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Letters to the Editor

Readers

Mark Rx, M.D. licenses of women’s rights foes

Nancy Barto’s HB 2564, regarding rights of conscience, does not have the best interests of women in mind and deserves defeat.

Her bill imposes ideological bias on women. I propose that any physician or pharmacist who does not respect the reproductive rights of women be boldly identified on their Arizona license in big red letters so the public can avoid them or choose them.

John B. Sullivan Jr., M.D.

Don’t blame Mexico violence on U.S. guns

Ninety percent of all firearms used to commit crimes in Mexico are smuggled in from America! Hillary Clinton said it. Bob Schieffer of CBS said it. Sen. Diane Fienstein said it. Quite a few other politicians have said it.

The only problem with that statement is that it’s a lie. The truth is that 90 percent of all firearms traced are smuggled in from America, with the key word being “traced.”

That accounts for up to 17 percent of the firearms used by criminals in Mexico, with the key words being “up to.”

The other 83 percent are imported from other countries or brought by deserting Mexican soldiers. Mark Allen of Customs Enforcement said that!

I’ve read the reports detailing Mexican gunfights using automatic weapons, grenades, rockets, etc. You can’t walk into a gunshop any place in America, buy those things and walk out with them.

The drug cartels make millions of dollars from drug sales. They can afford to buy their weapons from countries whose governments will happily sell them whatever they want.

I’m sorry that the citizens of Mexico have to deal with this but don’t blame it on automatic weapons, grenades and rocket launchers bought in America.

Why would the drug cartels buy an AK-47 look-alike pretender one at a time for $700 in the U.S. when they can buy the real thing for $500 for a crate of 10 from Venezuela?

Pat McGraw

Without public option, U.S. health care still ill

It seems the country is sick, and some still insist on using leeches to bleed the patient.

For years, it was thought that removing bad blood would cure illness, so thousands were made sicker or killed by “healers” who sucked the life from them.

We’re supposed to be out of the grip of the Bush clan’s desire to return to the Dark Ages, but the forces of darkness never sleep and continue to work even harder to drag us back to a more-primitive time.

We’re told daily that we should let the people who created the various problems we have continue to dictate the solutions. If they knew the solutions, we wouldn’t have the problems.

We need the change we’ve been promised without compromise. If Barack Obama’s health care plan doesn’t include a public option like Medicare, it is not reform. A public option is the only way to guarantee health care for all. Any legislation without it is just more of the same broken system.

Let people choose between for-profit and public insurance.

Insurance companies and HMOs just fear competition will force them to provide better service at lower cost.

Ray Malinda

Phoenix

Act now to cover those w/little or no insurance

We have waited long enough for universal health care! We need and want a public option, which is the only way to guarantee that all American families will be covered.

We need to be able to choose between our for-profit insurance and public care like Medicare. The uninsured and millions of underinsured need action now as well!

JoAnn Nelson

Phoenix

Take medical decisions away from companies

Every other first world nation offers health care to all its citizens. But 1 in 6 Americans is uninsured, and the number is rising daily.

The old model of employer-sponsored health care has been broken by the forces of global trade.

Health insurance companies pick and choose whom to insure – and then decide if their customers get the care they need, when they need it.

Everyone deserves access to quality health care, whether provided by a for-profit business entity or a public health care option such as Medicare.

President Obama and Congress know we need to change the way health care is delivered in the U.S.

We need to show our support for their efforts to counter the intense lobbying by the big insurance and pharmaceutical companies, which want to continue controlling how we care for our children, our elderly and everyone in between.

Doug Banfelder

Phoenix

Sweep system for ones falling through cracks

Those of us with disabilities have been given little or no choice when it comes to for-profit insurance companies.

Unable to afford the price, we are cut off from long-term care, and the same or worse applies to existing conditions when trying to get regular insurance.

Many needy people are falling through the cracks and “need not apply!” So the time is now for health care reform.

It is time to give people a choice between private and public insurance.

patricia jackson

Scottsdale

Our Digital Archive

This blog page archives the entire digital archive of the Tucson Citizen from 1993 to 2009. It was gleaned from a database that was not intended to be displayed as a public web archive. Therefore, some of the text in some stories displays a little oddly. Also, this database did not contain any links to photos, so though the archive contains numerous captions for photos, there are no links to any of those photos.

There are more than 230,000 articles in this archive.

In TucsonCitizen.com Morgue, Part 1, we have preserved the Tucson Citizen newspaper's web archive from 2006 to 2009. To view those stories (all of which are duplicated here) go to Morgue Part 1

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