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    Copied below is a letter to the editor submitted to the Delaware State News. You can post your opinions by clicking on "Reply."

    Copied below is an adaptation as a letter to the editor in the Delaware State News of a posting on one of the blogs on this site:

It’s not socialized medicine

    I disagree with the Letter to the Editor 4/6/’12, “Socialized health care is not American”!

    Health reform is very much happening at the state and local levels, not just the federal level, and not just by governmental agencies. The letter-writer is wrong to say that it’s “socialized health care rammed down our throats” and “where the federal government will be our health care providers.” Health reform is coming from the local communities, from the medical community, local hospitals, private insurance companies, private services companies, private information-technology companies, private pharmaceutical companies. This is not socialized health care run by the federal government. Funding and guidelines are coming in part from the federal government, but not entirely. The ideas, the planning, the control, in many examples, are at the local level.

    Examples of local health reform are the Patient-Centered Medical Home projects in our state. The Patient-Centered Medical Home is a well-established team approach to achieve lower health care costs, better quality health care and better health outcomes. The current projects include:

    1. Primary-care-centered pilot project developed by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Delaware and the Medical Society of Delaware – expected to launch in May 2012.

    2. University Health Sciences Alliance nurse-practitioner-led medical home inNewark– already in operation.

    3. The Delaware Cancer Consortium, composed of Delaware doctors and concerned citizens, made Delaware the first state to eliminate the disparity between African-Americans and whites in the incidence rate of colorectal cancer.

    4. Project Engage –Alliance between Brandywine Counseling and Christiana Care Health System to identify and better serve patients with substance-abuse and addiction problems who are frequent, high-expense admissions to the hospital.

    5. A.I. DuPont Hospital for Children – Working with three pediatric practices in New Castle County to identify frequent users of the Emergency Room and help them make better use of lower-cost primary care.

    From such projects, we learn that if you go to the patients who are the highest expense and highest-frequency users and direct them to more-efficient, cost-effective care, then, the money you save more than pays for the programs. We have to leverage those cost savings in order to make these projects self-sustaining.

    It’s not socialized health care. and the federal government is not the only provider or even the primary provider. People who keep on calling it “socialized health care” serve only to divide us. Health reform is happening at all levels of government and by private companies and non-profit companies.

I am blessed that you are not my physician and no one I know is a victim of yours either.

Easy Irv - You might need Obamacare to cut off your chances of recovery.  I think the death panels will find you beyond repair when you blow the gasket.

    Copied below is a letter to the editor submitted to the Delaware State News. You can post your opinions by clicking on "Reply."