Marines thanked for stellar service
“Once a Marine, always a Marine”: personified my late husband, Bill Carver. His burial with full military honors was a most impressive ceremony. I’m so grateful to the Marines who performed their duties with such precision and solemnity. I will always remember with pride their service and his.
Helen Carver, Ringgold, Ga.
‘Government-run’ most vital phrase
The Times editorial page recently jumped on the Insure Tennessee lobbying bandwagon. On May 15, the Times erroneously called the Beacon Center “thousand-dollar suit funders” of lawmakers. After admitting that we, as a nonprofit, cannot legally fund politicians, the Times threw us a piece of rawhide, changing its description to “donor-currying lobbyists.” I guess that’s as accurate as saying the Times is an advertiser-courting fish wrap. The irony is that the pro-Insure Tennessee crowd is made up almost exclusively of massive hospitals, insurance companies and other special interest groups that spend millions to lobby for Medicaid expansion. And the Vanderbilt poll cited by the Times? It was worded like this: “Do you [support or oppose] extending health care coverage for low-income people in the state?” Even I would wholeheartedly answer “yes.” But expanding health care coverage to low-income Tennesseans is vastly different from expanding government-run, taxpayer-funded health insurance to mostly able-bodied adults. The question displays Vandy’s incompetence at best and its intellectual dishonesty at worst.