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Chief actuary study best medicine for U.S. healthcare
DEAR EDITOR:
Professor Victor Davis Hanson's "New socialists are elite, ungrateful and toxic" is worth reading, but his thought that the new Jacobins are talking wildly about Medicare for all deserves a quick reply.
Medicare for all and variations of that phrase at state levels are place mat rhetoric for virtue-signaling politicians who want to demonstrate their hearts are in the right place. That's all. The phrase has only bumper-sticker value, and the clunky accompanying legislation is always dead on arrival.
The "wild talk" problem, if we can call it that, in the healthcare debate may be the mostly unarticulated assumption that there's anything normal about the distribution of healthcare to begin with.
Even well-intended folks are exhausted when they try to apply their "people logic" to healthcare's "pancake logic," a reference to the healthcare schemes heaped like pancakes atop other healthcare schemes by politicians and corporations with no regard for the effects of those schemes on the "pancakes" below them or those "pancakes" likely to come after them. One pancake impoverishes people to make them healthcare-rich, another pancake empowers Grandma and Grandpa at the expense of their middle-age children, yet another sacrifices production workers to make nonworkers healthcare-rich, and so on.
Or, call it "kaleidoscope logic," in deference to the populations that were shattered, like glass bits in a kaleidoscope, to make them packagable for America's truly weird employer-paid group health insurance. One moment Mom eand Dad, Sis and Bub are healthy and insured. Turn the kaleidoscope, Mom and Dad are expelled from their insurance group, Mom is sick, Sis and Bub are enrolled elsewhere but can't get Mom and Dad enrolled in their so-called family plan with a crowbar because family plans don't actually cover families. Turn the kaleidoscope again -- you get the picture.
That's why I've long favored a "chief actuary" study that exposes the fundamentals of American healthcare.
The chief actuary study won't present a road map to a Medicare for all utopia that satisfies the left, or a fantasy reversion to 19th century market-driven cash medicine with a dollop of experience-rated insurance on top to placate the right. What it will do for the first time in 80 years is put the American public in the healthcare driver's seat, and give them the direction-finding equipment they need to make their own healthcare future.
JACK LABUSCH
Niles
Disgusting' anti-Acton ad was not Ramaswamy's
DEAR EDITOR:
At this time I am not pro-Acton nor pro-Ramaswamy. I will listen carefully to what they say and do in the coming months before I decide. But I agree with the writer from Warren (Sound Off, July 18-19) that some of the ads against Ms. Acton are disgusting. The writer cites "Ramaswamy's televised ads" about her "drinking while taking drugs."
A democracy requires an informed electorate. But to be informed, we have to pay attention. That nasty ad clearly says "not authorized by any candidate." So let's be fair and not refer to that as Mr. Ramaswamy's ad.
ROBERT LOWE
Girard
How can the American flag make someone feel unsafe?
DEAR EDITOR:
In the weeks leading up to our nation's 250th birthday, I felt a sense of pride as I drove through Newton Falls and saw all the homes and businesses festooned with American flags, decorations and adornments.
Then I heard about "The View's" Sunny Hostin and her odious, opposing impression: "When I see American flags in a community, I feel unsafe."
It reminded me of another Democrat who was never proud to be an American until her husband was elected president, Michelle Obama.
JAMES COLLINS
Newton Falls
Trump can find election threats in the mirror
DEAR EDITOR:
Isn't it a bit ironic that as the President has every agency at his disposal looking for evidence of voter fraud and corruption in Michigan and Georgia, and election interference from China and Russia, but by far, the greatest threat to free, fair and open elections in America exists in Washington D.C. at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?
THOMAS BRENT
Struthers
Have you benefited from President Trump's policies?
DEAR EDITOR:
Recently, during a discussion with a lifelong friend who shares the opposite side of my political ideologies and especially the current administration, he stated, and I hear this all the time: "Sure, Trump is obnoxious, says things he shouldn't say or are untrue, makes false claims, but I like what he has done so far."
When I hear this, I ask myself, "What am I missing? What has this administration done, accomplished that I can support, that I am experiencing a benefit from?"
To assist me in understanding my friends' and other supporters' positions, I asked them to point out his accomplishments; here are the "Top Three" they replied with: Economic and tax policy, energy independence and judicial appointments.
Let's take a quick look at how the above have impacted the average US citizen:
● Economic and tax policy, aka: One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBBA), has widened that divide among American citizens, considerably favoring the wealthy while raising costs for the working middle-class households; inflation continues to rise.
● Energy independence, aka: "Drill Baby Drill," has resulted in rising energy costs for both gas and electricity. This results from the rolling back of federal tax incentives for alternative energy sources, e.g., solar and wind. The impact on the EPA has and will continue to lead to higher increases in both air and water pollutants, a fact that was made aware when our local Great Lake Erie was considered dead and now, due to the Clean Air and Water Act, is one of the best; that didn't happen due to a "do the right thing" business decision. The previous clean energy grants, which were all repealed, disrupted several project developments, impacting tens of thousands of well-paying jobs.
● Judicial appointments. It's not hard to understand that the right, as well as the left, would love to see Supreme Court appointments favor their ideology. But let's take a quick look at some of the recent rulings and the impact on the masses the current appointees have had.
Many of the decisions are and always will be a division among the masses, but recent rulings have impacted:
Reproductive healthcare, via allowing individual states to restrict or ban reproductive healthcare access.
Civil and other rights: Recent appointees have voiced the need to overthrow or ignore existing anti-discrimination protection policy and procedures.
Environmental regulations: As previously noted, this administration's judicial appointees have sided with a huge list of deregulatory agendas, limiting existing federal agencies from enforcing long-fought, deliberated, agreed-upon, proven environmental gains regulations.
I personally, and I'm willing to listen, have not experienced any benefits resulting from this administration's decision-making; I have actually experienced the opposite.
JOHN P. LESEGANICH
Canfield
A reminder about how Social Security began
DEAR EDITOR:
Being born in 1935, I've had a lifetime to learn what made Social Security work from the beginning and why it isn't working now.
Social Security was not a government program; it was a group of people who realized in order to survive, they had to work together and pay their dues, each generation paying their dues for the next one.
The Baby Boomers are the last generation with that work ethic.
With automation and isolation, and Star Parker's "I prefer to take care of myself" attitude, that is what is killing Social Security.
DONNA NASSER
Sharon, Pa