Voice of the people | Nov. 17

Would bill really improve health care?

This debate on health reform goes on and on without really getting to the point. Will this bill help us improve our health care, really give more care to the needy, help senior citizens or give health care to all the uninsured? The answer is no! This monster is the federal control of our health care and our lives.

If the current house bill passes, the Democratic Congress will cut Medicare $500 billion (wake up, seniors), cut payment to doctors and hospitals and increase the taxes on premiums and medical equipment.

In Rock Hill, we are considered a rural area, and our doctors and hospitals will receive less payments then Charlotte. I wonder where our doctors will move their practices and what will become of our hospital?

I'm mad and upset. President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and John Spratt are leading us down this wrong road. They are not listening to the people who want reform but not a government takeover of health care. Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid and Amtrak are good examples of federal government programs that are broken or in the hole.

We elected John Spratt to be our voice in Washington; he is not the same man we sent over and over. Spratt listens to his friends in Washington and not his friends from the 5th District. He loves his seat of power; he has thrown in with the socialists. We all have to get involved in this fight. These people have awakened a sleepy giant, and we will not take this anymore. Call, protest, write — just don't sit there and let them take our freedoms.

Paul Anderko

Rock Hill

People must have access to treatment

I am a “new” senior citizen (age 65) and a grandmother who is on Medicare, and I fully support health care reform, including a public option. I do so because it would enable more people to have health insurance. (I have heard estimates of 36 million) It would eliminate or lessen such practices asdenying insurance because of a previous medical condition.

While it may cost more, more people will have coverage.(I would be willing to pay my share of increased costs.) By doing nothing, insurance costs will continue to skyrocket, resulting in even more people uanble to afford insurance coverage.

Lack of treatment of a medical issue often results in a life-and-death situation, leading not only to pain and suffering but increased cost to the health system when the uninsured person is admitted to the hospital and given emergency services. I am not concerned that some government will “pull the plug on grandma.” I don't have a “plug” — Should I have one?

Eileen F. Misek

Fort Mill

Health care bill is socialistic

Reading in the Nov. 9 Wall Street Journal's opinion page, I noted that among the items in the health care bill congress railroaded through are:

1) Made the numbers look good by using 10 years of new taxes to finance 7 years of spending. The deficits explode in the second 10 years.

2) A long-term insurance program that starts collecting premiums in 2011 but doesn't start paying premiums until 2016 and runs out of money in 2029. (In the Washington Post, North Dakota Democrat Kent Conrad has called it a “Ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing that Madoff would have been proud of.”)

3) The small 20 percent corner of Medicaid now open to private competition is slashed, while South Carolina and other strapped states are saddled with a slew of new Medicaid mandates.

4) The insurance industry will have to vet every policy with Washington, which will regulate who it must cover, what it will offer and how much it can charge.

This socialistic bill makes me almost physically sick. But more than that, I am astounded at the malicious subterfuge our “representatives” have resorted to in order to get the bill passed. They rushed the nearly 2,000-page bill through because they did not want to us to understand the massive government controls and costs that are in the bill.