The Sept. 18 Sunday Valley News editorial, “The D-H Puzzle,” posed Gen. David Petraeus’ riddle, “Tell me how this ends.” It ends with universal coverage via national single-payer health insurance, or “improved Medicare-for-all.”
The only question is whether the entire system needs to implode first. D-H’s revenue forecasting error stems directly from the complexity of billing and collecting systems needed to combat the profit-driven insurance industry. ACOs are a wishful attempt by the Affordable Care Act to contain costs without allowing for a public option, with its attendant bargaining power and administrative efficiency. You failed to mention recent news that insurers, which helped draft the ACA, are dropping out of its exchange marketplaces, as even they cannot make them work.
D-H’s puzzle is only intractable because so many have capitulated to the myth that the United States somehow cannot implement the solution adopted by all of the world’s leading health systems. Shame on us.
Keith Loud Norwich
The killing of African-American citizens continue unabated. No one is holding law enforcement accountable. A horrifying majority of white people I try to talk with about racism do not hold themselves accountable. I am holding myself accountable for my lifelong participation in a viciously racist social system.
I write to my state congressional representatives almost monthly now. Please, people of the Upper Valley, take five minutes to email your representatives to demand justice and equal protection for all Americans. Where’s the support for our co-citizens?
Mainstream media is useless, Congress is impotent and the largest police union in the country has endorsed the blatantly racist GOP nominee for president. Get over yourselves and step up for justice. People are dying every single day.
Carolyn Bardos Fairlee
Do you remember how we felt after Tropical Storm Irene struck our precious valleys so hard? We were devastated, but I also remember that before dawn the next day there were people out helping their neighbors everywhere, in as many ways as there were people suffering. We all worked hard, together, for weeks, months … until it was done. We learned about resilience the hard way during those troubled times, and it turns out we are good at resilience.
We learned something about ourselves, our neighbors and our communities that we will never forget, something David Hall may never understand. David Hall, and NewVistas, his controlling, stilted idea of what community means, is the new storm on the horizon, the new catastrophe blowing in. He calls it NewVistas, but it is a narrow, hollow and dark vision, created and honed in a sterile laboratory. It is, really, no vista at all.
Together, not only can we stop NewVistas from destroying our existing communities, but together we can create a resilient, sustainable vision for our Vermont, preserve the rural integrity of our precious communities, and plan our own futures using our local democracy.
Join the “Alliance for Vermont Communities” at AllianceVermont.org, our new nonprofit organization, and learn what you can do to help stop this new storm, before it washes us away.
Randy Leavitt Royalton
The word “trust” is being used a lot in the media. We have a female experienced politician accused of lying, who has spent many hours in front of congressional committees and the FBI, and was never proven to have told a lie. In both cases that would have been a punishable offense.
We have a male candidate, with no political experience, who tells lies that can be verified as such, on a regular basis. Both are labeled as “untrustworthy.” One of these will be the future president of the United States.
The male candidate will not release his tax returns, and proclaims his health with a letter from his doctor. The female candidate has released her tax returns and has also released a great deal of health information, again, verifiable.
The tax returns give some understanding of a candidate’s truthfulness. What does it show about the candidate’s approach to actually paying taxes? The female’s (joint) return shows what seems to be a responsible tax payment, and reveals a healthy amount of charitable contributions. It would be interesting to see a tax return from the (trustworthy?) male. What percentage of income does the male’s return show as taxable; how much has he contributed to charity?
The female has staged an arduous campaign, with pithy, focused, informative speeches. I assume that these took a great deal of preparation and energy, in addition to normal campaign stresses. The male, while making probably as many campaign appearances, has obviously spent very little time or energy in speech preparation. I feel it is totally understandable how the female might experience a temporary health issue.
So, is my male/female usage cutesy? Or indicative of some very strong gender discrimination?
Ron Carr Enfield
Perhaps somebody can explain why I or anyone else should vote for president of the United States someone who:
1. Has no experience in government.
2. Says he will run government like a business, despite having had several bankruptcies and well-documented instances of nonpayment of contractors. (Does he mean he would act like a dictator?)
3. Is two-faced: says he will bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S., while many of his own products are produced offshore.
4. Is boorish and self-centered.
5. Has a thin skin and carries a grudge.
6. Plays fast and loose with the truth. For example, only now has he stated that President Obama was born in the U.S., despite stating the opposite for years. No apology, no admission of lying and now claiming the “birther” movement was not his fault.
7. Set up a university that bilked its students and is now closed — the issue is now in court.
8. Believes climate change is a hoax.
9. Will not release his income tax returns, as so many presidential candidates have done before. (What is he hiding?)
10. Had as his first campaign manager a man who had a lot to do with getting a corrupt pro-Russia tyrant elected as president of Ukraine. (No wonder he likes Putin!)
And I haven’t even mentioned the denigrating comments about Mexicans, women, Muslims, etc. So I am voting for a person who has none of these characteristics — Hillary Clinton.
Rosamond Orford Norwich
I am concerned about laws that Vermont is putting in. There is a new law called Act 64, the Clean Water Act, that seems to be more about control than about clean water. The Vermont Agency of Transportation sprays poisonous herbicides on our roadsides, mostly next to our waterways. As far as I know, that is not going to stop. But if a farmer spreads manure, an organic substance that only makes grass and algae grow, they are going to be fined.
We also have White River National Fish Hatchery in Bethel on Route 107 that puts tons of fish waste in our rivers every year and that seems to be OK.
I guess I need to be educated on how a rounded bottom ditch is so much cleaner than a V bottom ditch. I understand the towns are all going to have to use a machine that makes a rounded ditch. But it apparently doesn’t matter how much it costs taxpayers. But we can pave our roads with an oil-based asphalt that goes into the rivers.
I just cannot see how this act does anything to help clean water, but gives the state more control over individuals and the towns. I hope the people of Vermont will find out what this is all about, and then it should come to a vote, not just be forced on the people.
Brent Lindstrom Tunbridge
The article in the Sept. 18 Sunday Valley News, “Businesses Contribute To Crisis,” clearly identifies that the drug cartels Americans have to battle aren’t from Mexico or other countries. They are the pharmaceutical industry.
Corporations have been found to be equivalent to people by the Supreme Court, but corporations are not held criminally responsible for crimes committed against people the corporations profit from.
I have waited a long time for the media to begin investigating the causes of our opioid epidemic. Finally the facts are emerging about the role the pharmaceutical companies play in lobbying legislatures to prevent regulations that would curb these companies from making billions of dollars pushing opiates. Plus there’s the obscene practice of these same drug dealers positioning themselves to make billions more on drugs to fight the addictions they cause. When will regulators and legislators intervene, and put an end to this travesty?
Lives lost, societal costs and a never-ending supply of addictive drugs must be stopped. Until individuals who profit from killing, and addicting, Americans are brought to justice, and imprisoned for the planned and deceptive marketing and sales, the opioid crisis will grow.
If I were caught selling opiates, I would face jail time. Corporations line their pockets with profits from people’s suffering. Corporations must begin to show responsibility for the choices and actions they take. Fining these companies is a weak slap on the wrist. Compel these drug pushers to pay for the treatment and rehab of addicts, and not by using other drugs. Compel these drug pushers to compensate families and communities that are ravaged by opioids’ consequences.
Daniel Roisman Windsor