Letters to the Editor

What You Say

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Published: May 6, 2009

So true, I remember this as a seventh grader applying to Central/Girls High [Naked City, "School Maze," Kirstin Lindermayer, April 30, 2009]. I found it actually more stressful than college applications. Because if you don't get into a "good" magnet public high school in Philly and your parents can't afford private school, your chances of getting prepared for college by the time you graduate decrease drastically. If you want to go to college, it helps to be in an environment where the majority of the kids share the same goal.

Marc Stier's letter is an abject apology for giving up before beginning [Feedback, "Yes we HCAN," April 30, 2009]. What he doesn't say, in trying to ridicule a single payer solution, is that HCAN will not challenge the dominance of the insurance companies as useless middlemen in the brokering of health care to the American people. Indeed, his letter includes all the catchphrases of the insurance industry about competition, anti-government attitudes, and just plain wrong assertions about what the "vast majority" of Americans want. For some facts, readers should look at pnhp.org and healthcare-now.org. Tragedies like the closing of Northeastern Hospital cannot be prevented by a health care system run for profit. A government funded plan only to cover those who the insurance companies will not cherry pick will only make health care access more unequal.

The Massachusetts plan, which is the model for Obama, is an abject failure on three counts — reducing the number of uninsured, which is stable; reducing costs, which have skyrocketed; and improving access, which has gotten worse, as the state has closed safety net hospitals in order to pay the insurance companies! (See HERE for more info.) The only reason to support such a plan is in the hopes that it would fail rapidly and sweep away the equivocators like Stier so that we can really begin to make health care as a right, not a privilege in this country, in a giant step toward civilizing the United States.

Dancing with Trees