July 11 Letters to the Editor

To the Editor,

Reg­u­la­tions pro­tect Amer­i­cans from dan­ger­ous drugs, unsafe food, pol­luted air and water, and finan­cial shenanigans.

Back in 2008, the coun­try was founder­ing under a finan­cial col­lapse caused in large part by decep­tive prac­tices in the under-regulated bank­ing and mort­gage indus­tries, with greed push­ing more and more shaky practices.

When he came into office, Pres­i­dent Obama pro­posed and the 111th Con­gress approved the Con­sumer Finan­cial Pro­tec­tion Bureau (CFPB). Its pur­pose? To pro­tect Americans.

Accord­ing to Richard Cor­dray, the bureau chief, the bureau’s juris­dic­tion includes banks, credit unions, secu­ri­ties firms, pay­day lenders, mortgage-servicing oper­a­tions, fore­clo­sure relief ser­vices, debt col­lec­tors and other finan­cial com­pa­nies, and its most press­ing con­cerns are mort­gages, credit cards and stu­dent loans.

Repub­li­cans fought the CFPB’s estab­lish­ment, the selec­tion of a bureau chief, and its fund­ing, scream­ing “reg­u­la­tions.” These reg­u­la­tions pro­tect us, you and me, from peo­ple and busi­nesses that want to get rich by deceiv­ing us. I’m grate­ful to a pres­i­dent who puts cit­i­zens ahead of unbri­dled capitalism.

Jill Grubb, Ben­ning­ton West Township

Dear Edi­tor,

America’s so called safety net is no longer a safety net, it has become a ham­mock for the lazy, unwill­ing and spoiled. With the supreme court’s (yes I unca­p­atilized it on pur­pose) rul­ing on Oba­macare, you, the lazy able bod­ied enti­tle­ment group (“LABEG”) are going to find out rather quickly, I imag­ine, that the work­ing class cit­i­zens aren’t going to pay your way any longer. (II Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans 3:10) The work­ing class cit­i­zens don’t owe you a liv­ing, they never have. And the work­ing class cit­i­zens are going to see their taxes increase tremen­dously under the oppres­sive Oba­macare enti­tle­ment pro­gram. The work­ing class isn’t going to be so will­ing to con­tinue to pay for your food, cloth­ing and shel­ter because, they just won’t have enough money to go around. So LABEG just a lit­tle fore­warn­ing, you might actu­ally want go out and get a job. Then, you too can also pay the oppres­sive taxes that Oba­macare has placed on every­one with this new enti­tle­ment pro­gram. Let me out­line just a few of the new taxes you might not be aware of: (i) a 2.3% tax on med­ical device mak­ers which will raise the price of every pace­maker, pros­thetic limb, stent, and oper­at­ing table; (ii) cur­rently, Amer­i­cans are allowed to deduct med­ical expenses on taxes if the costs exceed 7.5%, the new law increases that to 10%; (iii) $2,500 cap on Flex­i­ble Spend­ing Accounts; (iv) 20% cap­i­tal gains increase on all Amer­i­cans in 2013 and sur­tax rate to 39.6% (i.e., an esti­mated $123 bil­lion out of tax­pay­ers’ pock­ets over 10 years); (v) Medicare pay­roll tax hike from 1.45% to 2.35%; and (vi) of course the Indi­vid­ual Man­date Excise Tax start­ing in 2014, any­one not buy­ing “qual­i­fy­ing” health insur­ance (that includes you LABEG) must pay a sur­tax that goes up each year until 2016. Oh, Oba­macare does have Inde­pen­dent Pay­ment Advi­sory Boardswhose sole pur­pose is to “keep costs down” for the gov­ern­ment by actu­ally deny­ing care via price con­trols and typ­i­cally inef­fi­cient bureau­cracy. Sarah Palin’s death pan­els do exist. So for those of you who like this new enti­tle­ment pro­gram, you either thought you were giv­ing away some­one else’s money, you were taken in by a snake oil sales­man, or you just don’t care if this county goes the way of Greece. For those that do care, the only way to stop this, is to turn this coun­try back to its found­ing prin­ci­ples and to bring God back into our every­day lives; oth­er­wise we will lose this great coun­try. (Psalm 146)

