Sept. 12 Letters to the Editor

GOP won’t help

There is no middle-class family in the United States that is more than one serious medical condition away from bankruptcy. You get sick, you lose your job, you lose your medical insurance, and medical bills are impossible to pay. You go bankrupt.

Does anyone believe that insurance companies are going to help you? Does anyone believe that the Republican Party will rise though its web of fear-mongering lies to offer assistance to an average citizen? If the Democrats can’t get health-care legislation passed this time, it will be a long time before they can try again.

Let’s see, what was the last thing the Republicans did for us regarding health care? Oh yes, they made it illegal to get your prescriptions filled for less money in Canada.

But that did make the drug manufacturers happy. And keeping corporations happy is the only goal of Republicans.

Let your representatives know you support health-care reform.

Bill Engstrom

Longview

We need health-care reform

I agree with Nancy Fagan’s letter. I don’t see how Nancy’s son-in-law can afford $1,750 a month for medical insurance. No one with any condition should have to pay that much. It’s absolutely ridiculous. We need health-care reform. Not everyone can afford to pay for health insurance. It’s great if you work for a big company and they provide it for you. But there are a lot of people that don’t work for big companies or others that are self-employed that need to buy their own insurance. People that make minimum wage can’t afford insurance, either.

My husband and I pay $400 a month, with a high deductible, medicine not always covered, and no preventive medicine (as to an annual physical). They tell us to get annual physicals, but when it’s not covered, you wait until you’re really sick before you see a doctor. We need something that when you change jobs your insurance would go with you, rather than having to start over again with a different insurance.

After reading the article on Pfizer fined $2.3 billion for health-care fraud, it makes me wonder what is really happening with our health care. The CEOs are still making money, the drug companies will up their prices to help pay for their fines. We, as consumers, will be paying for it along with having to pay for higher insurance.

Phyllis Ogden

Castle Rock

Comments need clarification

I would like to add clarification to my statement reported at Brian Baird’s Town Hall in Ilwaco. I gave a brief answer because the event leaders were insisting I sit down as my allotted time was up. I really should have known better because the words “universal health care” require definition.

Universal health care and single payer are the pseudonyms that the political left uses to describe government-run health care, and every sensible person should be opposed to government-run health care.

Government-run health care denies choices to patients who today can choose from among different free market options. Government-run systems ration health care to everyone, but particularly to seniors. Government has a role to play in providing a safety net to the poor, but we don’t have to create a government-run system to provide that safety-net.

Universal access to health care is a wonderful goal, as long as we maintain the choices available to patients today and avoid the rationing that inevitably follows from a government-run system. We can increase universal access to the choices available in the free market health-care system through tax incentives, medical malpractice reform and reducing the rampant fraud and abuse in the Medicaid and Medicare systems.

Nansen Malin

Pacific County Republican Party Chair

Seaview