To the editor:

Thanks to a notice in the Jan. 12 Journal-World, I took advantage of an indispensable institution: the county public health department, which ran a free clinic for H1N1 flu vaccination.

I was much impressed with the efficiency and kindness with which the clinic was run. When I arrived there was no waiting. Helpful volunteers assisted with a medically necessary one-page screening form. My special request related to a disability was accommodated without fuss. All comers were served equally without reference to money or citizenship. All in all, it was an exemplary case of socialized medicine doing exactly what it ought to do.

Conservatives claim the world would be better off if we privatized the public health system, and, even now, its funding is under attack. The undeniable benefit of that approach would consist in lower taxes. Unfortunately, this boon would accrue disproportionately to the rich. The downside is that many fewer people would get vaccinated. Unvaccinated people constitute a pool of potential disease carriers who pose a risk not only to themselves, but also to others who haven’t gotten vaccinated yet, or who (like newborn infants) can’t be vaccinated.

Lack of flu vaccination kills 10,000 to 20,000 people in the U.S. each year. That toll could be almost entirely eliminated by an aggressive expansion of free vaccination services — socialized medicine at its very best, with minimal paperwork, no rakeoffs to large insurance companies, and a nearly astronomical benefit-cost ratio.