Letters To The Editor

Let’s have real health-care reform, and let’s use a popular, efficient, and successful program that has a track record: Medicare. Medicare is not padded, like private insurers, with profit, exorbitant executive salaries and perks, cost of advertising, and the payroll of staffs of actuaries, agents, salespeople, and lobbyists.   Here’s the proposal: Expand Medicare in […]

In writing this letter, I would hope to clear the minds of skeptics who fear a government-run, single-payer health-care system. I’ve used both private and government-run health care programs. In evaluating the two, I can only conclude that the private sector leaves much to be desired.   While I was enrolled and covered under the […]

Today we were driving 50 on Orcutt Road in the country when a motorcyclist with a short-sleeved T zoomed past us at twice that speed. When he has an “accident,” who will pay the medical bills? The answer is we, the sane, responsible people.   The Arroyo Grande council noted that when people riding the […]

I’m a disabled vet with a public health-care program, and I’m happy.   My mother felt secure with Medicare and a supplemental insurance. Now, Congress wants to give all Americans an option to buy public insurance at a rate they can afford—creating competition with the for-profits, who have been declining care for decades and killing […]

When I read Jamie Ford’s letter advocating the dismantling of the veterans’ health care system (“Do veterans deserve socialist health care?” July 30), it certainly sounded to me like a position of advocacy and not a satire (as stated in “In support of the Veterans Administration,” Aug. 13).   Maybe he should do as a […]

We have the best medicine in the world because the American free-enterprise capitalist system developed it. Let’s not ruin it with socialism.   Medicare is a good example of what not to do. It costs too much, seniors older than 75 like ourselves are forced to use it, we are forced to pay for it […]

My recent letter to the editor (“Do veterans deserve socialist health care?” July 30) included such lines as “Let’s save our vets from big government and its socialized medical programs.” and “Patriots! Tell the Veterans’ Administration no more funding.”   Those comments, as well as the entire letter, were written tongue-in-cheek and not intended to […]

To your correspondent who decries our veterans’ health care system as socialized medicine (“Do veterans deserve socialist health care?” July 30), I can only say that as a military widow, I feel very well served by the present combination of Medicare and Tricare for Life for us older ones—“the best insurance in the country,” two […]

Somehow, I missed the outrageous letter from Jamie Ford of San Luis Obispo, titled “Do veterans deserve socialist health care?” when it first appeared in New Times and the Santa Maria Sun (July 30). While much in it is just cant and nonsense, certain points need a response.   If he/she defines veterans health care […]

I hate insurance companies. Let me explain. Let’s start with car insurance. You pay your car insurance each and every month in case you get in an accident. Then you get in an accident. The insurance company balks at having to pay anything. Next, you can guarantee your monthly fee will go up, or the […]

In this, the freest country on Earth, there is no excuse for relegating those who have served our country with honor, maintaining the freedoms we all cherish, to a creeping growth of socialist programs. This is not what our veterans fought for.   Government run programs, funded by our tax dollars, staffed by government employees […]

In the Cambridge brouhaha about the white cop arresting a black professor in his home, what is being ignored is who called the cops and why.   Was it a neighbor with a grudge? Was it a white who saw a black trying to get in the house? That call is what set the stage […]