To the Editor:
Delegate Plum makes much of the "morality" of the mockingly entitled Affordable Health Care Act (Connection, July 25-31, 2012). Invoking "morality" is a trusty recourse in the face of otherwise prohibitive drawbacks. An "act of human decency," it is called, as though this settled all argument. Costs be damned. Does anyone seriously believe, based on the record thus far, that the institution of nebulous "exchanges" will reduce health-care costs overall? Can there be any doubt if there have been over 1,000 waivers from this massive federal intrusion thus far that there will thousands more as "uncompensated care," in Delegate Plum's delicate phrase, theoretically disappears?
"We have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it." The bill that was rammed through by arm-twisting, bribery, and elementary chicanery and, as law, remains unread, understood even less, by just about everyone.
"A kinder and more decent society" in this "richest nation on earth" (although with a staggering public debt of $16 trillion!) is supposed to emerge from the extra $1.8 trillion in tax increases over the act's first two decades and the diversion of $500 billion from Medicare (already underfunded by an annual $300 billion, incidentally).
But then there are the children. Ah, those 26-year-old children! Folks in many countries are nearly dead from old age at 26, and they buy their own contraceptives!
Harry Locock
Reston