The Wrong Prescription
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I hope that The Post's Jan. 10 editorial "Certificate of Need? Yes!" helps stop the plan to build another hospital in a city that does not need more hospital beds.
Almost all of the serious health care problems in the Washington area require more effective disease prevention and primary health care; better access to doctors and nurses for routine and early-stage problems; better nutritional counseling; access to affordable healthy food; and an array of health services that are either unavailable or available only on a fragmented and dysfunctional basis to low-income families.
Employers and employees pay on average more than $12,000 a year for family health coverage in the District. Unnecessary, costly additions to an expensive health care system will drive up costs more. Some employers will drop coverage as a result or move jobs out of the high-cost city. Either way, the poor and others with low incomes will suffer most.
The District has too much high-tech health care and too little good primary care. The worst step that the city could take is to waste $400 million on an unneeded hospital, which undoubtedly will cost even more than that before it is done.
HELEN DARLING
President
National Business Group on Health
Washington
