To people like Beth Silberman [Letters, Oct. 27] a government-run health insurance option is the answer to the high premiums of BCBS. It sounds great.
What could possibly be wrong with a government-run option that holds health insurance premiums down plus provide affordable health care for those now uncovered?
Well, for starters:
The financial numbers simply don’t add up. BCBS and all other private insurance companies would eventually go out of business because who’s not going to opt for lower premiums laid on the backs of taxpaying future generations?
The resulting single-payer government-run health care insurance program will not pay high-quality health care professionals what the free market would pay, driving them to other higher-paying professions.
Rationing what’s left of a deteriorating health care system means a government bureaucrat will dictate who qualifies for what lifesaving procedure.
Surely, Obama’s bureaucrats would never cleverly withhold lifesaving health care procedures from families of employees of dissenters like Fox News, the national Chamber of Commerce and the insurance industry with whom Obama recently declared war.
The prospect of that kind of political power mesmerizes and makes power-grabbing politicians drool. That’s why the last thing they want is lower health care costs in the private sector, which could easily be achieved with such measures as tort and market reform.
The dangerously naïve and numerous Beth Silbermans need to see we are all being had in a frightful way and vote out all Democrats and Republicans neglecting private health care sector reform.
ARRINGTON HICKS
Oxford
Senior center rocks
Last Sunday night provided a delightful surprise, one that every citizen in Durham should have enjoyed. The Council for Senior Citizens was holding an opening celebration for the theater they’d completed inside the Durham Center for Senior Life. They call it the Beverly Tyndall Green Theater, and it’s just as cute as can be.
So you wouldn’t really expect the opening of a theater inside a senior center, to be an exciting affair, now would you? It was a pretty impressive party.
As I looked around, I also saw a building we bought with county bond money being utilized to the max. It’s a beautifully designed building, and one of the multi-tasks it was designed to perform was to hold big parties. They were making fine use of it Sunday night.
The building looked great, but more importantly the agency running it looked like it was back in shape, too.
I definitely saw an adorable new theater, also fairly sure I saw a Council for Senior Citizens that is once again capable of filling it.
BILL ANDERSON
Durham
The writer is former director of marketing for the Council for Senior Citizens.
