Editor:
I am all for stopping Trump Care, along with dumping Obama-care or just plain getting government completely out of the health care industry altogether.
The federal government gives grants to states to run Medicaid for those who genuinely are poor and can’t afford care or insurance. We pay for Medicare out of our own pockets and through payroll deductions.
The government handles that money and manages to steal part or all of it at times for other uses not authorized by us the voters, just as it has done with our Social Security funds that we and our employers have paid into our whole working lives.
All any of those programs, with the exception of Social Security, have done is cause the costs of health care to skyrocket because the government pays the bill instead of the consumer directly.
Why not let consumers deal directly with their health care folks and, if they want or can afford to buy health insurance, they can; but the insurance company should not be allowed to get between or deal directly with the providers of health care?
This would help bring down the cost of care because the care providers would not have to have a staff of non-medical personal to deal with insurance billing and all the forms and other paperwork required.
Why should a health care provider have to hire a staff of college-trained people just to fill out insurance forms and get them wrong about 30 percent of the time? If the government would require the insurance industry to make a simple form that speaks English in its simplest form for all insurance claims, then anyone could fill out the form.
Also, with a limited liability and maximum awards for malpractice claims law, this would help to lower the cost of being in the health care business and thus lower the cost to the consumer. This is real affordable health care. The more government messes around in it the more unaffordable it becomes.
This seems to me to be a really simple fix and for the life of me I do not understand why it hasn’t been done already or even tried before.
Could it be because the insurance industry lobby is in our congressmen’s and women’s pockets so they jump to the insurance industry’s bidding because currently the insurance industry has us all over a barrel and are raping us to no end?
We need to be able to buy our insurance from any company in any state, which would stimulate competition and bring down the cost of insurance. This is also another reason we are in desperate need of term limits on all elected government officials, with a maximum of two four-year terms for senators and four two-year terms for representatives – eight years total for all elected officials.
We thought that was enough for the president and it should damn well be enough for the rest of you politicians.
You worry about the people who might lose their health care.
Well, some might, but with government interference the cost of care is causing far too many people to go bankrupt or commit suicide or turn to crime in order to pay their bills.
There are 360 million people, approximately, in this country. Obamacare was supposed to enroll all of us; yet, the largest number I have heard was around 120 million.
Now I know some are exempt due to coverage from their employers, or like our people in Congress, which, even before the ink was dry, exempted yourselves like rats leaving a sinking ship.
The current state of the insurance industry has driven the cost of insurance to where many who were just getting by can no longer make their insurance payments so we are losing around 20 to as many as 60 million people, who will be uninsured within a year or less, regardless of whether we keep Obamacare or we get something different.
We still will have a lot of people without health insurance and maybe that is just the way it will be no matter what.
James Morton
Sweet Home
Congress should be like rest of us
Editor:
(An open letter to President Trump:)
I understand that the Affordable Care Act specifically stipulated that all members of Congress must live under the provisions and requirements of the law itself. However, the former president bought all their votes (or silence) by his executive action, which removed this requirement from all the members of Congress.
The American citizens, who had no voice in this, have been subjected to the ACA’s compulsory conditions, restrictions, excessive costs and scarcity of services. This so-called “health care” legislation was literally designed to self-destruct, so that after some years the federal government would remain as the only health resource in the nation.
Meanwhile, as the citizens suffer while the greatest health care system in the world is euthanized by this toxic law, the members of Congress enroll in plans that the citizens they represent are prohibited from accessing.
Mr. President, I respectfully request that you declare to Congress that unless they remove this law from the citizens of this nation that you will, by executive action, impose ACA requirements upon all the members of Congress and their families as they have been more than happy to do to those citizens they are supposed to represent.
In their current actions, they abide in pain-free executive privilege and have no feeling of the infirmities of those they are paid to represent. This is un-American and contrary to equal justice under the law. I know it does not agree with the promises you made and upon which you were elected.
Pete Ready
Albany
Cop goes beyond the call of duty
Editor:
Sweet Home has the greatest Police Department.
Thank you, Officer Wingo, for going far beyond the call of duty on Friday in helping us. It was deeply appreciated!
Sharon Toth
Sweet Home