Hsieh LTE in Rocky Mountain News

The October 16, 2008 Rocky Mountain News printed my latest LTE on health care, in response to their 10/13/2008 OpEd, "Dueling Med Plans":

Obama's plan would move us toward government health care

Thank you for your healthy skepticism about Obama's proposed health care "reforms". The last thing this country needs is a massive new bureaucracy that would crowd out private health insurance. The Obama plan would be just another step towards a complete government takeover of American medicine.

We've already seen this with Medicare, which has essentially destroyed primary private health insurance for American over age 65. Older Americans essentially live under a system of socialized medicine, and every year we see how their health care is held hostage to partisan political wrangling.

Do we really want to inflict this on all Americans?

There are genuine problems with the current health care system.

But forcing everyone into a government-run health system to "solve" the problem of the uninsured would be like forcing everyone into government-run housing projects to "solve" the "problem of homelessness".

Paul Hsieh, MD, Sedalia