Opinion

A modest proposal for Medicare

With so much division in our country, and some folks even losing faith in democratic government, I would like to offer a proposal concerning Medicare. I do this in the hope that such a proposal if implemented could help restore some faith in government.

I am calling upon the Biden Administration to lower the Medicare age of eligibility to 55.

Most of us either rely on Medicare for our own health care, having reached 65, or have a dear relation or friend who does. After our armed forces, Medicare may be the most popular part of the U.S. federal government. Since its adoption in 1966 it has kept millions of our senior citizens healthy and out of poverty once they qualify at age 65.

But by age 55, many people have been working for 30 years or more. Many are tired, and are beginning to suffer from various chronic illnesses. Unfortunately many are underinsured, uninsured or paying very high premiums. Some are small business owners who have tried to keep their employees insured (I was one of these employers).

We all know of folks “hanging on” until they reach 65, foregoing medical care, afraid to change jobs or start a business. Lowering the Medicare eligibility age would be a triumph of decent and potentially bipartisan politics. It could renew faith in the system for many who feel angry, left out of the American Dream, unappreciated and even betrayed. How could this be paid for? By raising the $133,000 ceiling of the Medicare payroll tax, as has been proposed for years now. Today, someone earning $500,000 a year pays the same total amount of Medicare tax as someone earning $133,000. By raising the ceiling — to $250,000 or whatever actuarial figure is appropriate — the increases in Medicare expenses will be paid for. When upper income people complain about their higher taxes, they should be reminded that they too would be eligible for Medicare at age 55 and be freed from their insurance premiums. Private supplements should of course remain available for those who wish to add them to their Medicare insurance.

Businesses will also pay more as they match the Medicare contribution of their employees — recently 1.45 percent of payroll. This will be greatly eased by being released from paying premiums for middle-aged workers who often have the most expensive medical bills.

The anger and division in our country can perhaps be partly explained by the burden of health care insecurity and the enormous related economic challenges encountered by many families. Bankruptcies, for example, are a well-known and unacceptable feature of our nation’s failure to address these issues effectively. The 55-65 years of age cohort is certainly affected by this.

If you find this proposal of interest, contact congressmen Madison Cawthorn, Patrick McHenry and others. They need to hear from you!

Steven Wall Guest Columnist

(Stephen Wall, MD, FAAP, is a retired pediatrician who lives in Waynesville.)

We must learn to protect the earth

To the Editor:

In the aftermath of recent events in our nation’s Capitol, we are still reeling in shock, disbelief and consternation at how best to pick up the pieces and move on. We hope that leadership will emerge to restore the ship of state to a democratic, compassionate and confidence-building course.

At the same time, however, we must not lose sight of an even-greater catastrophe looming on the horizon, bearing down on us with a prospect that could make storming the Capitol look like the proverbial “tempest in a teapot.” The terrorist assault on the Capitol posed a threat to our democracy. Humankind’s assault on the planet poses a threat to our survival. The Jan. 6 attackers have been characterized as a “gang of thugs.” Those who threaten the Earth’s future are “nice people” like you and me who cannot or will not adopt the radical changes in our economic system and comfortable lifestyle essential to turning around our Earthship now headed toward disaster.

Between 1990 and 2015 the richest 1 percent of humanity accounted for more damage to the environment than the entire bottom 50 percent. This 1 percent includes any with annual incomes over $109,000. The richest 10 percent, those making over $38,000, account for half of total emissions. Those of us with “decent” incomes — likely most readers of this paper — live in places allowing us to downplay or ignore the damaging effects of our fossil fuel dependency, while the lives of folks residing in Bangladesh, Vanuatu, “Cancer Alley” and other minority and poverty enclaves, bear the brunt of it. Our grandchildren are rightly up in arms as the viability of their future is threatened.

In the midst of the trauma and violence on Capitol Hill — and the underlying dis-ease and alienation that has fomented it — can we re-affirm our commitment to implementing human rights and equality of opportunity for all? As the COVID-19 pandemic causes us to invent new ways of communicating with and caring for one another, can we also find the will to sacrifice some of our comfort and convenience, and to divert resources from feeding our greed to nurturing the common good? Will we draw on our capacity for creativity and invention to replace carbon with alternatives, to put people before profits, to find adventure and fulfillment in a simpler life in place of the exotic and luxurious? Can we adopt a system that guarantees liberty and justice (and healthcare and education and security and a livelihood with living wage and the chance to achieve one’s potential) FOR ALL?

