Health insurance may disappear under GOP

To the Editor:

It makes no difference if you support the current administration or not — they’re coming for your health coverage.  

It’s no secret the president and Congress are trying to dismantle the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) little by slow, piece by piece. There is so much political noise right now that many do not realize there are quiet but continuing efforts in the courts to remove the most popular piece of ObamaCare — coverage of pre-existing conditions. That is, banning insurance companies from denying coverage to people with ongoing conditions or recent illness. 

It is estimated that as many as 130 million adults under age 65 have at least one condition that could result in not being able to get health insurance. The Kaiser Family Foundation puts the number at about a quarter of the country’s citizens under age 65. These are people like you and me, your neighbors and friends, your family members. Who does not know someone with cancer, diabetes, arthritis, cerebral palsy, emphysema, epilepsy, heart disease, hepatitis, kidney disease, mental illness, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, pregnancy (yes, pregnancy), sleep apnea, just to name a few. 

Many of us remember what it was like before ObamaCare became law in 2009. Insurance companies routinely declined those with preexisting conditions. Even the few companies that did offer coverage often excluded or imposed long waiting periods for those particular conditions. With the click of a computer key, insurance companies could cancel coverage for people who became ill once their policy year ended. Many went without treatment until showing up in the ER … living with unnecessary pain and disability … dying prematurely. ObamaCare made those practices illegal. We cannot go back there. 

If Republicans still hold Congress after the November election, anyone with a history of medical problems who doesn’t get health insurance from an employer will likely lose coverage. How do many Republican politicians feel about taking health care away from millions who have done nothing besides have past medical problems? Well, this is what Republican politicians have been saying they wanted all along.  

Consider the example of our Rep. Mark Meadows, chair of the House Freedom Caucus, who attempted unsuccessfully to ram through full ObamaCare repeal including preexisting conditions just last year! After the fact, he claimed he didn’t realize that pre-existing conditions was part of the deal. Yah, right! 

And if you think none of this matters because you’re covered by Medicare, think again. If Republicans control the Senate in November, they’ll be coming after Medicare next in order to help pay for their tax cut for the wealthy. Who said so? They did!  

Voters need to understand the stakes in these midterms. It will be the voters that will determine whether people with medical problems get the health care they need.

Elaine Slocumb 

Bryson City

We must protect our rights

To the Editor:

One of our local newspaper’s police activity section featured an officer asking a person he had pulled over if they had anything in the vehicle that he should know about. This violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution — by asking the person to incriminate themselves — and also indicating that the officer did not suspect anything specific (and thus did not have a reason for a search).

Americans are dying overseas to protect our values and way of life. This seems to me to be playing fast and loose with our constitutional rights. I respect our law enforcement officers, and realize they are doing a hard job. However the end doesn’t justify the means.

David Stearns

Otto

Workers suffer due to cost of living

To the Editor:

Granted, “The American worker is not getting their due” (www.smokymountainnews.com/archives/item/25493), but I have a little different take on the reasons why. I don’t think it’s as much the low wages as the high cost of living.

There are many factors involved, not the least of which is the ever-widening gap between the very rich and the rest of us brought about mainly by greed which worsens with each passing day. But let us consider simply the changes in the cost of living. 

I graduated high school in 1957 and a year later was managing a small plastics factory (in rural Massachusetts) that employed just four people. I earned $60 a week and took home $54.20 of that amount. On that salary plus what I could earn mowing grass in the summer, shoveling snow in the winter (both with hand tools only) and parking cars nine days in the fall at a nearby race track, I supported a wife, baby, a two-bedroom apartment, a car, tithed to our church and had money left over.  

How much would a high school graduate have to earn to do that today, 60 years later?

In 1958, my salary paid the rent ($15 a week), which was our biggest single expense, and allowed us to live middle-class. A new house was about $13K, a new car $2,500, a loaf of bread 20 cents, a dozen eggs 30 cents, coffee $1 a pound, and gas was 25 cents a gallon.

Teachers earned about $5,000 a year (an average wage) and always seemed happy. I like to think it was because I was in their classroom, but it could have been because all 30 to 40 of their students behaved themselves and paid attention.

The owner of the plastics factory earned about seven times what I did. Today he’d want 700 times more and I doubt I’d make a living wage. But, in 1958, with Eisenhower in the White House, Nixon the VP, and smiling Sam Rayburn Speaker of the House, with a three-cent first-class postage stamp and a year at Harvard costing $1,000 ... life was good.

David L. Snell 

Franklin