Dear Editor:

Allow me a few moments of your time to express my opinion as to a few of the many reasons you should contact your Congressional representatives, as well as your friends and relatives in other districts to contact theirs, to oppose the Federal government take-over of the health care industry in this country.

First of all, the government’s “public option” can operate, not only without profit, but at a loss and merely make up the difference through higher deficits, or increased taxes. Removing the profit motive will put all private insurers at a disadvantage, and who will eventually cease to offer the service because they will simply be unable to compete with the federal government.

Further, employers will see that a flat 8 percent tax will be cheaper than actually providing health insurance, resulting in even more people being forced into the “public option”. One can see how very quickly nearly everyone would be included in the Federal program, and only those who can afford their own independent coverage, and, of course, Congress, will be able to get health care without bureaucratic over-sight.

Speaking of bureaucrats, lets us try to anticipate the size of the bureaucracy that it would take to administer such a program. The last figure I saw was there are just short of 200,000 I.R.S. employees to collect and process the income tax returns of about 140 million people ( not including the business entities) who file one return, once a year. Now imagine the number of paper-pushers needed to handle the medical claims of nearly every man, woman and child in this country, who might well see a healthcare professional several times during the year, especially because it would be “free”. A conservative estimate would be about 500,000 new government employees.

Now, let us turn to the actual costs of a single-payer system, which is the stated goal of the current administration. Again, the last figure I saw was that the gross domestic product (i.e., the value of all goods and services) was just over $13 trillion for one year. It is generally accepted that the healthcare industry represents about 18 percent of that figure, which, as the baby-boomers age, will get higher, much higher, and 18 percent of G.D.P. is not, as we are led to believe, only “one trillion dollars over the next ten years”, but is $2.34 trillion per year, and given the average waste/fraud of 25 percent (per the GAO), we are talking just short of $3 trillion per year. This is a more realistic estimate of the ultimate cost for the government’s complete take-over of the healthcare industry.

Frankly, because of time and space constraints, I will not belabor the impact on the quality of care, nor the consequences of eliminating all competition in the industry, nor the inevitable elimination of any legal recourse for any injury/death caused by an over-whelmed healthcare system, as is already the case in the Veteran’s Hospitals, but let us not forget that rationing because of budgetary considerations will be unavoidable with a complete government take-over.

Julian Mack

West Point