Deception at play in bailout and health care legislation

When car manufacturers were bailed out and their executives got million-dollar bonuses, that was a real stab in the heart of America.

Fact is, any big company projects a next year’s earnings based on projected profits. If it makes $10 billion, was projected to make $12 billion and the cost to do business was $5 billion, then it didn’t lose money. It just didn’t make what was projected. But we are told it lost money.

When we bailed out those car manufacturers, big business deception was at play. In blackmailing our government, telling them how bad they would look, they got paid. Overhead and extravagant living were killing their profits. That is how things are. I bet promises were made to the Obama people for future backing of them.

Anyone who praises Obama for bailing those car manufacturers out doesn’t understand what really took place.

Obamacare is another way government wants to control us. If they cared that much, they would enact laws and rules for the hospital, insurance and medical world, preventing their making enormous profits off us and forcing lower overheads and profits.

For many years our government has battled within itself for power — who will have it? Our problems are solved by putting a Band-Aid on them to look good to us, but the underlying problem is never healed or fixed, and it comes back even worse later. I don’t see either party capable of making great decisions to improve our life, our America, as is. The air needs to be knocked out of their sails and bring them back down to earth with a reality check.

The first truth told to us by our government was by the writer of Obamacare, who referred to “the stupidity of the American voter.” That is how we are looked at.

— Arthur Liles

China Grove

Not so affordable after all

I was wrong thinking that the Affordable Care Act would provide affordable health insurance coverage for lower and middle income taxpayers. Despite again receiving a sizable tax credit subsidy, our 2015 health insurance premium has nearly doubled from 2014 for the same policy. It now seems to me that the only real winners of the ACA are the health insurance companies, for-profit hospitals/medical centers, pharmaceutical  companies, and medical device  manufacturing  companies — all at taxpayer expense.

We have the most expensive healthcare system in the world and our health outcomes are less than nearly all other developed countries with much cheaper costs. When will citizens wake up and insist that our government and health-related businesses really address how to control the ever-escalating health care costs in our country? We cannot afford to keep pretending that our health care system is not broken. It is broken and will turn us into a Third World country if we cannot fix it.

— Fred Krusemark

Salisbury