LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: HEALTH CARE UPDATE

To the Editor,

When our nation recently embarked on what was to be a serious effort at changing and improving delivery of health care, the vision was for simplifying claim procedure and reducing over all cost while retaining the highest quality and extending coverage to all Americans. It seems now -- after all the hearings, posturing and invoking free enterprise, competition and conservatism -- Congress and the Administration are working their tragic magic, capitulating to special interests and the status quo. What is in the making is simply a re-shuffling of the health-care delivery components with business taking the "hit" so that it will continue to seem "free".

Private health-care interests have been jostled into action. Locally, bitter turf struggles are developing, while we pride ourselves on our enlightened community attitudes. In other areas, various combines are emerging. In Springfield, hospitals are reportedly buying the majority of the medical practices in town. Self-interest combines are becoming the order of the day. It's rapidly becoming "every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost" in the guise of solving the problem.

Again, John Q. Public is counted on to stand idly by as he's being conditioned to fantasize an easy, painless, no-sweat solution. Legislators, except for a few, are shying away from the ultimate and best hope for a viable universal health care process -- the single payer system supported by a single government trust fund, generated by a society serious about its holistic well-being.

Call it socialized medicine if you will. If we are ever to effect the kind of change that is hoped for, it will be necessary to free ourselves from our deeply ingrained anti-government mind set and our self-imposed abject fear of the socialism bogey man.

We already have several "socialist" government programs that are working well: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Unemployment Compensation. Without these, half of our hospitals and nursing homes would not be in operation and employment termination would mean immediate devastation for many. These programs are as effective as any human system, public or private. Perfection will never be achieved this side of heaven, but we can always seek to do better than we are doing. So come on Americans (Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Conservatives, Liberals), step up to the plate -- if we're half as good as we think we are, we can support a national, universal, health-care system that is effective, efficient, less costly with less hassle and paper work ... and make it work in our unique way. Maybe we could call it Conservative Socialism to enlist prominent support, not from Pat Buchanan, of course, but Rush Limbaugh. Who knows?

GILBERT DEGENHARDT

Cape Girardeau