Who pays for health care? A federal district court judge in Virginia has ruled the new federal health care law’s individual insurance mandate unconstitutional.

The U.S. Supreme Court will eventually decide that issue. However, nonprofit hospitals (all Maine hospitals) are still required to provide care, regardless of ability to pay. So who pays?

Who pays the bill for those who cannot afford insurance, or who choose not to buy it? Who pays when Medicare and MaineCare pay less than the cost of treatment? Who pays for the hospitals’ bad debts and free care?

The answer is called “cost shifting.” You pay. Those who have insurance, and those who self-pay, pay extra to make up for those who don’t or can’t pay their fair share.

So if you don’t like the requirement that everyone has insurance, how do you like the requirement that you pay their bills?

Dean S. Read

Bar Harbor

Evolution is occurring right around us daily

On Dec. 2, NASA announced the discovery of a new life form on Earth. It is a bacteria cell based on arsenic instead of the usual phosphorus.

A good explanation of this is found in the book “The Biology of Belief” by Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D.

It was published in 2005, and Dr. Lipton, who is a cell biologist, believes that evolution happened when large groups of cells worked together to find the right environment, i.e., food, weather, etc. to grow in. If arsenic was all that was available, the cells would adapt to it.

About 150 years ago, Charles Darwin, in his theory of evolution, wrote that large organisms were in a “struggle for existence,” but he downplayed the effects of environment on individual members of a species. He believed our inherited genes, our DNA, were the “brain” controlling evolution over long periods of time.

Dr. Lipton rebuts Darwin by saying the controlling factor is environment. As an accomplished cell biologist and teacher, Dr. Lipton explains how our 50 trillion cells — the amount in an average-sized human body — work together for us.

Elbridge Gagnon

Houlton

Wrong to name Peace Prize after inventor of dynamite 

The fact that there is a prize for peace named after Alfred Nobel is sufficient proof for me that there is a “big D” devil and this world is his dominion.

As the inventor of nitroglycerin, the father of high explosives and smokeless powder, he was the most horrific monster that ever lived, accessory before the fact to 100 percent of the carnage of the 20th and 21st centuries.

They might just as well have a Hitler Prize for promotion of racial harmony or a Stalin Award for promotion of Ukranian agriculture. Alfred Nobel’s inventions made it possible for them to carry out their agendas and made possible literally billions of violent deaths and maimings.

To name a prestigious award after that monster is a despicable travesty, par for the course in this horribly corrupt world.

Tony Hammond

Danforth

State continues to interfere with Dechaine’s defense 

Since January 1989, when Dennis Dechaine was first denied his request for DNA testing on the evidence surrounding the gruesome death of Sarah Cherry, this case has been massively tilted in the state’s favor.

In the 22 years since, a plethora of new evidence has been unearthed and/or substantiated that both the state and the courts do not want considered in new proceedings that surely should result in a new trial for the 52-year-old Madawaska native.

What is the Attorney General’s Office hiding this time?

The evidence, some of it sealed in the state’s lockboxes for years, includes perjury on the part of testifying police officers; officers who were allegedly reading from their notes at the first trial but when those notes were finally unsealed we learned they said something very different than what the jury heard as revealed in trial transcript.

The time-of-death questions raised are clearly the most evocative, but so are the mathematically highly improbable statistics of Dechaine’s identifiable possessions being discovered at and near the crime scene as they allegedly were. The odds against that were greater than 99 to 1.

And why did the state incinerate evidence, including hairs found on Sarah’s battered body that would have exonerated Dechaine and perhaps identified her killer? As we now know, the male DNA found under her thumbnail did not belong to Dechaine.

Why is the state so reticent to have all the facts on the table, side by side, at the same time? Why does it want a potentially innocent man to remain in prison for life for a crime a massive amount of evidence says he did not commit? Why do the judge and the state insist on playing loophole games to keep information from a potential jury?

Understand, Dechaine is not looking for a get-out-of-jail-free card. He is only seeking a new trial — a fair one.

Why is the state so opposed to that? Why?

Dennis Curley

President, CanXus Broadcasting Corp.

Caribou

Wind power proponents fail to prove their case

I have written two prior letters to the media in which I asked the proponents and opponents of industrial wind energy development in Maine to come together and debate the merits of their respective positions on this important and controversial issue.

Proponents have not responded to my requests. However, through substantial research, I have been able to educate myself.

On Nov. 16, MaineToday Media wrote an editorial that extolled the benefits of industrial wind energy development, and asked Gov.-elect Paul LePage to support the industry.

I submit the following in response to these events:

1. I challenge the proponents of industrial wind energy development to present irrefutable evidence which supports their unsubstantiated claims on the benefits provided by these industrial developments.

2. I challenge the media to examine this subject in an unbiased and truly investigatory manner.

3. Gov.-elect Paul LePage is to be congratulated for taking a more pragmatic and far less self-serving position on industrial wind turbine development than did his two most recent predecessors.

Proposals to create industrial wind turbine developments in Maine have become the biggest scam to come down, or in this case up the pike, since “Dr. Doolittle’s Amazing Cure-All Elixir,” and they promise about the same result.

Therefore, to Independence Wind, First Wind, Patriot Renewables, TransCanada, Iberdrola and all other proponents or developers of industrial wind facilities in Maine, I ask: Why are you not willing or able to provide undeniable proof that supports your claims?

David Small

Norridgewock

Reader very grateful that paper delivered in blizzard

I don’t know how she did it, but our delivery person, Stephanie Waterman, delivered our newspaper during the blizzard despite the weather conditions.

I had to take the dog out and, since I was out anyway, waded through the snow to the roadside newspaper delivery box.

Much to my surprise and astonishment, there was the newspaper. There is nothing like starting the day with a cup of coffee and The Portland Press Herald and Stephanie made it possible for us to enjoy our morning routine — and us old folks do like our routines.

Please let her know that we recognize her effort and truly appreciate it. I might add that she lives in Dover, N.H., and we live in North Berwick. Thank you, Stephanie.

Jacquelyn Dolan

North Berwick