Affordable care should be right for all residents
When will we as a nation realize that health is not a business?
Access to affordable health care should be regulated by our hearts (and not our wallets).
Opponents to the new health care reform law insist that they do not want the government making medical decisions for them.
Yet we now have the health insurance companies doing just that. They decide who can have treatment and how much it will cost — and meanwhile, the prices go up and up.
Free markets and vouchers mean nothing to the elderly, the terminally ill and people facing painful and expensive treatment.
We need a health care system that includes all Americans — and provides help without regard for a patient’s tax bracket.
Sybil Thomas, Whitesburg
Fuel, Supreme Court articles appreciated
Regarding “High gas prices return in spring” (News, April 8) and “Justices’ robes can’t hide naked political motives” (Opinion, April 8), both pieces were terrific.
GENE GRIESSMAN, SANDY SPRINGS
Augusta National has reader’s support
The cartoon “Prove you’re a dude” (Opinion, April 8) is another not-so-veiled attempt by AJC cartoonist Mike Luckovich to educate the rubes among us as to the antiquated ways of Augusta National Golf Club.
Why can’t he respect a time-honored tradition?
The Masters tournament is one of the few remaining venues that hasn’t been altered to satisfy a perceived-injured segment of our society.
I for one am glad that the Masters has refused to capitulate.
JAMES E. STEWART, MCDONOUGH
Education is better investment than guns
Dollar for dollar, money invested in weapons produces fewer jobs than money invested in education, green jobs or a myriad of other industries (according to a study by the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst).
President Dwight Eisenhower was right when he said, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”
We don’t have to have starving seniors and poverty in our great nation.
It is a choice.
Louis Myer, Atlanta
Lobby rules: Foxes guarding hen house
Jay Bookman certainly hit the nail on the head with his column “In Georgia, lobbying is a gift that keeps on taking” (Opinion, April 11).
Unfortunately, it probably won’t change the ways of bribing members of the Georgia Legislature — and I use the word “bribing” because that’s what it is.
And the problem is that the very same legislators who are receiving these “gifts” are the same ones who are required to make laws to prohibit this practice.
The losers are all the residents of Georgia.
Sarah Cooper, Gainesville
