Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Letters to the Editor:

Feds shouldn’t run health care

After reading a letter published July 15 in the Sun (“Single-payer the way to go”) about health care, it should be noted that the writer’s description of single-payer federal sponsored health care is quite different than our working civilian population would experience under a Canadian-type system.

Being a career military service member and an officer, possibly receiving health care at the nearest military facility by the staff on duty at the time, is as natural as buying consumer goods at the commissary or living on base or in subsidized housing.

Now, well into my senior years and after having spent most of my adult years in the health care field — much of it near the Canadian border — I have seen too many stories to convince me that a specialized system can be operated by the same government that does such a fine job running the Postal Service, Amtrak, IRS, FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, EPA and numerous other federal services.

Here are a few examples why:

• A 50-year-old Canadian man was told he needed gall bladder surgery ASAP but could not be scheduled for six months. A few phone calls, a trip across the border and contact with an American surgeon and hospital resolved his condition in about two weeks.

• A young forestry worker was advised after an auto accident to get an MRI but was unable to schedule one for a year. Unable to pay the $1,000 fee at a private pay facility, he was given pain pills to hold him over until prognoses could be established.

• In 2007, a neonatal intensive care unit in Calgary was over capacity, so it flew a woman pregnant with quadruplets, along with her husband, a nurse and respiratory technician, to Montana to deliver the babies.

• The last decade or so, Belinda Stronach, Robert Bourassa and Danny Williams, all prominent figures in Canadian politics, required critical surgery or other treatment, and all chose to be treated in the U.S.

Our government for the most part does a fine job treating the military out of necessity, but it has no business controlling our health care.

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