Mailbag:

In Tuesday’s Daily Pilot, Richard S. Stevens tries to make the case that our present health-care system isn’t broken and accuses another reader of not having read “the proposed health-care plan” (“Don’t fix health care if it isn’t broken”).

This implies that Stevens has read it, which is impossible because no one health plan has yet been submitted.

President Obama has only outlined the general provisions of any plan he would find acceptable and not veto. There are at least five draft plans in existence within the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. (Purportedly, the GOP also has a plan, but no one has seen it.)

Stevens implies that under “the new plan,” he would have been denied a heart transplant, but doesn’t quote any provision of any of the draft plans that would lead to that conclusion.

In fact, had Stevens not been in generally good health, Medicare and/or his supplemental insurance program would have denied him a transplant. Screening of recipients for heart replacement is standard and appropriate medical procedure.

I challenge Stevens to show where Obama has proposed to “virtually eliminate Medicare.” It is curious that he feels Medicare, a government-run, socialized, public system, is acceptable for his age group (and mine) but not for others. It’s also curious that if, quoting Stevens “we have the finest health care in the world,” he and his wife would need to write a book about how to maneuver through it.

I wonder if all the people who stood in line in Inglewood for medical care the other week would agree with Stevens’ high assessment of our existing health-care system.

VAN O. WRIGHT

COSTA MESA

No government prescription needed

What’s the big deal with this whole health-care-reform debate?

I don’t know why Obama and his sycophants in Congress don’t simply use a page out of their own playbook that worked so well for them with the auto industry.

You know, buy a couple of car companies with our money and then pay people more of our money to buy autos via the “Cash for Clunkers” program. That’s the one where people who can actually afford new cars get to buy them now versus later and use our cash to help them do so while we destroy several billion dollars’ worth of perfectly good used vehicles, depriving an entire generation of little Johnnies’ and Suzies’ cheap starter cars.

This forced charity for the well-to-do from the previously used-to-do-well gives me a warm and fuzzy glow all over. How about you?

All the new administration would have to do is take some more of our cash and buy Blue Cross/Blue Shield and HealthNet and Humana and a couple of other insurance companies.

And if they won’t sell, just pull a Cesar Chavez/Venezuelan-style armed hostile takeover and get on with it. Then give half of our new public-owned insurance companies to the unions, of course. I’m recommending the Service Employees International Union, as they spent nearly $60 million getting Obama elected and they could really use the money.

Maybe give ACORN a sizable piece as well (community organizing is expensive!). And lastly, give more money from the overtaxed to those among us without insurance to buy health coverage from those same companies. Voila! No more uninsured.

This little plan would mean Obama and company could keep their grubby mitts off the health insurance that 83% of us tell the pollsters we’re happy with. After all, if you need to remodel your kitchen, you don’t start by burning down your house, do you?

CHUCK CASSITY

COSTA MESA