Michael Moore called Obamacare both ‘awful’ and a ‘godsend.’ Readers offer their opinions.

To the Editor:

Re “The Obamacare We Deserve” (Op-Ed, Jan. 1):

Michael Moore is correct — Americans deserve a single-payer system, and the Affordable Care Act is a poor substitute. But Mr. Moore does not mention that, for all its faults, the law would be working much better but for the unrelenting effort by Republicans to sabotage it by various means, such as propagating outright lies intended to confuse the public (“death panels”), refusing in numerous states either to extend Medicaid benefits or to establish state insurance exchanges, and proactively urging people not to obtain insurance under the law.

Contrast the reaction of Republicans to the health care law with that of Democrats to Medicare, Part D. That prescription drug benefit, enacted by a Republican Congress with the help of parliamentary legerdemain, had terrible flaws, most notably the so-called doughnut hole (partly alleviated by the new health care law) and the provision prohibiting Medicare from negotiating prices with the pharmaceutical industry. Nevertheless, once Part D became law, Democrats never tried to defund or undermine it; to the contrary, they tried to make it work.

I doubt that there has ever been a more cynical political action than the effort by Republicans to destroy a law based on ideas that they themselves conceived and first put into practice, thus depriving millions of Americans of the opportunity to receive quality health care. If they succeed, we will continue to have one of the most expensive and least effective health care systems in the developed world.

PETER HANAUER

Berkeley, Calif., Jan. 2, 2014

To the Editor:

I read Michael Moore’s Op-Ed essay as I heard news of the death from cancer of Benjamin Curtis, the young guitarist with School of Seven Bells. He needed to have fund-raisers to pay medical bills while fighting to live.