Health care law is health careless
Re: “If you like your health insurance, too bad,” editorial, Sept. 28
It is clearly obvious from a year-by-year look at the new health care law that the raise in costs and decline in health care are avoided to get around the 2010 congressional elections and the 2012 presidential election, and back-loaded to hit the nation beginning Jan. 1, 2013. Indeed, this is not only political gaming, it is a detrimental careless move to nationalize health care at enormous expense.
My particular complaint is the manner in which Medicare Advantage is being toyed with. Candidate and President Obama made it painfully clear that he was going to cut the plan — covering about 11.3 million seniors of the 46 million covered by Medicare — and he has. Even though premiums for Medicare Advantage are to drop 1 percent in 2011, rates will be frozen at 2010 levels to cut $136 billion from Medicare Advantage over 10 years.
Surely, all Americans will feel the pain — Medicare beneficiaries, private health plans, employers, 30 million additional Medicaid recipients, states, and all taxpayers — in reduced health care at much higher costs. As candidate Obama put it, “… health care costs will necessarily skyrocket.” However, why should he be concerned? By Jan. 1, 2018, when the 40 percent excise tax is imposed on high-cost health plans, he will be securely retired with free quality health care for life — at struggling taxpayers’ expense.
Daniel B. Jeffs
Apple Valley, Calif.
More camp, not more school
President Obama endorsed a longer school year as part of the solution to America’s floundering educational system. I respectfully request that he look no further than his own daughter, Malia – who spent some of last summer’s precious weeks at overnight camp – and reconsider his stance.
I’d like to ask the president to reflect on his daughter’s growth after spending time at camp. Would those 30 days have been better passed at school, preparing for more tests, or in a virtual classroom without walls, practicing for life’s circumstances? Where did she learn authentic lessons in compassion, cooperation, critical thinking, decision making, resilience, and responsibility — a direct result of living in a community with shared values and real-life, unfiltered experiences close to nature?
The American Camp Association’s outcomes research confirms that 10 measured social constructs enhance the platform for learning: self-esteem, independence, leadership, friendship skills, social comfort, peer relationships, courage, environmental awareness, values (ethics), and spirituality.
Our conversation about education reform needs to consider the whole child. The social education taught at camp is a vital complement to school. We need to make camp available to more children, not more school for all.
Marla Coleman
Past president,
American Camp Association
New York
