Sept. 24 Letters to the Editor

Most oppose reform

Earlier this week, The Daily News ran yet another lengthy opinion piece favorable to the proposed health-care legislation, maintaining its perfect record of one-sided reporting on this issue while ignoring polls showing that 56 percent of Americans, a greater majority than that which elected President Obama, oppose the bill.

Under the House bill, the president is granted unlimited power to establish regulations that will apply to every citizen and every entity involved in health care. By dictating what services private plans must include and the prices they may charge, which also means dictating what health-care providers such as hospitals, doctors and clinics will be paid, private insurers will quickly be eliminated. Socializing health care will mean less competition and fewer options than we now have.

The article didn’t even mention section 164, approved by our own Rep. Brian Baird, which establishes a $10 billion fund to take over the claims from union retiree health plans. No wonder the unions like the plan. But how do the rest of us benefit from this use of our money?

Larry Young

Silver Lake

Who will pay the billionaires?

I am writing to you about the current health-care reform debate. Don’t people realize that somewhere in America an insurance executive just bought a Lamborghini for their daughter’s 16th birthday? Who is supposed to pay for that? Not the billionaire. That’s not how it works.

Everyone knows the insurance billionaires get their money by denying coverage to their sick customers. If that socialist, fascist, Marxist Obama gets his way, our own friends and family will have affordable heath care and won’t be able to be cheated out of it.

What about the billionaires? How are they supposed to get another Ivory back scratcher or a private island if they don’t have a monopoly on the market?

We can’t have government between you and your doctor. We need private billionaires between you and your doctor. That’s the American way. Otherwise you are a bunch of yellow bellied communists. Even Fox News agrees.

Jack Perrine

Kelso

Vote out the incumbents

How can a national health program work without tort reform? Apparently it is not an issue with our “lawyer legislators” (they look out for their own first). Liability insurance takes nearly half of medical services income. Greedy, blood-sucking lawyers rape the medical system as if it was an innocent girl. They advertise to sue for every conceivable medical accident or drug effect that proves to be harmful for any person.

We all have individual sensitivities and reactions to surgeries and medications. If people don’t want to take the risk, then they should just accept the result of not taking a risk, not sue to satisfy the gluttony of the legal system. It’s the patients’ choice.

Doctors do not deliberately kill people or misdiagnose or misprescribe medications. They should be removed from practice if they have excessive issues doing their job. They should not be penalized for doing the best job they can. Lawsuits should be prohibited unless there is gross negligence. Some practitioners are changing vocations because of the cost of liability insurance and lawsuits.

Eighteen percent of Washington’s legislators were lawyers in 2006. There are probably more now, making a point of writing laws that only one of their cohorts could understand. The best thing people can do is to vote out all incumbents in every office in the land until we get true representation from them.

Willie Bowen

Kelso