To the Editor:

Your editorial (“An Unhealthy Debate” on August 9) gets things just wrong enough to do a major disservice to everyone trying to sort out the enormous task of reforming our healthcare system. The Post was entirely too nonchalant about both the absurd counterproductive demagoguery suggesting the establishment of boards to euthanize the old and disabled, and the very real discrimination being built into reform.

The age issue is especially troubling to advocates who have been working to make healthcare affordable for everyone. And your editorial glossed over the discrimination being built into health reform efforts.

In the plans being proposed, insurers offered to give up all but one classification system that let them charge more for people they thought would make them spend more. So gender, health history, race, are all out in deciding how much to charge people for coverage. But age would still be an acceptable way to rate people.

Making assumptions about older people and their health needs is unfair.

The industry is trying to have it both ways – they say they are going to charge everyone the same, and then make that money back by charging older people more, regardless of their health.

Does charging a healthy 50 year-old five times as much for insurance as a 22 year-old with a chronic condition sound like we've eliminated discrimination from healthcare? Does it sound like charging everyone "generally the same amount?" We didn't think so either.

Rachel Goldberg, Ph.D.
B’nai B’rith International Director of Aging Policy