...in response to this dung from James Roosevelt Jr., CEO of Tufts Health Plan. I doubt that they'll print it, since in giving him a large chunk of the op-ed page, they've kind of shown which side they're going to line up on, but you never know. There was a lot more in his letter I wanted to comment on, but that would have guaranteed it not seeing the light of day- the Globe's into pithy or ranting from the rabble, not anything longform.

To the Editors,

It’s difficult to tell a mother- whose teenaged son has a shattered jaw and is sitting in an oral surgeon’s chair in New Hampshire- that her insurance company (Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Massachusetts) won’t allow him to be seen because the oral surgeon doesn’t participate in their plan.

Nowhere as difficult as it was for her son, however.

It’s difficult to tell a different mother that her son, who had attempted suicide twice and was trying to kick a drug habit, wouldn’t be covered for his stay at a treatment center of their choosing, but hey: why not try these less costly, presumably less competent facilities that the insurer (Tufts Health Plan) said they would approve, at least for a short stay. Again, not nearly as bad as it was for them.

And so it was very difficult to read Tufts CEO James Roosevelt Jr’s contribution to the health care debate (“Healthcare: Let’s build on what we know” 4/9/09) without coming away feeling more than a bit dismayed, since the views he expounds will likely be followed by the administration: the ravenous foxes will continue to run the chicken coop, with a few minor, trivial implementations to allay irritating squawkers like me.

My view of the obscene joke that is our current health care system comes from working in the managed care offices of several community health centers in Boston over the past ten years. This assessment derives from seeing companies like Mr. Roosevelt’s be allowed to call the shots on patient care- on appropriate treatment, necessary diagnostic imaging, and medication choices- thereby setting the standards that allow them to maximize their profitability. Mr. Roosevelt’s compensation for 2008 was 1.06 million dollars according to the Globe. Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Massachusetts’ CEO, Cleve Killingsworth, received 3.5 million. Nice job, fellas.

While some might see my view as sawing off the branch that I’m currently sitting on, I am a firm believer that the only real change that is acceptable is a single payer, Medicare-for-all style plan, such as the one proposed by Michigan’s John Conyers, HR 676, The United States National Health Insurance Act. The proposal can be read here. I believe that only through this can we assure Americans their fundamental right to consistent, dependable health care, regardless of income, geographic location, or any other factors used to deny our citizens what should rightfully be theirs in favor of greed and insatiable profit generation.

Our nation is at a point where difficult decisions need to be made about the direction that we want to pursue. Mine is a very small voice compared to the health insurance industry and the cable naysayers who see disaster in switching our country to a system that the rest of the industrialized world happily uses, at a fraction of the cost. I would bet, however, that mine isn’t the only one out there.