Letters to the Editor for Saturday, March 13, 2010

U.S. health system woefully lacking
In The News & Advance on March 12, there were two letters regarding the health care debate.

Joe La Magna subscribes to the ideals of “The Party Of No,” and Linda Thomas to “Yes, We Can.”

I’m with Linda. I have found that the ones against reform are also the ones who have never had a friend or relative or someone close, die or suffer for lack of care, or have to cease taking their meds, or lose their homes and everything they own. Luckily, I am not one of them; I have the “socialized” Medicare and Veterans Administration pay my needs, and I could not be any happier with both. However I have met face-to-face with individuals as described above. Joe, it seems, is a member of the very large group of people who belong to the “I’ve Got Mine, Now You Get Yours” Club.

As to his three points: Costs are relative? Health care? Education? A pizza and a couple of beers? These are material things; things we would like, but are not a necessity of life. Joe, don’t you know that nothing ... nothing on Earth matters if you are sick ... or dying; not even your three examples.

Yeah, we do have a lot of “stuff,” most of it not “stuff” we need, but “want.” Sixty-seven countries, including those much poorer than ours have “single-payer” or something very close, as their citizens’ coverage. Don’t you think that one, just one of them,would want to change to our fractured way of providing care if ours is so great? Personally, I have no problem with contributing higher taxes in order to help those in need, even if I am covered now.

I have Randy Pausch’s book on my bookshelf, and he has great lessons for us all.

He didn’t state that he was “happy” to being dying though, did he? He would have much preferred a long and healthy life as we all aspire to. If we all had the money Bill Gates had, none of us would have a health care problem would we?

We would all pay for it as Rush Limbaugh did when he recently had an episode and then praised our present health care system. It is great if we can all afford it, but not as great as many other countries who have better statistics in most every category than we have, but only because our system needs a complete overhaul.

Like Linda, I know and have known, quite a few people who have been subjected to the “horrors” of countries with a “socialist” plan, Canada, Great Britain and Spain. They all seem to prefer it, even if sometimes they may have to wait a bit on non-life threatening medical problems, but, they believe it to be much better than dying, or losing everything that they own.

“Kisses are sweeter than wine,” Joe, and sweeter than your maple syrup too.

BEV JORDAN
Lynchburg

The flip side

Do we really want government-run health care? We just returned from Canada where we attended my husband’s brother’s funeral. He died of a massive heart attack. He had an EKG three weeks before he died, and they still did not have the results of that test at the time of the funeral.

While we were up in Canada we heard that a top Canadian government official was coming to the United States for a medical procedure. Canadian government-run health care is really not doing so well! May I ask again, ”Do we really want government-run health care?

ESTHER POGGEMILLER
Lynchburg