Subject: Letters to the Editor:  America Lacks Overall Health-Care Policy
Date: Published: 10/5/88 46 lines
Source:  Wall Street Journal.  Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. 

    Letters to the Editor:  
    America Lacks Overall
    Health-Care Policy

    I am dismayed by the tone of Dr. E. S. Berger's Sept.  20
 letter to the editor "Living With AIDS Has Societal Costs."
    Although a medical professional, Dr. Berger seems blind to
 the history of medical research, a history that has shown
 that gains in one area of disease research have had
 far-reaching effects in the development of effective
 treatments for other diseases.  Specifically, advances in AIDS
 have led to better treatments for life-threatening cancers,
 immune-system dysfunctions and a host of other illnesses.
    Dr. Berger states that as a society we must make hard
 decisions about health-care spending related to AIDS. He
 provides us with a simplistic and misleading cost-benefit
 analysis.  Health care is costly in the U. S. That is not a
 situation that suddenly evolved with the discovery of AIDS. 
 The real problem is that we, as a nation, have no
 comprehensive health-care policy for our citizens.  If
 anything, creative, cost-effective, out-of-hospital care for
 AIDS patients has kept care costs down, especially when
 compared with other life-threatening illnesses such as cancer
 and heart disease.
    Finally, I question why Dr. Berger finds it "ironic" that
 the message that people are living with AIDS is discussed in
 schools where "prayer and, in some states, the Pledge of
 Allegiance are forbidden."  One would hope that the respect
 and compassion we show for those who are ill and in need of
 treatment and care -- regardless of the source of their
 illness -- is a far more telling indicator of the integrity
 of our nation and respect for what it means to be an
 American.
    Patricia Christen
    Director of Public Policy
    San Francisco AIDS Foundation
    San Francisco

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