Senator and Republican candidate for governor Randy Brock’s health care plan is a fantasy wrapped in untruths about the virtues of private health insurance. As someone who has nearly died because of market-based insurance, it is hardly the dream of Sen. Brock he said, “And we can make certain there are only two people making your health care decisions: you and your doctor.” I wonder if Brock was thinking of single-payer. With market-based insurance every choice that a patient has is defined and ruled by the parameters of the particular plan that the patient is lucky enough to have. Anything outside this plan falls under the grim sobriquet of “out-of-network,” where the patient is on their own for payments at the uninsured rates. I learned the hard way through bitter experience what this market-insurance does. There is no such thing as a “pro-patient strategy.” What options a patient does have are governed by an insurance company medical director. This person’s job is to ultimately protect the company’s bottom line. As I was dying of liver disease (through natural causes) each medical step that I needed and that my doctor wanted had to be first vetted through the company’s “pre-approval” process. This, of course, took time that I did not have. If it was deemed “medically unnecessary,” then we had to endure the labyrinth and the vastly accrued stresses of the company’s (this was an insurance company outside Vermont) “appeals process, a process made to obfuscate the appeal so that it takes even longer and discourages the patient from trying. Sen. Brock’s health care plan will only work for the profitable advantage of the insurance companies. Walter Carpenter Montpelier