Dear Mr. Sanders,
I, like many concerned Americans appreciate your very real concern for the actual problems confronting the majority of Americans. I agree in theory with the concept and dire necessity for a single payer healthcare system. For Medicare to cover everyone and not bankrupt this country, however, the enormous amount of graft involved in the program must be eliminated. Lobbies are currently taking thirty to as much as sixty cents in overpayment out of every dollar spent by the program for pharmaceuticals , durable goods, oxygen, laboratory testing and outpatient services. In addition, Medicare contributors will need to stop paying for luxury medications for indigent patients that the contributors cannot possibly afford for themselves.
In short, the United States Congress has never been proven trustworthy or competent enough to run Medicare or any other government program. To make matters even worse, of course, the partisan Republican Supreme Court majority seems to have taken over the job of writing new laws not only from their fellow liberal justices but also from the incompetent legislators in Washington D.C. Under "Citizens United," not only have campaign finance laws been strictly forbidden in this country, but lobbies have been given leave to openly purchase any candidate they can afford, from judges to presidents.
Therefore, any single payer healthcare system in this country must be run by well regulated private insurance companies- whether the system is owned by the federal government or by the companies themselves. It cannot, under any circumstances, be run by "prostitute" Congressmen and Congresswomen that can legally accept unlimited payments from their generous "Johns." And, most importantly, the funds must be taken from the graduated income tax and other parts of the general fund, rich people paying more than poor people, not from a specialized system of rape known as the "Medicare tax." While much of the Medicare/Social Security fund is typically raided by greedy politicians to give to their "procurors," the true name for so many lobbies, an equal amount is wasted on the massively abused Medicaid system. If everyone has the same healthcare access, millions of poor people will not have to exaggerate their disabilities to obtain an insulting pittance from the government when all they need is the health insurance coverage. And, businesses can save billions of dollars in healthcare costs, enabling them to pay higher wages and expand their operations.
Yours truly,
Allen Finkelstein, D.O.
2/5/2016
P.S. I have enclosed a letter I sent you back in 2011 to your Congressional Office. I trust you will still find this quite apropos.
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Letter to Bernie Sanders in 2011
6/23/11
Dear Senator Sanders,
With the (hopefully temporary) political demise of Anthony Weiner, you remain the de facto champion of national healthcare. Like you, I believe that private health insurance is rapidly developing into an anachronism left over from the 1940's inducement to attract armed forces veterans to competing companies. Unfortunately, through the granting of antitrust exemptions allowing the insurance industry to collude and fix prices, Congress has created a giant monopoly which has crippled American business and industry and prevented us from competing with the rest of the world. Not only does the idea of businesses subsidizing health insurance represent an unfair and arbitrary tax, but it has been shown to increase the production cost of an average automobile in this country by one thousand five hundred to two thousand dollars per unit!
Until now, most state insurance commissioners, as lackeys of the industry they are sworn to regulate, have allowed companies to raise premiums to whatever level is required to insure that the premiums represent almost entirely profit. Even if this be no longer permitted, with relaxation of pre existing illness clauses and agreeing not to drop higher costing patients, eventually insurance companies' expenses will be so exorbitant that all but the "super rich" will be unable to afford health insurance. The Republican proposal to place these high risk patients in a special pool, the expense to be shared by the government, is a legitimate but quite temporary attempt to delay the demise of the private health insurance industry. It is an attempt by the industry to care for only the healthiest segment of society and to relegate more and more of the "unhealthiest" to the government's care. Unfortunately, Republicans do not want to furnish the government with any funds for these unfortunate people.
Mr. Sanders, at our age, I would estimate that the yearly premium for private health insurance even close to the quality of Medicare would easily cost at least 30 thousand dollars per year in premiums. The meager vouchers suggested by various Republican profiteers would hardly survive a hospitalization or two before most Americans would be faced with the party's ultimate suggestion, bankruptcy. The healthcare proposals erroneously called "Obamacare," foolishly under-researched and hastily passed by both Houses are also a silly attempt to postpone the demise of the health insurance industry. Both parties' proposals represent, as I have heard you admit, a concession to their respective House and Senate friendly lobbies.
I am a practicing physician who has done fairly well financially under the present system, but I realize that ultimately we must establish some form of socialized medicine. With both Republican and Democratic compromises, just as homeowners insurance is constantly subsidized and bailed out by the federal government(that furnishes ninety percent of the homeowners insurance industry's unfunded liability coverage for free) so too does the health insurance industry plan to "go on the dole" with huge"subsidies" in the form of government care for the sickest patients. It is clearly time for the government to "own" homeowners insurance, but let the insurance industry's qualified bureaucracy run it. In the same vein, it is time to "clean up" Medicare waste and graft, the Part D drug scam, durable goods, oxygen products and laboratory tests at three to five times retail prices,and hospital charges seventeen thousand versus fifty thousand dollars for the same procedures at different hospitals. Medicare is our socialized medicine. Instead of pretending it is well run, the government needs to "own" it, but let the insurance bureaucracy "run" it. Despite what a bogus and incompetent Supreme Court says, it is still illegal for a lobby to bribe an insurance company. Perhaps, Mr. Sanders, you can speak to Mr. Obama about this concept and about dismissing his inappropriate choice for Attorney General, "Uncle Tom Holder." Properly fumigated and sterilized, Medicare would then look quite appealing and affordable to American voters. It is only then that the honest proposal can be made to extend the program to everyone.
Enclosed are letters written to you and law professor, Jonathan Turley in November of 2009 as well as a few articles that I thought you might find amusing. Also enclosed is a 250 dollar check for your campaign fund. Perhaps you could use fifty dollars of it to buy out Mr. Holder's contract for what it's worth. Any of the fifty dollars left over could be donated to your favorite charity. I firmly believe that you are the one man left in Washington whom we cannot afford to lose.
With my very best regards,
Al Finkelstein, D.O.
