Letters To The Editor
To The Editor:
It is not wise for any Christian church to look to a secularly-corrupt government to resolve our health care challenges in America. It is up to the private sector and individuals such as you and me.
For example, let us look to Mother Teresa and how she used inexpensive homeopathic medicines in all of her missions to give quality health care to the poor. Mother Teresa studied homeopathic medicine with Diwan Jai Chand, a highly respected Indian homeopath who opened her first charitable homeopathic dispensary in Calcutta in 1950. She even prescribed homeopathic medicines herself sometimes.
For folks on either side of the health care debate, other options exist that are not being considered or discussed. Have we looked into how the Amish pay for their health care bills? Families in the Amish communities pay a monthly stipend into a pool and when a family has medical bills to pay, that family can use the available money. Their system works so well the Amish pay their hospital bills in cash. Furthermore, the Amish have few health care costs due to using midwives to deliver babies, they grow their own food, and they are chaste and pure outside and inside of marriage.
There are two medical sharing organizations I am aware of in which members share each other’s medical bills: samaritanministries.org and medi-share.org. In these organizations, members band together to share medical bills with one another. The health care dollars go toward supporting healthy lifestyles that favor biblical principles. Check into both organizations if you are purchasing your own health care insurance or are uninsured.
We all should be purchasing our own health care plans as we do car and homeowner’s insurance.
All Christian churches in America certainly have enough members to share its medical bills without having our dollars contribute toward euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, abortion, infanticide, cloning, etc. Furthermore, state and federal governments are not interested in any form of natural medicines (acupuncture, Chinese traditional medicine, native medicines, emotional freedom technique, homeopathy, energetic meridian therapy, ayurveda, organic food, whole food vitamins, etc.) that are based on a 15,000-plus-year-old energetic medical model.
Government is too tied in with the pharmaceutical companies in making money for artificial drugs it can patent. Government is focused on creating artificial food, lacing it with pesticides, genetically-modifying our food supply and injecting drugs in farm animals than using natural medicines and food to cure diseases in humans and animals.
We all have other options to improve our health care system if we take the time to consider and research them. Refocus on medical sharing organizations and the energetic medical model. Let us pray for a marriage of U.S. Western medicine with the older forms of energetic medicine and look to the past for answers to today's challenges. Going this route will solve our health care issues in the United States.
Leave government out of it. We are smart enough to solve this issue in the private charity sector.
Deborah Wiersma
Pacific
Alternative health plans
To The Editor:
A story in the Boston Globe in July reported that Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas (R), the incoming chairman of the National Governor’s Association, offered this assessment of the proposed National Health Care Bill: “We can’t have the Congress impose requirements that we are forced to absorb beyond our capacity to do so.”
His concern was shared by Gov. Bill Richardson (D-New Mexico), who stated: “I’m personally concerned about the cost issue, particularly the $1 trillion figures being batted around.” Gov. Phil Bredesen (D-Tenn.) characterized the Health Care Bill as “the mother of all unfunded mandates.”
Recently, the St. Louis Beacon reported that Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon was among six Democrat governors who refused to sign a letter urging passage of a health care bill because “it does not address the need to prevent unreasonable costs from being placed on the states.”
President Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress who are hell-bent on ramming this fiscally-disastrous legislation through would do well to heed these words.
While governors have expressed their fiscal concerns, local legislators have concerns of their own. Apprehension over National Health Care legislation has prompted Missouri Sen. Jane Cunningham (R-Dist. 7) and Missouri Rep. Tim Jones (R-Dist. 89) to approach the national health care from another perspective.
Concern over what they see as an attempt by the federal government to expand its influence over the states, Cunningham and Jones plan to sponsor an amendment to the Missouri Constitution during the 2010 session of the General Assembly that would guard “against attempts to socialize health care through the ‘public option’ health care mandate currently under consideration by Congress.”
Missouri is not alone in this regard. The state of Arizona has a similar amendment that will go before that state’s voters next year.
