Getting our money’s worth on health care

We should end the income-only means tests that government, insurance and provider bureaucracies use to polarize us to determine who gets financial help for medical care and who does not. Why count income if expenses and real assets and loopholes are not counted? Getting good, affordable health care should not be contingent on knowing a good attorney.

Medical debts can deplete long-term savings, ruin credit and send people into bankruptcy. Why should we allow our health system to rake sick and dying people and their families over the coals?

No parent should be denied help for their children’s care. And no senior citizen — actually, nobody — should be prevented from obtaining the best medical care because of money. Just create the “NQA” medical plan: the No Questions Asked plan.

A nonprofit should administer our health care plan, which includes everyone and covers dental, vision, hearing and foot care — instead of multimillionaires and their unnecessary and expensive insurance and hospital bureaucracies sucking up our scarce medical dollars for their CEOs and stockholders.

No need to continue worrying over growing medical and prescription bills. No more going without hearing aids or glasses or nursing care because the friends of those in Congress have to make money on the sick and dying.

Just retake control of our money. What a thought! A more humane approach is needed. One payer (the United States), more good care from higher-paid, more responsible providers, much less bureaucracy, happy taxpayers and patients.

“Socialism!” some will cry. Nope, it is our money. We should end the profiteering and price-gouging of patients — and do something no government or insurance company seems able to do: negotiate better prices and better outcomes for the care we pay for.

Alan DiCara, Winsted