Why in crisis mode?

About 84 percent of Utah's population has health care, according to an article in Friday's Deseret News, a decrease of 1 percent from last year. It's time we looked at the health-care debate with those figures in mind. Churches, families and private charities, the state of Utah insurance pools, along with Medicare and Medicaid, fill in for the 14 percent who don't have or can't get health insurance. There is a small percentage who don't want insurance for whatever reason.

So why are we in a crisis mode? Is it unreasonable to expect that we have the highest cost of medicine per capita in the world when we have the best system? This is a business in which people are allowed to make a profit, including doctors. In Europe and other government-run health-care systems there are wage and price controls and rationing, which reduce costs somewhat. Is this what we want for ourselves?

Socialism is not the answer. It is immoral to for me to have my neighbors pay for my health care. Surely we can reduce costs under the present system as Intermountain Healthcare has done, as President Barack Obama noted in his address.

Art J. VanTielen

Murray