Cindy Fricke, Mt. Gilead

Dear Edi­tor,

The Sex­ual Rev­o­lu­tion dawned in the 1960’s with the inven­tion of the birth con­trol pill. Many Catholics were chaf­ing under the Church’s pro­hi­bi­tion of arti­fi­cial con­tra­cep­tion. The Vat­i­can appointed a com­mis­sion to reex­am­ine the issue. It was widely hoped and expected that the Church would reverse its ancient pol­icy but, in a con­tro­ver­sial 1968 Encycli­cal let­ter, Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI announced his deci­sion to uphold this doc­trine. In response, Cana­dian bish­ops issued a state­ment affirm­ing each Catholic’s right to fol­low his or her own con­science when decid­ing whether or not to prac­tice arti­fi­cial con­tra­cep­tion. Amer­i­can bish­ops decided to let this “don’t ask – don’t tell” pol­icy take effect in the United States. The men­tion of arti­fi­cial con­tra­cep­tion in Sun­day ser­mons and, one might sus­pect, in the con­fes­sional became extremely rare. As the decades rolled on, the size of U.S. Catholic fam­i­lies shrank.

The bish­ops were silent as twenty-eight states passed laws requir­ing Catholic orga­ni­za­tions to pro­vide their employ­ees with insur­ance which included con­tra­cep­tion cov­er­age. They uttered no com­plaint as more and more Catholic uni­ver­si­ties and Catholic hos­pi­tals began to offer sim­i­lar ben­e­fits to their employ­ees. But, when the Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices decreed that arti­fi­cial con­tra­cep­tion cov­er­age be made avail­able to women through their employer-based health care insur­ance, sev­eral bish­ops headed for the near­est micro­phones to rail against this “assault on Free­dom of Reli­gion.” In view of their four decades of silence, this sud­den out­cry is hyp­o­crit­i­cal, even farcical.

In a recent let­ter to Catholics in the Colum­bus dio­cese, Bishop Fred­er­ick F. Camp­bell wrote: “almost all employ­ers will beforced to offer their employ­ees’ health cov­er­age that includes ster­il­iza­tion, abortion-inducing drugs and con­tra­cep­tion. Almost all health insur­ers will be forced to include those ‘ser­vices’ in the health poli­cies they write. And almost all indi­vid­u­als will be forced to buy that cov­er­age as part of their poli­cies.” These charges are false.

The employer will not be required to pro­vide, pay for or refer for con­tra­cep­tive cov­er­age. Cov­er­age will be offered to women by their employ­ers’ insur­ance com­pany directly, with no role for employ­ers who oppose con­tra­cep­tion. The pre­ven­tive care does not include abor­ti­fa­cient drugs. While it is true that insur­ers will be required to offer con­tra­cep­tive cov­er­age, 89 per­cent of insured plans already cover con­tra­cep­tives. A 2010 sur­vey found that 85 per­cent of large employ­ers and 62 per­cent of small employ­ers already offer con­tra­cep­tive cov­er­age. This cov­er­age is cost neu­tral because it saves money for the insur­ance com­pany by keep­ing women healthy and avoids spend­ing on other health ser­vices. Finally, under the Afford­able Care Act women will receive con­tra­cep­tive cov­er­age free of charge.

This blus­ter over Reli­gious Free­dom isn’t about con­tra­cep­tion. It’s an attempt by Amer­i­can Catholic bish­ops to use an old wedge issue to fur­ther their own right-wing polit­i­cal agenda. And, of course, they want to reclaim their author­ity to act as arbiters of Amer­i­can sex­ual moral­ity, author­ity they for­feited by their cover-ups in the con­tin­u­ing priest sex­ual abuse scandal.

