And we will remain in 1867 until we finally gain some militancy around health care reform.

Bottom-up change requires the cajones to take on the Bad Guys, and it always begins in the streets. Where are the boycotts, sit-down strikes, and demonstrations?

To answer many of our questions I recommend that we get in contact with the leadership of OWL-The voice of Midlife and Older Women: http://www.owl-national.org/Welcome.html. Also consider inviting Merton C. Bernstein, Coles Professor of Law Emeritus at Washington University in Saint Louis, a founding board member of the National Academy of Social Insurance and was the principal consultant to the National Commission of Social Security Reform. This organization has been working since 1980 and has accumulated lots of information and statistics and data and articles which, taken together, show how single payer is the only way to go.

So instead of re-inventing the proverbial wheel, let’s join together with similar groups and finally get something done. My respect for Senator Teddy Kennedy just went down when it was reported that he held closed door meeting with health insurance executives, some physicians and some citizens. I thought that he would not be on the health insurance payrolls. If he is not then he should distance himself from these organizations that will do about anything to keep the money flowing into their coffers. And that’s the truth! (Lilly Tomlin the telephone operator and other characters from the old Saturday Night Live.)

It is definitely time to keep pushing for a thorough debate that includes single payer national health insurance (statewide in meanwhile) as the fiscally responsible way to return medical decision making to individuals and their choice of providers.

John T Garland, MD
retired endocrinologist

Insurance companies do not deliver health care. I have been a nurse for 35 years and have had healthcare coverage with every nursing job I have ever had. Not once in 35 years can I point to a single instance where an insurance company has had any impact whatsoever on the quality of the care I have received. The only interaction I have ever had with an insurance company was to either pay a premium or argue over a bill.

The insurance companies are huge money storage and distribution centers. They have a big loading dock in the back where money is hauled in, and a single window up front where a long line of hopeful health care providers waits while a receptionist with no medical knowledge decides whether or not to pay them for their services. There is also a helipad up on the roof where money goes out to lobbyists to make sure that there is never more than one teller window out front. Insurance company executives also use the helipad at times to remove some of the money to their own private off site storage facilities.

We don’t need health care reform, we need health care reimbursement reform. Of course the insurance companies will oppose this. Change sometimes hurts for a while. The arguments in favor of reform are so overwhelmingly in the public interest however, that it cannot ultimately be stopped. This is of immediate importance because, unlike Representative Gottwalt, many of his constituents don’t have a government job with tax supported health insurance and that number is growing rapidly by the day.

Leadership is needed to fix our problems, not pandering.

Well, there it is. The un- and under-insured, who are suffering even as the rest of us think we are covered (possibly an illusion) are invisible.

The bill, the Minnesota Health Plan, was authored by Senator John Marty and carried in the House by Rep. David Bly. They deserve our thanks for being willing to recognize those among us who do not have the advantages some of the rest of us temporarily enjoy. I say temporarily because the system in which Rep. Gottwalt has such faith is crumbling under his feet. He just can’t see it.