{"id":128677,"date":"2009-12-31T17:23:54","date_gmt":"2009-12-31T22:23:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/seattletimes.nwsource.com\/html\/northwestvoices\/2010656118_healthcareroundup.html?syndication=rss"},"modified":"2009-12-31T17:23:54","modified_gmt":"2009-12-31T22:23:54","slug":"health-care-roundup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/128677","title":{"rendered":"Health-care roundup"},"content":{"rendered":"

Congress going about reform bill in all the wrong ways<\/strong><\/p>\n

It has been depressing to follow the progress of the health-care bill as it makes its way through Congress [\u201cCongress moving to close Medicare\u2019s \u2018doughnut hole,\u2019 \u201d News, Dec. 29].<\/p>\n

The House of Representatives passed a tolerable bill, but the Senate has passed a very weak bill that sent the stock of the medical insurance companies and the big pharmaceutical companies soaring, which means bad news for the rest of us.<\/p>\n

Unless the final bill includes a government-run public option, the insurance companies will not have to offer competitively priced policies, but the public will be forced to purchase those unfairly priced policies whether it wishes to, or not.<\/p>\n

What is the value of that?<\/p>\n

To those who doubt the ability of the government to provide good insurance policies, I would suggest that this is merely an option. Anyone wishing to shop elsewhere would be able to do so.<\/p>\n

Other requirements of good health-care legislation would include: subsidies to enable all Americans to be able to purchase medical insurance at affordable prices; coverage for women\u2019s reproductive health care; apply antitrust legislation to insurance companies, and paying for health-care reform by taxing the wealthy, thereby helping to decrease the gap between the super wealthy and the super poor.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Ken Rasmussen, Bow<\/em><\/p>\n

Remembering \u2018forever families\u2019 during the holidays<\/strong><\/p>\n

Opening your hearts to children<\/p>\n

I really enjoyed the guest commentary by Nicole Sanchez, and agree wholeheartedly with her [\u201cEvery child deserves a forever family,\u201d Opinion, Dec. 22].<\/p>\n

I happen to have an adopted son, who was about 19 months old when we brought him to our home permanently about a week before Christmas. It has been a mutual blessing for us over the years.<\/p>\n

Our family has always been grateful to be his \u201cforever family.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thanks so much for the commentary by Sanchez. I hope many other families will open their hearts, and give a child a forever family, something each child deserves.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Mary Bartholet, Shoreline<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Congress going about reform bill in all the wrong ways It has been depressing to follow the progress of the health-care bill as it makes its way through Congress [\u201cCongress moving to close Medicare\u2019s \u2018doughnut hole,\u2019 \u201d News, Dec. 29]. The House of Representatives passed a tolerable bill, but the Senate has passed a very […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-128677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128677\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}