Major reform needed
BENTONVILLE — I attended U.S. Rep. John Boozman's town-hall meeting on health-care reform in Bella Vista on Friday and came away with two main thoughts. One, how have we as a nation allowed health care to become the mess that it is? And two, based on comments from Boozman, his panel members and the general audience, nothing is going to solve this problem short of universal health care. It is too big, too complex, too political to think that fixing one or two things (tort reform, portable insurance, breaking insurance "monopolies," etc.) is going to do any good in the long run.
Additionally, I found it sad to hear the same old mantras repeated or implied, statements we have heard for decades about how terrible our government is, that it can't be trusted. Boozman even said it is abusive. Perhaps if we reflected a bit about how much the government does for us and how, through it, we became a great nation, then maybe we could look at the situation more positively and think about how we as citizens could help the government solve this issue instead of fighting it.
Finally, I would like to challenge the comments made about Dr. Ezekiel Rahm. Boozman and a panel member singled out Rahm as the architect of "death panels," rationed care and other "spine-chilling" ideas. You should know that Dr. Rahm is one of the nation's leading opponents, not proponents, of legalized elderly euthanasia. Start with Wikipedia, then go from there to learn the truth about Dr. Rahm's research and publications.
Spreading falsehoods, I should think, is not going to help solve anything. Shame on you.
Bob Virden / Bella Vista