Your Views on Rationing Health Care, Cigarette Warnings, Feelings of Isolation

Health Care: What We Need, What We Don't

Rationing health care ["Rationing Care Is Standard Practice," Aug. 4] is always the norm. The real issues are about health care's costs and its efficiencies and effectiveness. One way to solve these issues would be to offer more scholarships for medical students, which would increase the number of doctors. The government could also provide tax credits to small businesses to cover, say, 60 percent of the employer's health insurance costs. The employer and employee could then share the remaining 40 percent. This would be a lot cheaper than what the president and Congress are proposing.

A lot of folks object to Obama's plan not just because it's more rationing but also because it increases costs and limits the freedom to choose a private insurer. Our family has Blue Cross Blue Shield, and we like it very much. I am eligible for medical care at the Veterans Administration but prefer not to go there because it doesn't seem to be as good as private facilities. .

We do not need another bureaucracy to get between our doctor and us.

Michael D'Andrea

Olney

The article cites extreme examples involving lung transplants, ICUs, LVADs, dermatologists, etc. These are all limited and scarce resources that have to be rationed in the United States, as anywhere else in the world. What most Americans are afraid of, and rightly so, is the type of rationing that occurs in Canada and the United Kingdom over routine tests and procedures, like colonoscopies, knee replacements and cardiac workups, that result in unnecessary and grossly underreported morbidity and mortality. What we don't need and what the writer's argument reeks of are the core principles underlying the Obamacare playbook: rationing, or the denial of routine medical care.

Jayesh Dayal, MD

Potomac