Congress can do better than this bad health plan

I do understand the desire to reform the current health-care system. What concerns me is the careless manner in which Congress is addressing this critical issue. I believe that Congress can do better.

I agree that changes to the health-care system are necessary. We should provide individuals and small groups the opportunity to become part of larger pools, providing them access to affordable health-care programs. We should allow doctors who follow best practices to no longer have to worry about open-ended liability.

We should promote prevention and wellness programs and the use of technology to reduce waste and improve efficiency.

I have lived in England and can emphatically state that is not the health care I want. If it takes us three weeks to see a specialist in this country, we become concerned. In England, I know of cases where friends waited for over a year to see a specialist.

Would you be willing to watch your loved one wait a year? Have you ever dealt with a government agency on any issue? Do you really want to trust your health care to the bureaucrats in Washington or a state legislature whose years of bad decisions have resulted in 13 percent unemployment?

I don’t.

Congress can do better, yet the members of our congressional delegation have already made up their minds. They don’t have a voice of their own; they are blindly following party leadership. What do they care? They are not going to be on the same plan. We will not witness leadership by example; they don’t want to wait in line if their loved one needs health care.

Congress can do better. Let’s hope there are more in Congress who have the courage to speak for the people not the party.

John T. Biddick

Jamestown

Too good for them

The one thing that the Kaylee Dyguard case showed us is that we need to reform how we deal with child abductors.

I hope Robert Croft and his guillotine start a movement (“What he would do to child killers,” news, Nov. 2)! Obviously the current penalties are not working.

I hope Robert Croft’s symbolic statement starts a popular uprising that changes laws and protects our children. A guillotine is too merciful for those criminals. A more appropriate penalty would be to chain them up in a prison and let the men do to them what they do to little children.

Nancy LaRue

Cranston

Should’ve called Laffey

Who got us to where we are today in Rhode Island? Is it the unions? Is it the failed Carcieri administration?

We are told the speaker of the House of Representatives is the most powerful politician in Rhode Island. He controls the votes in the House and how the budget is allocated. Whoever controls the money, controls everything, right?

Not so fast!

The speaker has to deal with the Senate. Without its ratification, there is no bill on the way to the governor’s office. The ultimate veto power in the Senate is union control. Any legislation that has any relationship to the unions’ interest — state workers, teachers, correctional officers, city and town workers, Twin Rivers and trade unions involved in state work — is subject to the Senate’s veto.

Governor Carcieri has been unable to accomplish his agenda. While other Republican governors have, Carcieri’s inability to compromise with the Democrat leadership caused the biggest failure of any governor in my lifetime.

And I’m 71.

The governor failed to put together a staff with the political skills and brainpower to devise and implement the approaches Rhode Island needed to avoid the problems it faces. One after another of his plans had to be halted because of problems he and his team failed to foresee.

Why didn’t he call on former Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey to help him fix the problems? Laffey, who fixed Cranston, did make the offer more than once, only to be snubbed by the governor.

Gov. Bruce Sundlun and his administration were able to pull Rhode Island out of the biggest deficit in history in 1991. He pulled in the best and brightest. He did not fear smarter people helping him get the job done.

Warning to the voters: If you continue to elect General Assembly leaders who have union ties and a governor who is enthusiastically supported by the unions, you will continue to bring about the demise of our way of life in Rhode Island.

Joe “The Barber” Muschiano

North Providence

Gay-marriage ping-pong

Now that Maine has joined California in voting down legalized marriage for homosexual persons, I wish to state my concerns and pledge my prayers for those children, men and women affected. No matter where one stands with regard to this issue the ping-ponging of persons’ lives by signing into law and then voting out same-sex marriage is unconscionable. It is not a “good thing.”

The resulting “now you’re married, now you’re not; now you’re equal, now you’re not” is beginning to have an abusive and harassing feel to it. As protection under the law for married homosexual persons is once again taken up in Rhode Island, I ask the judicial and legislative branches of government here to please pay attention. For some this crusade is like wheeling and dealing with their lives; this see-sawing and legal-not-legal game has the look of a kind of sexual abuse (the damaging of a person with regard to his or her sexual life).

This also has an adverse effect on the children of same-sex parents who can use as much emotional and economic protection these days as anyone else. This is unless one of their parents happens to be an investment banker who has or will receive a multi-million-dollar severance bonus from the federal government.

The attempt by those labeled lawless, immoral and licentious to connect with laws and licenses to assume a more responsible and accountable place in their various societies should be looked at very carefully. And if Governor and Mrs. Carcieri as well as other officials exhibited the same passion for our economic climate and double-digit unemployment as they do for preaching against illegal immigrants, single-parent families and same-sex marriages, we might make some good progress here in Rhode Island.

The Rev. Michael J. Menna

Providence

The writer is pastor of St. Ann Catholic Church.

Bishop Tobin should recuse himself

Bishop Thomas Tobin doesn’t want taxes to pay for abortions? Since when does the Roman Catholic Church pay taxes? Until it does, he should keep his comments confined to the pulpit, and not try to inflict his beliefs on others. He is trying to coerce politicians, who are trying to care for the entire population of citizens, not just the bishop’s flock. Bishop Tobin needs to realize that he is a small fish in a shrinking pond.

Bill Siderski

Portsmouth