Health Care: What About Little Guy?

So CalPERS is able to demand an across-the-board reduction in health care costs (“3.8% Premium Cut Negotiated for CalPERS,” Feb. 16). So it’s the third year of reductions in a row. So other large employers will be able to use these reductions as leverage in their own negotiations.

All this is great news, but for each of the millions of employees in California who do not work for such large employers, it is more like having your nose pressed against the window of the hospital refusing you entry.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could all belong to a large insurance cooperative that could use the market forces to achieve lower health costs for all of us?

We had such a chance in President Clinton’s health care plan, which would have banded small employers together with CalPERS-like clout to hold the line on costs and increase the meager choices most of us have in selecting a health care provider. Plus, unlike even CalPERS, we would have gotten report cards on each of the health plans available so we could compare their quality and price.

But that chance is gone, a victim of last year’s Republican obstructionism, which perversely led to the Grump Old Party’s victories last November. I only hope that the American people soon wake up from the spell the Gingrichers have cast and realize that Republicans stand for the narrow economic elite, not the vast American middle class.

COBY KING

Los Angeles