The concern about federal mandates is well-founded – and for a number of reasons, the least of which is a federal monolith imposing its will on the states without regard to individual states’ needs. For this reason alone their proposal deserves serious consideration.
Of course, there are those who declare such legislation to be a direct challenge to the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, which declares federal laws and treaties are “the supreme law of the land.” That is undeniably true, but only when made within the confines of the powers authorized by the Constitution. Opponents of legislation that empowers states but restricts the federal government’s self-proclaimed authority to impose its will are the same people who view the rights of states as an obstacle to progressive government.
Given the high-handed manner in which the Democrat-controlled Congress is attempting to ram through a bill that would impose draconian financial burdens on our state along with severe restrictions on the freedom Missourians now enjoy when it comes to choosing their own health plans, Cunningham and Jones should be applauded and encouraged to pursue their legislation. Democrats in Jefferson City should enthusiastically support their legislation come January.
John R. Stoeffler
Ballwin
To The Editor:
I had a discussion the other day with a co-worker whom I consider both my mentor and my friend. What I heard come from his lips not only disappointed me, it equally frightened me.
We had digressed into a discussion on President Barack Obama’s pending health care address and I was surprised to hear that my friend not only voted for Obama, but did so with the express conviction that the Republicans could not accomplish reform and my friend was interested in getting something for himself, namely health care in terms of his retirement years.
When I countered that one of the current bills did not prevent coverage for illegal aliens and could promote federally-funded abortion, my friend responded with "What can one guy do?" He did not like it, but retirement health insurance was more important.
I argued about there being more at stake in this debate: the long-term cost; the government intervention; rationing; false claims of "competition". He said "I feel sorry for my kid, but I won't have to pay it; it will be 20 years before it comes due."
The next day, I read a column in the patriotpost.us, a Web-based resource which I highly recommend, and from which I excerpted and provide a few quotes from our Founding Fathers. They struck home and as is typical of our Founding Fathers’ statements, they express concepts so much more eloquently and directly than I ever possibly could.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin
"If you love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands, which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams
"If there must be trouble let it be in my day, that my child may have peace." -Thomas Paine
We are the proverbial frog in the pan of water set on the fire to boil. The assault on our liberties has been slow and steady; however, under this president, the heat has been turned up and the assault is being waged on multiple fronts - economic (bailouts, handouts, immense debt, sovereignity); social (healthcare, abortion, stem cell, education, activist judges); family (definition of marriage, easy divorce, Hollywood "icons'" lifestyles); religious (the U.S. is not a Christian nation, appeasement of terrorists, no school prayer, Pledge of Allegiance and other acts to remove God from our lives); safety (extending citizen rights to terrorists, undermining the CIA).
There is a liberal/progressive war being waged on the American way of life and many Americans have either drank too much of the Kool-aid to know better, have acquiesced to the inevitability of it all, or are simply looking out for No. 1. It is a very saddening and sobering situation.
Liberals offer "freebies," not necessarily at a cost to the recipient, but at a cost to someone; conservatives offer concepts, principles, and a basis from which success can be achieved, but as everyone knows, handouts are easier. How many people think this way?
Kudos to U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson for his outburst during Obama’s health care speech and calling him out for what he is, a liar. If we had real leadership in Washington, D.C., every Republican would have been standing and shouting in unison. Instead, they meekly hand-wave their bills when the president lies again when stating that they have offered no alternative proposals. One really needs to listen to his changing word selection as therein lies the truth - he always has an out.
I quote again from PatriotPost the final line of our Declaration of Independence:
"For the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor."
Our Founders sacrificed much, as have and do our men and women in uniform, for our way of life. Many, if not most, of our representatives and senators, it seems, have lost touch with the gift, honor and duty bestowed upon them by the people, to which they "solemnly swear, [to] support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic: [to] bear true faith and allegiance to the same, that [they] take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that [they] will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which [they] are about to enter: So help [them] God."
Thomas Jefferson wrote, ". ... Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God."
