OPINION:
What a joke. Liberals are euphoric because Gallup reported last month that the percentage of uninsured people has dropped from 17.1 percent at the end of 2013 to 15.6 percent in the first quarter of 2014 (“Rate of uninsured Americans is dropping: Gallup,” Web, March 10). This means that about 3 million more people have insurance.
My dad had an old saying: “Figures lie and liars figure.” What liberals fail to mention is that the percentage of uninsured was 14.4 percent in 2008. When the recession hit, almost 9 million people lost their jobs, and many lost their company-paid insurance. Now as the economy slowly recovers, many of these 9 million people have gained jobs and access to insurance.
The truth of the matter is that the historical uninsured percentage has hovered between 14 percent and 15 percent, and Obamacare has done little to change this historical average. On the contrary, Obamacare has slowed new hiring, resulted in more than 6 million people and counting losing insurance, raised premiums and deductibles for a large percentage of policyholders, caused confusion as people have lost insurance they liked and had to replace doctors they liked, and slowed economic growth as a result of its 27,000 pages of onerous regulations.
If you like Obamacare, you can keep it by voting for a Democrat in the November elections. If you are fed up with broken promises, don’t like government-run health care, want to replace Obamacare with a market-driven, patient-and-doctor-centered system, want to allow competition by having insurance companies compete across state lines and want tort reform to lower malpractice costs, then you can start the reform movement by voting for a Republican in November.
With a Republican-controlled House and Senate, we can prevent President Obama from further damaging our country.
MIKE FERREER
Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.
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