Letters to the Next President
By Glinda
Want to know what thousands of middle and high school kids across the country are thinking about in politics?
Go to Letters to the Next President and find out.
Be prepared to be surprised. And impressed.
Here are some excerpts from a letter written by Matt B. from Oklahoma:
Hello Future President,
As you can see, our country’s economy is at a all time low. There are some issues that I am concerned about, and believe that they should be dealt with before anything else. As you are sworn to office in January you should fix our college funding programs, propose energy solutions, and address healthcare as soon as possible because these are the top issues that all of America needs changed…
I believe that nobody should be denied an education because of their money situation. There needs to be more financial aid than there is now in the U.S.. Where I live in Oklahoma they only give out financial aid if your family makes $50,000 or less a year. I don’t qualify because my family makes $70,000, but I can still not afford college my my mom has to support 3 kids and she can’t afford to help me out with college. So the family with 1 child making $50,000 a year gets their child’s education paid for but the family making $70,000 a year doesn’t. I don’t believe that is right because my mom and dad have to support 3 times the children only making $20,000 a year more. If I can’t get any scholarships then I am going to have to take student loans and be in great debt several years after college, because I had no financial help after high school. I believe you need to raise financial aid for those middle class families that can’t afford to send their kid to college…
Our country is never going to be perfect but you can make it better then it’s ever been in the past years by raising education funds, converting cars to run on CNG, and making sure every American recieves healthcare. Please Mr. Future President don’t make me move to Canada.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:38 am
Sorry. No sympathy. Student loans ARE financial aid.
November 4th, 2008 at 4:25 am
yeah I don’t get it – you take student loans so you can study, then you pay them back when you work. what is so difficult about that? If you can’t get a loan then I maybe sympathise. and if your art degree won’t pay for your student loans, then I also feel a bit of sympathy but you need to take that into account when deciding what to study. I put myself through college with loans, working and scholarships.
November 4th, 2008 at 11:25 am
Seconded.
November 4th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
I wasn’t necessarily endorsing Matt B.’s perspective, just putting it up as an example of the letters.
November 5th, 2008 at 10:58 am
Glinda, not jumping on you at all! Just tapping the kid on the shoulder as someone who, as Katherine did, paid for her own college through working, loans and scholarships.
November 5th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
An interesting point to ponder is the contention I’ve seen raised in a couple of articles (though unfortunately I can’t find the links, currently) that the increase in availability of student loans at low interest rates is one of the factors driving the crazy increase in college tuition costs (significantly above inflation over past decade or so). Increasing aid –> higher tution –> need for more aid?
November 6th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
I agree with you all! It’s hard to feel bad for a kid who says “if I don’t get a free college education, I’m going to live in Canada.” Does the Canadian government give out free higher educations? Come on, kid. Get a job, save money, and work your butt off!
Interesting, though, to see what the next generation thinks the world ought to be. Good that they prize education. Not so good that they think they should get it all without effort.
November 7th, 2008 at 9:53 am
Marvel, I have seen the same information. Basically, the theory is that third-party payers (ie, the gov’t, either in the form of loans or grants) drive up the price because colleges can charge more. That is, the family still pays the same $$ and the balance is made up by loans or grants. (Remember in the late 70s when they had to change the rules on student loans? There used to be no income cutoff, so rich families were borrowing the money at low rates and investing it.)
I think it’s the same way with medical care. If everyone had to pay for every penny of a doc’s visit, hospitalization, or drugs out of his own pocket, he would shop a lot more carefully and the prices would be lower. (When I had my insurance with the $5,000 deductible, you know I called both my internist and my OB/GYN to get prices before deciding which one to see for my pap smear.) It is always easier to spend someone else’s money than to spend your own. I think there is actually data about how the prices of cosmetic surgery (which is usually not covered by insurance) have declined while the prices of other medical services have increased.
