REFORMS SAVE LIVES

AS A FOURTH-YEAR MEDICAL STUDENT at the University of Virginia, I've already seen patients who have been financially ruined by medical bills and patients who put their lives at risk because they are unable to pay for the care they desperately need.

Every day your ordinary citizens, and my patients, confront a choice between paying their bills on time and caring for their health. This has to stop now.

The health care bills now before Congress are imperfect, but they are at least a step in the right direction.

To our representatives: If you don't have a better bill on the table right now, get behind the current legislation.

Delays in reform aren't measured in months or years but in lives.

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Politics of hope

Re 'Keeping calm and carrying on sent McDonnell to the top,' Kerry Dougherty's Nov. 5 column about the failure of fear and despair to win votes, was right on the mark.

Republican challenger John Amiral, opposing Del. Paula Miller, and independent Doug Knack, opposing Commissioner of the Revenue Sharon McDonald, both used negative accusations against the incumbents. It was nasty, only partially true and very misleading. And, more importantly, it didn't work.

Future candidates, beware.

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The governor's calling

The front page of Thursday's Pilot quotes Gov.-elect Bob McDonnell saying, 'I will govern as I campaigned.' I hope that does not mean that my quietude will be interrupted numerous times each day for the next four years by phone calls from the governor, his family and his friends asking me to approve or agree with whatever he is considering that day.

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Too few campaign ads

Re: 'GOP sweep,' Nov. 4: Campaigns are like cookie-recipe competitions. The best cookies win the prize. Bob McDonnell's recipe seemed perfect, but Creigh Deeds' recipe contained some flaws, especially the lack of advertising spots in Hampton Roads.

During the first half of the campaign, I saw numerous ads about Deeds, but as the campaign drew nearer to the end, they decreased in frequency.

Though Deeds was mostly concentrating on Northern Virginia and places where Democrats dominate, I think his staff should have recognized earlier they were not getting the results they intended and should have spent more money advertising in more places to maximize his votes.

Also, had Deeds not supported closing the gun-show loophole, he would have kept a large amount of votes.

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Truth-tracker blind spot

I would like to comment on how the local media impact local elections. Every morning before the elections, when I turned on my TV, I saw the same commercial for a local candidate that referred to the WAVY News 10 truth-tracker.The so-called truth tracker portrayed Ron Villanueva, a Virginia Beach City Council member running for the House, as a liar who missed too many council meetings.

The report states he missed 105 council meetings (in total or in part). I point this out because there is a difference between missing entire meetings and missing parts. When confronted, Villanueva says he has not missed in total that many meetings. He is not given the opportunity to address the meetings he missed in part.

The media twisted his words or failed to allow him a rebuttal and simply called him a liar. I would expect the station that is supposed to be on my side to be unbiased and present what people say in a fair and just way. They should not twist the truth into an opinionated truth. It's their job to report the truth. Let me decide on my own. Be on my side; don't dictate it.

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Pre-dating history

I usually like the creative ways columnist Kerry Dougherty demonstrates her points, but she got a little too inventive when writing about the dawn of standard time in the U.S. in 1918 ('Enjoy falling back if there's time after all the resetting,' Nov. 1).

She stated that, in 1918, people had more time to 'relax and listen to radio reports about the end of the war ...' That would not have been possible, as the first commercial radio broadcast in the U.S. didn't happen until 1920, well after the end of World War I.

Kerry shouldn't feel too bad about creatively situating history. On a post-election newscast, a CNN reporter said that the Democrats' winning of the congressional seat in New York's 23rd district was the first time the Democrats have prevailed there since the end of the Civil War in 1872. Of course, the end of that war happened in Virginia in 1865.

To slightly adjust an old admonition: People are entitled to their own views of history but not to their own facts about history.

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Eager for Christmas

'Premature Christmas' (letters, Nov. 4) complained about the early Christmas decorations on display throughout Hampton Roads.

My wife and I made comments when we noticed the first Christmas commercials prior to Halloween. I could barely contain my excitement.

Christmas is a wonderful time of year, my favorite, and the displays help usher in the season of giving. To the writer, I say, do not get lost in the sea of commercialism; enjoy making plans to be with loved ones. The earlier the spirit of the season, the better. Merry Christmas!

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Right track for Pilot

THERE MUST BE snow falling in Satan's kingdom, for today The Pilot came out in opposition to the whole batch of Democrat health-care reform proposals ('Experiments in health care,' editorial, Nov. 2).

For all the right reasons, too, as the editorial board wrote: 'Instead of trying to decide precisely how the nation's health care should be structured in every hill and hollow, Washington should get out of the way. It should strip away the anachronistic rules and featherbedding, find a way to ease the bureaucracy and legal fears, force insurers to actually compete and let medicine be medicine again, in as many ways as there are states and communities.'

The snowfall may not yet be ice. But welcome back, our Downtown Font of Knowledge.

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False comparison

Re 'Insurance profits don't live up to critic's claims,' news, Oct. 26: To compare profits made by health insurance companies (which deal by and large with alleviating the misery of sick people) to the profits made on common merchandise is immoral. A person does not choose to get sick; it is not comparable to the same individual choosing to purchase a product because he or she likes it.

Quoting a profit margin as a percentage is meaningless when not accompanied by the actual profit in dollars. Assume for this argument that half of the citizens now have a health insurance plan underwritten by commercial providers and that the average cost is $800 per month. The yearly premiums paid out for that service would be $1.44 trillion.

Even if the 2.2 percent profit margin referred to in the story is calculated, this would amount to almost $3.2 billion in profits. That is pretty good money for any enterprise.

Good enough apparently for the health insurance industry to pour millions of dollars into the campaign coffers of members of Congress who have not indicated their support for business as usual.

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Health insurance profits

As the country enters the home stretch in the debate on health care reform, I recommend that all taxpayers and voters examine a few quarterly earning statements. According to factcheck.org, second-quarter profits reported by the country's largest health insurance companies were as follows: United Health Group, $859 million; WellPoint, $693 million; CIGNA, $435 million; Aetna, $347 million; Humana Inc., $282 million; Health Net, $40 million, and Coventry Health Care, $18 million.

With those sums of money at stake, it is understandable that the health insurance industry is fervently guarding the status quo. (OK, the companies have agreed to standardize forms to make it easier for hard-working, middle-class Americans to fork over more money.) These profits, while good for stockholders, are not so good for the American people.

The public option, while not perfect, would give consumers a choice. When consumers have choices, the market responds with competitive pricing.

Without the public options, United Health Care will continue to rake in $859 million per quarter, and Americans will continue to be denied their most basic needs by their own government.

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