Pass health insurance reform now
To the editor:
The time to pass health insurance reform is now. We’ve been debating it for a year and the best ideas have been identified and included in the final bill. It is time to stop debating the details and remember that the goal is to provide affordable health insurance for the millions of suffering uninsured Americans. The question is: Do we, or do we not, want to do that?
Opponents bemoan the cost of health insurance reform and say we can’t afford it. The truth is that we cannot afford to continue our present broken health care system. The bipartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the president’s health insurance reform plan will reduce deficits by roughly $100 billion over the next 10 years and by roughly $1 trillion (yes, that’s $1,000 billion) in the decade after that. How can anyone advocate ignoring those savings?
Many believe the lack of a public option leaves us at the mercy of the big insurance companies. But the public option is not dead. It is alive and immensely popular with voters. The House already passed it. Forty-one senators have already promised to vote for it in reconciliation. Additional senators announce support almost daily. With that kind of support, final passage is likely. But consider this: Even if the public option isn’t included now, outrageous premium increases and other abusive actions by the insurance industry will assure its passage within a year or two.
The question is simple. Do we want to allow a broken health care system to bankrupt our country or do we want to provide affordable health care to more than 30 million uninsured Americans while reducing the federal deficit by more than $1 trillion over the next two decades? A few politicians are having trouble figuring that out, but most American voters realize the obvious answer is to pass health insurance reform now. Those American voters will soon have a new title for any politician who doesn’t figure it out: “Former congressman.”
Fred W. Van Nest
Kissimmee

No no-wake zone
To the editor:
It’s hard to imagine that a state that repeatedly leads the nation in boating fatalities would not have boater safety as a high priority. But for Osceola County, the home of legendary lakes, not to have a no-wake law is well … the nicest word I can conjure up is “unacceptable.”
It wasn’t always that way. Back in May of 1994, the Alligator Lake Chain Homeowners Association working with county staff wrote and got the County Commission to sign a very good no-wake law, drafted to keep folks on our lakes from being killed by boaters racing through the canals and waterways where vision is often restricted because of weed-lined banks. The problem, you see, is County Attorney Jo Thacker failed to keep up with state changes and the law that was in place is no longer valid.
Not only is it no longer valid, but it hasn’t been for five years.
Now I’ve never been known to be the brightest bulb in the row but the more we look the more we might find. This might be just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
Further, and I’m really going out on a limb here, but I’m willing to guess that Jo Thacker somehow did not overlook her pay increases and benefit packages as well as other perks over the past five years.
Hello? Are we paying attention or has county staff made us too poor to pay attention?
Capt. Al Bernetti
President
Alligator Lake Chain Homeowners Association
Alcha.embarqspace.com