Single-Payer Health Plans Deserve Attention

The front-page article ``Businesses Line Up Against Clinton Plan; Public Is Still Divided,'' Feb. 4, is misleading. Americans may be divided in their views of President Clinton's health-care reform plan or conservative alternatives to it, but other polls have shown that a majority of Americans in general and US physicians in particular support a single-payer plan.

Single-payer bills have been introduced in the House (HR 1200 by Reps. Jim McDermott [D] of Washington and John Conyers [D] of Michigan) and in the Senate (S 491 by Sen. Paul Wellstone [D] of Minnesota). It is inconceivable that a report on health-care proposals would ignore these bills, especially since they had some of the highest number of congressional sponsors of any of the health-care proposals.

Instead, the article focused on the Clinton plan (a.k.a. ``the Insurance Industry Preservation Act of 1993'') and conservative alternatives to it.

For democracy to work, citizens must be informed about all of the alternative proposals. When the media attempt to limit discussion to a narrow range of proposals, they are failing in their duty to the American public. Ronald Forthofer and Mary Forthofer, Longmont, Colo.

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