Health care: Some see golden dawn, others red ink

Finally, we have a real health care system, not an “illness care” system. We will promote health and prevent illness and lower the cost of health care.

We will prevent the leading cause of personal bankruptcy in our country. How can anyone object to this health care reform? For those who are against health care reform, how would you feel if your child with diabetes is refused care because he is considered to have a pre-existing condition?

What would you do if your health insurance company dropped your coverage because you were just diagnosed with colon cancer or your wife has breast cancer? And what would you do if you lose your home because you can’t afford your mortgage payment because your health care costs are through the roof and insurance won’t pay? This happens every day now.

With this health care reform, we will not have these terrible consequences anymore. With this health care reform, you will no longer have to worry about not being able to afford health insurance. We will finally have a basic human right fulfilled, the right to health care.

Anne Graham

Pediatric nurse practitioner

North Yarmouth

 

Mr. and Mrs. Hopendope: Have kids? Thanks to the deficits the new health care law will create, they will now live in smaller homes, will pay higher taxes and will have their health care controlled by bureaucrats.

No kids? Too bad, because someone needs to procreate a working population to pay for the unsustainable entitlements President Obama has convinced you that you actually are entitled to.

A CNN poll showed nearly 60 percent of Americans opposed ObamaCare. But, Congress approved it. Is ObamaCare truly about health care? No, it is about wealth redistribution.

This expansion of government will require $3 trillion over a decade. The “health care” bill levies $569 billion in new taxes over the next 10 years alone.

The bill grants authority to the IRS to hire 16,500 agents to aid the revenue process.

Real insurance is where individuals pay to cover their risks. This program covers everyone, including 32 million uninsured, paid for by a “mandate” (read: tax). Taking money from some people to subsidize those who cannot or will not pay is called wealth redistribution, not health care.

Certainly problems abound in our present health care system. But there are reasons why Dan Williams, Newfoundland’s prime minister, opted to have heart surgery in the United States instead of in his home coun- try, where the government allocates health care.

A wealth redistribution scheme will not help the quality of health in America, yet it will certainly further the socialistic endeavors of our president.

Today, more than a dozen states are preparing constitutional challenges to Obama’s “individual mandate,” as it violates the Ninth and 14th Amendments. The federal government does not have the authority to force individuals to purchase services (insurance) from private industry.

As Ronald Reagan and others have said, “A government big enough to supply you with everything you need is a government big enough to take away everything you have.”

Steve Merritt

Old Orchard Beach

 

My daughter Kyra was born with cardiopulmonary stenosis. This condition rendered her primary artery from the heart to the lungs severely small. So small, in fact, that the arteries and vessels branching from it were far smaller than necessary.

Her initial care was covered through state insurance. At 9 weeks of age, Kyra had her first open-heart surgery to replace the section of heart and conduit with a donor piece. The surgery was successful.

A few months later we found that she was going to need another surgery and without it she would not survive. Her mother’s insurance refused to take her due to her pre-existing condition. Her mom worked at the local hospital. The HMO I had would take her, but at reduced coverage for nearly triple the premium to cover the financial loss.

We were lucky. Our income allowed us to keep her on state insurance, and she thrives today.

With the passage of the federal bill I know she will continue to do so, and that no one can deny her the right to treatment, or financially drain her for coverage.

Thank you, Mr. President. I owe you a debt, as one father to another. And to Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, thank you for showing Maine that your hearts consider money and party lines ahead of what is right and fair. This voter will remember.

Nick Anderson

Jefferson

 

Thank you, President Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, for adding to the deficit that will now take our great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren to whittle down to a mere few billion dollars or so. Thank you for listening to your egos before listening to the American taxpayers. We elect you and pay your salary, yet you continue to run on an agenda driven by your desire to be entered into political history as change makers.

The sad part is you could have still achieved this without creating another program the government can not afford or manage. The free market has proven for hundreds of years it works. The best way to run a program in this type of market is competition.

What you should have focused on is changing the laws that allow grossly inflated suits against the insurers by setting limitations. You should have set in place tax breaks for those having to carry malpractice insurance.

You should have set ratios that insurance companies would have to meet so you could monitor companies that raise malpractice premiums, which in turn raise medical care fees, which in turn gives the company a reason to raise patient care premiums.

