Editor:

I am a rarity in Wyoming, a registered Democrat (a senior, too) who voted for Barack Obama.

For many years, I have been pretty satisfied with Sen. Mike Enzi's representation of all the citizens of Wyoming on many issues. Now I must say how disappointed I am in his work as one of the gang of six on the vital issue of health care. It sadly appears to me that he has become an agent of partisanship and even quietly signed on to some of the despicable scare senior efforts that have been going around. Most of these are bald-faced lies while others center on creeping socialism themes.

The sad truth is that health care has become a cash cow for many, some of whom don't want to see any fundamental changes. Recently, in an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine titled "Market-Based Failure - A Second Opinion on U.S. Health Care Costs," the author Robert Kuttner wrote: "Relentless medical inflation has been attributed to many factors -- the aging population, the proliferation of new technologies, poor diet and lack of exercise, the tendency of supply (physicians, hospitals, tests, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and novel treatments) to generate its own demand, excessive litigation and defensive medicine, and tax-favored insurance coverage.

"Here is a second opinion. Changing demographics and medical technology pose a cost challenge for every nation's system, but ours is the outlier. The extreme failure of the United States to contain medical costs results primarily from our unique, pervasive commercialization. The dominance of for-profit insurance and pharmaceutical companies, a new wave of investor-owned specialty hospitals, and profit-maximizing behavior even by nonprofit players raise costs and distort resource allocation. Profits, billing, marketing, and the gratuitous costs of private bureaucracies siphon off $400 billion to $500 billion of the $2.1 trillion spent, but the more serious and less appreciated syndrome is the set of perverse incentives produced by commercial dominance of the system."

Health care reform must address the issue of conflict between incentives for profit and making quality care available for all Americans.

Please, Sens. Enzi and John Barrasso, get off the GOP wagon that just wants to see this administration fail, whatever the cost to all the citizens of America.

CHUCK REED, Rawlins