Insurers distort the proper economics of providing heath care in this country

Regarding "Addressing health care costs -- the right way" (Editorial, Oct. 15): I am amazed at the platitudes that pass as serious repair of our broken health care system. Your suggestions are vague, useless and ineffectual because they do not strike at the heart of the problem.

We will not have a health care system in this country with reasonable cost until we have a market system controlled by buyers and sellers of health care without the market-distorting presence of insurance companies.

The true cost of health care will be known when doctors sit across the table from patients to determine the price of the product.

A few questions will illustrate my point: What do insurance companies do? What value do they add to the system they are so deeply invested in? Why do we need them? Why are they involved in health care? Why do we buy our health care from insurance companies instead of from the people who create it?

Insurance companies are public companies; that is, they are stock companies whose first and last responsibility is to their stockholders, who may or may not be patients. If the patient happens to be a shareholder, he will benefit in the profits. If he is not, then he loses as the profits are drained away from the health care system to enrich the company, its officers and shareholders.

There was a time when people saw their doctors, were treated and paid their bills. This was not so long ago, certainly before and just after World War II. Unfortunately, the present generation of physicians, so-called health economists and other health professionals are too young or too uneducated in modern economic history to remember these golden years of physician independence, respect and financial security.

A first step in regaining our economic integrity and controlling the cost of health care is to restore market principles, free of the incubus of insurance companies.

We should not be going to these people as mendicants for the 1% or 2% increase in our fees every year. They know nothing of medicine. They do not know what we go through every day of our lives caring for the sick of this nation. They know profits. Let them find the profits somewhere else.

Roger W. Cyrus, MD, Madison, Conn.

Note: This item originally appeared at http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2007/11/19/edlt1119.htm.