You should have looked at state and federal laws that create financial barriers to insurance providers to enter certain markets to compete with the embedded providers such as we have here in Maine.

Competition in a free market eventually increases availability and lowers the cost of the commodity. If there was a vote today, I would send you both home.

The damage has been done for now. Let’s hope the Republicans can get their tools out and shape this monster into something we can actually afford.

Andy Soucy

Biddeford

 

Despite the lack of representation of Maine’s two senators, we finally have a health bill which will surely benefit many of Maine’s residents.

This only makes it clear to me that the population of a state should never be represented by a single party, particularly when Republicans have chosen to suspend representing all of their states’ residents and vote as orchestrated by their party’s leadership.

I’m embarrassed to say that our senators did not think that anyone in Maine would benefit from changes in health care. The increase in the Medicare tax for residents who earn over $200,000 per year will affect very few of us and the benefits will be for most of us.

The legislation which was passed into law last Sunday may be modified to better represent the entire population by 2014 when it is finally enacted, so shame on our senators for not thinking more about us.

I’m very grateful to the 220 Democrats who had the courage to set in motion action that administrations have been trying to pass for generations.

Jane Metzler

Yarmouth

 

I want to respond to Mr. John Manderino of Buxton, who wrote on March 14, “All polls indicate that most Americans want radical health care reform, and in fact most want it in the form of a public option.”

I have just visited several major poll Web sites and cannot find a single one that backs up Mr. Manderino’s contentions. Most national polls show, at most, 42 percent in favor of the current law, and not less than 53 percent opposed. Some polls are even more widely separated, showing as many as 62 percent opposed.

It is easy to invent numbers to support a position, but when real numbers are so readily available, one should be somewhat more cautious.

John Nelson

South Freeport

Welfare, illegal aliens take funds, jobs from Americans

 

I feel sure that most people who complain of Maine’s generous welfare system and also about the influx of immigrants are not uncaring of the needs of the poor.

I feel most wouldn’t deny clothing, medicine, food, shelter, etc., if needed. I believe what concerns most of them is the excess of our welfare system.

One would have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to notice the lifestyles of many welfare recipients. Late-model cars, cell phones, brand-name clothing, personalized license plates, the best of meats and groceries, etc. If these pleasures of life are affordable, then why are they receiving welfare and subsidies?

Many hard-working taxpayers have little left over from their pay once the bills are paid, and can’t afford the extras in life.

To those who quoted the Bible expressing how God wants man to aid and care for the needy: Do you truly believe that God wants us to supply them the necessities so they can afford the pleasures?

I think not. Welfare was made to help people so they may soon help themselves, not to make welfare a way of life. I don’t blame the people as much as the system. If I were down and out and lived elsewhere, I would move to Maine also.

Maine desperately needs welfare reform. There’s no question of that. Tough love is more productive than spoiling.

Charles A. McDonald

Portland

 

With all the current discussion on health reform, maybe we should look at one of the leading causes of the high cost that affects all of us.

The huge cost of illegal aliens using the emergency rooms as their personal health care facilities is causing massive increases for all of us. In some cases hospitals have had to close. California alone had five that were forced to shut their doors as losses had overwhelmed them.

Our Congress must take a stand and demand immediate action and deportation of all illegal aliens. Anyone wishing to live here must start at the beginning, and stand in line like others have done.

What are we telling our children when we say we will give illegals a path to citizenship? That it is all right to break the law and we will reward you?

This action is not unprecedented. During the Great Depression, President Herbert Hoover ordered all illegal aliens deported to make any available jobs open to American citizens.

President Truman again deported illegals to make jobs for American citizens and returning soldiers. And finally, President Eisenhower deported 1.3 million or more over a two-year period beginning in 1954.

So it can be done, and must be done if we are to take care of our own.

Richard Dodge

Portland

I ask our representatives in Congress a single question, so that they will not become confused: With millions of citizens out of work, and a jobs bill pending, why is it necessary to have even one “guest” worker (legal or illegal) in the country? Without them, that could mean a lot of jobs for Americans.

It is said guest workers do jobs we won’t. I’ve been watching a TV program titled “Dirty Jobs.” With this in mind, I would like to see a published list of jobs citizens will not do.

No response will mean to me, at least, that there are no such jobs. So, again, why do we need “guest workers” in these times of joblessness?

Herbert Dobbins

Windham