December 30, 2005

LETTERS2theEDITOR

Mayor Gonzales is an embarrassment

Editor,
Mayor Gonzales is shameful and an embarrassment to the residents of San Jose. He conducts himself like a despot, and makes the rules as he sees fit, ignoring established guidelines and ethical business practices.

The way the majority of the council members votes on issues, excluding our own ethical Councilman Cortese, makes me think Mayor Gonzales owns the other members—not a comforting thought.

We will vote for Dave, who we know will bring much needed integrity, morals and clarity to the position of mayor of San Jose.

Brenda Franca-Serpa
The Estates neighborhood

Medical benefits bankrupt businesses

The transit workers’ strike that paralyzed New York City recently was called over a conflict about medical benefits. This is just one more in a long list of strikes and bankruptcies that are due to the cost of health care. We need to recognize that something is amiss, and it is not simply that healthcare costs too much. It’s because of the way we pay for health care, and the way we manage our healthcare budget.

The United States is the only place on earth where health insurance is tied to employment. It depends on businesses to provide the insurance and then it turns to other businesses, insurance companies to manage it. But business people are not doctors. They don’t know how to take care of the sick. They focus on making money and on saving money, not on healthcare. By tying health insurance to employment, many Americans are left out, so that more than 41 million of us can’t afford care, wait too long, get too sick, land in emergency rooms and hospitals and cost society far more.

Briefly we spend more than $3.4 trillion annually on health care, half of it lost to administrative waste. We can cover every American, improve quality, control costs—including pharmacy, and still have $200 billion annually left over. For details, look at www.GoodMedicineAmerica.com and then ask your congressional representatives to do the same.

Carter V. Multz, MD, FACP, FACR
Cabernet Court, The Villages

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