Healthcare bill needs public option

To the Editor:

Healthcare reform without a public option amounts to billions of dollars of bailouts for the insurance companies.

By expanding health insurance to the uninsured, we'll be giving tens of millions of new customers to the insurance companies, along with federal subsidies to keep premiums affordable.

But there's no incentive for the health insurance companies to keep costs down, or to provide better service. By subsidizing high premiums, all we're doing is bailing them out.

The public health insurance option provides competition that will make the private health insurance industry fight for customer loyalty by offering lower premiums and better services. Lower premiums means less tax dollars going into the pockets of corporate CEOs.

Americans deserve the right to choose their own health care. Limiting our choice to the same for-profit corporations means trusting the same people who benefit from the broken health insurance system we have now.

Congress must give Americans more choices for their personal health care by allowing the availability of a non-profit public health insurance option. Requiring people to purchase health insurance from a limited pool of for-profit insurance companies only is not real reform, it is a taxpayer bailout of the insurance industry.

If the for-profit corporate health insurance companies fail us and cannot provide quality service for less, we deserve the right as consumers to choose a non-profit public option.

LaVonne Dodson,

Center Point