LETTERS to the Editor.

Bradley's Health Plan Scores

I believe the Bradley health plan is a good one, responsive to a great humanitarian need and worthy of support from all who have labored in the cause of health care as a basic human right.

As Doctors Ida Hellander and Steffie Woolhandler point out ("Wrong Prescription," December issue), not a single candidate for President has ever advocated a nonprofit national health insurance program. Meanwhile, since 1992, seven million people have been added to the rolls of the uninsured, which now total forty-four million. How many more millions will lose their coverage before there is a confluence of the administrative, legislative, and popular forces that would work together to achieve the enactment of a single-payer system? No one has the answer.

During the 1970s, the Committee for National Health Insurance organized broad-based coalitions in all fifty states in support of a single-player program. The plan was co-sponsored by thirty-seven Senators and more than 150 House members. But even with all of that power, lacking Presidential leadership, we failed. I believe that, with Bill Bradley in the White House, his commitment and his thoughtful plan would finally succeed.

Hellander and Woolhandler are concerned because the Bradley plan wasn't opposed by the Heritage Foundation, won't put the insurance companies out of business, and won't transform the health care delivery system into a single-payer entity. But what the Bradley plan will do is make real the principle that some forty-four million Americans, most of them in low-income working families, should have ready, affordable access to health insurance.

Max Fine Bethesda, Maryland

A Single-Payer Candidate

Authors Hellander and Woolhandler commit a huge error when they state, "Not a single candidate has the courage to advocate the nonprofit national health insurance program America needs and Democrats used to support." Longtime peace and justice activist Dr. Robert M. Bowman, who is campaigning for the Reform Party's Presidential nomination, is clearly on record in support of a single-payer health plan for all Americans. (See his web site at http://www.rmbowman.com.)

The courage in question in this case is not that of candidate Bowman but that of our supposedly progressive journals that traditionally refuse to cover third party candidates who represent the very values the journals claim to espouse. It seems that peace and justice are fine to talk about as long as no...