{"id":467752,"date":"2010-03-24T18:06:54","date_gmt":"2010-03-24T22:06:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/seattletimes.nwsource.com\/html\/northwestvoices\/2011430987_signingofthehealthcarebill.html?syndication=rss"},"modified":"2010-03-24T18:06:54","modified_gmt":"2010-03-24T22:06:54","slug":"signing-of-the-health-care-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/467752","title":{"rendered":"Signing of the health-care bill"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Teddy would be proud<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>More than a century ago, then-President Theodore Roosevelt said of a young United States of America, \u201cThis will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless it is a good place for all of us to live in.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Today he would have been proud of his successor, President Barack Obama, who signed into law the historic Health Care Reform Act, which ensures health-care benefits for 30 million uninsured Americans.<\/p>\n<p>We can also be proud of the AARP and the American Medical Association for their politically important endorsements.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u2014 Langdon S. Simons Jr., Seattle<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>More work to be done<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I recently received a message from U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee saying with the signing of the health-care-reform bill \u201cthe kitchen is finished.\u201d Well, the kitchen is definitely not finished!<\/p>\n<p>To continue Inslee\u2019s analogy, we have merely ordered some cabinets. Some very expensive cabinets, from suppliers who are not subject to antitrust laws. Cabinets whose cost will most certainly rise significantly and continuously as we try to pay off the loan.<\/p>\n<p>And if our kitchen happens to have a couple of special problems, \u201cpre-existing conditions,\u201d then we must buy cabinets from the high-risk pool of suppliers, at even higher cost.<\/p>\n<p>If we decide that we might try to get along without cabinets in our kitchen, then we will be fined! The legislation apparently does nothing to lower costs, but instead raises our taxes to subsidize the costs. We get a double whammy, our cabinets continue to rise in price, and our taxes rise to try to catch up.<\/p>\n<p>The health-care legislation just passed certainly has some good points, but the lack of obvious cost controls will prove it ruinous to our economy. We need real competition in the health-care industry, competition that can only realistically be created with a publicly run health-care option, and removal of the antitrust exemption from the health-insurance industry.<\/p>\n<p>Really \u201cfinish the kitchen,\u201d Mr. Inslee!<\/p>\n<p><em>\u2014 John S. Snow, Woodinville<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Teddy would be proud More than a century ago, then-President Theodore Roosevelt said of a young United States of America, \u201cThis will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless it is a good place for all of us to live in.\u201d Today he would have been proud of his [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2861,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-467752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467752","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\/2861"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=467752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467752\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}