GOP and HMO Funds

* Re “GOP Action on Medicare Sets Off Debate,” Oct. 20: About 16% of all seniors and disabled covered by Medicare are currently enrolled in HMOs, yet the GOP wants to channel nearly 36% of the total funding restored to revive a failing HMO model. Many health plans and hospitals are dumping their HMO contracts with Medicare, since mixing health care with politics often amounts to nothing less than a kiss of death for the providers.

If 84% of the seniors do not choose to be in an HMO and most health care providers do not want to deal with this model unless they can cherry-pick their covered lives, why has the GOP remained so tethered to this sinking SS HMO? For a party that purportedly abhors coercive action by Big Government, I don’t know what else to call this, when each HMO patient gets more than twice the restored funding that the rest get.

JOHN T. CHIU MD

Newport Beach