In a recent letter to the editor, Dr. Morris made some interesting points and posed a number of questions in the course of telling us of his discovery that asking questions and engaging in a dialogue had filled his need to continue to learn and broadened his perspective. As we grow older, these are the things that can add greatly to our lives.
Perhaps I can add something to the discussion. It is very well known that our two parties are so unable to compromise, and some of the members of each party are too interested in playing it safe and not antagonizing theirconstituents, that they are paralyzed. However, even though the president had a majority, he knew that they would not commit to a position that they knew their own supporters were divided on.
President Obama made a decision to pursue his quest for a law that would provide extensive reform to our wildly expensive, inefficient health care system, which excluded many from care. It was one of his campaign promises and he needed to start to fulfill one promise that he felt he could accomplish at a time when he had a majority.
He made his decision to use his political capital in this way. It was long overdue in the country. We were the only industrialized nation in the world without a universal health care system. Several presidents had advocated it, Theodore Roosevelt had been the first who seriously sought it in the early 20th century and Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman did as well. With all the faults built into the Affordable Care Act in order to appease many powerful factions, he succeeded.
Advocates such as I, along with many citizens, along with legions of outstanding physicians, joined together to advocate “single payer” healthcare, on the model of Medicare. The ACA was a disappointment in some ways but was accepted as a good start, and has already proven so.
More about this at another time.
The good doctor asks why some 100 bills were not brought to the floor of the Senate. I cannot possibly answer in detail but surmise that the Democrats were opposed to the contents. Of course, how many of them were serious, I cannot know. Suffice it to say that the Republicans made more than 30 attempts alone to repeal the ACA, so that may account for part of the rejections.
Regarding all the “proposals” from Romney/Ryan, if many of their speeches are an indication, many bills were either so seriously conservative or antithetical to Democratic opinion or so vague that they could not gain consideration by the majority. And added to the impossible ideas that defy the imagination, is Romney’s “Energy Plan”. To paraphrase many of the leading thinkers in this country, Romney’s proposal to drill in the Arctic, on public lands, in the ocean, and to explore all sources of natural gas, mine coal more intensively and run pipelines through great stretches of our land would pollute our water and our air, fry us, choke us, destroy our health and what is left of our natural beauty. He also wants to eliminate incentives for exploration of renewable sources of energy, water, wind, vegetation and solar.
There are many reasons for delay in approving projects. First, public and private objections to the project, the need for thorough review of all provisions in contracts and detailed specifications, evaluation of environmental impacts, approval of budgeting for the expenditures, investigation of the proposed vendors.
In addition, there often are limited resources to review all aspects of governmental budgets on all levels often do not provide for enough staff and expertise to get answers expeditiously. Leaving decisions to individual states, with all the influence they are subjected to, could be chaotic.
I challenge you to seek your own answers to your questions about the cost of fuel and the reasons for the rate of unemployment. I only would wish that you would start such a study with an open mind, looking for many non-ideological sources for your edification.
Esther Confino
New Hyde Park
