Health-care savings plan laughable

2/23/2006

Can our President be that out of touch?

Buy an insurance policy with a high deductible and then buy in to a health-care savings account?

Buying the high deductible plan is "no problem." Many of the insurance companies would like to sell you one of those. How long will it take to earn money on your HSA at the 0.25 percent rate paid on savings accounts at many neighborhood banks? How long will it take for someone working at Wendy's to save enough in his HSA to spend one night in a hospital when just a few hours costs thousands of dollars?

Shop around for medical care?

Try calling reputable medical practices. They aren't taking new patients. If they are taking new patients, they want to know all about your insurance coverage before they discuss your health problem. Don't think of making an appointment if you have no insurance. It is not done.

Most uninsured or underinsured in America would love to have the benefits they are already paying for with their tax dollars. Only the members of the federal government have access to that kind of care, while the people paying the bill have little or nothing in comparison.

Sadly, many of our wealthy elected officials have never had to balance a family budget, let alone a national one. Therefore, it is hard for them to understand where most people are living. Unfortunately, they have no desire to learn. They need to burst out of their protected bubbles, quit the constant bickering, and serve the people who elected them.

Delores Bleau

Walbridge

Snuggled alongside stories about Nazi stolen art, your disgracefully slanted article deceptively misrepresented the educationally dedicated museum and University of Toledo collaboration.

UT's nationally accredited, superbly partnered art department of 375 undergraduate majors is compared to five private world-class art schools - elite institutions admitting few students annually where yearly tuitions surpass $30,000. The Blade's conclusion is UT's bachelor programs lack the stature of MFA programs at Rhode Island School of Design, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Harvard, Yale, or the Art Institute of Chicago. Duh?

UT undergraduates receive outstanding educations for about $8,000 a year in fully accredited art programs meeting or exceeding national standards. Regional applicants can actually enroll in the program and afford it.

While UT and the museum have not launched a joint degree in glass, significant partnership opportunities provide fine arts students unique undergraduate educations. Co-funded is an outstanding art library. UT students attend classes in TMA galleries. UT students receive frequent presentations by museum curators and access materials from museum archives.

UT students receive fine art educations in culturally enriching museum environments unavailable in BGSU's and Ohio State's larger regional programs. Some UT foundation instruction is from professionally active, part-time faculty. OSU or BGSU undergraduates receive similar instruction from pre-professional teaching assistants.

For glassblowing, UT students are in an enviable position. They can co-enroll for on-site museum classes. Opportunities will expand with the museum's enhanced glass facilities. Fairly, the cost is a tuition supplement for students choosing to enroll.

That the institutions have not fully maximized their collaboration might be said for many complex partnerships. UT's facilities warrant expansion. Frank Gehry's architectural plans anticipated an additional building.

This distorted smear about a healthy, affordable, accessible, distinctive UT program and Toledo Museum of Art collaboration is a shameful community disservice.

Joel Lipman

Scarsborough Road

Editor's note: Mr. Lipman is a professor of art at the University of Toledo and a recipient of the Ohio Arts Council Governor's Award for the Arts.

A recent Blade editorial trashing the University of Toledo's Art Department posed a larger question - why hasn't the University of Toledo prospered?

Here's a parallel scenario that might explain it. Suppose all the local television network affiliates ran a steady, ongoing series of stories and editorials over years and years pointing out what a third-rate little newspaper The Blade is and never missed an opportunity to put the most negative spin on anything The Blade did. What kind of reputation do you suppose it would have?

The University of Toledo has a seven-time Grammy award-winning professor of jazz, one of the world leaders in photo-voltaic solar panel research, a nationally recognized legal expert on racial profiling, a bio-chemical engineer breeding a bacterial strain that eats pollution, etc.

Maybe some day an adult will buy the Block Newspaper Alliance and the University of Toledo will finally be presented accurately to the community as the great institution of higher learning and research it is.

Tom Barden

Kenwood Boulevard

Editor's note: Mr. Barden is a professor of English at the University of Toledo. He holds three degrees from the University of Virginia and is an expert on John Steinbeck.

Here we go again. Another company is jumping on the anti-smoking bandwagon and charging its employees who smoke an extra premium for health-care insurance. The company claims it is doing this to promote "a healthy lifestyle."

This takes a lot of crust from a store that sells cigarettes, pipe and chewing tobacco, cigars, and snuff. Will they quit selling these products? I doubt it. Hypocrisy at its finest.

And before all you non-smoking readers out there decide this is a great idea to show these smokers the error of their ways, I say you better back up the train.

What will be the next item on this phony "I know what's good for you" agenda: eating red meat, eggs, drinking coffee, cheeseburgers, french fries, etc.? How about being overweight, having high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, or maybe one too many cocktails on the weekend?

You say you ride a motorcycle or snowmobile, or have a relative that died of heart disease or cancer? I say you are the next target in this never-ending intrusion into our private lives.

And do you get a rate reduction if you are leading a "healthy lifestyle"? The answer would be no.

Smokers are in the spotlight now. Who's next?

Kent Snyder

Westbrook Drive

The President can't have it both ways. He cannot raise military spending and cut education. One of our greatest advantages has always been the fact that we develop the weapons and defenses first.

If he keeps trying to cut education, the next generation is going to be too stupid to develop and use anything. It's like trying to build a house with no foundation.

He started the "No Child Left Behind Act" and our whole country could be left behind.

Andrew Segovis

Packard Road

Bob McCloskey has virtually painted himself into a corner. Instead of serving his constituents, he will now be preoccupied with mounting a defense for himself.

The unethical practice of using his position as city councilman to renegotiate something he couldn't deliver years ago for the Pilkington union retirees has made him a political liability.

Because of his poor judgment, the city, at taxpayers' expense, will be expected to bail him out.

If he has any integrity he would resign. His replacement should be the people's choice, according to the election results (Bob Vasquez) and not a political cat fight between the councilmen.

TOM SHAW

Perrysburg