Download the letter from the Sun Times website
Medicare for all is best system
Your article about the new restrictions on access to the free clinics at NorthShore Evanston Hospital ["Free clinics tighten boundaries," July 6] is a chilling harbinger of the accelerated decline of our broken health-care system.
These are clinics "of last resort," standing between health care and total neglect. To see them shrink in this way shows how heartless and untenable our present arrangements are. The resultant suffering -- and even death -- that will ensue is unacceptable in a country as compassionate and wealthy as ours.
Tragically, this kind of diminished access to care will not be seriously ameliorated by the new health law. We will continue to face an acute shortage of primary care physicians. The private insurance industry will continue to erect barriers to care with high premiums, co-pays and deductibles. The drug companies will continue to charge astronomical prices, putting needed medications out of reach for millions.
The solution, favored by a solid majority of the American people and physicians, is an improved Medicare for all -- single-payer national health insurance. Such a program would cover everyone, without exception, and give us the cost-control tools we need to deliver high-quality care over the long haul.
Given the power and resources of the multimillion-dollar private health industry, it will take a mass movement -- much like the women's suffrage or civil rights movements -- to achieve this goal. The alarming news about Evanston's curtailed clinics should spur us on to build this movement without delay.
Quentin D. Young, M.D.,
Hyde Park
Comments