READERS WRITE

Health care reform

Responses to “Is Britain’s national health service a good role model for the United States?” @issue, Aug. 10

Stop meddling and move on

Your two “opposing” columns on whether the British health service is a good role model for the U.S. are actually in agreement. They both think the U.S. should meddle in health care; they just argue over how much. It’s like two Mafiosos bickering over which neighborhoods they will control and how much extortion they will extract. They both miss the fundamental point in this discussion: liberty.

Because humans have a right to run their own lives, they should be able to run their own health care, and moreover, not have to pay for others’ not running their own health care properly. End of subject. Let’s move on.

DAVID ELMORE

Roswell

European systems cheaper and better

European health systems cost far less, but they also produce better results. France, for example, spends about half what we do —- as a percent of GDP —- yet French people have longer life expectancy and much lower rates of infant mortality. In the Netherlands, people on average were much shorter than Americans just after World War II but now are taller. The reason given is a better diet, a consequence of the Dutch health system’s focus on prevention.

We desperately need an honest, open and civil discussion of the pros and cons of the entire health care issue, not the kind of disingenous dissembling offered by Merrill Matthews.

GORDON P. RONDEAU

Marietta

Current system broken beyond repair

Allowing an insurance executive to explain why national health insurance is bad is like allowing the fox to explain why he should be allowed to guard the henhouse. Our health care bill per person is almost twice that of the next closest country in the world, and a huge amount of that money goes to the insurance industry —- between 30 percent and 40 percent of $2 trillion.

In 2005 the CEO of United Healthcare took home a tidy $124 million. To look at it from the viewpoint of the health care system, that one person’s compensation could pay the yearly salaries of 833 general internists. In the U.S., our life expectancy, at 78 years, ranks us 45th in the world, behind many countries with nationalized health care. A national health plan will be far from perfect, but the current system is broken beyond repair for everyone but the insurance industry executives.

MICHAEL E. McCONNELL

The writer is a physician in Atlanta.

Universal plan not the solution

The author who opined against the British model had the better analysis. In fact, you don’t have to look to Britain to find failures in government health care. Two of my brothers were diagnosed with prostate cancer at the same stage of the disease. One was covered by private-employer insurance and the other received treatment through the Veterans Administration.

I know for a fact that the brother with private insurance received treatments for his cancer that were not available to the other brother, who is now deceased.

Individuals insured under a universal health care plan will be denied access to targeted therapies, clinical trials and other expensive therapies because, like Britain, the government will not be able to afford to pay for these treatments. Universal health care is not the answer.

TERESA COLLIER

Smyrna

Global warming

Responses to Thomas Friedman’s column “Your kids will be all too fluent in ‘Climate-Speak,’ ” @issue, Aug. 10

Condition not new occurrence

Friedman writes about the “warming” that he experienced on his recent trip to Greenland. He should know that similar conditions existed there about a thousand years ago when the Vikings settled the island.

Of course, the pro-global-warming climatologists claim that warm period, which lasted about 300 years, was just a local rather than a global occurrence. Yet Friedman and many climatologists ascribe global significance to the recent warming in Greenland that has lasted for a far shorter time. This is just one of the inconsistencies with a theory that attributes climate change to human activity.

JOHN HUNT

Smyrna

Panic stifles our prosperity

Friedman writes eloquently of Greenland’s disappearing glaciers. But he fails to relate Greenland’s history. When the Vikings settled Greenland, it was much warmer, even warmer than today —- hence the name Greenland. Historians believe it was climate change that initiated their demise, or withdrawal. History is replete with such stories of “violent unpredictable weather.”

Abnormally high food and energy prices are less a result of climate change and more a result of our futile attempts to stop it. Friedman is right about one thing: “Our kids are going to be so angry with this one day.” They should be angry. In an increasingly competitive world, we are stifling our prosperity because of panic over a weather forecast. Madness. Sheer madness.

TRACY SNYDER

Woodstock

How about license to procreate?

Children need and deserve two parents who love and financially support them (“Sex may be free, but children come with a cost we must accept,” @issue, Aug. 10). However, speaking as an attorney, I believe that the column is missing the point. You can put biological names, Social Security numbers and DNA coding on a child’s birth certificate, and you may even find the missing parent, but ultimately you can’t make them pay.

What is needed, in my opinion, is a license to have a child. We require them for everything else —- driving, owning a business, practicing law, medicine or accounting, massage therapy or even haircutting, but not for one of the most important things human beings will ever do. Americans apply the same tortured logic to what we pay our teachers. We pay CEOs, sports figures and celebrities millions, but can’t come up with a living wage for a starting teacher. This country has its priorities in all the wrong places.

LAURA E. TAYLOR

Buford

Vouchers indeed a diversion

Re: “The voucher diversion” (@issue, Aug. 10): What is the major factor influencing the push for universal school vouchers?

a) politics

b) social class

c) religion

d) all of the above

Congratulations! You got the correct answer: d) all of the above.

School vouchers are promoted as being for the good of children. My perspective on the school voucher system is that it is a disguised way for parents to select those children their little darlings sit next to, eat lunch with, go to school dances with, and play football with.

Voucher proponents try to hide behind the concept that “vouchers empower families to send their children to the private school of their choice.” Those families not empowered by their economic/social class will continue to be powerless and marginalized if the voucher diversion becomes a reality.

MARIE BORIM

Woodstock