EDITOR’S NOTE: This week’s historic votes on health care reform drew a tremendous number of letters from Trib readers. We’re devoting this space to publish some of our readers’ views on the subject.

* * *

Twice recently we’ve been asked by writers in the Trib to compare medical care to groceries. That raises some serious questions. No one in America has grocery insurance, yet farmers, ranchers, supermarkets and everyone between are able to produce food in abundance at prices most people can afford. Why?

However, health care providers cannot produce medical care at prices most people can afford. Why not?

Perhaps it’s because we treat medical care as a right and food as a commodity. What would happen if we really did have grocery insurance? We wouldn’t care how much we bought or what it cost because someone else would be paying the bill. Demand would skyrocket, supermarket shelves would be empty, and prices would explode, which is what’s happening now in health care. If it’s a right, we cannot be denied and someone else is obligated to pay.

Grocery stores charge prices that most people can afford. Medical care providers, however, don’t charge prices their patients are able to pay. Instead they charge prices insurance companies and the government are willing to pay. And that means insurance companies and bureaucrats call the shots and the whole process is distorted. 

Aside from making insurance companies compete, let’s make the health care providers compete. Then maybe we’ll see prices posted in lobbies and fliers in the Sunday Trib advertising specials on gallbladder surgery. If the free market works for food, it can work for medicine.

David B. Anderson

Waco

* * *

The health care bill has been passed. Everyone who is unhappy with it needs to please get over it. This country needs to move on. Let’s get back to being Americans together and stop throwing bricks through windows and hurling racial epithets.

I’m ashamed of my country right now. Can you imagine what other countries are thinking of us?

David Daithi Fisher

Bellmead

* * *

Our country is dangerously heading in the wrong direction. The purpose for which it was founded is radically being transformed. I don’t recognize it anymore.

What’s happening to us? President Barack Obama said he was offering “a ladder into the middle class.” What happened to earning your way in? Or do we just take it from those who did earn it?

We need to stand up for what’s right and what’s best for our country’s citizens. We need to return to an America where people worked hard, used money wisely, paid their debts and loved and cared for their neighbors. We need to return to being a country where our government officials have the interests of the people at heart and are guided by the Constitution.

Republican congressional candidate Rob Curnock believes in those things.

Jan Walters

McGregor

* * *

We have certainly strayed a long way from the vastly honorable Republican ideals of Jeannette Pickering Rankin, the first woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and Edmund Gibson Ross, who were part of my father’s Republican Party, and his father’s father’s Republican Party. They were Republicans who voted their conscience and for what they felt was right. Today these precious ideals have been uprooted and replaced by the narrow-minded, fear-mongering mentality of Republicans like Dick Cheney.

Congratulations, U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards. By voting against a national health care bill, you have successfully aligned yourself with a whole new group of voters like the Tea Party. Their most recent exploits include spitting in the face of those who disagreed with them, shouting racial slurs to black members of Congress and screaming epithets at openly gay U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, a Democrat from Massachusetts.

Ernest Franklin

Waco

* * *

On Tuesday morning, President Barack Obama signed the health care reform bill into law. If anyone thinks he or she is not going to be affected, read on.

Approximately one hour after the bill was signed, I had an appointment with my family physician, at which time I was told that he would not be treating anymore Medicare patients and that I would have to find another doctor.

I just want to point this out to all Medicare recipients because many of you will likely be in a similar situation soon.

Dan Pechacek

Waco

* * *

I continue to read letters from various people who claim to be unable to afford health care. I would wager that the actual number is much smaller than the 30 million claimed by the Democrats.

To all those who claim lack of affordability, please evaluate your priorities. How many of you have cell phones, computers, wear designer tennis shoes, drive a late-model car, eat out at expensive restaurants or smoke? Think about it.

David Calvert

Waco