We can’t afford another program

Published 4:43 pm Monday, June 22, 2009

The cartoon on the June 9 opinion page of The Herald was a sick, pathetic attempt to pass along party line misinformation. So a new health care system is Barack Obama’s baby, and it’s the insurance industry that wants to hurt the baby. Ha! The truth is, the people who are actually going to get hurt are seniors and the poor, and it is by the hand of the current government administration.

Changes to health care will require big money to pay for it. What a concept! At Obama’s 100-day speech he stated, “The big problem we have with entitlements is not Social Security, it’s Medicare. Medicare and Medicaid, the two health care programs that the federal government helps support, those are the things that are really breaking the bank.” If we can’t afford Medicare and Medicaid, and Obama has said we can’t, how can we add another program?

Medicare was created by a promise made to protect a group of people that could no longer get coverage due to their age. Medicare is a single payer system that has been in place for 40 years. Do you know that many doctors will no longer accept Medicare patients due to the cuts that have already taken place? Now this administration plans to cut another $500 billion? Do you know who seniors are? Seniors are your mom and dad, your grandparents, your great-grandparents, your aunts and uncles, friends and all kinds of people that you care about. Tell this guy “no.”

Penny Hansen

Marysville