Letters to the Editor
Christopher1988
Published Letters: 567 Editor's Choice: 40
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Personal Greed Is Leading to Socialized Medicine
[Read the article: Hillary Clinton's healthcare 2.0]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Who's greed? Not doctors, not hospitals: the patients. The many, many, many patients since the 70's who file malpractice suits when things don't go their way. This forced doctors and hospitals to take out huge insurance policies to cover themselves, both in the office and the operating room, which in turn jacked up the costs of consultations and procedures. Which has made health care unaffordable. Which has forced everyone who wants coverage to do so through an HMO. Which only pays the doctors half of what they would have originally gotten. Which means that after the huge costs of med school and student loans, doctors have trouble making up those costs and making a profit. Which means the charges continue to go up.
Lazy, greedy Americans have all but bankrupted the medical industry and reduced doctors to a marginal middle class earning power. Which of course means that fewer people will risk the money and time to go to school and learn a difficult, demanding profession. Oh, and they can't afford to pay good secretaries in their offices, so the quality of the consultation and the patient's experience goes down even further.
There's almost no choice but some sort of socialized medical system, but all that most likely will mean is the quality will continue to sink and the prices will continue to rise.
It's one of the saddest chapters in the history of American medicine.
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King, you rock!
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You are exactly right, and obviously the point isn't whether he did this or not, whether it was a serious crime or not. It's that breaking and entering isn't media "sexy" the way that murder is. It's that OJ has been so very strange for so very long that people are just tired. I think it's also that notoriety only gets an individual public attention once. If Michael Jackson was brought to trial a second time for child molestation, I doubt he'd get half the ratings of his first trial even if the prosecution had videotape evidence. For OJ, if he is found guilty, the day of the sentencing will probably be a huge ratings fest. Likely nothing else will.
But also likely, the whole thing won't be televised. That's what really made the first trial a big media circus. Without it, reduced to nightly re-caps and artist's sketches, the audience would have walked away bored within two weeks.
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Thank You Texans For Standing Up to the Jackasses in the Letters Column
[Read the article: Texans turn against Bush's war]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Texans are not morons, illiterates, or any of the other things mentioned. Larry McMurtry? Terry Southern? Buddy Holly? Scott Joplin? Willie Nelson? Janis Joplin? Robert Rauschenberg?Roy Orbison? Walter Cronkite? Katharine Ann Porter? Gene Roddenberry? The list goes on and on and on.
I was born and raised in Houston. We have one of the greatest symphonies in the country (led, in the 70's, by Andre Previn). One of the great ballet troops. The Alley is one of the most revered regional theaters, and has won several Tonys (the Houston Grand Opera revival of Porgy and Bess was the first to perform the complete work, transferred to Broadway, and provided probably the greatest, and still one of the longest in print, recordings of the show in its history).
We also had something to do with men landing on the moon, maybe you heard about that.
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I'm gay, in favor of gay marriage, but "basic human right" is a meaningless, even dangerous term.
[Read the article: The courage of Mayor Jerry Sanders]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Everybody has the right to be married? Does that mean everyone without a partner who wants one should be provided with one? Should there be compensation for the absence of one?
I can't even tell what this gobbltygoop phrase "basic human right" means. I guess it is meant to signify an even more fundamental rigth than a Constitutional one, and it sure as hell better, since our Constitution does not guarantee anyone the right to marriage. How nature itself suggests anyone's right to marriage is, of course, even more of a mystery. Marriage not being, for any species, a natural right or condition.
This is so typical of what's wrong with America today: the assumption that our desires are instantly transformed into our rights.
Yes, I desire a country that allows gay marriage. Yes, I will argue why people resistant to the concept should put aside their fears. Yes, I think I can list many reasons why allowing gay marriage is a beneficial choice not only for gays themselves but society in general. I think it will strengthen marriage, the family (both nuclear and extended) and society as a whole.
But it is not a right by nature, and for no sexual preference is it guaranteed as a right by law. That's why everyone has to apply for a license. And can be turned down. Because marriage is, in fact, a privilege, not a right. Even if, like other activities for which a lisense is needed, that privilege is granted to the vast majority of people petitioning for it.
I hope we achieve gay marriage in this country, but the pretense of any kind of marriage being our right demonstrates a failure to understand, and maybe even an embarrassing lack of interest in, the laws and underlying philosophy of our country.