Democrats and Republicans alike are worried about protocol, decorum and sanctions regarding Rep. Wilson's calling out the president, while Obama denigrates and calls opponents of his plan liars and fear mongers with no alternatives; and all the while he and the great majority of them systematically destroy the very foundations of America. What hypocrisy.
Benjamin Franklin was once asked if the delegates had formed a republic or a monarchy. "A republic," he responded, "if you can keep it." I recognize that I am no Benjamin Franklin, but I simply ask, can we? If we are to do so, a bit of hell-raising certainly seems in order.
I close with another excerpt from Mark Alexander, publisher of the PatriotPost.us, one to both provide real hope and to contemplate: "I implore you to make no peace with oppression, and I leave you with these words of encouragement from the Father of our Nation, George Washington: ‘We should never despair. Our situation before has been unpromising and has changed for the better, so I trust, it will again. If new difficulties arise, we must only put forth new exertions and proportion our efforts to the exigency of the times.’"
Will we? I urge you to make your voice heard throughout the country with money, pen, paper, or keyboard and then vote for conservatives in 2010. I do not mind paying my fair share to get America back on track, but I want an America that I and the world respect, not that which this administration and his lapdog liberals have in mind.
Jon Schulte
Ballwin
Preserving freedom
To The Editor:
In a move right out of the old Soviet Union playbook, President Barack Obama attempted to prevent a news organization from being involved in a White House briefing. Luckily, recognizing the danger in allowing such dictatorial measures to be taken, the remaining major news outlets protested until Obama acquiesced and allowed for the freedoms guaranteed our press by the Constitution to be exercised.
Has Obama been spending too much time talking to Hugo Chavez or reading the philosophy of Mao?
Carl Schroeder
Wildwood
Fear and hate
To The Editor:
I do not understand how you can continue to print the kind of hate and lies that Tim Weber writes in his article, “Stupid is as stupid does.” It is one thing to have an opinion, but it is crossing the line when filled with lies that only incite fear and hate. Again, Weber has managed to write a completely fictional article based on his lack of intelligence.
What President Barack Obama was intending during his speech was to list the facts and goals of the current heath care reform plan. He had to do this not because he feels the American people are stupid, but due to the fact that there are many Republican leaders and the media trying to scare us with lies about the plan. They were not able to let us know during Town Hall meetings what the plan was about due to the fact that right-wing radicals like you would show up and start shouting lies.
You also mention another lie that the government would control how our children are treated when sick. This is not what the health care reform is about; it is about putting controls and oversight in place to make sure everyone gets the best care possible.
Perhaps you like the current plan we have today that health care CEOs and managers get to decide what kind of care our children get based on their profits. As an example, I recently was sick and required a prescription. My health insurance provider, without looking at my needs, determined that I did not need that medication and refused to pay. When I asked my doctor what would happen if I took a lesser medication, he indicated I could wind up in the hospital. I went ahead and paid out more than $500 on my own for the medication.
It is truly sad that a country as great as ours has one of the most expensive health care plans of any developed nation yet we are at the bottom when ranked on type and quality of care received.
It is not the American people who are stupid, it is just people like Weber and other leaders spreading fear and lies at every turn because they did not get their way in the last election. If you want to write about ways to help our country or offer suggestions to make the health care reform better, I would not have an issue, but this article is just pure fear and hate mongering.
Glenn Bujewski
St. Louis County
American protest
To the editor:
Before the name calling begins, I would like to say that the (Hwy.) K&N protests are a breath of fresh air. It has been wonderful and invigorating to drive past the protestors, wave to them and share a smile or two.
Do I agree with all they are protesting? No. But it was good to see Americans still have the will to stand up for what they believe and can do so without harsh, angry words and name calling.
Surely, it is only a matter of time before harsh liberals or harsh conservatives start getting into the picture and making a travesty of things. It’s very sad to think that just because you might disagree with someone, you feel you must call them a racist, un-American, communist, or whatever.
Let us not let that happen at K&N. Keep it uplifting, with people of all sides having a chance to speak their minds and carry their signs. It seems so very American.
