Perfect health care or none at all?

“An average of 17 weeks is required to see a specialist in Canada,” claims letter writer Warren Barnes, who emphasizes that health care in the US is superior for children. I doubt his claim. In the United States, many children never get to see a specialist at all. Uninsured children are 10 times more likely to have an unmet health care need than insured children.

In 1997, 22.3 percent of kids were uninsured. By 2005, that number had dropped to 14.9 percent. Over the same period, the percentage of uninsured adults remained roughly the same. Still, more than one-seventh of American children - a total of 9 million - have no health insurance. Many of these kids no longer have health protection because there has been a steady reduction in health coverage by corporations and businesses. Many parents, especially in middle income families, cannot afford the cost of steadily increasing health insurance.

I find it puzzling that Mr. Barnes equates the number of MRI machines with the quality of health care for kids. This technology is a wonderful tool, but it seems to benefit most those kids whose families can afford it. The number of high tech, expensive machines is not the measure of the quality and effectiveness of children’s health care. Availability of doctors and proper treatment are far more important.

It is dismaying how many people in this country rank political ideology above the compassionate health care of our kids. We have had government sponsored free education for kids for many generations, but ideologues go bananas over government sponsored health care for children. There is a fundamental meanness in this.

Joe Howard Crews