November 7th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Class-factotum:
Oh, don’t get me started on the health-care. I basically agree with you; if we had a system where more people had major medical insurance (to cover the big disasters no one except the very rich could afford–car accidents, cancer, quadruple bypass surgery, MS, etc) but paid out of pocket for expected health maintenance–check-ups, pap smears, even uncomplicated pregnancies–I think the prices would be lower because there would be no “middle man” to 1) artificially protect consumers from prices and 2) take their cut of the payment.
Also I do not get why health insurance is still tied to employment. That’s a holdover from WWII and FDR’s economic policies and has no current justification. It limits choice (I currently have exactly one choice of health care plan through my employer) for the consumer, and prevents people who are unemployed from being able to buy health insurance at a reasonable price (since insurance companies bargain and bundle with employers, but not for individuals).
Government-provided health care is a pipe dream for the US–2 states have tried (TennCare and Hawaii for kids) and had to scrap the plan because of expense. I don’t think the average US citizen is going to accept the rationing and shortages that would come if healthcare here was fully nationalized. Also, I worked in a federal government bureaucracy for 3 years and if you think it’s hard dealing with private insurance companies to fight for coverage wait till you deal with a government bureaucrat who can’t lose his/her job, has no personal interest in your outcome, can’t be sued for error, can’t go out of business, and has no vested interest in anything but maintaining his/her job and pension. It was hard enough wresting my promised moving expenses out of their grasping, red-tape-bound hands (only took 8 months); health care would NOT be pretty.
There is a very interesting study out of the 1970s in which they divided volunteers into 2 groups–half received any and all medical care they sought for free, and half had to pay out of pocket for all medical care received. At the conclusion of the study, the overall “health” of the two groups was exactly the same, but the use of the medical system (and associated costs) was much higher in the “free care” group.
Here is a link in which this RAND study is described:
http://freemarketcure.com/whatswrongwithushealthcare.php
which brings up some interesting points to ponder, though I don’t know that I agree with everything written there.
And you should have seen this post BEFORE I cut out 3-4 paragraphs. Hit a nerve, here, this morning.
(Note to all: I am not saying the US health care system doesn’t have some systemic problems. It clearly does. But there aren’t any simple answers, and “universal health care” is NOT the panacea so many seem to think it would be. I can’t imagine working in a system in which everyone essentially had Medicaid. Plus would you really want to risk someone like Bush being in ultimate control of your health care? Think about it.)
November 7th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Marvel – I agree — I don’t want the government running the medical system! I used to work for a health insurance company and our mantra was “If you like the Post Office, you’ll love socialized medicine.” Course, after having lived abroad, I realize our PO is pretty darn good, but still — FedEx and UPS are better. The other argument we presented was one you noted about healthcare rationing. At the time (mid 80s), if you were over a certain age in England, you didn’t get dialysis. I saw a story in the paper there a couple of years ago about some guy not getting treated for cancer b/c his odds of recovery were so low. There is a reason that people come to the US for their medical care. (Remember the Canadian woman who came here to have her sextuplets?)
As far as Tenncare — one of the reasons it failed (I lived in Memphis for 7 years) was that the benefits were higher than you could get anywhere in the private sector. No copay for drugs? How do I get that plan?
And individual health insurance can be expensive, but I had a $5,000 deductible for $160/month, which isn’t cheap but is better than not having insurance at all. Sure, it wasn’t as nice as the plan I had when I was working, but it was available. Unfortunately, if you wait until you’re sick to get insurance, it’s not going to happen. Also, if you have to convert to an individual plan once your COBRA runs out, you will be charged (I think) based on your actual health. My husband’s ex-wife is still on the post-divorce COBRA (that we are paying for) and will be screwed in two years when she converts to an individual plan (that we will not be paying for) b/c she has cancer. (Diagnosed years after my husband left her.) Her cancer is not severe enough to keep her from working, but she doesn’t want to work (alimony decreases if she is earning money). I guess she hasn’t figured out that if she gets a job, she’ll have good health insurance and won’t have to worry about a conversion policy.
PS I don’t want someone like Obama in charge of everyone else’s medical care. 🙂
November 8th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
Class-factotum:
Bush, Obama, pick your poison. Neither one of them should be making medical decisions.
How did we get this off-topic? 🙂