Government run-health coops would be different
Re: “The insurance co-op is already in your neighborhood,” Aug. 19 State Farm is an admirably run insurer, but its structure may not have many lessons for health insurance reform. Such mutual insurance companies, in fact, are already common in the health care arena. For example, in the D.C. area both Kaiser Permenente and CareFirst BlueCross/BlueShield already operate on a not-for-profit, non-stock basis just like State Farm. Although mutual companies may well have a stronger customer-orientation than stockholder controlled companies, they charge similar prices and have product lineups that are often indistinguishable from their for-profit counterparts. The co-ops currently being proposed in Congress would work quite a bit differently from either State Farm or the many existing non-profit health insurers. An honest debate requires that both proponents and opponents of co-ops admit this.
Eli Lehrer
Director,
Center for Risk, Regulation, and Markets
The Competitive Enterprise Institute
Democrats contradict their own privacy policy
For over 35 years, the Democrat Party has unwaveringly supported a woman’s right to choose, insisting that there is a constitutional right to privacy. Under this thinking, abortion is legal since the government has no right to interfere in a decision reached between a woman and her doctor. Now, as the Democrats advance their health care reform proposal, they seem to be contradicting their own party platform. For example, under the current health care proposal, the government will provide counselors to advise patients and facilitate end of life discussions with patients’ doctors and their families. So the government would interject itself in the most serious and intimate of conversations regarding life and death. This begs the question: How much choice or privacy is there for an individual faced with the U.S. government smack in the middle of their critical life-saving or life-ending medical decisions? At this point, the Democrats need to clarify their position. Do they support the individual’s right to privately choose what transpires between patient and doctor – or not? The bad news is that Democrats might in the end be able to pass their disastrous health care reform. The good news is that, based on current Democrat thinking in which the government will be intimately as well as financially involved in health care, there would be no right to privacy or choice in medical decisions. Therefore the long-awaited time to overturn Roe v. Wade may finally be at hand.
Mary Alice Rogoskey
Fairfax Station
Thanks for clearing that up
Thanks to Sally Kline for her excellent review of “Inglorious Basterds.” I imagine I’m not the only one who wondered why the word “bastards” is misspelled, but I’ve read review after review by various critics, local and otherwise, all of whom failed to address that glaring fact. Kline is the only one who dared to tread on what must be perceived as dangerous waters in that regard!
Natalie Aronsohn
North Bethesda
