Viewpoint | Correcting America’s Health Treatment Program

To the Editor:

Re “How Do We Fix the Scandal That Is American Health and fitness Treatment?,” by Nicholas Kristof, with images by September Dawn Bottoms (column, Aug. 20):

Nicholas Kristof scratches the surface area of the failures of the wellbeing treatment system in this nation. I have been in observe for 28 years as a cardiologist and internist and have found firsthand the miraculous breakthroughs in cardiac care as well as the appalling stage of care common in treatment of serious conditions, primarily amongst minority populations.

Most care in this country is delivered by big for-profit and nonprofit entities (which function mostly as for-income entities but avoid taxes). These programs are incentivized to commit in large-close tertiary care, ordinarily cardiac, orthopedic, neurosurgical and oncologic care, as they have the optimum reimbursement.

Persistent care for circumstances this sort of as obesity, diabetes and higher blood pressure are not attractive spots of medicine and for the most part supply very low compensation from Medicare, Medicaid and professional payers.

Our health and fitness treatment system needs to incentivize most important care and force nonprofit entities to allocate larger sized portions of their budgets to most important care or eliminate their nonprofit position.

Daniel Zanger
Brooklyn

To the Editor:

Nicholas Kristof has published a cogent and damning column. 1 piece of the wellbeing care disaster we have to also tackle is medical doctor instruction and remuneration.

New medical professionals have delayed earning opportunity in purchase to go to health care school and have endured at least 3 a long time of paltry spend and particularly demanding schedules as professional medical interns and residents. By the time they are ready to exercise medication just after at minimum 7 yrs of post-higher education schooling, they are not likely to set up observe in rural spots with the lowest spend, fewest colleagues for support, qualified isolation and minimal simply call protection. They are also fewer most likely to observe in pediatrics or household drugs than in a health-related specialty.

Without a doubt, no a person can blame them for wanting to perform in a location conducive to easily repaying college student financial loans as very well as shelling out for malpractice insurance policy.

Vibrant, hardworking younger persons can come across myriad other fields of do the job and skip the tension that is modern-day U.S. medicine.

If we are major about bettering health and fitness outcomes and cutting down infant mortality, melancholy and skyrocketing rates of diabetic issues and other ailments, then we require to wholly revamp doctor training.

Nurses, medical doctors and hospital employees are heroes. Let us handle them as this sort of. Pay out for their training, and incentivize work in underserved and significant-possibility locales.

Susan Balogh
Boston

To the Editor:

Only previous month the Department of Health and fitness and Human Expert services found that some of the country’s largest for-earnings insurance plan firms, which jointly deal with Medicaid applications that cover the bulk of the 87 million people on Medicaid, denied a lot more than a person of just about every four requests for medical professional-requested treatment plans or remedies for clients enrolled in their Medicaid strategies.

Medicaid serves several who live with the cons that typically direct to better prices of diabetes and other serious illnesses for which timely and constant treatment is necessary to far better results. Delivering the solutions that doctors prescribe for these clients would go a extensive way to fixing the scandal explained by Mr. Kristof.

Ted Herman
Providence, R.I.
The author is a previous well being coverage government.

Trump’s Demo Dates and the Odds of Conviction

To the Editor:

Re “This Indictment Does A little something Ingenious,” by Norman Eisen and Amy Lee Copeland (Viewpoint guest essay, Aug. 16): The Ga indictment may possibly be ingenious, but the fact remains that Donald Trump received Georgia in 2016 and missed by a whisker successful again in 2020. So there is an mind-boggling probability that some of his foundation of supporters will be on his jury and will not vote for his conviction no issue the toughness of the evidence.

Harold J. Smith
White Plains, N.Y.

To the Editor:

There are a lot of legitimate aspects to get into account in analyzing when any legal demo may possibly start, but just one element not to acquire into account is the defendant’s task. At the minute, Donald Trump is searching for a job (president) and in essence interviewing to get the career (campaigning).

So let us hope that the just one element that none of the judges take into consideration in environment Mr. Trump’s demo day is his “interviewing routine.”

The judges may contemplate that at minimum some of Mr. Trump’s opportunity “employers” may want to know before using the services of him regardless of whether or not he is a felon and established to devote numerous many years in jail.

Eugene D. Cohen
Phoenix

Does Barbie Definitely Will need Ken?

To the Editor:

Re “Why Barbie and Ken Will need Just about every Other,” by Ross Douthat (column, nytimes.com, Aug. 9):

As a young girl, I concur with Mr. Douthat that “Barbie” includes some actual, not-talked-about ambivalence relating to what female empowerment certainly usually means.

However, the main failing of “Barbie” is not, as he indicates, its failure to unite Barbie and Ken romantically, but a failure to consider a globe in which people of all genders can correctly lead collectively. Mr. Douthat’s insinuation that romance and copy must be the basis of any variety of effective union between guys and gals is archaic and troubling.

This being mentioned, the assertion of the “Barbie” motion picture that Ken is “superfluous” is also about. It is not, of training course, that ladies have a want for guys, but that humanity calls for all of its members’ collaboration to attain its optimum likely. And yet, at the end of the film, when Ken is relegated to a status equal to that of girls in the real environment (browse: oppressed), any hope for a world in which individuals — or dolls — of all genders can dwell fulfilled, empowered lives continues to be elusive.

Mary Elliot
Lenox, Mass.

To the Editor:

Unquestionably, there is evidence that married folks tend to be happier than the single. But that largely applies to people who are fortunately married. Unhappily married individuals are not only fewer delighted than the happily married, but also fewer joyful than these who are divorced, and less healthier than those who are single, divorced or widowed.

There are some significant things that recommend Barbie and Ken’s union could possibly not be a joyful a person. Barbie never ever expressed any interest in a partnership with Ken or with everyone else. As Barbie was getting ushered into a black S.U.V. and taken to the Mattel headquarters, Ken substantial-tailed it again to Barbieland solo. When there, as Gloria (played by America Ferrera) so clearly summarized, he took Barbie’s property, he brainwashed her good friends, and he tried using to manage the federal government.

No 1 demands 40 a long time of Standard Social Study data to know that they would be miserable. Quit attempting to encourage women of all ages that the important to their pleasure is committing to emotionally weakened males towards their self-fascination and superior judgment.

Theresa Hastert
Ann Arbor, Mich.