Achievers should be recognized, not hidden
I read the article that reported schools refusing to rank seniors, or pick a valedictorian. (“Title for top of class dropped,” Metro, May 21).
The upshot was basically the competition made other students feel bad. This is the same thinking that says every kid gets a prize for just showing up. The purpose of our school system is to educate children and to prepare them for real life. Well, in real life, you don’t get a blue ribbon for just showing up. I retired from a Fortune 100 corporation. Raises, bonuses and promotions were based on performance. Employees received performance reviews (grades) that determined their income and future success. Life is a competition. Teach that to our kids — please.
BUTCH GAUDETTE, ACWORTH
MARTA numbers add up to a bad investment
Let me make a point regarding Truth-O-Meter’s analysis of Brett Bittner’s comments. (MARTA not so heavily subsidized,” Metro, May 18). Let’s put your analysis in business terms using Home Depot as a model. According to your report, taxpayers fund 57 percent of MARTA’s operating cost while riders fund 43 percent. If MARTA was Home Depot, the financial report would state that Home Depot spent 57 percent more than they took in via sales. If Home Depot were MARTA, they would not be in business for long if they could not figure out how to reduce operating costs and at least break even. When you look at the figures as if MARTA were a business, you find they lose big every time. Why do I have to support MARTA when it is a huge money loser that refuses to rationalize its business model like a private enterprise should? It’s because the government, unlike private business, can force me to do so.
BRIAN WILSON, ATLANTA
Insurers should cover emergency care costs
People who believe they are having emergencies should go to the emergency department without fear that their health plans won’t cover the visits. That is the position of the nation’s emergency physicians, a position backed by more than three-quarters of Americans who believe health insurance should pay for every ER visit.
Yet private health plans and Medicaid increasingly want to cut back on coverage for ER visits if those visits turn out to be non-emergencies.
The Prudent Layperson Standard protects people from exactly this kind of Monday-morning “quarterbacking,” since the average person cannot distinguish between excruciating pain that won’t kill them and excruciating pain that will.
Apart from being bad medicine, denying payment for emergency care is short-sighted and unlikely to save much. Emergency care represents just 2 percent of all health care spending in the United States.
MATTHEW WATSON, MD, ALPHARETTA, PRESIDENT, GEORGIA COLLEGE OF EMERGENCY PHYSICIANS
