Readers write

Healthcare is stressed because of insurance demands

Re: “Ga.’s rural healthcare is stressed to the limit,” Oct. 11.

Why is healthcare stressed to the limit? That is simple: A large part of the funding goes to insurance companies, which tell patients and doctors what tests can be run and what treatments can be administered.

Despite spending more than twice what other industrialized countries spend on healthcare, we have lower health quality and a shorter life span than any of them.

As a physician, my highest salary as a pediatric hematologist-oncologist with Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, working five to seven days a week and sometimes 36 hours straight, never reached $150,000. That was two decades ago. A general pediatrician in Georgia today averages $162,550, still not enough to account for the exorbitant costs of healthcare.

Admittedly, some fields pay over $1 million, and if a neurosurgeon or cardiovascular surgeon were operating on me, I wouldn’t fault them for their salary. The point is, a lot of the money goes to insurance executives making over 10 times the highest physician salary (ranging from $18.3 million to $60.9 million in 2025, according to Becker’s Healthcare).

The question is whether basic healthcare should be a part of capitalism. We are the only industrialized country without universal healthcare coverage. We need “Medicare for All.”

DR. BEA FILES, ATLANTA

Trump willing to trade nation’s integrity for votes

In the AJC’s “Trump says Ukraine should get a new president, blames Zelenskyy for high U.S. diesel prices,” Oct. 11, President Donald Trump is at his flaky worst.