Public Employee Press

Letters to the editor

Proud of DC 37 for backing Thompson

To me, Lillian Roberts is a genius. I went to a DC 37 Community Association meeting and heard her say don’t believe the polls, which claimed Mayor Layoff (Bloomberg) would win by 18 percent.

He won by less than five points, so our leader was right again when nobody else was. I wish I could have seen the sad look on Bloomberg’s face.

Bloomberg would have lost except that he bought off so many of the Democrats and ministers in town. Too many of them showed that they really belong to the oldest profession (and I don’t mean preaching).

I am proud of Lillian Roberts and my union for standing up for the candidate who stood up for city workers and the middle class. I am even prouder that when we put our “people power” up against Bloomberg’s billions, we almost won.

—Mary Jones
Local 1549

Health care naysayer misses the point

I’d like to respond to the “Health Care Reform Now” article in the September 2009 PEP. I hope the USA is not so quick to move to government-run care. Yes, our care may be more expensive on a per capita basis. However, new drugs and treatments disproportionally are introduced in the U.S. According to the Karolinska Institute, the U.S. “has been the country of first launch for close to half of the oncology (cancer) drugs in the last 11 years.”

A 2007 study found that the five-year cancer survival rate was 55.8 percent in Europe and 62.9 percent in the U.S.

Sometimes when nations with socialized systems have a long wait for elective surgery, they subsidize or contract out such surgery to a freer-market nation. Hospitals in British Columbia send cardiac bypass patients to Seattle.

Your argument that we need a government-run system to keep insurance companies honest is backward. It took Federal Express and UPS to get the U.S. Post Office to bring greater innovation, not the reverse.

Rates of illness and infant mortality are not valid measures of comparison, as there is no universal way of measuring infant mortality, and Americans have higher rates of obesity and risky behaviors.

The often-cited number of 45 million uninsured Americans is inflated with illegal aliens, Medicaid-eligibles who wait to apply until they need it, and individuals who could afford coverage but choose voluntarily not to purchase it.

—Steven Kalka
Computer Specialist, Local 2627

Editor’s note: Like Brother Kalka, my father used to rant about the evils of socialized medicine — until he got very sick and the government-run Medicare program paid for everything. It saved him from having to make the cruel choice between paying outrageous medical bills and paying for food.

While you may quibble about the exact number of the uninsured, there are clearly tens of millions of working people with no medical coverage and no medical care. While this nation can well afford to include them, many of them die for lack of care.

“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane,” said Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The problem reform will fix is that Americans pay more for health care and get worse care, because too much of our money goes into profits for the wealthy insurance industry.

Correction

Local 1549 member Amanda Sanks took the photograph of U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, Local 1549 President Eddie Rodriguez and Local 768 President Fitz Reid that PEP published on page 4 of the October/November issue. The photo credit was mistakenly omitted.