Why I support the Affordable Health Care Act:

• Preventive care: Before the ACA, some immunizations were covered and some were not. Before the ACA, some preventive exams were covered some were not. After the ACA, all immunizations and all preventive exams in all health plans in all 50 states are covered.

This, of course, is my favorite thing about the ACA. I get to spend more time preventing heart disease and cancer and less time treating heart disease and cancer.

• Parents can keep children on their health plan until age 26.

• Seniors no longer face the doughnut hole of losing prescription drug benefits.

• No more pre-existing conditions: Before the ACA, insurance companies did not have to accept a patient with rheumatoid arthritis. Losing a job is bad enough, but for a patient who needs a $10,000 injectable medication, it is worse.

After the ACA, insurance companies are forbidden to deny coverage based on a pre-existing condition.

• No more free riders: No more cost shifting.

Before the ACA, Americans were “free” to gamble and not buy health insurance. If they lost, they passed the cost of their care on to those of us with insurance. After the ACA, we all will be taking responsibility for our health care.

• Insurance companies pay for care, not advertising and CEO salaries.

Before the ACA, insurance companies spent 40 percent of its premiums for overhead. About 60 percent went to patient care. Note that Angela Braly, CEO of Anthem/WellPoint, made $13 million in 2009.

After the ACA, insurance companies must spend 80 to 85 percent of premiums on patient care. If not, they must pay the customer (you and me) a rebate check. Hopefully, some of that will come from Ms. Braly.

Thomas McInerney, M.D.

Cape Elizabeth

Our representatives on the right, at nearly all levels of government, are demonizing any approach to universal health care. Never mind that logic at its most simplified level reveals that universal health care is far less expensive, on an individual level, than our present system

To get decent health care now, one must have a comprehensive insurance policy, paid for increasingly by individuals. Those policies must support stockholders demanding greater and greater profits, executives barely surviving, poor things, on bloated salaries and benefits and an extensive infrastructure mostly designed to complicate claims.

Those corporations comprising the U.S. health care system extant must also generate enough income to lobby Congress (some might claim to buy Congress) and to advertise enough to confuse those who don’t choose to think for themselves.

Absent universal health care, those without coverage will continue to use the emergency rooms in those hospitals that haven’t already excluded those without insurance. Many, if not most, of those visits should be replaced by far less costly visits to a clinic.

The absurd rhetoric of election-year politics and politicos should not outweigh reason, but it does. And now that the Supreme Court has defined corporations as individuals, and Congress won’t reform campaign financing, we will continue to sink deeper into this 40-year decline.

John Wood

Hollis

After the Supreme Court voted to stop the 2000 Florida recount, thus awarding George W. Bush the presidency of the United States, the Republican Party had a message for Democrats: “You lost, get over it.” Al Gore issued a concession speech more eloquent than any given during his campaign, a constitutional crisis was avoided and the nation moved forward.

The Republican Party moved further to the conservative right and a new, near-religious fervor for the original intent of the Constitution was fueled by the emerging tea party and the Ron Paul libertarians. A return to constitutional principles would save us from the encroaching socialist agenda attributed to the Obama administration and the Democrats.

The focal point of the agenda — the Affordable Care Act, derisively referred to as “Obamacare” — would be struck down by the conservative Supreme Court as unconstitutional, proving the right-wing assertion that we were going to hell in a European socialistic handbasket and needed to be saved by Republican intervention.

The Roberts court was expected to deliver a verdict favorable to the conservative interpretation that requiring the purchase of health insurance by individuals was practically equivalent to joining the Communist Party.

Justice Roberts cast the deciding vote declaring the ACA constitutional under the right of Congress to levy a tax on those individuals who, through freedom of choice, decided not to purchase the lawfully required insurance.

Ideological disagreement notwithstanding, our Supreme Court upheld the Constitution. Rather than vilify Justice Roberts and take valuable time in the House of Representatives taking a symbolic vote to repeal the new law, it is time for conservatives and the Republican Party to take their own advice, admit they lost and get over it.

