Class warfare in health care debate

If you boil down the health care debate to its bare bones, what you have is class warfare at its finest. Those with health care (including the stably employed) are arguing on the side of insurance companies for no change. Those without health care (including the poor and the recently unemployed) are arguing to transform the system.

Conservatives have always criticized liberals for engaging in class warfare. And let's face it, some of that criticism is warranted. But I never thought I would live to see the day when conservatives would so shamelessly pit classes against each other.

Let's be honest, much of the health care debate is engineered as a means to create a rallying point for conservatives. Democrats did the same with the war when Bush was president. But that wasn't about class.

This case is one where conservatives have drawn a clear line in the sand asking everyone to take a side. General Sherman once remarked about class, saying, "In our Country . . . one class of men makes war and leaves another to fight it out." Whether we will be a better nation because of this fight remains to be seen.

DONNIE CHARLESTON

Raleigh

Pass health reform

Our health care system is broken, and American families and businesses urgently need a solution.

It is ludicrous that in America health insurance is something that is tied to one's employer and employment -- it is an antiquated relic of the past century that America cannot afford any more.

We need to get pragmatic about today's needs for today's society. For American businesses both large and small to prosper, they must be relieved of this burden of having to provide health insurance to all of their employees.

If we glorify small business and entrepreneurship as the way out of our economic and job downturn, it makes little sense to then shackle the very same businesses with unaffordable health insurance costs, which they in turn promptly (and understandably) pass on to their employees.

There is no doubt Congress must act courageously in 2009 to stand up to powerful lobbies in defense of health care reform. A health care system and its constituent companies must exist to serve customers. It is clearly failing to do so today.

I am a small-business owner and serial entrepreneur, and I am counting on Congress to pass real health care reform in 2009 that serves all American citizens, not just a privileged few.

GUY ENEMARE

Durham