HEALTH CARE
End incentives driving
medical costs higher
Let’s face it: Our health care system in the U.S. is overpriced and inadequate for many in our society, and certainly not providing health solutions without regard to age and income level. Our elderly population is forced to seek the few physicians and clinics who will accept Medicare coverage — a quickly dwindling number. Millions of citizens are paying more for health coverage than they do for mortgage payments each month. I can understand why most of my neighbors and friends no longer have coverage. They cannot afford it.
I propose that we change the system — but not with Obamacare. Remove the financial incentives and capabilities for doctors, hospitals, insurance companies and dentists to get rich off of the hurting and dying. Bring some sanity to an enormous public burden that is a major source of the growing federal debt.
CHARLES R. THOMAS, CUMMING
ETHICS
Keep up the pressure
for meaningful reform
If any ethics reform package is signed into law this year, it will happen because of the vigilance of a broad coalition of organizations buoyed by overwhelming popular support. A lobbyist gift cap or ban and some restoration of independence to the ethics commission are worthy reforms, but they are really only a drop in the bucket in terms of what needs to be done.
These marginal improvements to our laws will only address a couple of high-profile specific abuses. It was House Speaker David Ralston’s European vacation — paid for by a lobbyist — and the gutting of the ethics commission that drew our ire. So, if Georgians don’t continue to paddle upstream for more reforms, our lawmakers will float along until the next crisis, and then the next crisis. Their successive responses will constitute patches — just enough reform to hold us over until the next scandal.
DON MCADAM, SANDY SPRINGS
CONGRESS
Stop squabbling, get
to people’s business
The sequester simply shows how dysfunctional democracy with our elected Congress can be. Third World countries must be horrified to see how democracy simply moves the war indoors. Our leaders must stop squabbling over politics and start helping America get back on its feet. Citizens are feeling like kids caught helplessly in an unending, nasty divorce.
Congress, stop the power plays, and start doing what we sent you to Washington to do: Solve problems. Don’t create them!
KATHIE CHENEY, PEACHTREE CITY
