Dear FRONTLINE,

As Americans we are all faced with this problem of the health care crisis. Yes this is what it is, a crisis. Our government just spent billions of tax payers money to bail out the banks and wall street. It's interesting that our financial health as a nation is more important than our physical and mental health.

The question we need to ask ourselves, and this is the issue, what kind of society do we want to live in? I read on letter on this forum in which the writer refused to pay for someone else. His attitude was pay your own way and leave me out of it. This speaks volumes to me. The subtext of this mans selfish comments, and I bet he considers himself a good christian, the subtext is that in America we are individuals. This is a bastardization of some mythological ideal left over from the frontier age of the 19th century. The fact is there was no period like this. The settlers of the past knew about collective living, their lives depended on it.

It's time we as country grow up and make decisions that are good for our collective good as a nation. I would also like to add that the Massachusetts model is the wrong model to follow, I should know I live here.

I am also so very disappointed with president Obama on so many fronts. From the health care issues to the financial crisis it is clear to me that I voted for a man who has turned out to be nothing more than another politician who is good at being rhetorical without any vision or ability to really solve problems.

The insurance companies are the major problem as I see it.One can also point to the way we educate doctors who end up with enormous debt from all the schooling they go through. When you start to dissect this problem you start to see that our whole system from cradle to grave is broken, the health care issues is just one of the larger problems we a country have created for ourselves.

boston, MA

Dear FRONTLINE,

Where are the people of color? Where are the poor, the working poor, the gay people with AIDS? Your documentary showed precisely two people of color, both of whom are administrators in the "system". Regardless of the intent of the documentary's producer, shame on you for failing to show "all of America" - particularly when so many of the front line of America's healthcare system - the nurses - are women of color, often immigrants. We were truly disappointed in you, PBS! An otherwise great show ruined by your myopic view of who is America.

Marc Matheson
San Rafael, CA

Dear FRONTLINE,

Frontline's Sick Around America touched only the tip of an sick 'health? care system.

Some one should do a documentary on the accounting practices of hospitals? How profit and 'non' profit is dependent on physicians ordering multi and repeatative examinations? How levels of patient acuity are manipulated to increase profit? How prolonged Intensive care stays cover costs of excessive overrides in other departments?

denver, cO

Dear FRONTLINE,

What a journalistic failure. The problem with health care is coverage of people, obviously stricken with Munchausen syndrome [maybe by proxy], who go to the doctor for something like an antibiotic for the common cold. Antibiotics, by definition, don't work with the common cold. The "victims" should be charged for the full cost, and the doctor shouldn't be able to bill a dime to the same plan that I, a non narcissistic "victim", pay into.

I don't mind that 99.9% of my premiums pay for people like the cute girl with Lupus who died. I am disgusted that the vast majority of my premiums pay for painfully stupid "victims" who go to the "doctor" for a sniffle, and insist on coverage, and thus cause the death of people who really need coverage that I grudgingly pay for. The blood of the cute girl with Lupus who died is on the hands of every "victim" who goes to the doctor with what is obviously an untreatable common cold.

I'm disappointed in the recent Frontline producers who can't ask the real questions. Dot con rocked, but it's like Frontline production was taken over by suburbanites with degrees from CU in ethnic studies or something. I think I'd rather watch Fox News for entertainment.

Phil Kaplan
San Francisco, CA

Dear FRONTLINE,

As a family physician, I have witnessed 33 of my primary care collegues bancrupt, close their doors without a buyer, or change careers in the last 7 years. Meanwhile, we have twice as many ER physicians and hospitalists in my town. What this means is that if you live here and don't have a primary care physician you get your care later in the disease process and at a higher cost. Please don't talk to me about physician prices, being a family phyisican is like being a family farmer or small grocer, we are getting killed in the marketplace and the public needs to wake up to this fact and stop lumping us with specialists bringing down a half million a year.

John Bender
Fort Collins, CO

Dear FRONTLINE,

We need universal health care, with whatever streamlining and rationing it will require. There are too many people who have done everything right, but just don't happen to work for a major employer. So they get to die or go bankrupt when they get a serious illness? Do we have to choose our jobs by the type of health insurance, regardless of our skills? I think we have to ask ourselves if someone deserves to die because they are under-insured, unemployed, self-employed, bankrupt, work for a small company, a new college graduate, widow, or full-time caretaker (those were just a few examples). This documentary did a great job of showing how those too young for Medicare and newly graduated from college are particularly vulnerable.

Sandi Dooley
Libertyville, IL

Dear FRONTLINE,

To say that I'm scared is an understatement. I, like Nikki, have a chronic condition that appeared with no rhyme or reason. No doctor, none of my six specialists can tell me how it came about and NO PREVENTATIVE ACTIONS (I was never a smoker) would have made a difference! I hit the jackpot on the "rare not so rare" disease list. And there are many like me who need real medical care, not just a checkup every year.

Medical insurance is life and death issue for me, but only because it opens access to medical care. I have insurance that I bought on the private market when I was well, but it is hard for me to afford the doctors' appointments and CTs that I desparately need to determine my current status. My insurance is better than most, but it only covers 1 doctor's appointment a quarter and only $1000 of one procedure a day. Many days I feel as if America is telling me to die, which really pisses me off, because with access to regular care I believe that I can keep this "monster" in the box. Some symptoms exist, but I have to ignore them and am putting off a trip to a specialist until I can afford the co-pays. Folks this is the reality of healthcare in America; most people even if they have insurance face crushing debt (and the possibility of not having an income source if you get well). The healthcare debate is NOT about insurance coverage... It is about whether Americans truly understand and are willing to embrace the value of creating the right to medical treatment without the stress of financial ruin and being a "loss" on some company's income statement.

