Healing Prager
As a physician of 45 years, who has followed the calling of the profession devoted to patient care, I must start the healing process for Dennis Prager (“A Response to a Reader,” April 9). The only way to ensure the health care needs of the public is to adopt a single-payer system. By removing the health insurance companies from the monstrous system they have created and transferring their massive funding to a public utility, all of us would be guaranteed the care we deserve and already pay for without new taxes. Profits, with their moral and ethical shortcomings, would be removed from the table and administrative expenses cut to 5 percent.
Forget the complexities and shortcomings of Obamacare. Even with 2,409 pages, it is too little, too late, and will do nothing to halt the meteoric rise in health care costs. Within our midst in California is a rescue bill, SB 810, now past the Senate and in the Assembly, which will be on the governor’s desk in the fall. For less than we are paying now without new taxes, every legal resident in the state would receive health care without co-pays, deductibles and charges for medicines, eyeglasses and dental care. The first year alone would see accrued savings and surpluses of $25 billion. With single-payer, the state would be forced to address and control the usurious prices of medicines, surgical equipment and supplies and information technology for physicians. Physicians would see an immediate bonus with 30 percent savings in administrative expenses.
As a conservative, Prager should welcome and support SB 810. Not only would it not require new taxes, it will bring in funds to depleted state coffers. As a physician, Maimonides was devoted to serving the public. As a physician, I am proud to follow in his footsteps.
Dr. Jerome P. Helman
Venice
Wouldn’t it be great if Prager could respond to everyone who disagreed with his columns every week? Look how Prager explains his case and makes the persons letter seem so foolish. As a matter of fact, I noticed that every response to Prager’s column is factually incorrect and daft. Of course, they have a right to their opinion.
Richard Levine
via e-mail
In Support of Tea Parties
Related to your recent negative, unfortunate attacks regarding the Tea Party phenomena (“Party Off,” March 26), you might appreciate reading the current Commentary article, “Teatime at the Times” by Andrew Ferguson, putting some needed light on your rather unsubstantiated, demeaning and partisan prose.
Stuart Weiss
via e-mail
The Jewish Journal is alarmed and concerned about the “dangerous volksfest” (anti-Semitism cloaked within the guise of patriotism) or Tea Party Movement. Pardon my lack of concern, but having been a target of real anti-Semitism and serious threats from the left during the Bush years, this particular charge seems a bit overblown.
The real volksfest dangereuse is not a pugnacious, grass-roots uprising with genuine concerns and exerting their free speech rights. It is rather the arrogant, audacious and offensive majority glorifying in its disdain for popular opinion:
• The arrogance of Congressman Waxman to recite the secretly held House bill in the dead of night — by a speed reader no less.
• The audacity of a president who claimed, “The way you change our policies is by including the American people in the process,” but molded a bill in secret, cutting the deals he so reviled during the campaign.
• The offensive manner in which Speaker Pelosi (The Hammer) twisted arms and threatened colleagues.
Elections matter however, and to the victors go the spoils. But it used to be that in America (remember 2000-2008), the losers retain their free speech rights until the next election.
The Jewish Journal ought also to remember Alexis de Tocqueville’s admonition about a “tyranny of the majority.” That runaway majority is the danger we face today, not the voices, however offensive, from ordinary Americans meeting in the public square.
Joel Strom
Beverly Hills
A Haik U
A fox in the glen
With minions at his very
Evil beck and call
Joshua Lewis Berg
Burbank
From Freedom to Grief,Too Soon
Most of The Jewish Journal covers are interesting and intriguing. The April 2 cover was different. I was feeling so happy and liberated after cleaning my home for Passover, eating all the purely kosher Passover food and reliving the Exodus from Egypt. I was feeling reborn, fresh and free. Then, I picked up a copy of The Jewish Journal the morning after two exhilarating and liberating seders, only to be brought down by the front cover displaying an empty bed which used to belong to a dead daughter. The title screams out, “Endless Grief” and speaks about death and family tragedies. We all feel sorry for Victoria Hen’s tragedies. However, couldn’t you have printed this cover the next week and given us a cover that would reflect the Jewish emotional state of being in the midst of freedom, renewal and endless possibilities? Perhaps a photo of hopeful, happy Jewish people being liberated from difficulties in their countries, finally arriving in their Jewish homeland would be an appropriate cover to rest upon our coffee tables. Please, in the future, make an effort to create a cover that reflects our holiday and emotional spirit.
Sharon Asher
via e-mail
Needs of Survivors Immense
I searched your Yom HaShoah issue (April 9) in vain for an article acknowledging the acute needs of living survivors. Other than a poignant cartoon noting the extraordinary poverty rates among survivors in the United States and Israel, there was no discussion of the fact that scores of survivors, including many in our own city, are unable to meet their basic human needs. Nor was there any mention of the services available to help them meet those needs.
Bet Tzedek, through our Holocaust Survivors Justice Network and in partnership with Jewish Family Services across North America, is undertaking a major new initiative to help survivors receive pensions from Germany. Previously, Germany denied more than 90 percent of the applications for these monthly payments, but a recent High Court decision entitles thousands of North American survivors to this pension. Bet Tzedek will assist more than 5,000 survivors with this process, which could release them from the grip of poverty.
Yom HaShoah is about remembrance. What better way to remember than by honoring the lives of those who survived unspeakable horrors in their youth by alleviating their suffering in old age?
Mitchell Kamin, president/CEO
Bet Tzedek Legal Services
The House of Justice
Los Angeles
Taking a Stand
Wow! A liberal Jewish publication allows in print an article portraying the timidity, silence and cowardice of reform Rabbi Stephen Wise’s shameful lack of courage during the Holocaust (“Against the Tide,” April 9). I’m impressed! Shehecheyanu!
Harold Weiss
Los Angeles
Correction
In the article “Jewish and Muslim Teens’ Project Focuses on Shared Values” (Community News, April 9), Samia Bano’s age should have been 28.
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