National health care system needed to lower medical costs
While Fulton County Commissioners seek additional funding for local health care, I expect to read fearful language about new taxes. Let’s skip the anti-tax hysteria. Our more important concern should be why health coverage in the U.S. has become so expensive.
For-profit insurance companies dominate and distort the delivery of medical care in both the private and public sectors. They make money by restricting patient choice and underpaying primary-care doctors. The oligarchs of our pharmacy industry rip off nearly everybody with their super-high prices based on ill-gotten patents. Private medical “empires” have consolidated across the map.
Compared to other wealthy societies, we get poorer health outcomes while paying at least twice per capita for our care. We can’t solve this problem for just one county at a time. Everyone will win (except the profiteers!) when we build a national health program that’s universal, simplified and funded by progressive taxation.
HENRY KAHN, M.D., ATLANTA, RETIRED PRIMARY CARE PHYSICIAN
Justice Thomas’ actions diminish stature of entire court
Every U.S. citizen should be profoundly disturbed and deeply concerned by Justice Clarence Thomas’ blithe explanation for not reporting what is estimated to be hundreds of thousands of dollars of lavish vacation travel from a well-known political activist donor.
He stated these trips were gifts from a friend -- a friend he acquired when he became a Supreme Court Justice - so he need not report them, claiming this relationship exempts him from the law governing the reporting of such gifts.
Justice Thomas’ actions demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding of a conflict of interest.
No company on the Fortune 500 list would tolerate the acceptance of such gifts, much less the non-reporting of them.
Justice Thomas need only ask himself, would Harlan Crow have given such lavish gifts if Justice Thomas was not a Supreme Court Justice? The answer is blindingly obvious to most people, but the Justice does not appear to see his actions severely diminish his stature and that of the entire court.
MARK HUNTER, ATLANTA
