Reform misunderstood

Rep. Joe Schmick wrote a heated editorial excoriating Commissioner Mike Kreidler for his position on Washington adopting the modified Obamacare implementation but devotes much of his entire editorial to his beliefs and misperceptions of the basic law.

The goal of the Affordable Care Act was to insure the great majority of Americans with coverage that did not allow refusal due to pre-existing illnesses or place them at risk of subsequent loss due to illness and created a basic set of coverage standards. These are criteria that essentially every other First World nation provides. The ability to retain one’s personal physician was a goal, but as we have seen in the local marketplace, insurers have often altered preferred provider choice with no recourse, driven entirely by economics. Association health plans have driven some of these changes as well.

Schmick may not have had to change physicians due to such policy changes but a great many have. The ultimate goal is to have all Americans secure in the fact that their economic future is not at risk due to their health, rather than play insurer roulette in some unregulated marketplace.

All change is hard, even from worse to better.

Bruce Becker, MD

Spokane