With corporations involved, health care suffers
It came as no surprise to read that lobbyists are pushing their preferred consultants to cash in on the millions of taxpayer dollars being made available to rural hospitals in the form of tax credits for donations to local healthcare (“Rural hospitals’ aid goes to consultants” A1, Oct. 2). Couple that with Tenet Healthcare’s recent upwardly revised minimal offer of $238 million to join a growing list of businesses seeking to avoid criminal prosecution for Medicare/Medicaid fraud, and Mylan and Turing pharmaceutical companies’ recent much-publicized and unconscionable jacking-up of certain drug prices (Epi-Pen and Daraprim) and ask yourself, “why?” Root cause analysis would immediately reveal the source of the problem: there is big money to be made. These issues and so many more are the inevitable result of a health industry where “health care” is replaced by “healthy profits.” Such callous stories do not occur in countries with national healthcare plans, nor have they occurred in socialized healthcare systems here, such as the VA. As a recently retired VA healthcare provider, I can attest to the constant satisfaction of being able to provide the best care available without ever having to consider my veterans’ ability to pay. When health corporation bureaucrats determine availability and quality of services for people, the “care” part will always suffer — it is the nature of the beast.
KURT OHBERG, ATLANTA
Is Atlanta the city too busy to care?
How shameful that the city of Atlanta continues — and seems on the verge of winning — its push to replace the large Peachtree-Pine homeless shelter with an enormous, presumably state-of-the-art police station of all things! And all with no plans, even as winter approaches, to provide any viable alternative for the homeless who must rely on the shelter.
Truly, Atlanta has become a city too busy to care.
LINDA A. BELL, DECATUR
Those sick of lies, corruption vote for Trump
On Nov. 5, a letter-writer said that the choice for your vote for President was “clearly a choice of going forward positively into the future with Hillary, or going backward negatively into the past with Trump” (“On Nov. 8, U.S. faces important decision,” Readers Write). I beg to differ. It’s a choice between continuing the same old insider politics of the last 28 years, or of throwing the insiders out and doing what’s best for the U.S. If you like the economy, foreign policy and domestic tranquility we have had under this administration, then vote for Hillary. If you are sick of the lies, corruption, cronyism, social strife, and international humiliation, then vote for Trump. As many have said, “Doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result is the very definition of insanity.”
GRANT ESSEX, WOODSTOCK
Entitlements ruining the U.S.
I am one of the deplorables. I am a senior citizen with children and grandchildren. I have worked hard all of life, sent my kids to college and have never drawn welfare. I have a question. How can this country survive? Under President Obama, the national debt now exceeds $20 trillion. It has been reported that we can barely afford to pay the interest on this debt. Democrats, and in particular the democratic candidate, want to increase entitlements with no good way to pay for them. Their answer is to tax the rich! What a joke. Entitlements in general have ruined this country. A long list of “free things” begets votes — then empty promises. Wake up America. Start using some common sense. Nothing is free! You are being had.
SHERRILL LANG, TYRONE
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