Regarding the July 21 letter, "Medicare works": I am amazed to read that Bonnie Leon doesn't believe the government interferes in her Medicare coverage. They sure as hell interfere in mine. As several examples:

1. The government sets the price every year. I have no alternative because;

2. Medicare has run all competition out of business. Get on the Internet and try to find non-Medicare coverage for anyone over age 65. When you do find it, ask if they will cover you if you have the choice of Medicare. If they will, check the cost.

3. The government sets the coverage. Nope, we do not get an annual physical or many preventive-care immunizations and the like, no dental coverage even possible, no eye-correction tests or appliances, no hearing aids. All of these are at least possible coverage with commercial insurance programs. Oh yeah, no coverage outside the United States.

4. The government sets frequency of many coverages. I forgot and had a PSA blood test done slightly less than a year
after the previous one because my urologist recommended it. No coverage.

5. The government sets the amount that providers are paid at considerably less than the providers' normal rates for non-Medicare patients. This causes some number of providers to decline to provide service. It also, at least to some extent, raises the cost for non-Medicare patients.

Having said this, I get all the choices she states for the coverage I do get. It is not, however, "free" by any stretch of my vivid imagine: Besides the monthly premium, much of the coverage requires deductibles and copays of 20 percent (my "commercial" supplemental coverage that I pay additionally for, has out-of-pocket maximums, but Medicare does not).

Meanwhile, we are assured that Medicare is going rapidly bankrupt and that both the costs are going up and the coverage and payments are going down.

Good luck with avoiding all that non-interference.

Jack LaRowe is a retired Big Oil computer nerd and occasional conservative curmudgeon living in the Santa Fe area.