Irving, TX

Dear FRONTLINE,

You're program on healthcare was disappointing and slanted. The bulk of the interviews were of people in the healthcare industry, the heads of the companies or people who represented the industry as a whole. I saw only two physicians who didn't represent the healthcare industry interviewed. Dr. Delbanco works at a large tertiary hospital and thus does NOT have to deal with the day to day rigors of having to battle with health insurers for services, medications, etc. The general public has very little idea of how their insurers attempt to insinuate themselves into people's personal and private lives. The dirty little secret of the insurance industry is that if one had the opportunity to look at their ledger sheets, the number one item on accounts payable would be administrative costs and not reimbursements. This program sadly did nothing to confront the way the health insurance industry is run.

Michael Katz
Norwell, MA

Dear FRONTLINE,

Let me add my voice to the others who wish that this program had discussed the option of a single-payer system. Can America afford the continued existence of the private health insurance industry?

Oak Park, IL

Dear FRONTLINE,

The first thing to be done is identify the true culprit here -- False Costing. Then take away the "false buffer" that exists. The Insurance Companies selling health insurance. Let insurance companies sell their other products for a profit. Such as car insurance, life insurance, flood insurance, etc. These are rare events that strike randomly. Let the insurance companies play in these sandboxes. Then we can concentrate on the real problem which is a run away cost process within the actual health system. One which we cannot clearly see now. But take away the "buffer" and suddenly the air will clear revealing a greedy system that feeds on the people's fear of being hurt and dying. Do you ask the cost of fixing your broken leg as you lay there in pain? Probably not, and this is the root of the problem. When we buy a product in a store it is clearly labeled with the price and we can make a decision. Why is this opportunity denied us in the health system? The health system is important to us all, just like the water we drink and the utility system. These are price regulated. Why not the health system?

Shreveport, LA

Dear FRONTLINE,

It is utterly dissapointing that the program spends so little time talking about solutions; analyzing and comparing the data, the arguments and the criteria that seperate the key proposals for a solution going forward. In illinois, the health care justice act, sponsored by then State Senator Obama created a comission to study key proposals for achieving universal healthcare in Illinois. Eight proposals were put forward, most by insurance industry backed groups. The most cost effective solution by a wide margin was the single-payer proposal. It was estimated to cost Illinois tax payers around $600 million per year. Incedentally, that turns out to be near the amount in combined reported operating profits by Illinois' health insurance industry.

This is the kind of information we need to see in order to fuel a truely constructive national dialog. How many single-payer spokespeople did you have on the program? I didn't count one. How many industry spokespeople did you have on the program? A half dozen.

What kind of public-interest reporting is this?

I'm again dissapointed by Frontline.

Dorian Breuer
chicago, il

Dear FRONTLINE,

While you have presented a lovely apologetic for socialized medicine, you completely ignore the lack of transparency in health care cost and quality. If I walk into an emergency room with a broken finger under current circumstances no one within five floors, possibly even 100 miles, can tell me how much it will cost. No wonder costs are out of control. Rather than trumpeting ideas like forcing everyone to purchase health insurance and fixing wages and prices, how about proposing medical providers and insurance companies be forced to notify consumers of the cost of service in advance (including the enormous discounts offered to large insurers). If I can get a good faith estimate from my auto mechanic, why is it that a bunch of MD, PhD, and MBA's are too stupid to do the same.

Scott D
Springfield, VA

Dear FRONTLINE,

President Obama, reportedly, has declared that a single player health plan is "off the table" in his administration, deliberations on health care reform. I found it deeply disappointing that Frontline, in "Sick Around America", also clearly chose to take the concept of a single player health care plan off the table. What a shame, to be left wondering if PBS and Frontline's editorial judgement has been compromised by the influence of the for profit health care industry.

Larry A. Unruh
Chicago, IL

Dear FRONTLINE,

Thank you for your efforts tonight to show viewers a few of the glaring shortcomings of the U.S. medical insurance system, as well as your past coverage of how our medical insurance compares to other systems from around the world. Given this body of coverage, then, it seems to me it would have been logical tonight to discuss alternatives to our system; to take this moment in time to show viewers how other developed nations have been able to develop systems that deliver high quality medical care at lower costs. It is not news to us that the U.S. health insurance system is broken. It is news to consumers that other nations do it better. If debate continues to be limited to the insurance architects we saw tonight, this nation is doomed to the idea that underwriting, or rescision, or whatever buzzword is now in vogue to describe medical insurance denial, is acceptable.

Pat Motherway
Oakdale, Minnesota

Dear FRONTLINE,

Health care is not a right and we shouldn't try to make it one. The American people need someone to tell them that if they get sick it is their own personal responsibility to pay for it. The government should not be forcing individuals to subsidize others health care costs, and yes that goes for the people on medicare and medicaid too.

The best way to solve the healthcare "problem" is for the government to get out of the health care business. Let's put an end to medicare and medicaid and tell people that if they get sick to pay for it themselves. If they can't pay... then too bad.... that's your problem not mine.

Hugh Long
Atlanta, Georgia