Health-care reform is about people, in final analysis

Health-care reform is about people, in final analysis

EDITOR:

The current, often explosive debate over health-care reform seems both sad and comical. It’s sad because lost in all the vitriolic rhetoric is the fact we’re talking about people, by many estimates, about 40 million people, approximately 19 percent of our population. The elderly, the poor and the wealthy are pretty much accounted for in our health-care system. These people are, essentially, working class people who live daily with a very dangerous ax hanging precariously over their heads and the heads of their families. Having, along with my family in a time now past, lived in that very situation for a decade I can assure you that, to them, this is no purely academic argument.

It’s comical because opponents of health care reform are crying that we’re moving too fast. This is a problem first articulated during the Truman administration. Only in the annals of American politics could 60-plus years be declared a “rush”.

This issue has nothing to do with fairness, choice or rationing. A system that slams the door in the face of 40 million people is already patently unfair. Those locked out of the system have no choice except to pray a lot and hope for the best. We are already rationing by telling 40 million people that there is not enough for them.

Unfortunately what we currently have areleaders of the right and leaders of the left, each having dug in their heels with a “my way or no way” attitude. What we desperately need are national leaders who realize that we need each other to pull together to get this problem fixed. People who deliberately try to polarize people into different camps who don’t like, or even hate each other are neither leaders nor patriots. They are simply obstructionists determined to maintain the status quo, ostensibly for their own advantage.

Will extending health-care benefits to those 40 million mean that I have fewer benefits, higher premiums or higher taxes? Most likely, yes. Am I willing to go that route? Absolutely, but I can’t speak for others. Pastor Chuck Swindoll once observed that only God’s Word and people are eternal. What should that do to our priorities? God convinced me years ago that I am, indeed, “my brother’s keeper.” Government can’t and shouldn’t mandate concern for others. Insurance companies, however, operate under state and federal laws, which makes it unrealistic to think that this will be done apart from government oversight.

What we have observed in the Tea Parties, Town Hall meetings ,etc., is a textbook case of how not to get things done. What we need are leaders who know how to get people to pull together to actually accomplish something. May God grant us such leaders before we devour ourselves.

MIKE HALCHUCK

Canfield

Keep fees out of politics

EDITOR:

Watching Judge Belinky on the news the other night attempt to justify his expenditure for pencils was unbelievable. He seemed to think that using our fees was OK.

If it is true that he — and other officeholders — use part of the fees and charges we pay for such purposes, I am frankly appalled. If this is not illegal, it should be. Such a use amounts to an involuntary political contribution, perhaps to someone we would not support if we were asked.

If Judge Belinky, and, he says, other officeholders, want to promote themselves and their re-election, they should do it with funds raised out in the open, not skimmed off the fees we are required to pay.

MARILEE R. HIRD

Youngstown