July 18th Letters to the Editor

Dear Edi­tor:

Many in Con­gress and the media con­tinue to lie about the Afford­able Care Act (ACA). They call it “the biggest tax increase in the his­tory of the world” and refer to it as a mas­sive tax on “every­one.” Of the fif­teen largest tax increases since 1950, the ACA ranks sixth, amount­ing to one half of one per­cent of GDP, much less than the Rea­gan tax hike of 1982. The Con­gres­sional Bud­get Office expects that the ACA will cut the deficit by around a tril­lion dol­lars in its sec­ond decade. And, far from being a tax on the middle-class or on every­one, it will affect only a small por­tion of our pop­u­la­tion, the wealth­i­est two per­cent. Nobel Prize win­ning econ­o­mist Paul Krug­man says taxes on the rich are cur­rently lower than they have been for 80 years.

Fewer than 6 per­cent of Amer­i­cans will be required to buy new health insur­ance under the Afford­able Care Act and more than half of them will qual­ify for gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies to help pay their pre­mi­ums. The other 94 per­cent will be exempted from the require­ment to buy insur­ance; for exam­ple – if fam­ily income is below $18,700 per year, if they are on Medicare or Med­ic­aid or the Children’s Health Insur­ance Pro­gram (CHIP) or if they already have insur­ance from an employer.

Only 2 per­cent of the total pop­u­la­tion will be sub­ject to a penalty if they do not buy cov­er­age. The peo­ple in this tiny group can afford to buy health insur­ance and they should. Oth­er­wise, they will be what Mitt Rom­ney calls “free rid­ers” who get hos­pi­tal care at the expense of those who do have insur­ance. The Indi­vid­ual Man­date penalty tax is designed to encour­age those who can afford insur­ance to accept finan­cial respon­si­bil­ity for their own health care.

The increase in the Medicare pay­roll tax applies only to those fam­i­lies with incomes above $250,000 per year – the wealth­i­est 2 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion. They are also the ones who will be most affected by the increased tax rates on cap­i­tal gains and inter­est income and the new lim­its on Flex­i­ble Spend­ing Accounts and so-called “Cadil­lac” plans.

And, finally, let us put to rest the biggest lie of all – death pan­els. The Inde­pen­dent Pay­ment Advi­sory Board will have fif­teen full-time mem­bers appointed by the Pres­i­dent and con­firmed by the Sen­ate. It will sub­mit annual rec­om­men­da­tions to Con­gress but Con­gress is not obliged to accept these rec­om­men­da­tions. The Board is also pro­hib­ited by law from chang­ing eli­gi­bil­ity or ben­e­fits, reduc­ing the Part D low-income sub­sidy, or rationing care.

There is no excuse for being unin­formed or mis­in­formed (or mis­in­form­ing oth­ers) about the Afford­able Care Act. Any­one who wants to learn the truth should turn away from unre­li­able news sources and buy “Land­mark: The Inside Story of America’s New Health Care Law and What It Means for Us All.” This book was writ­ten by the staff of the Wash­ing­ton Post and cov­ers every aspect of the Afford­able Care Act. It is avail­able at www.amazon.com and Barnes and Noble Book­sellers. www.healthcare.gov is another trust­wor­thy source of information.

Edward Tay­lor, Mount Gilead

Dear Sir or Madam:

Isn’t it strange that the Democ­rats keep rag­ging on Gov­er­nor Rom­ney because of his wealth and his con­nec­tion with a legit­i­mate busi­ness, namely Bain Cap­i­tal, for basi­cally doing his job and look­ing out for the share­hold­ers of that com­pany by point­ing out how com­pa­nies could save money, even if it meant that some non-profitable fac­to­ries had to be closed or restruc­tured. The truth is, if they had used the same cri­te­ria with John F. Kennedy that they are using with Mitt Rom­ney, Kennedy would never have been elected President.

John Kennedy inher­ited his wealth, unlike Rom­ney who’s fam­ily was wealthy and he did inherit a huge for­tune, but he gave most of it to charity.

John Kennedy’s father acquired much of his wealth by boot­leg­ging Rum in the twen­ties and thir­ties and it was pretty much of a fore­gone con­clu­sion that he had ties with sev­eral well known under­world char­ac­ters, but that did not stop him or his fam­ily from being the dar­lings of Soci­ety, which helped the Kennedys to become so pow­er­ful politically.

What isn’t strange is the dou­ble stan­dard they always use. If the Democ­rats do any­thing that would be con­sid­ered taboo for the Repub­li­cans, for some unknown rea­son, it becomes per­fectly fine. Case in point, when Rush Lim­baugh said what he thought about a col­lege stu­dent when she made the asi­nine state­ment that she and many other col­lege stu­dents used sev­eral thou­sand dol­lars worth of birth con­trol in a year, accord­ing to the Democ­rats this was out­ra­geous, ludi­crous and just wrong. But Bill Maher the sup­posed Mis­cre­ant Come­dian, uses vul­gar­ity and calls Sarah Palin the C word for doing noth­ing more than express­ing her opin­ion, that is A-OK, with no out­cry from the Democ­rats whatsoever.

I could quote many, many other cases, where-in, “What is good for the Goose is good for the Gan­der” is not the case, where Democ­rats are concerned.

Thank You, Darl Mills, Mt. Gilead

To the Edi­tor,
While read­ing a recent Let­ter to the Edi­tor about the evils of Oba­macare it quickly became appar­ent that the writer had got­ten some bad infor­ma­tion quite pos­si­bly from Fox News or maybe Tea Party emails. Maybe “2 Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans 3:11″ is a bet­ter fit. The let­ter is writ­ten from the view­point of a suc­cess­ful hard work­ing per­son, smart and lucky enough to have had health insur­ance through her work­ing career and good for her. Where she goes off track is the with the mis­con­cep­tion that the Afford­able Health Care Act is for the poor or in her words lazy people.

There are mil­lions of peo­ple that work hard every­day and don’t make enough to pay for insur­ance or it is no good when they needed it. If you choose to remem­ber, you know that con­ser­v­a­tives for years have blocked any attempt to make health care bet­ter with no real effort to improve any ones life. The Afford­able Health Care Act is not the final answer, but is a good start to help­ing the work­ing class and I thank those who made it happen.

Jim Clark, Marengo

Posted by Taylor Kaser on Jul 17 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.