To the Editor:
Health care reform was needed for two very
important reasons: to insure millions of Americans currently without
health insurance and to control ruinous cost escalations.
Douglas
Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office, showed
convincingly in “The
Real Arithmetic of Health Care Reform” (Op-Ed, March 21) why claims
that the new bill will lower the federal deficit are smoke and mirrors
and not to be believed, and why that was not reflected in the C.B.O.’s
recent evaluation of the costs of the bill.
In “Fear
Strikes Out” (column, March 22), Paul Krugman does not address the
limitations of the C.B.O.’s report. But he does cite the health reform
instituted in Massachusetts by Mitt Romney as a model for the bill
passed by Congress.
It has been widely reported that skyrocketing
costs make the Massachusetts plan’s continuation unsustainable in its
present form. Mr. Krugman’s cavalier pronouncements have increased my
fear that the debt burden our country will shoulder under the new health
programs will ruin us.
Steven L. Weiss
Princeton, N.J., March 22, 2010
Note from KBJ: Democrats own this debacle.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 