To the editor:
There is no hiding the fact that the U.S. health care system is broken. The World Health Organization ranked the U.S. first in expenditure (spending 16 percent of GDP) but 37th in overall performance and 72nd in overall level of health. Our emergency rooms are overcrowded because 45 million Americans are uninsured. As a result, we waste massive amounts of money because it cost much more to treat illnesses (especially in an emergency setting) than to prevent illnesses (or in the case of smaller problems, it is much cheaper to treat them in an office setting).
John Sununu supports the same basic health care plan that the rest of the Republican Party supports. He says he supports allowing "greater consumer choice" and actually wants to enact reforms that will reduce the instances in which an employer would provide, or help to provide, health care. As a result, more people will be thrown into the volatile individual health care market. The result will be more people uninsured, even greater use of emergency rooms to address issues that should have been addressed in doctors' offices, and more of the taxpayers' money being wasted. The only ones who will benefit will be the insurance companies.
The intentions of John Sununu and his friends were clearly stated by John McCain: "Nobody is uninsured because they can go to the emergency room." The Republicans do not want to fix health care, they simply want to help big insurance companies at the expense of taxpayer dollars.
Jeanne Shaheen worked to help cover uninsured children as governor, and in the Senate she will continue to fight to insure those who have been left out. Her sympathy lies with struggling working and middle-class families, not big insurance companies. We need a change of direction, we need a new senator, we need Jeanne Shaheen.
KHARA BARNETTE
Atkinson, N.H.