R. Woodham
St. Charles County
About healthcare
To the editor:
Private insurance and for-profit healthcare providers are motivated to maximize profits by charging as much as possible, and to reduce costs by providing as little healthcare as possible.
Of the approximately $2.4 trillion spent annually for health care in America, fully $800 billion goes for the activities of the for-profit insurer-based system. This means one of every three healthcare dollars is siphoned off for corporate profits, stock options, executive bonuses, advertising, marketing and administrative cost.
The cost of giving patients the choice of using a public insurance option is more than offset by the savings from not using our mandatory failed for-profit corporate insurance system. We can’t do any worse than the current failed system (the most expensive in the world while ranking an embarrassing Third World-style 37th – World Health Organization report.)
The insurance cartel is fighting tooth and nail against any type of government insurance plan (such as expanded Medicare) because they know once consumers experience better healthcare while paying lower premiums, it’s all over.
So, instead of providing a better “product” to deal with a public option competitor’s superior product, the big insurance companies have put a call on all the politicians they own to enforce a government-mandated corporate insurance monopoly.
Not only is antitrust law dead, but corporate monopolization has been made a fundamental right to be protected and mandated by government. (This is) strange behavior by those who supposedly want to “get government off our backs.”
The majority of the American people support a public option, which will either allow companies that cannot compete to fail, or force them to succeed. We should show them the same mercy they showed millions of Americans forced into bankruptcy by their exorbitant rates, denials, restrictions of coverage, and predatory collection practices.
About 1.5 million families lose their homes to foreclosure every year due to high medical costs. (American Journal of Medicine, May 2009.)
No one should have to lose their home in America because they were sick.
Jim Karll
O'Fallon
Remember veterans
To the editor:
This Veterans Day we remember, we celebrate and we honor all the men and women who served in our country’s armed services. Our veterans were called to serve their country, and they answered that call. Veterans were the liberators, the freedom fighters, the protectors of our country, and they were and are the architects of our way of life.
The majority of our veterans will be working at the civilian jobs on Veterans Day, not getting the day off. It is so typical for these warriors who proudly served their country and then joined the civilian work force to be providing for their families and keeping our country’s economy strong.
When we veterans were sworn into the military, we took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to bear true faith and allegiance to the same. Even in retired or honorable discharge status we still live by that oath. Our veterans, while serving our country, had instilled in them core values, principles and morals, the values of honor, courage and commitment. These core values became second nature, because we knew that American and its Armed Forces have always stood on the side of what’s right and decent.
We learned the meaning of team work and the necessity of depending on each other, for we all knew that there would come a time when discipline, trust and dependence on our fellow soldier could mean the difference between life and death. We placed in each other’s hands, our very lives. The combined strength that developed from that trust makes us the greatest fighting force the world has ever known.
We fought for freedom and traveled to many distant shores to free its people and their countries from their oppressors.
These are some of the principles and values we hold as veterans and why our love of our country is unconditional. We do not always like the direction our country seems to be headed, but we are determined to keep it strong and free.
This day, Nov. 11, is set aside to honor and respect our veterans for their service to our country.
As a veteran and in my capacity as director of elections for St. Charles County I am privileged to help our citizens participate in one of our most cherished freedoms, the freedom to vote. I encourage you to exercise this freedom, show your pride in the men and women that fought and served to give you this freedom…honor them by voting.
Rich Chrismer
St. Charles County Director of Elections
Class warfare
To The Editor:
A couple of election cycles ago, a politician was accused of trying to soak the rich. He denied the charge saying, "Why would I want to soak the rich? I've been trying to join them my whole life."
Most of us have been trying to join them. We work hard every day hoping not only to catch up, but also get ahead. This is what Americans do and what we have done for more than 200 years. Others from around the world are drawn here to do the same.
Why, then, do we allow our political leaders to use success as a four-letter word in order to drive a wedge between people of different occupations and incomes? In recent years, people earning $250,000 per year were declared rich but not included in the political definition of "working Americans" or "working families." Really? First of all, let me say I do not make $250,000. I would like to join that club some day. I have always wanted to join the club that was just above where I was at the time.
