HEALTH CARE
Response to "Exchanges limit some choices" News, Oct. 13
Carrie Teegardin’s article should not be news to anyone. Of course, the Health Insurance Marketplace’s basic plans offer fewer options than its more expensive plans.
My employer has offered two tiers of plans for years: a family plan at more than $600 a month with a choice of providers, or a plan at half the cost with limitations of providers in an HMO network. Sure, the cheaper option “takes away a freedom” (as Lisa Paulauskis states in the article), but this type of choice is certainly not unique to, or due to, the Affordable Care Act.
KIM KELLY, MARIETTA
SOCIAL SECURITY
Don’t be so stingy about
cost-of-living increases
Regarding “Social Security raise to be small” (News, Oct. 14), it was recently announced that the 2014 Social Security benefit will likely increase about 1.5 percent.
Some of our elected representatives and the Obama administration have indicated that the COLA (cost-of-living) formula has been too “generous” in the past and needs to be modified downward.
What are these idiots in Washington thinking? Increases were zero in 2010 and 2011. Have any of these people actually gone to the store and bought milk, eggs, bread, cereal, soup or coffee, or paid electric, gas or rent bills lately? The COLA formula is already rigged against beneficiaries.
P.D. GOSSAGE, JOHNS CREEK
EDUCATION
Thanks for detailing
APS board candidates
Although I miss the days when my daily newspapers would endorse political candidates so the voting public had these opinions to consider — particularly with regard to lesser-known offices — the AJC has made a step forward in reporting daily introductions on candidates for Atlanta’s school board.
Let’s encourage readers to take your information with them to the polls.
SAM MASSELL, BUCKHEAD COALITION PRESIDENT
GOVERNANCE
Put nation’s interests
ahead of partisanship
These last few weeks have demonstrated to us how the radical GOP would rather force the country into default, than govern in a considerate and thoughtful manner.
The only way we can get out of this morass is to ensure we have a party in power in all three branches of government that really wants to govern, and has the good of the country in mind. We need people who have the willingness to look at the facts before plunging ahead with philosophical fanaticism.
We in Georgia should take a hard look at those we have elected to Congress who follow the dictates of the tea party and disdain the population at large. Vote them out next year, and put people in place who can think and really understand and care for the health of our state and country.
TOM MCMANUS, ROSWELL
