Eliminate health benefits for Congress
Mainly, the so-called House Freedom Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives stood in the way of passing the Republican health care plan last week. They wanted to eliminate the “essential health benefits,” which were required for health plans under the Affordable Care Act to keep the insured from insurance scams and inadequate coverage in the face of even higher costs. Basic things, like maternity care, prescriptions, laboratory services, hospital care, emergency services, ambulatory services, rehabilitation care, pediatric services and preventive care. They say those services are “too expensive.”
Consider what your medical care costs would be without these services being included in your insurance. And, of course, nothing they’ve offered up comes anywhere close to what the Affordable Care Act dollar buys. They want to allow insurance companies to sell us much less coverage for much more money.
The Republican plan also would have given a $600 billion tax cut to the wealthiest in the country.
Let’s do this: Eliminate the taxpayer paid health care insurance payments for Congress.
And eliminate any of those “too expensive” “essential health benefits” Congress gets in their insurance coverage that the Freedom Caucus didn’t want to provide in the Republican American Health Care Act.
Nancy Fitzgerald
Gouldsboro
Strengthen RGGI
President Donald Trump’s proposed budget doesn’t look good for the Environmental Protection Agency. The new budget proposes to cut the agency’s budget by 31 percent, which will result in the loss of approximately 3,200 positions and the defunding of programs, such as the Clean Power Plan. The Obama-era Clean Power Plan was an instrumental program in reducing carbon dioxide emissions and mitigating the effects of climate change.
The deregulations, reduction in funding, and the defunding of environmental programs will be detrimental in our national fight against climate change. This is why now more than ever Maine needs to commit to strengthening the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. The regional initiative is an extremely effective climate and clean air program of which Maine and eight other Northeast and mid-Atlantic states are part. The program requires polluters to pay for allowances to emit CO2 and then reinvests the money from these allowances into clean energy and energy efficiency programs within the state.
In the past six years, the initiative has reduced air pollution, reduced CO2 emissions, created jobs across the region, and boosted the regional economy.
With defunding of the Clean Power Plan and environmental protection unlikely to come from Washington, Maine has the opportunity to become a leader on fighting climate change. By agreeing to strengthen RGGI, Maine will help to fight climate change, create more jobs, and reduce health risks. This is our chance to become a leader in protecting our environment and climate.
Emma Rotner
Environment Maine
Portland
Health care not a free market
Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan has repeatedly stated that free market competition will reduce health care costs, improve quality, and give Americans the freedom of choice. If Ryan were with me, I would ask him two major questions. How does the average American choose a physician or hospital? How do they measure quality of health care? In a free market system, quality is related to costs.
Should hospitals and physicians let sick people die in the hospital parking lot? If you want to buy a TV set, would the seller let you have one if you cannot pay for it? Of course, we care for all the sick who need hospitalization. And more importantly we give them the same care that we give those who can pay. The quality of mercy is not strained.
Consequently, health care does not fit with a free market system. Rather it is a Robin Hood system. The death spiral started long before the Affordable Care Act. I saw it in my community of Plymouth, Massachusetts, beginning in the 1970s. When physicians and hospitals treat a sick patient who cannot pay, they charge more to those who can, which means that the health insurers pay more and premiums are raised. Eventually, more people cannot afford health insurance, which means more free care is required.
In fact, we do not have a free market system for health care. And the Republican plan will fail miserably. The only system that can solve our problems is a single payer, improved Medicare for all.
William Babson, M.D.
Sinclair
A missing comma
I enjoyed Roslyn Petelin’s account of the tricky serial comma in her March 24 article. One rule about which there is no controversy, however, is the need for a comma to separate two independent clauses joined by “but.”
So where’s the comma in this sentence, “There are other grammatical issues with this clause (neatly unpacked in more detail by Mary Norris in The New Yorker) but David Webbert, a lawyer for the drivers, told ….”?
Paul Gray
Castine
The gap between fact and fiction
Nearly every issue of the Bangor Daily News has at least one report regarding the clear misrepresentations of facts by either President Donald Trump, Gov. Paul LePage, or both. Even when there is overwhelming evidence that those “alternative facts” are wrong, few if any retractions follow.
I am reminded of the comments made years ago on the Dick Cavett television show by novelist Mary McCarthy about playwright Lillian Hellman: “Every word she writes is a lie — including ‘and’ and ‘the.’” Hellman sued, but died before a decision was rendered.
Thankfully, a responsible American press like the BDN illuminates the gap between fact and fiction.
Howard Segal
Bangor
Move Trump to Canada
Why should we all be considering moving to Canada when President Donald Trump and his family get along so well with the Canadian prime minister? We should help him pack up and move there.
Linda Campbell
Dedham
Seek compromise on health care
Now that the American Health Care Act has been ditched, we have the opportunity to develop a plan even better than the Affordable Care Act. A plan that would cover everyone with the same coverage that all of our congressmen and women have. As the richest country in the world, we can afford it.
If the Democrats and Republicans can work together and President Donald Trump can pull it off, wouldn’t he look great.
Joan Shapleigh
Dover-Foxcroft