Government intervention needed when society fails

TO THE EDITOR:

I read with interest today’s comments in The Daily Tar Heel by the chairman of the College Republicans (“Roy Cooper should join lawsuit against health care,” March 29).

Mostly, patients (or at least the ones we see at UNC) have little choice in the matter of health insurance (“if someone doesn’t buy health insurance, they should face the consequences of their decision”).

I’d like to invite the chairman to our clinic at UNC Hospitals, where many of our patients who live “in perpetual childhood” (most through no fault of their own) are constantly denied basic health care and medicines by either lack of insurance, or sub-optimal health insurance.

In my role as a cystic fibrosis physician, I see many patients we cannot consider for potentially life-prolonging treatments because of a lack of health insurance. Why does the chairman think we keep a cabinet stocked with free samples of respiratory medicines in the clinic?

Sometimes government has to intervene when society has failed a large proportion of its citizens, and in this case, President Obama and Congress have done the right thing.

Perhaps a lively debate about the immense sums of “government” dollars that are poured into the “military-industrial complex” (a term coined by a Republican president) is warranted, in contrast to the constant Republican whining about what is effectively a much needed social justice reform.

By the way, I wonder who is going to paying for all those lawsuits against the federal government, money that might be better spent?



Peadar Noone, M.D.
Associate Professor of Medicine