Letters to the editor

Editor,

While great credit goes to the faculty and law enforcement who responded to the threat of weapons at Hillsdale High School, we also need to be grateful that young Alex Youshock was unable to get his hands on firearms.

This incident might have had a very tragic ending if he was armed — as has been seen at Columbine and other high schools.

Efforts to reduce the chances that guns end up in the hands of troubled youths do, indeed, save lives.

Sharon Vause

San Mateo

Jackie Speier’s ‘staged’ townhall

Editor,

We attended the "town hall” in Montara. Could the location have been more remote and hard to get to, much less park at? U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo, has made it as difficult as possible for her constituents to attend her "town halls,” much less have an opportunity to speak (i.e. teleconference).

We oppose the current health care bill and we are tired of Speier telling us that she knows what’s in our best interest. She does not speak for us.

She continued to avoid answering the question about where all the money is going to come from to support such outlandish spending. She said, "the government will pay for it.” Where does she think the trillions of dollars will comes from? A government money tree? We’re the money tree folks, and our children and their children and their children.

Sandra and Michael Dillon

San Mateo

Bringing foreclosures to light

Editor,

I would like to thank Mark Aspillera for his article about the Aug. 15 housing fair ("Housing fair offers help” in the Aug. 18 edition of the Journal), sponsored by the Peninsula Interfaith Action (PIA) local organizing committee at St. Matthew. We appreciate you bringing to light the work we are doing to help prevent home foreclosures. Your article told the stories of a nice cross section of people and conveyed the sense of the community working together across differences for the common good.

PIA local organizing committees throughout the Peninsula are working on many community concerns. Congregation members active in PIA’s local organizing committees are working in this way on issues such as a teen center in Mountain View, a grocery store and sidewalks in East Palo Alto, affordable health care in San Mateo County and services for seniors in Daly City.

Thank you for covering this important story.

Lori Abrahamsohn

San Carlos

The letter writer is the communications and operations manager of Peninsula Interfaith Action.

Health care retreat

Editor,

"Money talks.” There has been no truer thing said than that old dictum in politics, ever; and big money talks even bigger.

Obama started out his health care reformation efforts with a fatal compromise in order to try to curry some cooperation from big money. He apparently agreed in advance to keep "single payer” health care off the table. Not simply Medicare for all. Instead, there would be the weaker, but better for big money interests, "public option.”

Now Obama has compromised on even that! Oh, there may be some sort of public money support for health insurance companies which will offer co-op sorts of deals. We will still have to pay premiums, co-pays and deductibles, of course, but with some help for the very poor. However, "big money” has won again, as usual, and the easily bamboozled general public has lost again, big time.

The saddest part of this whole thing for me as an educator is that our education system has failed to teach our general public how to simply see through the propaganda, ferret out the facts and vote our own best interests. But maybe that was the plan all along. Big money wants cheap workers, after all, not critical thinkers.

Don Havis

San Mateo

Who is responsible for health care problems?

Editor,

As I sat, reading the article on the front page of a recent Sunday edition of the San Francicso Chronicle about obesity’s heavy toll on medical expenses, it became even more difficult to understand Michael Oberg’s objections to my letter about how our culture and lifestyle choices adversely affect the cost of medical care in our country. The Chronicle estimates that the cost of treating obesity related medical expenses, in 2008, was $147 billion.

The reasons for medical costs being what they are are complex and, to have any hope of rectifying the problem, it is imperative that all players, whether they be insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, government officials, doctors, hospitals or patients recognize that, they in some way are responsible for the current situation.

Everyone, including Mr. Oberg, needs to look in a mirror and recognize that some of the problem lies there. Until now, we have seen mostly finger pointing with all players trying to give as little as possible. The purpose of my letter was to point out how our legal culture, our lifestyle choices and our unreasonable expectations are responsible for a significant amount of the problem and that these are problems which are not being addressed in the 1,000-page health reform document.

If we fail to address them, if we continue to try to sweep them under the rug and pretend they do not exist, then there is little hope that we will rein in medical costs.

Believe me Mr. Oberg, I do get it.

Steven Howard, M.D.

Redwood City

Health care is a priority

Editor,

In our search for someone to blame for health care problems, we have lost sight of the fundamental causes of our nation’s health care problems.

All of the actors in health care — from doctors to insurers to pharmaceutical companies — work in a heavily regulated, massively subsidized industry full of structural distortions. They all want to serve patients well. But they also behave rationally in response to the economic incentives those distortions create. We have built up a health care system, with incentives, that generate terrible and perverse results.

These incentives emphasize health care over any other aspect of health and well-being. They emphasize treatment over prevention, disguise true costs, favor complexity, and discourage transparent competition based on price or quality. They have led to a generational pyramid scheme rather than sustainable financing, and, most importantly, have removed us, consumers, from our irreplaceable role as the ultimate ensurer of value.

The solution is not more government intervention, but less. Start by repealing laws that make it illegal to buy affordable health insurance from another state. Then, make it legal to buy a policy that excludes certain coverages, if you like the savings this would afford you. Then phase out and Medicare and Medicaid altogether.

Warren Gibson

San Carlos