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Letter: When the health care bill comes due

(Claudio Furlan | LaPresse via AP file photo) A COVID-19 patient wears a ventilated respiratory device over his head as he lies in a hospital bed at Bergamo's Papa Giovanni XXIII hospital, northern Italy, Friday, April 3, 2020.

Just after the election this coming November will come the time of year when everyone renews their health insurance for the following year. Estimates are that premiums will rise 40% in order to cover the costs of the pandemic sweeping the country.

People who could previously afford to insure themselves and their families will find the choices between insurance, food and housing to drift more toward the immediate needs of food and housing.

As people drop off their insurance plans, and the next projected wave of coronavirus moves across the country, people will instead of seeing their doctor or going to an immediate care facility will fill the emergency rooms that are obligated to treat them. Any hospitals not already driven to bankruptcy surely will be.

Health care as a commodity that few can afford will be a completely different animal than health care that the “undeserving poor” cannot afford. When we all become the “undeserving poor,” the political ramifications will shake the country to its core. The lack of foresight by the political class and the insurance industry will prove as effective as the 2008 bank collapse in demonstrating that these people do not deserve to have their business.

The right’s moral justification of for-profit health care in strengthening a people’s will to work hard is evaporated when, no matter how hard they work, they will not get health care.

Douglas D. Reilly, Logan

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