I am writing this letter, with trepidation. I do not support the Ocean Beach Hospital bond issue. This $10 million is woefully inadequate to really fix any part of the real problem.

Most everyone knows that healthcare is broken in the United States for the poor and especially the rural poor and working class. The CEO of Ocean Beach Hospital, Scott Attridge, in his most recent newsletter wrote and I quote, “Studies show that rural Americans are at risk for poorer health outcomes.” I agree.

However, the problem does not lie at the feet of the hard-working, well-meaning individuals who work in the rural health care system across America. It lies in the way healthcare is funded through a complex system of insurance reimbursements, Medicare, Medicaid, the VA, state agencies, employers, big pharma and big politics that leaves the rural poor and working class behind.

Small hospitals have high overheads, and low cost-recovery rates, so they often lose money and that does not change when they add additional services — ask any small business owner about how that works.

Approving the bond issue does not address the underlying national rural hospital systemic cost and recovery problem. I’m lucky — my wife and I can afford to travel and access specialized health care that is not, and will never be, available here. Most of my neighbors are not so blessed and I am ashamed of this. This was not how it was when I was growing up.

I applaud our local healthcare providers, but voting tiny amounts, county by county, across America is just throwing away money to make us feel better. The American rural healthcare system is broken. I challenge our local providers to speak the truth to us so we can get behind them and ask our state and federal politicians to start trying to fix something that just maybe they can actually work across party lines to do.

If we cannot fix this broken system, then the rural poor and working class will continue to fall further behind, and that is a shame, because the promise of America, I was taught, was that if you work hard, at least some of vast wealth of the republic would be shared by all. But maybe that is too much socialism, and if it is too much socialism, why do we even have a hospital district?

THOMAS ROGERS

Ocean Park