LETTERS: Logic doesn’t add up in Obamacare dissent

After reading yet another of the Review-Journal’s interminable editorials opposing Obamacare, I was confused about the logic that was expressed in the latest diatribe (“Unaffordable care,” Monday Review-Journal).

On the one hand, the R-J cites several cases where people signed up for high-deductible insurance via the exchanges, then couldn’t afford to use their insurance because of the high deductible. The editorial implied that this was something happening everywhere, and not just a few isolated incidents. On the other hand, the R-J cites the announcement by one large insurer that it is considering dropping out of the exchanges because it’s losing money due to Obamacare.

Here is where I am confused: If people are not using the insurance that they are paying for, then how is the company issuing the insurance losing money? That simply doesn’t make any sense. Before Obamacare, insurance premiums were rising at eye-opening rates. Insurance companies were finding any excuse to drop customers who actually had the audacity to use their insurance. Pre-existing conditions prevented many citizens from even obtaining insurance at all. Lifetime caps on payouts left people with chronic conditions out in the cold.

When President Barack Obama said, “If you like your insurance, you can keep it,” he failed to take into consideration that some policies then in effect had lifetime caps. Those caps were no longer legal under Obamacare, and thus, those policies were invalid and the policy holder was required to purchase insurance that adhered to the law. Now, insurance premiums continue to rise, but at rates not nearly as dramatic as the rise in premium rates before Obamacare was signed into law.

Nobody expected premiums to fall as a result of the law. So while premium rates still rise, and apparently people with high-deductible policies don’t bother to use their insurance, why is it that a major insurance company claims to be losing money? Is it because of Obamacare? Or is the management of that company simply incompetent?

David Adams

Las Vegas

Safe spaces

I lean Democratic, progressive, liberal or whatever your title du jour happens to be, but with that in mind, my hat goes off to Steve Sebelius for his Sunday column (“Beware the safe spaces”). Shielding children of any age from things that make them uncomfortable is inane and, as Mr. Sebelius points out, totally in opposition to what has made humanity “humanity.”

I can see the importance of reduced speed zones for school kids, given the erratic driving habits of many of Las Vegas’ residents (although “look both ways before crossing” was canon in our house as I grew up). But to provide “safe zones” for adolescents who are in training to assume life’s heaviest problems is anathema — mental challenge forces the mind to grow, exposes young minds to new ideas and promotes debate and even acceptance.

Humanity did not evolve in a sterile, vacuous environment, but rather through a rich introduction of new ideas and inventions, by strident argumentation in support of those ideas and inventions. And though many failed through a lack of support, many also succeeded and offered us a world where we are better off today than we were 2,000 years ago.

Jim Foley

Las Vegas

Hillary’s tax credits

Hillary Clinton is proposing health care tax credits for middle-class families (“Clinton pitches tax credit to assist with caregiving,” Monday Review-Journal). She wants a credit to offset the cost of elderly care, a credit to augment the high cost of the Affordable Care Act and a credit to cover some of the expense of attending college.

Wouldn’t it be more efficient to allow middle-class workers to retain more of their earnings, as opposed to filtering the money through the government’s grist mill?

Tom Hoover

Las Vegas