Sunday, February 7, 2010 — James Misenheimer, chairman of the Democrat-ic Party, Stanly County, I certainly appreciate your response in the SNAP.

It would be a good idea if you would go back and read my note. It plainly asserts that the people are being shafted by Ms. Hagan’s voting record.

More to the point, I propose that we need to protect these people from the socialization of Obama-care. You seem to be bound by rhetoric and not fact.

My letter pointed to eight items that need to be left alone, from her supporting reducing Medicare by $500 billion to her supporting overwhelming Medicaid, driving it to an earlier bankruptcy. Her record of dismal support speaks for itself.

Since you have learned that “cost is a concern,” it seems your word is wanting and coasting along with blinders on, not me. Since you are interested in fixing healthcare let me give you a few ideas that I have broached to Sen. Burr and Hagan that we the people need:

• Tort reform. This will positively reduce malpractice insurance rates, end the nonsensical call for every conceivable test being run to preclude the fire engine chasing lawyers. With limited liability payments and forcing medical claims to binding arbitration will drive the cost of medicine down as the doctors and hospitals will not be running scared as now.

• Portability of healthcare insurance for workers so they can take their healthcare from job to job and in many cases keep their premiums lower and/or coverage intact.

• Ability to purchase healthcare across state lines to allow more competition in purchasing and allowing competition to set premiums instead of a few insurance politicians in our legislatures and Congress who keep driving the cost of medical care up.

• Allow drug companies to sell in the U.S. as they do in Canada. There should not be the extreme difference in wholesale cases between countries.

• End the waiting periods for coverage and prior conditions not being allowed to be insured.

Right now without any bills, laws, or pie-in-the-sky manifestations, she and the Democrat Senate could be doing something about the waste, fraud, double billing and the criminal misuses of Medicare and Medicaid. Why isn’t she speaking out for those thousands right here in Stanly?

These are a few more “ideas” I endorse besides the eight I wrote about and you ignored.

Now I will provide you a little detail to qualm your suppositions about me.

Yup, I have fallen off cabbage trucks, fallen off the hay wagon too, but was lucky enough to retain enough sense as a young man to know I ain’t cut out to be a Democrat. I was a John Kennedy advocate but like a kitten, my eyes eventually opened and I realized as a pizz-ant farm boy I was truly a conservative: Re-publican by choice, conservative by American beliefs.

I live, most probably unlike you, on my SS and Medicare Advantage plan (one of the things Ms. Hagan wants to end) along with a small pension. And, I doubt if you could comprehend, I have suffered financial setbacks and have had members of the family suffer during this ongoing “repression” losing healthcare and jobs.

That, sir, is why I wrote about Ms. Hagan in the first place.

Thomas M. McCluskey

New London