Letter to the Editor #2 12/8

By Jeff Reamer

published: Mon, 7 Dec, 2009

To the Editor,

This letter addresses Mark Kozlowski’s Dec. 7 column titled “Health reform bill not viable.” Kozlowski might not be a lunatic, but he certainly does not know how to make an argument.

In the beginning parts of his column, Kozlowski bashes Medicare as a bane to the American taxpayer, saying that nearly one-quarter of the funds doled out by the program are fraudulent.

So, he argues, Americans should not rally behind a bill that gives the government more money to mismanage while the American taxpayer foots the bill. Well, OK. So far, so good.

However, he then argues that health care reform is unnecessary because Medicare looks after the public sector’s health care needs. So his solution to the health care crisis? Expand the foundations of the Medicare money pit. Is anyone out there listening?

The exact reason we need health care reform in this country is that Medicaid is totally inefficient andunreliable.

If Kozlowski spent as much effort actually thinking about the health care problem in the U.S. as he apparently does linking together trite arguments taken from conservative blog sites, he would realize that his column not only fails to explain why health care reform is bad for Americans, but it also reveals why we need it in the first place.

Jeff Reamer
School of Arts and Sciences