HEALTH: Here's one prescription

Thank you Fiona Gressler. Your letter was refreshingly magnanimous, direct, without name calling, clear and true. The point of the Affordable Care Act, besides providing health care to all Americans, was that 10 people would pay for 10 people, rather than six people paying for 10 people. Those uninsured were being paid for by the insured and caused our (already) subsidized health-care programs to become overextended.

I, too, am terrified that I won’t be able to afford health insurance. I make enough not to qualify for assistance, but not nearly enough to be able to drop an extra $500 a month to insure three people. If the health insurance companies operated more like car insurance companies, the ACA would work like a dream, but I’m afraid that some very powerful money interests are not going to let that happen.

It’s too bad Congress cannot see that supporting our president would be more productive and beneficial for the whole country. It’s too bad corporate leaders don’t see that they are hurting their own country and may be shooting themselves in the foot by not paying their workers better. It’s too bad that people think it is OK to subsidize the wealthy with oil subsidies and bank bailouts so CEOs and stock holders can get their bonuses, but not OK to help the people working under them.

We need a living wage, we need more cooperative insurance companies and everyone to help pay for insurance. Unity strengthens, division weakens.

G.D. HAGLER

Coeur d’Alene