Health care’s costs are high

Regarding “‘It’s OK if you die’ — why Ben Taub is the people’s hospital (Essay),” (March 19): Tears came to my eyes as I realized Dr. Ricardo Nuila’s experience with his patient mirrored mine in 1988, as an immigrant hospice social worker. Both patients died peacefully. Ben Taub offers patients universal nonprofit health care, whether they’re insured or not. When health care is denied, people wait until they need the emergency room; these costs are high and paid by us through taxes.

At present, I have Medicaid clients with cases in which cost, not care, is the priority. They are denied their effective drug because it costs more than another, delaying infusions and leading to illness and hospitalization. Insurance companies also do this. We pay more than the rest of the world, and most of us get less.

Through Britain’s National Health Service, I got more. In 1948, my immigrant mother survived her illness; I came home from the orphanage, came to the U.S., became a U.S. citizen and went on to get my master’s degree. Excellent health care benefits the recipient and their families, too. As we say over here, “Have I got a deal for you.” Let us stop just talking about the benefits of universal health care, and make it happen.

Angela M. Arney, Houston

The essay by Dr. Ricardo Nuila was thought-provoking: If your life depended on it, you could not devise a more costly, inefficient, unfair and complicated system of health care than we have in this country. We are the richest nation on earth, yet our life expectancy, infant mortality and other measures are inferior to several other countries’. There are two causes: greed and failure to follow the golden rule of treating others as you want to be treated. There has to be a better way.

David McMillin, The Woodlands