Survey of Attitudes About Health System

“Distress Over Health System Seen Growing” (Jan. 24) suggests that more than 80% of “consumers” (“patients”) have come to mistrust the reliability of their medical care. This finding is a serious symptom of the problems associated with managed care, reflecting the negative impact of corporate values. Since ancient times the doctor-patient relationship has been the foundation of the therapeutic process. Even with the major developments in medical science, therapeutic outcome remains dependent upon the patient’s trust of his doctor.

As the respondents to the poll accurately recognized, the intrusion of third parties with profit motives has introduced an inherent conflict of interest for the doctor. This conflict, in turn, may compromise the integrity of the entire medical enterprise. At this point some form of major reconstructive surgery is clearly needed. The profit motive, as such, has no place in the treatment of patients.

RICHARD P. FOX MD

Tustin

* The personal tragedies wrought by this country’s wholesale and irresponsible surrender to profit-driven health care are legion, but perhaps it’s the smallest of these that best illuminate the situation.

My great-aunt, ensconced at 91 in a convalescent home she can thankfully afford, was visibly upset when I arrived for a recent visit. The cause of her consternation? An outdated, computer-generated threat of being turned over to collection if she didn’t pay some allegedly past-due emergency room charges Medicare hadn’t covered. The bill had long since been settled, but not before my frail relative, who has never had an overdue bill in her life, spent some of her dwindling hours on this Earth fretting in the dark about something she was raised to abhor--being considered a deadbeat.

It doesn’t take a study to realize that the current system is an outrage, inhumane and shamelessly designed to benefit the few who profit from it. Come back, Hillary! Our “leaders” continue to fiddle, to the tune of their own lifetime guarantee of taxpayer-funded health care, while Rome’s rabble gets increasingly desperate.

SARAH L. SHANKLAND

Palmdale