Edward Tay­lor, Mount Gilead

www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/ 02/10/fact-sheet-women-s-preventive-services-and-religious-institutions

www.healthcare.gov/news/factsheets/2011/08/womensprevention08012011a.html

www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=HHS_FRDOC_0001-0443Dear

Edi­tor,

June 28 was a great day if you enjoy hav­ing your income tax dou­bled and hav­ing the Amer­ica health care sys­tem ruined. The only thing Jus­tice Roberts proved was he does not under­stand our sys­tem of jus­tice. He is to rule on the law as pre­sented to him not change the law then rule as he did in this case. He did two things that day he vio­lated the con­sti­tu­tion, and fixed it so the con­gress can tax us for every­thing we do or not do in every day life.

Any­one that thinks the health care reform is great had bet­ter look at the true facts of what the law will do to our qual­ity of life. The old say­ing of “if it sounds to good to be true it prob­a­bly is” fits this law to a tee. Like every­thing else Pres­i­dent Obama has done it will do noth­ing more than put more lim­its what we the cit­i­zens of this coun­try will be allowed to do when it comes to free­dom of choice.

So what does it mean to the peo­ple of Mor­row County. You can keep your cur­rent health plan if you can afford it because now that no one can be refused cov­er­age the cost to providers will now increase so guess who gets to cover the increase in cost? It is also nice no one can be denied health cov­er­age because of “pre­ex­ist­ing” con­di­tions. The gov­ern­ment just decides you are not worth the cost to treat your con­di­tion so you are given med­ica­tion to ease your pain and suf­fer­ing until you die. This also is the case if you need any type of med­ical treat­ment and you are over a cer­tain age you will be given med­ica­tion to ease your pain and suf­fer­ing until you die because it would be cheaper than the cost of the med­ical treat­ment or surgery you need. This is also how the pre­scrip­tion drug gap for Medicare ben­e­fits for those over 65 years of age will be cov­ered. If your med­ica­tion is too expen­sive you will be given med­ica­tion to ease your pain until you pass away.

True we will no longer have to worry about los­ing our heath cov­er­age if we lose our job because employ­ers will no longer be pro­vid­ing health cov­er­age for their employ­ees because it will be cheaper for them to pay the tax penalty than the monthly health pre­mium for each employee. Which means every one will be pay­ing to be on the gov­ern­ment health plan because it will be cheaper than any health plan any pri­vate insur­ance com­pany can pro­vide. Oh I for­got there is not to be a sin­gle health care plan it is just going to work out that way.

Obama care is sim­ple pay only for the young because they will be liv­ing longer than an older per­son unless they have an untreat­able con­di­tion then they will be treated like any older per­son just given med­ica­tion to ease suf­fer­ing and pain until they die. You need only to read the Obama Health Plan to find out all of the true facts about how bad it is for Amer­ica. Yes the gov­ern­ment will now decide who now get what med­ical treat­ment and who will not.

How many times have you had to buy some­thing pay on it for two years before you were allowed to use it well that’s is what now has hap­pen we get to pay, with the increase in our income tax, for this new health care sys­tem, for the next two years before we can use it. It is the largest income tax hike in the his­tory of the United States but the Pres­i­dent does not want that fact becom­ing pub­lic knowl­edge until after the elec­tion this Novem­ber, which is why he is upset with Judge Roberts call­ing it a tax. How bad is it going to be just for exam­ple now the per per­son Medicare Insur­ance Pre­mium will increase from the present monthly fee of $96.40, ris­ing to: $104.20 in 2012, $120.20 in 2013, and $247.00 in 2014. These are pro­vi­sions incor­po­rated in the Oba­macare Leg­is­la­tion, to pur­posely delayed and cover up more of the truth of his not free health plan so not to hurt his 2012 Re-Election Cam­paign. The gov­ern­ment has now started hir­ing more IRS agents to make sure every­one legally liv­ing in the United States is, and will be, pay­ing their income tax to cover this great health care plan.

Duane Rasey, Con­gress Township

Posted by Taylor Kaser on Jul 10 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.