Questions in my head
Some questions have been wandering around in my head and I thought I would throw them out.
First, women sports reporters have access to male dressing rooms. Do male reporters have the same access to women's dressing rooms?
If someone disagrees with me on a political or religious issue, am I or they the one who is wrong? After all, we all know that differences are not allowed unless someone is actually wrong, not just of a different persuasion.
Do laws creating special treatment for certain groups actually create equality or preferential treatment? Isn't that inherently contradictory?
Why don't people who complain about Congress and the state of government not run for office themselves?
Just some questions I had.
DAVID KELLEY
Fort Smith
Sure that was right?
In his column, "Fifty years later," Mike Masterson recalls those days of yore, 1965, specifically. I read with more than just passing interest, since under different circumstances, I might have grown up in Harrison, too, where my mother's family, the Holts, once lived.
However, I was puzzled to read that the cars in Harrison had "... those clutches in the floor, just left of the dimmer switch?" I never drove or rode in one of those autos. The only configuration I ever encountered had the clutches to the right of the dimmer switches.
Then there's that reference to "Wolfman Jack broadcasting from offshore in Del Rio, Texas." Never having been there, I had to look it up, and it seems that Del Rio is west of San Antonio, not near the ocean or Gulf of Mexico, but on the Rio Grande River.
And not to quibble, but one of the songs mentioned was "Oh Donna." The correct name of Ritchie Valens' 1958 hit was merely "Donna," although there was Dion's "Donna the Prima Donna," from 1963, making it a more likely song to have been a favorite of the Class of '65.
Mike does a fine job, however, regarding the beleaguered Buffalo River.
JACK W. HILL
Bismarck
Who pays for all that
Re Lana Wiedower's letter, I believe freedom cannot be had without a means of self-protection; thus, the Second Amendment. Obamacare is not affordable health care, especially for those who are paying for it. But if it is all that you think it is, affordable health care for all, then why is there a need for Planned Parenthood? As for public servants justifying allegiances to corporate entities and special-interest groups, that exists on both sides of the aisle.
Conservatives are trying to conserve life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness through less government. Have you ever stopped and considered how much the government is in control of your life? As for peace, it will never be made or found except in yourself, for evil abounds in this world more than ever.
PAM MONTGOMERY
Conway
Could be saving cash
In the early months of 2015, my wife received two identical bulletins at about a two-month interval urging her to call for an appointment with her doctor for a wellness visit (its purpose is to improve rapport between the two). My insurance company paid my doctor $179 for that visit. He has been our family doctor for 25 years. We are extremely satisfied with his medical care. This visit added nothing but cost.
Under the Obamacare rules, the medical insurance company gets to keep, for their operating costs and profit, either 15 percent or 20 percent of the premiums they collect. The rest must be spent on medical care for its clients. Judging by the effort they put into urging participation, I would suspect several million dollars in costs were added (15 percent or 20 percent of that amount), accruing to the benefit of those companies and adding significant inflationary pressure to the cost of medical insurance premiums.
Two new schemes of very limited value have cropped up lately: (1) setting up a group of pharmacists as drug managers. That sounds like the responsibility of my doctor. (2) I have access to a "Welvie surgery-decision support program," whatever that consists of. I am urged to visit their website and sign up for their service, without any surgery in sight.
It is high time to call a halt to inflationary private insurance bleeding the public for services maybe 5 percent of the population might find useful, if at all. We could be saving some $350 billion in administrative costs and 40 percent of our current cost for medication by switching to a Medicare-for-all plan, with no co-pays.
ROBERT G. HALL
Jacksonville
Seeing no connection
Anthony Belmont says that "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" is a stupid NRA standby. I don't belong to the NRA and I'm not going to defend them, but for Belmont to make that statement leads me to believe that he also believes that spoons make people fat.
Like a spoon, a weapon of any kind is an inanimate object until it gets put to use. To think that controlling weaponry is the answer is to continue going down the same path expecting different results.
I recently purchased three weapons and I had no problem filling out the paperwork because basically it's a joke. Had I had mental problems, do you think I would have checked yes? Do you think a person with a mental defect would?
We live in a time where computers are part of everything we do. Is there not some way they can set up a program that would put up red flags when more than one weapon is purchased by anyone and when they purchase more than a few rounds of ammunition?
There are more ways to handle this problem, but since smarter people than I aren't doing that, it leads me to believe something else is going on. Taking away our firearms? I don't know. Doing something about the mentally ill? I don't see anything happening there, so why doesn't Belmont urge his elected representative to do something about that problem? I can't for the life of me see how he could connect the NRA with these mentally ill people killing other people.
PHILLIP M. FREEMAN
Benton
Editorial on 10/10/2015