Editor, Gazette-Journal:
It shouldn’t take the murder of a health insurance CEO to wake us up to the horrors of the U.S. health insurance system. While we don’t know for sure the motives of the gunman, the etchings found on the bullet casings give us a pretty good idea—“deny,” “defend,” “depose”—all ways that the insurance companies try to save money by denying care to insureds.United Healthcare has been accused of denying a full third of claims made. Why should insurance companies be allowed to deny care that a doctor has prescribed? Shouldn’t doctors and nurses be deciding what care we need?
The United States is the only wealthy, industrialized nation that doesn’t provide universal health care. We pay far more for health care than any other country and see worse results. On average, other wealthy countries spend about half as much on health care per person than the U.S. and yet in the U.S., we have a lower life expectancy, the highest rate of preventable and treatable deaths for all ...