We went to the moon a half-century ago. We have now set our sights on Mars. Is not climate justice a worthy — yes, essential — goal as well? As Pope Francis put it recently, “The Earth must be taken care of, cultivated, protected; we cannot continue to squeeze it like an orange.” To do so would only extract the juice of life, leaving only the pulp of debris — as did the Trump marauders. Doug Wingeier Asheville

LETTERS

Despite claims, truth does matter

To the Editor:

I always enjoy the illuminating letters from Carol Adams. Her most recent (last week’s Smoky Mountain News, www.smokymountainnews.com/opinion/item/30705) was especially spirit-lifting. I was relieved to learn that the thugs who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6 wearing MAGA hats and waving Trump flags were not Trump supporters (as commonly believed). Thankfully too, the attack on the Capitol Police, the looting, trashing and destruction was not committed by Trump supporters either because (as Adams enlightens us) “that behavior is not in their collective makeup.”

No, we didn’t actually see what we thought we saw being broadcast around the world. The chaos, the ravaging of the House and Senate chambers, the violence, the devastation and havoc was more likely the work of those who have “a well-documented track record of inciting violence.” That would be (according to Adams) “media personalities, leftists, never-Trumpers and Trump-hating politicians,” and, oh yes, “the courts.”

Absent a shred of confirmation, not one iota of proof, not a scintilla of evidence, Adams is sure Trump is “1000 percent correct” that the 2020 election was a fraud.

Ms. Adams, this may come as a shock to you and to the Republican Party but — boys and girls — truth matters.

David L. Snell Franklin

Facts, compassion are important

To the Editor:

Humanity has a universal propensity for lies and distortions, and Trump-supporting extremists ruled by reality-free ideas are front and center in the public view, as events in D.C. show. But the truth is that we are all prone to fantastical intellectual views that confirm our entrenched internal biases, ideas that identify the bad and evil guys over there and the good guys that we hang out with.

Sixty years ago, I often witnessed the denigration and deliberate demeaning of Black people, and my young eyes did not miss the sadistic pleasure that ordinary white folks were deriving from this barbaric activity. No one today with access to the internet or a television believes society has eliminated all such behavior and the attitudes that support it. Mostly racism has gone underground, out of view, waiting to rear its ugly head when allowed. In these and many other societal structures that are destructive and non-nonsensical, substantial lies are involved, like claims of racial or cultural superiority. The same kind of deceit is involved in no end of other obscene societal events, like the giving of tax breaks a few years ago to the wealthy while masses of poor folks cannot both pay the rent and feed their children.

On Jan. 6, the same kind of detachment from obvious reality was on prominent display by masses of Trump followers, including our local Rep. Madison Cawthorn, who actively endorsed and repeated the brain-dead, dangerous claims of election stealing and promptings to riot by an obviously mentally deranged man.

There is only one way out of the morass of indecency and delusion that has taken over the Trumpian wing of the Republican Party, and that lies in emphatic attention to the twin demands of truth and suffering. The first is obvious; no debate or deliberative process can yield useful and lasting benefit if it fails to start and proceed with ideas that accurately reflect reality. The second provides the point of why we deliberate at all. If our efforts are not to address real and common suffering, then the debate is just a bunch of hot air being expelled to bolster the coffers and reputations of ego-driven buffoons that do not actually represent the electorate, and we will continue to provide the good life for a thinner and increasingly isolated wealth class.

The truth is that the wealthy do not need our help, but poor folks clearly do. The middle class is getting squeezed, and that has to stop. Mentally and emotionally unbalanced folks often end up in jail rather than in treatment, which is a pox on the individual and a burden on everyone else. Minority citizens are the ones that need to worry about racial profiling, excessive incarceration and suspicious police, not white people. Corporations do not

To the Editor:

For weeks leading into the insurrection and ransacking of our Capitol on Jan. 6, Madison Cawthorn’s words and actions fomented a mob of traitors by supporting our former president’s lies. He did so instead of representing us in North Carolina’s 11th District.

