What’s good for one is good for all

What’s good for one is good for all

I believe a 28th Amendment to the Constitution should read as follows: “Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the USA that does not apply equally to the senators and representatives, and they shall make no law that applies to the senators and representatives that does not apply to the citizens of the USA.” In plain talk let the politicians who pass the laws also live by them. No special privileges. No great health-care plans that apply to them only and not to the rest of the citizens. No pension plans that allow them to retire after one term and receive handsome pay.

It is obvious that the mess in Washington has been created by people who are lifetime professional politicians, more interested in scoring political points against the opposing party than solving the nation’s problems. Getting re-elected is their primary aim: health care reform, homeland defense, and energy shortages run a distant second.

A term limit amendment might also help. Don’t hold your breath for any of this to happen. For now we can only vote them out at election time.

Herb McMullen, Youngstown

Let’s stay out of the organ trade

I read Sally Satel’s proposal for a commercialization of the organ trade some years ago in The New York Times Magazine and then last Thursday in The Vindicator.

I thought I’d heard every sort of sheer awfulness in health care debate, until this zinger came along.

What she’s saying without quite saying it is that people without health insurance face obstacles so great in obtaining timely and effective health care that they could be “persuaded” to accept an organs-for-Medicare swap. What other reason would there be for Medicare to “incentivize” otherwise unwilling medically uninsured folks to part with their organs? What would a kidney be worth: a few years of maintenance meds and some root canals?

Her proposal is coercive and predatory, and pretty much reeks of Nazi-era medical abuses.

Jack Labusch, Niles