Expand Medicare into single-payer insurance
The current governor in Massachusetts, in addressing health insurance plan implemented by Mitt Romney and endorsed by John McCain recently, stated that “Forcing people to buy health insurance is like forcing homeless people to buy houses.”
There is only one solution to solving the health insurance disaster in this country. Rather than continue with the fragmented system we have today, a system that is neither integrated or interactive, a national pool has to be developed by extending Medicare to every single resident and transferring all current premium payments into that nonprofit system.
That will lower premiums across the board and allow the uninsured and underinsured to fully participate in all services by paying affordable premiums based on income and circumstances.
It is time to take private insurance industry out of healthcare. There is no reason except greed and lobbyist pressure applied to our elected servants for continuing down that road. It is also time to stop wasting money on inefficient programs such as the VA by integrating all providers into a national panel.
Jack Scialabba
Clearlake
Insurance pull out leaves many out in the cold
Recently, a major insurance company pulled out of the county, leaving a very large number of its past members scrambling to find future medical coverage.
My question is, if such a company has gained profits from its membership in the county for a large number of years, who were at ages that their overall health did not tax their need or use of that company”s coverage, was its action to leave the county, either fair or legal?
We all know that this country”s population of folks ready to retire is about to sky rocket, plus the fact that the lake is a place that will see a far greater share of retirees moving to, in this state, and their use of medical insurance will also leap.
For a company to be allowed to pull out of covering so many, after happily taking millions in payments, for both individuals and local government budgets, by playing the odds of levels of use, is a crime and those members effected should look to a class action type of suit, to keep the playing field level as most members would fairly expect if they made their payments on time, to have coverage until they passed away.
To be a senior citizen, or government employee, both working and retired, and have your medical insurance yanked away from you, through no fault of your own, but, by the fact that this company”s profits may be lessened, due to the aging of America, is not an issue that should be allowed with out a fight.
Our government forces, by law, for us to carry insurance, and thus, should make sure that in doing so, that we receive protection from a company doing what it just did. I think all of us who pay for insurance, expect coverage to give us, as long as we make the agreed upon payments.
For those who lost coverage, they face finding new insurance, that will be far more costly, and will not cover pre-existing medical problems and costs. Is this the way we ? as a nation ? want to treat our seniors, who in time, we all will join? I say not.
Jim Hall
Clearlake Oaks
Oil company revenues are hurting consumers
It seems the topic of most conversations between worried Americans is either how the economy is slowing or how gas prices are escalating. I suggest looking at the possibility that the reason the former problem even exists can be found within the latter topic.
With ever increasing payments at the pump, consumers are leery of spending there money elsewhere in fear they won”t have enough left over to get where they need to go (i.e.: work, school). Considering the fact that consumer spending accounts for over half of our total economic activity, this poses a major problem.
The federal government thinks the solution to the problem is going to come out of a $168 billion “economic stimulus package.” Supposedly, consumers are going to turn around and spend their rebate checks upon receiving them and like magic the economy will be out of its slump.
I dare you to ask yourself, if gas prices are still so high, where will you be spending your $600-1200? Will you be putting that money back into the economy or will you be saving it for a “rainy day,” using it to pay off bills, or possibly using it to fill up your gas tank?
An honest solution to our economic crisis would come from something such as a decrease in gas prices. If consumers were not spending the majority of their paychecks building oil company revenue they may not be so leery to possibly buy that $4,000 plasma television or go on that long awaited luxurious vacation. Considering oil companies clear billions of dollars per year, a trivial chunk out of their revenue seems a small price to pay to save our country from a recession.
Jessica Harris
Kelseyville
Wrong war, McCain
“You talk to those Republicans who voted for McCain, and they don”t know anything, other than he was a POW.” ? GOP propagandist Ann Coulter, on NBC”s Today Show (Feb. 8, 2008)
On Jan. 3, 2008, at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire, the Republican Party”s intractable presidential nominee ? Arizona Senator John McCain ? infamously claimed that the American military will remain an unwelcome occupying force in Iraq for the next 100 years. McCain apparently neglected to ask either the Iraqi or the American people for our assent.
Then again, the backwards, bloodthirsty former naval aviator undoubtedly forgot to ask the people of Vietnam for their acquiescence either, back when “Vietnam War hero” John McCain was ? in violation of international law ? bombing innocent women and children with napalm in “free-fire zones” during that unnecessary genocidal quagmire, which cost over 58,000 American GIs their lives (in addition to three million dead Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians).
As a particularly hypocritical and notorious presence in American politics these past few decades, John McCain has continued to earn his well-deserved negative reputation as an exceedingly-ambitious, self-righteous, irate and unstable man still mentally-confined in “The Hanoi Hilton,” compulsively intent on re-fighting old battles long since lost, regardless of the horrific cost in human lives or national treasure.
McCain should be told that Iraq is not Vietnam ? no matter how deluded the Republican presidential nominee may be ? and that it is time to move beyond these old arguments and catastrophes of the past.
Democrats, Independents and enlightened Republicans: it is time for change! This Nov. 4, please exercise your right to vote. Derail insane John McCain”s “straightjacket express,” before this white-haired warmonger launches another illegal imperial war based on lies and greed.
Jake Pickering
Eureka
