LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Health-care overhaul needed
6/10/2013Your June 2 article “Americans pay most for health care; Cost of ordinary services driving $2.7T annual tab” elucidates the reality that our current health-care system is bankrupting the country. What is most needed is an overhaul in how hospitals, physicians, and vendors are reimbursed for their services and products.
The change that is most needed is a switch from a system that pays for volume (fee for service) to one that rewards value. Value is determined by seeking the best possible outcome for a given cost.
Health-care providers should seek to improve quality and to be transparent with our outcomes, as we strive to lower costs. This should make us high-value providers of care to both patients and insurers.
DR. KARL BEER
Quality Director Wildwood Orthopaedic and Spine Hospital North Reynolds Road
Editorial cartoon on IRS offensive
The May 29 editorial cartoon by Rob Rogers was offensive on so many levels that whatever humor it included was lost.
The cartoon portrayed an Internal Revenue Service official as a black woman and a Tea Party member as a fat white man. From what I’ve seen, no person cited in the IRS scandal is black, and not all Tea Party members are white or fat.
What seems to be the point of the cartoon — that tax-exempt social-welfare organizations should not be political — misses the nuances of IRS regulations and the odd definition of “political,” which in the law is limited to activities that support or oppose a particular candidate.
Editorial cartoons, no less than columns, should further discussion of ideas. This cartoon fails that test.
NICK BATT
Springfield Township
‘Tea Bag Patriots’ is an insult
The cartoon implies that only conservative nonprofits are politically motivated, and that the Tea Party was operating as a “social nonprofit” organization.
The organizational status for which the Tea Party applied allows all of its money to be used on lobbying and on a political agenda.
Identifying the Tea Party as “Tea Bag Patriots,” as the cartoon does, is not clever, but insulting. Mr. Rogers only sheds light on his juvenile sense of humor and his manipulative agenda.
BRETT MENTZER
Kimberly Drive
Big government? Eliminate IRS
President Obama has grown the government so vastly that he cannot control it (“Obama tells us to trust him, but why should we?” op-ed column, May 23).
Is Mr. Obama incompetent if he can’t control what he has created? With the IRS running amok, it is time for Congress to dismantle it and implement a flat tax.
DAVID PRICE
Tulane Avenue