HEALTH CARE
Medicare patients suffer from rationing now
Medical rationing is already here for Medicare subscribers, and my father is a victim of this rationing. He is taking chemotherapy, and is denied the drug that treats anemia caused by his chemo. The chemo makes him nauseous and tired. Add to this extreme fatigue and shortness of breath, and you have a recipe for extreme suffering.
This drug was once given to chemo patients to prevent anemia, even when there was none. Medicare saw they were spending billions a year on this drug and made a cost-saving cutback — at the expense of chemo patients. I dare anyone to tell me this isn’t rationing. I dare anyone to tell me any government medical programs won’t result in far worse rationing. Medical rationing means suffering, and while medication may be withheld, there will be plenty of suffering for everyone. Jane Wood, Duluth
HEALTH CARE
Federal workers don’t get subsidized care
I have just read yet another letter requesting that federal employees be insured under any new public health care plan (“Readers write,” Opinion, Nov. 3). When will folks realize that federal employees are covered by an employer-sponsored health care plan as a form of supplemental compensation, just like the employees of any large business? Their program is not subsidized welfare.
Helene Camp, Sandy Springs
PUBLIC HEALTH
Private sector to blame for vaccine hitches
The efforts of the president’s detractors to portray the H1N1 flu vaccine difficulties as Obama’s “Katrina” (“Readers write,” Opinion, Nov. 5) show that knowledge, reason and logic have no place in their arguments. “The Obama administration has botched the manufacture and distribution of this vaccine,” writes the reader, ignoring the fact that the government does not manufacture the vaccine. It was the private sector — the vaccine manufacturers that failed to produce the promised amount of the vaccine. As for the same reader’s complaint that the president’s daughters received the vaccine, while his two young girls had not, one is reminded of the famous quotation: “Have you no sense of decency, sir?”
Miroslav Marek, Atlanta
POLITICS
It’s the economy and jobs this time, stupid
The pundits are scrambling to attach political meaning, nuance and long-term implications to the elections in Virginia and New Jersey. The American people are not into nuance. This is pretty simple. In 1992, a candidate rode, “It’s the economy, stupid” into the White House. It is no different today. People are scared. They are angry. And they are motivated. “It’s about jobs, and economy, stupid.”
People are not blind. Unemployment is way up. Families are hurting. Dreams are being crushed. Good, honest working people are fed up with a government that doesn’t get it. They just keep growing, spending and borrowing like there is no tomorrow. There is a tomorrow, and it will arrive like a freight train next November, in the national mid-term elections. Candidates that “get it” will sweep into office. I just pray that there are enough of them, and that they retain their backbone when they get into office.
Grant Essex, Milton