To the editor:

What’s shocking, but not surprising, about “Helicopter shocker” is what it shows about greed in capitalist medicine in the U.S. These families were experiencing desperate medical emergencies and had to be airlifted to Burlington immediately. The air company is not only billing them the sorts of sums (from $45,000 to $60,000!) that can drive some families into homelessness, but the company also has a reputation of using merciless collection practices.

No other advanced industrialized country in the world does it this way. A Canadian friend tells me that if a doctor there orders an airlift, then it’s covered under the public health plan. Nobody in Canada (or England, France, Germany, etc.) is ever forced into destitution because of medical bills. Furthermore, overall medical costs are lower in those countries, and the outcomes are at least as good, in fact better, for the non-wealthy.

The only reason we don’t have a humane health system in this country is because the insurance industry and other powerful, for-profit medical companies control the system. This is the real “helicopter shocker!”

These greedy merchants of death are parasites that produce nothing of value for human society.

Chuck and Helen Cairns

Ray Brook