Letters to the editor for Sunday, July 2, 2017

Congress needs to do better on health care

On May 22, the Senate introduced a draft of the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA). Like the AHCA passed by the House on May 4, this bill doesn’t reconcile anything, it just makes it worse for everyone. It raises costs of premiums and out-of-pocket costs, it cuts coverage, it weakens protections, and it essentially ends Medicaid, a program that helps children, pregnant mothers, the disabled, and older Americans. It allows states to drop coverage of mental illness from insurance plans. It defunds Planned Parenthood, a program that provides birth control and lifesaving screenings to vulnerable women. When I was a college student, Planned Parenthood gave me an early diagnosis of cancer, probably saving my life.

The Senate promised to start over. Instead, it came back with the same or worse than the House bill. It’s not even a healthcare bill, it’s a tax cut bill.

Congress, please give us a plan that builds a healthy America!

Marty McGarry

Carson City

Taxing fossil fuel companies a poor solution to climate change

Lynn Goldfarb’s letter concerning a solution to climate change makes no sense.

Oil is only product one of more than 6,000 products produced from petroleum. Wind and solar are not sustainable, and without government support are more expensive.

As to the 5 million new jobs, who’s going to pay them? Who will they work for, would it be the manufacturers as maintenance or operational personnel, or the electrical facilities? If so, this is an additional cost.

Taxing fossil fuel companies means higher prices on the 6,000 petroleum products. In the Paris Accord, China and India would not have to start to reduce their pollution until 2030, and that’s not even binding.

The accord also states taxation would be between $100 trillion and $200 trillion by the year 2100, and that this solution would reduce the temperature 0.03 of one degree.

Lynn Goldfarb lives in Lancaster, Pa., and would have us all be like their Amish citizens and live in the 18th century.

Patrick McIntyre

Stagecoach

Shooting of Rep. Scalise latest example of liberal violence

The June 14 Virginia baseball park shooting was the just the latest violence from left-wing criminals in modern America stretching from Al Sharpton (Crown Heights in 1991) to Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and the anti-free speech campus thugs.

So it’s no surprise that Trump’s efforts to undo the left’s damage to our economy, culture, and civil rights has Democrat bullies attacking his supporters.

Alex Griswold, Ann Coulter and Conner Beck have documented over a hundred such assaults so far.

Democrat politicians and party officials like Jim Devine (#HuntRepublicans) have been whipping gullible mainstream Democrats into a hate-fueled frenzy, assault weapons and all. It’s a sure bet the Bernie Sanders supporter’s homicidal rampage was just the beginning.

When the Democrats claim Trump will kill people by getting us out of the Paris climate farce, fixing health care, and preserving our gun rights, consider the source.

Lynn Muzzy

Minden

Latest health care bill harmful to Nevadans

The Congressional Budget Office scoring for the Senate’s AHCA bill reveals that it is just as heartless and just as harmful as the recently passed House version.

The CBO estimates that in just two years 15 million recently covered Americans would once again be without health care with the uninsured rate rising, for all age brackets, on its way to 18 percent uninsured by 2026.

Nevada would be particularly hard hit, as much of change would be a result of rolling back the Medicaid expansion that has covered so many in our state.

The Senate includes the same “age tax” that is central to the House plan, which would mean that a 64-year-old making $57,000 annually would have to pay more than $13,000 for health insurance by 2026. Under the plan, states would be able to change their own definition of “Essential Health Benefits,” meaning that those with certain pre-existing conditions could once again be denied coverage.

Sen. Dean Heller has very publicly stated that he could not vote for any bill that stood to be harmful for Nevadan families. This one certainly would be harmful. We can only hope that, unlike Congressman Mark Amodei, he will be true to his word and fight for a better solution.

Ryan Budman

Reno