Repair, don’t repeal

My admiration to Rep. Steve Womack for meeting with his constituents in West Fork, even the ones who didn’t vote for him. One thing I heard him say clearly was that “the people of Arkansas sent me to Washington to get a hold of spending.” I agree. Here’s my question: How many billions of dollars will be spent destroying the Affordable Care Act only to try to rebuild it? Wouldn’t it have been cheaper to fix the program already in place?

Parts of the ACA worked. Thousands of people in Arkansas got medical insurance for the first time. It’s not perfect, but it’s something, and now it appears we are about to get nothing but a suggestion that we open a savings account. A health savings account is a great idea; I have one. But my HSA will not reduce the price of insurance for my kids, and it will not make my insurance company treat me fairly. Good old “Obamacare” did both. Parts of the ACA worked because hundreds of people from the medical and insurance industries cooperated with our government to build it.

Who did not cooperate? Members of Congress like Representative Womack. They insist on destroying a huge program we already paid to build and now want to spend millions more to replace it. I believe that is money wasted, it is government spending out of control, and not what we sent him to Washington to do.

JEANMARIE MAKO

Pettigrew that such a fetus, if unwanted by the parent(s), shall become a ward of the state and that the mother be informed that her child was kept alive against her wishes.

This would apply to fetuses at 19 weeks or less because the state outlaws abortion at any later date. This stands in direct conflict with the American Medical Association’s recommendation that “resuscitation should be withheld when the gestational age is less than 23 weeks, birth weight is less than 400 grams, anencephaly is present, or with a confirmed diagnosis of trisomy 13 or 18.”

Of course it’s no surprise that the Arkansas Legislature thinks it knows better than doctors. Or parents who have decided for a complex set of reasons to terminate the pregnancy.

Arkansas can’t afford to take care of normal children, much less provide for five months of neonatal medical intensive care. The costs don’t stop there. Extreme prematurity comes with a host of lifelong disabilities. Amid the cries for cuts to Medicaid expenses, now we’ve got money to force life on aborted fetuses?

I believe this outrageous legislation steps far beyond the state’s proper role. The decision to produce a child rests with the parent(s). Period. DENELE CAMPBELL

West Fork