Re: Guest commentary

Editor: I read with some amusement two of the questions Mr. Gonder (Green Valley News, March 2,) would pose in anticipation of the federal elections. The ones regarding health care I find very interesting as I come from a country that spends far less per capita on medical coverage and has on an average basis as good care as is available in the U.S.

In one of the questions he poses in his guest commentary �“ Would you bail out Medicare and the other essentially is would you imperil ‘The best medical system in the world.”

If Mr. Gonder is claiming that the U.S. system is the best in the world, why would it need bailing out?

Our consulting Minister in Nanaimo, British Columbia, is an American who won’t risk cancelling her American health coverage as she is uncertain that she would be able to replace it upon her return to the States. Her Canadian plan costs her about $57 month. Her U.S. plan cost month is over $400. Last November, she needed an unexpected gall bladder operation. In Canada, she received that operation and paid a total cost of $12.70 for pain killers. Her deductible here would be $2,000 and she would still have to pay for follow up medications.

I think Americans should test the public �” not for profit �” model versus the private one by experiment. Take two states with approximately the same per capita health costs all found. Spend the same amount on health care per capita publicly in one and privately in the other and see what can be delivered by each. Do this for one to five years.

I would anticipate the results by suggesting that a U.S. public health system model so funded would spread to other states, cost no more, and deliver better service as an average to all Americans as well as knocking the socks off all other health systems planet wide.

One of your great jurists, Oliver Wendell Holmes suggested that ‘Taxation is the cost of civilization.” I believe he was correct.

Taxes spent on the health of all citizens, I believe, contribute to a country where each person feels proud to be a citizen and gives the word society a broader meaning.

Sam Cosco, Parksville, British Columbia