Who really pays for health care?
There are a number of immutable facts about health care. The first is that someone has to pay for it.
Second, health care can be expensive; the average person can easily be bankrupted by medical bills in the absence of a health insurer who can take the risk of loss.
Third, that risk costs something and the more the risk is spread across a wide pool, the more manageable the risk is.
When it comes to health care, at least life or health sustaining care, we need to think of society as a big organism in which we are all interconnected. If we insure everyone, the cost of care and the cost of insurance will go down, but governmental costs and taxes will go up.
If we say that only people who can afford insurance can get it, the government’s costs and taxes may go down, but the cost of care and health insurance will go up. You can’t reduce taxes and provide care for everyone who can neither afford care nor free market health insurance premiums.
While conservatives would rather walk barefoot over broken glass than say the words “Let’s raise taxes,” sometimes things just are what they are.
John West
Signal Mountain
Appeal of socialism is dangerous to U.S.
I am a bit confused. The media, including many newspapers and TV, and the majority of our professors and teachers in the colleges are leaning to the left or emphasizing the benefits of socialism.
To my knowledge the countries of Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea and a few others are the prime examples of socialism. The people are oppressed, no free speech, goods and services are poor while the upper echelon live in great style.
I have to presume that the owners of all types of media are also confused because the first thing that happens when socialism takes hold is that the newspapers and television companies are told what to say and if they do not comply, the editors and owners are put in jail or closed down. It makes you wonder why anyone would want to embrace socialism.
We live in one of the most wonderful countries in the world, yet some misinformed people who have never lived in or even visited a socialist country are misleading our young people and our nation into believing socialism is better than our way of life in the United States. God Bless life in the USA.
Vincent Patterson
Signal Mountain
Writer chastised for conservative criticism
For the life of me, I can’t see how anyone, including the writer of a Wednesday letter (‘Republicans slammed as ‘self-serving ideologues’), could slam Christian conservatives for wanting to protect our borders from illegal immigrants, the likes of Estuardo Alvarado who murdered a beautiful California girl by the name of Sandra Doran while he was being harbored by a sanctuary city.
You slam us, yet you vote for and financially support the liberal Dems who kill millions of babies a year who never had a chance at life.
May God have mercy on your soul.
You will give an account of your actions and deeds when you meet God face to face (and you will meet him). What you and the blind left don’t seem to understand is, the illegals in the U.S. have more rights than U.S. citizens and get plenty of benefits, all free, paid for by law-abiding U.S. citizens.
Ken Ogle
Cleveland, Tenn.