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Editor,
I am very concerned about our entire political system, Democrats and Republicans alike. But before everyone in the Republican camp gets too excited about Paul Ryan being chosen as Romney’s vice presidential candidate, I suggest we pay attention to people like Wendell Potter, former vice president of corporate communications at CIGNA, one of the United States’ largest health insurance companies. In June 2009, he testified against the HMO industry in the U.S. Senate as a whistleblower. He is now Senior Fellow on Health Care for the Center for Media and Democracy in Madison, Wis.
He recently wrote a most comprehensive and thoughtful article in The Huffington Post entitled: “Path to prosperity? For many senior citizens, VP pick Ryan’s plan would be path to the poorhouse.”
I am simply pointing out that even though we belong to one political party or another, we must each search out the truth about programs and proposed legislation. And Paul Ryan’s entry into the picture shines a very bright spotlight on the drastic changes being proposed for our present Medicare system.
We should not throw the baby out with the bath water just because we are experiencing a long, long recovery from, as Robert Reich suggests in an Aug. 11 article:
“The G.W. Bush era that told America there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and led us into a devastating war, turned a $5 trillion projected budget surplus into a $6 trillion deficit; gave the largest tax cut in generations to the richest Americans in history; handed out a mountain of corporate welfare to the oil and gas industry, pharmaceutical companies, and military contractors like Halliburton; and turned a blind eye to Wall Street shenanigans that led to the worst financial calamity since the Great Crash of 1929 and then persuaded Congress to bail out the Street with the largest taxpayer-funded giveaway of all time.”
We need to put our dearly held political preferences aside and be alert and informed on the issues. Our choices have profound effect upon our future as a nation.
Bob McClellan
Polson
