To the Readers' Forum:
Based on the Supreme Court ruling that the Affordable Care Act is constitutional, what does it matter if the cost for non-participation by employers or the uninsured is a tax, a penalty, or whatever you want to call it? At least under so-called "Obamacare," millions of people will be able to get coverage they couldn't afford or were denied. Others who choose to refuse coverage will pay into a pool to help offset sticking the rest of us with the bill for not electing coverage, but demanding medical care. Seems like a fair trade-off to me.
As you should know, universal coverage, or "Romneycare," seemed like a good idea when Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts, too. Oh, and George Bush enacted government-subsidized Medicare Part D, drug coverage. By today's labels, shouldn't Romney and Bush be "Socialists"?
Speaking of taxes, are you aware that every worker is taxed for Medicare Part A, regardless of age and regardless if they ever use it when eligible? (Yup, just another one of those "Socialist" programs enacted during Lyndon Johnson's presidency.) What I don't get is that 80 percent of Americans approve of Medicare, yet about 60 percent of Americans, most already covered by health insurance, including Medicare, oppose extending private insurance coverage to the uninsured (i.e.''Obamacare"). What's up with that?
On another topic, yes, some of us are still waiting for an improved economy - especially the unemployed or under-employed, and a stagnating middle class. But a "one-percenter" is already doing just fine and has been getting finer over the years. So, why haven't these finer, so-called "job creators" used some of their expanding wealth to create more jobs? The answer: wealth does not create jobs. Otherwise, Romney would have used his cash stored in the Cayman Islands to support business in the U.S., right? For the eight years of tax cuts under Bush, the one-percenters hoarded wealth and 7 million jobs were lost.
Yet, even with the economy on the fence, and almost universal congressional Republican roadblocks to any Obama economic plan, the country is on the plus side of job creation since 2008. Just ask anyone in the U.S. auto industry and related suppliers if Obama's action to save their jobs was a bad thing, un-American as some call him. On the other hand, ask those government workers across the country if Republican actions that cut their jobs was a good thing.
Paul Demler
Jamestown