Letter to the Editor by Dr. Benjamin Brown, Blue Ridge Medical Center

Taken from the News & Advance:

Until most people feel strongly that health care needs to be changed for reasons larger than their own personal insurance plan, health care is unlikely to be reformed meaningfully.

I am a family physician practicing locally. I personally believe in a principle that everybody in America should have health insurance, just as everyone’s children deserve an education. Furthermore, I believe we are already paying for those without health insurance, via the most inefficient means possible, emergency room visits and cost shifting from people with insurance plans.

However, there are other forces pressuring our country, caused by the high cost of health care, that have very immediate and personal consequences to someone in everyone’s family. Sixty-two percent of personal bankruptcies are due to medical costs according the recent American Journal of Medicine article. This is primarily happening to people who have health insurance policies. American jobs are being lost to overseas companies because of the cost of American health care. Companies are laying off workers because of the cost of health insurance, and jobs are hard to find. A large percentage of recent foreclosures have resulted from medical debt. These economic trends drop the value of people’s life savings, which they count on for retirement and emergencies.

If we don’t take advantage of the momentum to change health care in this country now, I firmly believe that, as a country, we will be forced back to this table again soon, with a deeper and more complicated situation on our hands. We can’t afford not to address our current inefficient health insurance system

Dr. BENJAMIN BROWN
Blue Ridge Medical Center
Arrington