The writer of the Feb. 1 letter, "Liberals unfairly depict conservatives," proudly emphasized Rush Limbaugh's claim that the U.S. has the best health care in the world. But the writer seemed to ignore the sad, shameful fact that in our world-leading United States of America millions of our fellow citizens do not get that excellent care because they simply cannot afford it. Furthermore, I doubt most of us can afford to pay cash for medical care like the writer's apparent role model, Limbaugh, claimed he did.
Currently, we all pay for the treatment of the uninsured who go to emergency rooms rather than to private doctors. Our hospital charges and insurance premiums simply go up and up in order to cover the costs of such an arrangement.
Another thing: Corporations and the like unethically hire illegal immigrants to do work we won't do because the pay is low. The result is we citizens end up with lower prices for some groceries and so forth because of the illegal workers' production.
(In defense of ethical employers, I'm told they too often are unable to distinguish the illegal immigrants from legal immigrants because forged documents are well done.)
What are we to do when illegal immigrants are injured? Leave them to their own devices, to suffer or just to die? If an illegal immigrant comes down with some deadly and rapidly contagious disease, should we not treat it and try to prevent its spread to others?
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Our problem is indeed not with the overall quality of our excellent American medical care, but with its misdistribution and uneven availability. That is the crucial dilemma that our leaders must solve.
Robert J. Goldish, M.D.
Duluth
The writer is a retired Duluth internist.
