Readers Write for Saturday, Aug. 15

I'm 60, with five years to go before Medicare. Any health insurer can refuse coverage for any serious disease, which could bankrupt me, take my house and destroy my retirement. Every one of us -- insured and uninsured alike -- desperately needs reform now.

But members of Congress instead allow a small minority of angry, rude, paranoid, deliberately misinformed citizens to hijack town meetings, and thus the news, drowning out truth and reason. This is not the American Dream. It's the American Nightmare.

MATHEWS HOLLINSHEAD, ST. PAUL

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When I graduated from medical school in 1967, nothing could be done for a heart attack victim except bed rest. There were not many long-term cancer survivors. Extremely premature babies had little chance.

The present cost of care is not due to waste but to our ability to do more. It is mathematically impossible to do more for more people at less cost, so the only possible solution to the equation is rationing.

Those who claim that encouraging living wills cannot possibly have any unintended consequences do not look at Holland, where tender-hearted elderly request assisted death "so I won't be a burden to my family" and a significant proportion are euthanized by the doctor's decision alone without a request from them or their family.

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As we know, health care is quite good in this country. However, the policies and actions of health insurance companies caused me to have to turn down a job interview this week. You see, I was laid off in July. I needed to interview for that job! But because the job does not offer benefits, and because I have preexisting conditions and can't get insurance on my own, I wasn't even able to apply.

We need health insurance reform now.

GAIL HARLESS, WYOMING

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Prevention is not just (or primarily) about more tests and more drugs; it is about healthier living. Healthier living will prevent more diseases and save money -- for individuals and society.

Let's create a health care system that rewards doctors for encouraging patients to make healthier choices, rather than the current system that pays doctors more for authorizing expensive (sometimes unnecessary) tests and procedures.

DAN GOODRICH, EXCELSIOR

While we're on the conversation of how to get to airport terminals, how to paint airplane tails or not, how to get off idled airplanes on the tarmac, I'd like to throw my two cents in.

The woman's recorded voice at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport is British and oddly out of place. We should be proud of our Minnesota voices. I suggest that it be Garrison Keillor's voice that says, "Watch your step," and "Please move to the back of the tram."

How is it that 6,000 people under the age of 18, who don't even pay their own living expenses, get a free pass into the PGA tournament? What about the 6,000 of us unemployed or working part-time who can't even afford to buy a ticket? This is age discrimination, pure and simple.

Why not lower the price of the tickets for everyone, so more disadvantaged people over the age of 18 could afford to attend?