Letters to the Editor for Sunday, November 22, 2009

Hard questions that won’t be asked
I wish we’d be able to have our representatives and senators in town halls to talk about the health plans, but I don’t think that’ll happen.

I’m curious why some say that another government plan would be like Medicare, and that it would encourage competition in the private market. Where is the competition with Medicare? How will this new government plan not be like Medicare in that according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the trust fund that Medicare uses to pay for beneficiaries’ hospital care will be insolvent by 2017?

By not taking into account the $200 billion in fees for doctors who see Medicare patients, the House of Representatives was able to give the illusion that its reforms were deficit neutral. Will our senators force those fees to be included in one reform package or, deceive the public as to the real costs like the House did?

The bill says some of the costs will be paid by an excise tax on high-end insurance plans, an increase in the Medicare payroll tax for people making over $200,000, and a fine on companies who don’t provide care for their employees. What happens to the cost if companies simply reduce the costs of their high end plans, or there are fewer people making more than $200,000, or companies merely pay the fine for not covering their employees and dump a lot more people into the government plan? Were the costs figured at our current 10 percent unemployment rate or a more modest level?

Those shouldn’t be hard questions — I’m just not convinced our representatives care to hear them or answer them. They should.
MIKE COBB
Lynchburg

Whom to protect?
According to UNICEF, 11 million children die each year before their fifth birthday in the developing world. Nearly all suffer preventable conditions such as pneumonia and diarrhea. In Africa, a child dies every 3 seconds from AIDS and extreme poverty.

The BBC reports that 1.2 million children are trafficked worldwide each year as slaves.

Approximately 10,000 children are killed or maimed by landmines every year.

An estimated 300,000 child soldiers are involved in more than 30 conflicts worldwide.

More than 300 million children go to bed hungry every day, and more than 90 percent of them suffer from malnutrition. In the United States, according to the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), 16.7 million children go hungry. 14 million American children live in poverty.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, 820,151 abortions were performed in the United States in 2005. It’s difficult to cite an exact number for abortions performed yearly worldwide, but estimates range from 20 to 80 million.

To this reader, then, the greater moral crisis is protecting children who are actually alive in the world now rather than expending a disproportionate amount of energy in well-publicized conferences and “fly overs” protecting children who have yet to be born. But, then, hunger and poverty require much more effort and resources to remedy.
MATTHEW POTEAT
Lynchburg