Thank God that in America it is possible for everyone. I would hate to think though, if I ever get there, I would no longer be considered a "working American." I will bet any family earning that kind of money and those earning far more work hard and sacrifice a great deal to stay at that level. Oftentimes it is both husband and wife working long hours in difficult careers or running a family business to earn that kind of living.
Yet we allow our political leaders to convince us that such people do little for what they earn.
We also hear companies demonized because they dare to earn a profit. It is the sports team owners when the players are talking of strikes. It is Exxon when gas prices were high at the pumps. And it is insurance companies now that the government wants to take over health care. The President recently mentioned in a speech, with great distain, that "health insurance companies were reporting record profits." Why is this a bad thing? Would we be happier if they were all appearing before Congress needing bailout money to avoid bankruptcy?
The government forced the chief executive officer of General Motors (GM) to resign because GM had been run so poorly. Has the "class warfare" button become so effective on us that we no longer recognize when we are being led around by our emotional noses? The button is pushed and we are made to feel disgusted watching companies being bailed out and made equally disgusted because others do not need to be.
Are we not hoping that GM, Chrysler, CitiGroup, AIG and others return to record profits so they can repay the tens of billions of dollars they were given?
Should the government not just hope for it, but believe it to be possible? If it is not possible, the money should have never been given in the first place.
I have had people say of reported record profits that "$3 billion profit is too much." This is said without regard for the amount of revenue it takes to generate such a profit or the amount of capital at risk.
We all hope for annual raises from our employers, right? Where do we think raises come from? They come from the company's ability to pay them from higher profits. Do we not all want our 401K plan to grow in value? That does not happen when the companies we have invested in report meager profits or break even. Even a traditional pension plan like the railroad, teachers and firefighters depend on the companies that those funds are invested in is "reporting record profits."
A great deal of charity given takes place because record profits encourage it.
Class warfare is used to differentiate between "Wall Street and Main Street." There is no difference. Main Street is Wall Street. Every one of us has a stake of some kind in Wall Street. It could be that traditional pension plan, our own 401K plan, the dividends that Grandma and Grandpa live on, and even our insurance policies on cars, houses and our lives. The premiums are not put in a sock until a claim is filed. They are invested so that they grow in order to provide adequate coverage for all the policyholders.
Our politicians are great at touting the virtues of the entrepreneurial spirit. Until someone actually dares achieve it.
Do not allow clever politicians to get you angry because someone else has achieved a degree of success greater than your own or when you achieve it, they will anger others into taking a bigger piece of yours.
Mark Surgener
St. Louis County
Represent us
To The Editor:
The vocal town hall meetings, frustrations expressed by voters, and grass roots protests we have witnessed in this country over the past few months are simply manifest of politicians who no longer work to represent the people, but rather primarily work to maintain their own positions of power and prestige.
On both sides of the aisle and in the oval office, we no longer have statesmen and stateswomen who have made the sacrifice to go to Washington to represent their constituents. Instead, Washington is replete with career politicians whose daily focus is to get one step closer to re-election by pandering to whatever person, industry or special interest group they feel will provide them with the most votes or campaign contributions.
In the meantime, the people left on the outside looking in are the very taxpaying citizens who elected these "representatives" to office.
Often displaying an arrogant and dismissive attitude, our president, congressmen and senators set themselves up as superiors, lording over their "minions" and forcing upon them their personal ideology, while ignoring the will of the very people who put them into office and who are, in fact, their bosses.
The people are tired of out-of-touch, self-centered career politicians who ignore the constitutional limitations ascribed to the federal government, throw away the taxpayers’ hard-earned money on one folly after another, and generally act with a reckless lack of accountability.
It is time that the people enforce their own term limits by cleaning out the House and Senate of any and all incumbent candidates during the next elections and elect real statesmen and stateswomen. Maybe then our representatives with turn their attention back to the people.
Carl Schroeder
Wildwood
