Health care needs time

EDITOR:

The present shouting match over health care reform was aptly described by Shakespeare: "Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Three House committees have each issued drafts, which have to be reconciled into one bill for debate by the full house. Two senate committees have, I believe, also submitted drafts and a third will (hopefully) resume discussion of its draft after recess. So we end up throwing platitudes and prejudices at each other.

U.S. expenditure on health care (government and private) amounts to a very significant percentage of gross domestic product (some 16 percent, over $6,000 annually per individual - Kaiser Foundation). The health care "system" is a very complicated mix of public, private profit, and private non-profit organizations. That such a costly, complex, entity could be sensibly reviewed in its entirety and improved by congressional committees, and then debated and passed by Congress in a few months (initially, by mid-August, now by year-end) is just plain silly.

That the organization of health care could be improved (reducing cost), is undoubtedly correct (some reductions made by removing/altering legislative impediments). That the availability to lower-income citizens could - and ethically should - be improved is equally correct. Just how to do all this and where to find the resources are complicated and difficult questions, which I suspect are beyond the capacities of our congressmen, certainly within such a tight deadline. The better way I suggest would be to appoint an independent committee of experts, (either a presidential or congressional commission) to study the subject and, as they reach conclusions, submit draft bills to Congress for debate. Resources, incidentally, are not just cash. If tens of millions more people are suddenly capable of demanding health care, do we have enough primary physicians, specialists and hospitals to handle this surge in demand?

Carefully thought out and costed recommendations couldn't be done by the end of this year (a totally artificial deadline, politically motivated) but they would be of much greater relevance and higher quality than what we are likely to get from Congress.

D.H.E. Dicconson

Gardnerville