Tom Foley

Cumberland Foreside

Your July 17 editorial — Our View, “Cost control the next arena for health care” — rightly points out that one of the less publicized provisions of the Affordable Care Act may end up having the most impact.

MaineHealth is one of several health systems in the state participating as Pioneer accountable care organizations authorized under the ACA. Their combined efforts will reach virtually the entire population of Maine.

These systems and their affiliates are investing substantial human and financial resources with the goal of nothing less than the transformation of health care — one that demands best practices delivered in the most efficient and cost-effective manner.

While the Pioneer ACOs cover only Medicare recipients, parallel activity is going on in the private sector, with all of the major health insurers investing heavily in ACO development.

These combined efforts represent a profound cultural change in the historical provider/payer relationship — from short-term transactional to long-term collaborative. This transformation will allow both to make the difficult but essential decisions that are required to achieve the quality and cost targets.

Most of these activities have unfolded without public fanfare. But given the high stakes that all of us have in improving Maine’s health care, I would encourage my fellow citizens to pay more attention to these exciting developments and less to the heated rhetoric that has occupied so much of center stage in the dialogue surrounding the ACA.

Sam Barouch

Yarmouth

While I am seldom moved to comment on articles found in the Parade Magazine supplement, I found myself wondering if anyone else was as offended as I was when I read the interview with former President George H.W. Bush (“An exclusive conversation with President and Mrs. Bush,” July 15).

His health care arrangements are pleasing to him, he stated, since “Americans like to take care of their former presidents.”

One has to wonder if the former president gives a thought to how many Americans who have no health care at all, or are struggling to pay for it, are really that pleased to be paying for his.

Phyllis Giordano

York

When I read all the critical comments about Obamacare taking away the individual’s right to making “choices” and “eroding our freedom,” I think, “What about sick people, through no fault of their own?” No one would “choose” to get cancer, Crohn’s disease, diabetes, arthritis, multiple sclerosis or any other seriously debilitating disease.

Although I understand why healthy people complain about the high cost of medical insurance that they don’t utilize, to me, they are the lucky ones.

They don’t need to think about getting through a workday with chronic pain and illness, or the side effects from treatments or medications.

They don’t need to think about how they’ll support themselves if they can’t work, especially if they’re self-employed or caring for a sick loved one.

They don’t need to worry about whether, even if they are working, they can afford the insurance, medications and treatment that will allow them the chance to relieve their pain and treat their illness.

To me, the “lucky ones” would benefit from spending some community service time with sick people, whose choices and freedoms are which medication or treatment they can afford that will have the least debilitating side effects and risks.

If they could walk in these folks’ shoes, even for one day, perhaps they would “choose” to think differently.

Julie O’Brien

Scarborough

I was a little confused by the July 9 headline “Mother of two charged with bank robbery.” Why was “mother of two” considered necessary to describe a bank robber?

Your article explains that the children were with her when she was apprehended, but that information should have been clear to any readers without the headline.

I don’t recall a “father of two” headline before, and in this age of gender equality I’m sure your readers would be just as interested or uninterested in their family status.

I’m hesitant about even addressing this problematic equality when as a country we are in a crucial time with speeches about freedoms and liberties being denied. It’s almost difficult to stay focused with a governor comparing the IRS to the Gestapo taking away our freedoms.

The Gestapo did take away freedom — of life, rarely discriminating between young, old, rich, poor — as long as you were considered an enemy of the state of Germany.

The IRS consists of American citizens whose job it is to collect taxes democratically decided upon to support our government in its job to preserve our freedoms. If that includes the freedom to life, supported by affordable health care, the Gestapo is the antithesis in its freedom to confer death.

No one I know is enjoying the freedom to be uninsured. No one enjoys the freedom of choosing between food and shelter or medication. No one enjoys the fear of a cancer diagnosis and no money for treatment.

Until we have freedom from illness, affordable health care is a means to life, liberty and the chance for us to pursue happiness.

Mary Frances Frank

Sanford

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