NECESSARY TOOL
Use reconciliation, pass health care reform
Reconciliation as a means to ensure an up-or-down vote on health care reform in the Senate is justified. Remember, the House and Senate already passed separate bills, and these differ greatly in their content. Reform opponents have spent more than $1 million daily on advertisements and Tea Party rallies to scare and confuse voters.
Those who think reconciliation is new, or by some twisted logic believe that it signifies the end of democracy, need to learn American history. The GOP has used reconciliation on 16 occasions during my adult life, including for sweeping welfare reform. Health care reform is desperately needed to refocus our economy and establish a vibrant future. If reconciliation is the only path forward, so be it.
RICHARD ZEYEN, FALCON HEIGHTS
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President Obama said last week that he was open to four new Republican proposals on health care legislation, a gesture of bipartisanship meant to jump-start his stalled drive to overhaul the system. So when you take those four good ideas and insert them into a bill that is laden with bad ideas, what's the result? A bill loaded with bad ideas and four good ideas. Please start over. You never build a house on top of a bad foundation.
MIKE MCLEAN, RICHFIELD
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In 1966, my Austrian grandmother visited us and firmly announced that America was an uncivilized country because it didn't have national health insurance. Forty-four years later, here I sit looking at the opinion page ("Charting America's health care conundrum," Feb. 28) and note that Austria spends exactly half as much per person on health care as the United States, yet life expectancy there is nearly three years longer. Other health statistics track the same disparity between the extraordinary amount Americans spend on health and the results they get.
