Letters: How insurance works

Re “Obama and his big lie,” Opinion, Oct. 29

To suggest that the elderly are being forced to pay for maternity care suggests that Jonah Goldberg doesn’t understand the concept of insurance. The concept is that a large pool of people contributes to a fund that can be used to pay for the medical costs of the few.

You can’t pick and choose your coverage. Do we want plans that cover maternity care only? Or how about a plan to cover lung cancer but not brain tumors? From an actuarial point of view, this simply cannot be sustained.

If President Obama was playing to win, he was doing it for all Americans, both the insured and uninsured. And shame on Goldberg for vilifying Obama as a liar.

Jack Berens

Alta Loma

Goldberg is critical of Obama because at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, he “talked at great length about the middle class and not once about the poor” — but, horror of horrors, it turns out that Obama actually is concerned about the poor (or what Goldberg calls “income distribution”).

How sad that in Goldberg’s mind, concern for the poor is something worthy of criticism.

Anne Gessert

Thousand Oaks

ALSO:

Mailbag: A giant biblical mystery

Letters: Green governors don’t frack

Letters: Digging deeper into the NSA