EXTRA
Dr. Kantarjian’s Op-Ed on the ACA and My Letter to the Editor in Response
To the Editor:
Regarding “The ACA’s future: Tweak it, or scrap it? (Page A17, Thursday), with all due respect to Dr. Hagop M. Kantarjian (“Point: Million now insured because of Obamacare; fix it, don’t kill it”), it will take far more than a tweak to make Obamacare a useful step toward the universal health coverage absent in the U.S., but available in all the rest of the Western world.
The problem is not what the ACA does. It is with how – mandates, subsidies and exchanges.
Rather than eliminate all the middlemen feeding at the trough of the health care-industrial complex like the insurance companies, the drug makers and the large hospital chains, ObamaCare locks them in place making profits and standing between Americans and their doctors and real quality health care.
Nina Owcharenko (“Counterpoint: Initiative is trending in wrong direction – toward failure”) is right. We would do better starting over with a clear goal (health care for all Americans, not health insurance) and a clear strategy to get there (private market vs. government sponsored).
Either access to quality health care is a right of being an American as it is for Americans over 65, or it is part of a supply-and-demand marketplace with the haves getting and the have-nots losing.
Leonard Zwelling, Bellaire
2 thoughts on “EXTRA Dr. Kantarjian’s Op-Ed on the ACA and My Letter to the Editor in Response”
Len, can you email me a copy? I don't have a subscription. Thanks, Marie
Will try