Web Letters: It's Easier to Insure Pets Than Kids

Ms. Ehrenreich: Great article! Your description of a political system and insurance industry that provide healthcare insurance for our pets, while many of our children go lacking for medical care, illustrates the great hypocrisy of our capitalistic society. The current American healthcare system seems to be just another "bait and switch" (I'm reading your book) flimflam that the politicians and the insurance industry have perpetrated on America's middle and working class and poor. I look forward to the day when we will have a healthcare system that will provide medical coverage for all Americans.

Conversely, I can't see how profit-oriented businesses can provide good healthcare insurance. It is difficult to imagine the profit motive being compatible with providing healthcare--there appears to be a vast and insurmountable hurdle that divides the two concepts.

The incompatibility of the health insurance industry's profit motive with the provisioning of healthcare was even understood by President Richard Nixon. Michael Moore's movie Sicko points out that Nixon was a big supporter of the development of health maintenance organizations--the healthcare profit machines that are the bane of good medical care.

John Scott

Cave Creek, AZ

Are we not paying ten billion dollars a month for the "pre-emptive" invasion in Iraq? I think the program is $80 billion for five years! Where is the shame from not only this Administration but Congress, MSN and the people?

Eileen Harris

Kensington, MD