Residents talk about health care, Charles Manson and how to block “robo calls” in this week’s letters to the editor.
Move to single payer health
In response to Ronald M. Rolli’s Letter to the Editor, “We need better health care,” published in the Nov. 22 edition of the Northeast Times:
I believe that Medicare offers a model to achieve single-payer in partnership with the insurance companies.
Medicare Part C was enacted in 1997 but is not well known. It offered more coverage than Medicare Parts A and B together, at lower cost. Part-C plans can now cover drugs (Part D), too, and are called Medicare Advantage Plans. Private insurance companies with Medicare contracts offer them — essentially look-alikes to private HMO or PPO plans. But they are regulated by the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services. They give subscribers everything (always A & B, sometimes D: in-patient & outpatient, sometimes prescription, services) and go beyond (e.g., the Silver Sneakers benefit).
Nothing except the will to do it prevents our legislators from enacting what I’ll call “Medicare Part E,” to allow insurance companies to develop and market Part-C-type plans subsidized by the government, except these “Part E” plans would cover Americans before age 65.
Just as we see with Marketplace ACA plans, there are regional differences in Medicare Advantage Plan availability. Two key features to make “Part E” work are to ensure that everyone who holds a medical practice or testing license of any kind participates in “Part E” and that every insurer who offers workplace plans now must develop and offer at least two “Part E” plans (at least one with drug coverage).
Otherwise, there would be locales where providers would stay out of “Part E” plans in hope of charging higher prices privately. Even if employer-provided plans were allowed to continue, “Part E” plans would likely win out if priced properly simply because subscribers could change jobs without changing health insurance. “Part E” plans should have the same Special Enrollment Periods that Part C plans have for people who move to a different coverage area during the year.
Bernadette Freedman
Bustleton
Kick illegals out of the city
It’s time for Jim Kenney to get in step with Trump and the federal government on immigration or step out of office.
Jim Kenney is putting the people of Philadelphia in danger by letting illegal aliens stay in the city. I see too many examples of aliens doing harm to U.S. citizens.
Greg Sibla
Bridesburg
You can block ‘robo calls’
A new rule change at the Federal Communications Commission now makes it possible for phone companies to block many “robo calls” and phone scammers
The FCC has just adopted new rules that will allow your phone company to block some “robo calls” before they reach your phone.
The FCC’s press release states, “To combat these scams the new rules expressly authorize voice service providers to block robo calls that appear to be from telephone numbers that do not or cannot make outgoing calls, without running afoul of the FCC’s call completion rules.”
If you have ever been bothered by a robo call or a call from a fake IRS agent, no doubt this will be good news.
And while the rule is good news, it will not stop every robo call and it will not help unless the phone companies use the ruling and new technologies to block the scammers and robo calls.
Consumers who would like to have these calls blocked should call their phone company and ask how they can apply for the blocking technology.
Hopefully these new rules will help consumers come one step closer to putting an end to annoying robo calls once and for all.
City Councilman Brian O’Neill
Good riddance to Manson
It took 50 years to finally silence Charles Manson. As he once said to Diane Sawyer during an interview, “Being crazy meant something, nowadays everybody’s crazy.” What’s crazy is to have Manson live that long. And again, it’s the craziness of our judicial system for that verdict. To keep Manson living is the real insanity.
We feed and housed this waste and still had the tenacity of Diane Sawyer to interview him. He does not deserve our attention to hear his insanity, when he has no remorse for his crime.
If the judicial system did their job 50 years ago, then the interview would never have taken place. It would have been the end of him and the end of his story. Good riddance to evil, 50 years too late.
Al Ulus
Somerton
