Thursday, July 30, 2009
Health reforms will sacrifice the elderly
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Health reforms will sacrifice the elderly
Here are some of the things from some of the Democratic health care plans being rushed through Congress.
Seniors citizens get evaluated against an age-based scale to determine what treatment, if any, they get for serious diseases and infirmities, such as joint replacement, cancer, bypass surgery, angioplasty, Parkinson's, etc.
An important adviser, Dr. Ezekiel Emanual, has advocated devoting health care resources to those who have the most time left to benefit from them. If you are too old or too sick to reap benefits from expensive treatments, they would be denied by bureaucrats.
Seniors would be offered a counseling session every five years (more often if they become sick or go into a nursing home) about alternatives for end-of-life care. A presidentially appointed bureaucracy not accountable to the public will determine what you can get.
If you can believe the Congressional Budget Office, these changes will not reduce but increase costs tremendously. Remember the days when $400 billion deficits were bemoaned? Well, $1.8 trillion and rising are just ho-hum numbers today.
A czar for elderly health care is coming.
To find out more, go to defendyourhealthcare.us/.
Apply cap and trade to health care
With all the hue and cry about the costs of revamping our entire medical insurance program so that everyone can participate in the benefits, I think it is surprising that President Obama has not proposed a cap-and-trade philosophy toward the liability insurance costs that doctors are now obliged to cover by increasing their fees (and paperwork and extra testing).
After all, cap and trade seems to be the way to go in the energy industry to attempt to control the laughingly infinitesimal amount of greenhouse gas released by autos and energy companies.
Moreover, since we, as patients all, are paying for the horrendous drug advertising costs (three out of four TV ads on the evening news are drug-oriented), no wonder drug costs for individuals are in hyperflation.
So let's put a cap on drug advertising and a trade on medical lawsuit settlements.
Put ID request on the line
Here is some useful information regarding the letter about the stolen car and purse ("Asking for IDs would cut fraud," July 27). To help prevent fraudulent charges on your credit and debit cards etc., simply write in bold letters, "Ask for picture ID" on the signature line on the back of your cards. This will help to deter the perpetrators and also require the business to comply with your request.
Higher energy costs are just beginning
Re: "Businesses reel from a power-bill surge" (July 27 news story):
Duncan Adams is spot-on with describing the real issues facing all customers of Appalachian Power Co. All of us are being affected by rising power costs. However, the power company is not fleecing its customers since we rely on our government to monitor and approve any increases that come our way.
In fact, with the proposed rise in energy prices, we're just experiencing what more than 50 percent of the voters want to experience -- higher energy costs. So what's all the fuss about?
President Obama told us what will happen when he gets his way, and he hasn't even started yet. Again, what's all the fuss about?
Perhaps Adams should write another story on what will happen to energy costs when Obama fulfills another of his campaign promises. That story will no doubt receive a different illumination than the one that appearing July 27. Then Adams can sing the praises of high energy costs, because they are necessary to save the Earth. Is that anything to fuss about? You betcha.
Hold AEP rate increases to match expenses
American Electric Power is first and foremost a utility that provides a service to the community. It is under the scrutiny of the Virginia State Corporation Commission, which can increase or reduce rate requests.
It angers me when a utility rate increase is more about the stockholders than the customers it is required to serve. It angers me when AEP Chairman Michael Morris' stock options and salary are more important than businesses' survival in an economy devastated by skyrocketing costs, unemployment and a recession.
The SCC has an obligation to keep rate increases to a minimum until the economy has had a chance to catch up. AEP should be allowed only those increases that offset expenses due to costs for fuel, transmission expenses, environmental and reliability costs, etc.
All of us have made sacrifices during this economic recession, and so should AEP. There is an arrogant attitude when an AEP spokesman says if businesses had "such dismal results that they didn't believe it was worth staying in business, then they should, in essence, perhaps close down." ("Businesses reel from power-bill surge," July 27 news story)
Virginia cannot afford to continue losing businesses and employers such as Steel Dynamics and Vaughan-Bassett Furniture Co.
Evidence of God surrounds campers
I have to make a comment on the July 20 news article about the camp where they don't want to hear anything about God ("Atheist summer camp has a faithful following").
It saddens my heart to see educated people leading young minds and hearts to destruction. People have become so educated that some actually think they're smarter than God himself. To shed some common sense and truth to anyone who denies God, look at just a few words from Romans: "For since the creation of the world his invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse."
Creation so clearly reveals God that man is without excuse. Everything the campers will wake up and see, from the blue skies to the chirping of songbirds, shows God's glorious works. You may think you can run and hide, deny him, but you are fooling yourself.
Israelis are losing the moral high ground
I came of age after the second World War. Like many Americans, I have a natural sympathy for Israel in the wake of the Holocaust. But in the last 30 years, Palestinians are more and more in the hapless place European Jews once found themselves, while Israelis more and more seem their arrogant masters.
Palestinians are imprisoned within their towns and villages by checkpoints and blockades, while Israelis freely move through them, dispossessing Palestinians from their homes, orchards and vineyards and replacing them with Israeli settlements. I am not justifying Palestinian violence. But when an animal is being strangled and lashes out at the one with a grip around its neck, who can be surprised? Jews themselves said "never again" to their own dispossession.
On the scale of human rights and values, Israel has tragically lost the higher moral ground. This is an important moment for Americans to speak the truth to one another and to our Israeli friends: Hard-line Israeli government policy in settlement expansion and suppression of Palestinian society is morally wrong, destructive to peacemaking and a guarantor of future turmoil and bloodshed. More and more Americans, including myself, do not support it.
