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Al Rosenthal: Consistent data can’t be ignored

Steamboat Pilot & Today
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The letter “Question the data” (Steamboat Today, Sept. 3) made me question the letter’s intent. Was it to question the data of any given subject or to mistrust ColoradoCare by doubting its data?

Data in itself is usually facts or figures, gathered together for analysis or reference by business leaders, managers, policy makers, and average citizens for various reasons.

While I have no qualms with questioning data, I do mistrust the letter’s purpose with this statement, “if you consider the data provided by the expert proponents of the ACA [Affordable Care Act] and the reality of the program you should be able to realize that the data was worthless.”



The problem is the letter’s seemingly deliberate misunderstanding about this statement. The insurers are not exiting the ACA due to flawed data, but because of how many desperately sick Americans there were from being rationed out of health care by economic means for so long.

Aetna is a perfect example. In 2014, Aetna made nearly “$7 billion in profits” off of us. Yet, it is exiting the ACA because of what its CEO Mark Bertolini “described as a spike in individuals in need of high cost health care.” (healthinsurance.org/blog/2016/08/25/cry-me-a-river-aetna/). Simply put, Aetna does not want to pay for sick people.



The ACA is no ”centrally-planned healthcare system, nor is it an example of “socialized medicine experiments.” Its planning occurs in a decentralized zone of ornate corporate boardrooms; its “socialized medicine” is beholden to Wall Street.

True “socialized medicine,” as the rest of the democratic world knows, is about as socialistic as the Steamboat fire and police departments. The data for these systems, however, consistently reveals something remarkable about them that cannot be ignored and will make me vote yes on 69.

Al Rosenthal

Steamboat Springs


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