In the aftermath of the failed coup, Cawthorn has tried to distance himself from criticism, outrage and questions. Through deliberate equivocations, deflection and attempts to redirect the national focus away from calls for accountability from both the insurrectionists and members of Congress who encouraged them, Madison has shown a profound dereliction of duty and moral authority, mirroring the failed legacy of our last president’s. The past few weeks have shown that Cawthorn’s position as our representative threatens to continue an atmosphere of dishonesty and division. He is the wrong man for both this moment in time and for the people of Western North Carolina.

Without taking ownership for his missteps and mistruths, Cawthorn continues to dig himself deeper. Attempting to distract from his actions during the Jan. 6 riot, a Cawthorn spokesman recently condemned “all violence” and stated NC-11 Democrats had not, insinuating their support of violence and lawlessness. WNC Democrats did publicly condemn the riots, but he and his team seem to assume we and others nationwide wouldn’t take the time to look into the accusations. These Democrats have since received threatening phone calls.

In the same article, they lied about our Buncombe neighbors, stating in no uncertain terms that Asheville’s Black Lives Matter protests had “burned businesses,” “looted” and attacked police. None of this happened here, and it’s an insult to all of us who he is supposed to represent.

Many of us have friends or relatives from whom we can inquire about the truth of those days this past summer. From what I’ve heard in my circles, the protests in Asheville were overwhelmingly peaceful — as were 93% of the protests nationwide. I’ve also heard and read about how law enforcement at the protest initially took a knee to show solidarity with the activists. Other protests I was lucky enough to join were held in Sylva, Maggie Valley, Waynesville and beyond, and these were all peaceful, positive and without more than some arguing between activists and counter-protestors.

Madison Cawthorn either doesn’t know this or doesn’t think much of who he was expected to represent. Perhaps he was out of town, or too focused on Raleigh and the opinion of the other six N.C. congressmen who also voted against our country and constitution on Jan. 6. Even as the media focused on him more and more, he’s failed to focus on WNC. Perhaps it’s because he doesn’t live among our mountain communities, alongside regular people like me and you. Instead of with us — his constituents — Cawthorn has put his faith in false claims and the liars who’ve said them.

Immediately after the election, he was a sore winner and blamed anyone who didn’t vote for him on “cancel culture.” To this day he has owned up to nothing and repeatedly shifts responsibility to the media. He’s said and done all of this while expecting us to trust he’ll represent us fairly.

As his constituents, it’s our responsibility not to forget these lies, nor those Cawthorn continues to spread, and to assume the threatening phone calls to those who disagree with him and the actions on Jan. 6 were supported and inspired by his words. Examples of this are numerous, like his suggestion to “lightly threaten” other members of Congress at an event in late December. He went on to encourage the crowd to say he and the mob of attendees (and anyone who watched from elsewhere) would “come for them.”

The awful occurrence on Jan. 6, much like 9/11 and Pearl Harbor, will not be forgotten — and neither should Cawthorn’s hand in it. He, as WNC’s representative in D.C. and obvious partner in the crimes of President Trump, Rudy Guiliani and others, will be forever connected to the embarrassing incitement of the mob and their ridiculous actions that day.

If Cawthorn will lie about those he was elected to represent — including protestors who stood for Black Lives all across his district — it shouldn’t surprise us that he (and the other six of N.C.’s “Seditious Seven”) voted against the will of the people in an attempt to overturn the valid presidential election results — even after the events on Jan. 6. He seems to assume we, the people of his district, won’t bat an eye at the lies and distractions he’s said during recent interviews. This behavior is childish and has no place from our elected leadership where it can clearly cause so much harm. We shouldn’t forget any of this.

Cawthorn clearly has no concern for the mandate of his constituents, and he needs to go before embarrassing himself, and all of us, any further.

Jonathan Wood Cruso

need protection from nature, but rivers and the air we breathe needs to be protected from them.

And there are many other inequities that deserve our best efforts to eliminate them. We are wasting our time and limited resources propping up that which is already substantial and secure.

At the dawn of the Biden/Harris era, I hope that we can continue a national conversation and debate on the basis of a respect for the truth, and the needs of those among us with less than a fair shot of life. Is that not why we created a country and maintain a government in the first place? And if it is not, then why bother entertaining democratic ideals at all? What would be the point of all this noisy effort and astronomical expense? Rick Wirth Bryson City

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