Health care costs
Repair, improve
Regarding “Just one health bill qualifies as ‘extreme’ ” (Page A19, Friday), Jonah Goldberg is correct to point out that Bernie Sanders’ bill stands at the extreme left of the political spectrum. But that fact does not move the Graham-Cassidy proposal one angstrom away from its position at the extreme right of the political spectrum.
Americans have repeatedly told Congress that we do not want either extreme. So what does the middle look like? Let’s see, single payer? No! Uncontrolled profit motive driving health care costs through the roof? No!
What I believe we are looking for are reasonable curbs on the profit motive without destroying a sector of the United States economy. From a purely logical standpoint, what we are looking for already exists in the Affordable Care Act. Here is the truly moderate compromise standing between the two extremes.
Like any other compromise the ACA is far from perfect. But that is no reason to “repeal and replace” it. The trick is to improve what you can and accept the imperfections that remain. Congress should get busy fixing what it can without destroying what is working.
Ernest Davis, Houston
Please the base
Jonah Goldberg inadvertently states the clearest reason why GrahamCassidy does not deserve to be passed into law. He writes, “It’s between this and letting Obamacare continue intact, violating all those repeal-and-replace promises.”
After offering a weak endorsement of this latest GOP health care deprivation bill — with the standard bromides about “block grants” and “innovative governors” — Goldberg admits that Graham-Cassidy is really all about the GOP keeping a promise to its hard-right Republican base. Whether it is good or bad public policy is beside the point.
And to those who might respond that Obama did the same in 2009, I’ll point out that at least Obama had his bill scored by the CBO and put through regular order, with public hearings and congressional committee deliberations.
David Bradley, Spring
Dig deeper
Another problem with Graham Cassidy: This bill penalizes those states that were wise enough to take advantage of the Medicaid expansion. It also rewards states that were remiss in taking this opportunity to aid its citizens. This is wrong and again runs against Texan and American values.
Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz should do the right thing and vote down this bill that is not recognized as being helpful by any of the major U.S. medical organizations.
R.K. Entrekin, Houston