May 19, 2009
What are lessons of Healthy Howard?
A single payer health care system is the only solution.
NotableMA single payer will face the same problems the multiple private payers of today face - doctors terrified of being sued ordering expensive and unnecessary tests to stave off malpractice attorneys; patients who want approval and payment for every technological advancement that comes around so that they can be saved from the jaws of death; hospitals that have become Meccas of costly, invasive procedures because patients who ignore prevention are the norm - and only pricey interventions can save them when they are admitted with radical problems.
Those who preach prevention don't understand this is not appealing even to the public because personal discipline, time, effort and health literacy are its essential components.
Even if we mandate that every working person should pay to make a single payer system possible, it will face the same crisis that now besets Medicare if each individual in our society refuses to see his own stake in the system.
Usha Nellore
Notre Dame was well represented
President Obama did his usual job of delivering a truly inspirational speech at Notre Dame on Sunday. It should also be noted that the introduction to President Obama's speech by Father John Jenkins, president of Notre Dame, was equally impressive.
Father Jenkins noted the controversy surrounding President Obama's appearance and reaffirmed the role of Notre Dame as a Catholic institution. Father Jenkins suggested that respect and civility must accompany any discussion of moral issues, and he lauded President Obama for his outreach to the poor and marginalized.
The rhetoric of some of the U.S. bishops has not been inspiring. Catholics deserve the kind of leaders represented by Father Jenkins.
Edward McCarey McDonnell, Baltimore
Vozzella column a farce
It is reassuring to know that despite the cutbacks in coverage, The Sun can still have journalists such as Laura Vozzella working on years-old matrimonal items involving local semi-notables ("Call me nosy - Laura Lippman did, on TV," May 17). The Sun's priorities rival those diligent crew members who achieved much with the Titanic's deck furniture in the vessel's closing moments.
Also, Ms. Vozzella's column was unnecessarily skeptical about our reasons for declining publicity regarding a private ceremony. We were specifically asked by John Waters not to make mention of his services as he does not wish to be engaged often as a minister. Until The Sun made the matter known, we honored the request; the fact that Mr. Waters, upon being queried, was more forthcoming did not, in our minds, absolve us of our promise. That Ms. Vozzella continues to deny the ethic of giving and keeping one's word, choosing instead to see a hypocrisy of ex-reporters declining to offer up their personal life is, well, intellectually embarrassing.
Laura Lippman covered poverty and Baltimore County for The Sun. I covered criminal justice issues as part of a projects team. Neither the poverty beat nor the projects team now exists, and the Baltimore County bureau has moved downtown and is a shell of itself. Yes, we were once prying reporters, but for purposes that make a farce not only of Ms. Vozzella's pursuits but also of her equivocal claims of hypocrisy.
David Simon, Baltimore
