On the continuing health care debate . . .

Seen in the New York Times under editorial comments relating to the article, "Justices Ask if Health Law Is Viable Without Mandate."

"Without the mandate, administration officials say, it would be unreasonable to expect health insurers to cover the sickest Americans if the healthiest ones are not required to pay for coverage. If the pool of the insured was composed disproportionately of the sick, insurance costs could soar."

Here, ladies and gentlemen, are your death panels. They are called for-profit insurance companies. That people persist in hoping for a market solution to a human rights issue shows the extent to which people will place blind faith in a theoretical version of capitalism that has never existed, despite any insistence that it did and we somehow strayed from it.

So we can either work toward a solid solution to health care or we can choose to keep walking toward a mirage that always just seems over the horizon. Meanwhile, families will still go bankrupt, people will be denied care for pre-existing conditions, and costs will still rise. Fear not, though, ardent free marketeers, profits will rise, too. You just have to be healthy enough to enjoy them.

C. McAdamis, Santa Monica, CA
March 28, 2012