We can’t fix health without Medicaid
So the Georgia Chamber of Commerce plans to conduct a nine-month study tackling the crisis of a lack of health coverage in the state and not look at Medicaid expansion (“Health study won’t look at Medicaid,” Metro, Nov. 5). Everything is on the table except Medicaid. They don’t want to look to the feds for $35 billion over the next decade. They will figure out how to cover 600,000 additional Georgians another way. Isn’t that like the joke about the man in the night who drops his keys next to his car but looks for them under the street light because it’s easier to search there? What a sad joke for Georgians left in the dark.
FAYE ANDRESEN, ATLANTA
Obamacare hits middle class hard
For several months, we have been reading articles and letters concerning the projected rise in health care insurance costs. I can verify I waited until the first day of open enrollment for my wife and me under my former employer’s retirement health care plan. What I found was shocking. The same high-deductible plan from the same carrier will cost 607 percent more in 2016 than what we paid this year.
I get that medical expenses are likely to climb maybe 10 percent next year, but I had no idea government mandates could be responsible for such a huge insurance cost increase. Interestingly enough, when I checked rates at Healthcare.gov, I found the lowest-cost plan (with a much higher deductible and lower coverage after the deductible) to be over 400 percent more expensive than my 2016 plan.
Clearly, the Affordable Health Care Act is anything but affordable, and it hits the middle class the hardest. The middle class earns too much to get subsidies yet cannot afford the available plans. We the voters must replace the politicians who foisted this monstrosity on us with people who will address the real problems in health care with common-sense, market-based reform.
PERRY COOPER, ROSWELL
Stone Mountain carving should stay
Please do not mess with the carving on Stone Mountain. Destroying or changing it would be a slap in the face to hundreds who are gone and the few of us who are left. I was one of the hundreds of school children who, in the depths of the Depression, contributed our nickels and dimes to complete the carving. There are not many of us left, but we are all proud of our part in finishing this wonderful tribute to the history of our region.
ROBERT S. FORBES SR., TIGER
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