To the editor:

In the debate over health care reform I find plenty of what psychologists term “projection.” Definition: a. Tendency to ascribe to another person feelings, thoughts or attitudes present in oneself…. b. Psychoanal. Such an ascription relieving the ego of a sense of guilt or other intolerable feeling.

Health insurance corporations often exercise their considerable economic power to restrict doctors and hospitals from fully carrying out treatments they believe patients need. Corporations interfere with doctor-patient relationships to minimize expenditures and maximize profits. This is not a good “prescription” for the best health care!

These insurance corporations, and their defenders, predict such interference and restrictions to doctor-patient relations if reforms are enacted to provide a national system paying for medical care for all of us.

Reality check: Medicare is a national insurance system for us old people. It does not interfere telling us what doctors to see or limiting treatments doctors may prescribe. Even in the Veterans Administration system — a form of socialized medicine — there are no restrictions on procedures your doctor prescribes. True, full service is reserved for veterans with service-connected disabilities.

Neither nationally administered plan demonstrates the sort or degree of interference now imposed by private insurers.

Congressional members, and private insurers, may be relieved of guilt and “other intolerable feelings” by scare tactics about “socialized medicine.” Or, with one-sixth of the economy at stake, we simply may be observing greed at work!