Letters: Longmont budget; Hickenlooper, Gardner and health care

Sep. 19--Parts of city budget could be trimmed

Longmont's proposed budget is $371,780,000. Longmont population is 96,000. That's $3,872.00 that each man, woman and child will consume. How will this be financed?

Most people are in favor of safety (police and fire) and utilities (city water, electricity, trash pickup, building and maintaining streets and sidewalks, city landscape and tree maintenance). Citizen entertainment (parks and recreation, other non-essential services) have ballooned year by year, and could be trimmed or even eliminated in many cases.

What is the plan here?

Bob Askey

Longmont

Hickenlooper's health plan?

John Hickenlooper does not have a plan for healthcare -- I know from first-hand experience.

I was laid off as an older engineer in 2008, and I was fortunate to find a job as a security guard that paid me $12 an hour; 40 million Americans earn less than this today. The job came with health insurance supported by Hickenlooper's version of the ACA in Colorado. When I did the math I found that this health insurance would cost me 70% of my take-home pay after adding in the deductibles. The decision was stark: Pay for health insurance for my family of three or put food on the table. We chose food and went without health insurance for three years, all of it during Hickenlooper's time as governor of Colorado.

Do you wonder that most bankruptcies in the United States are due to medical costs?

Republicans and centrist "moderate" Democrats have given us "health care" which costs twice as much as the world average and delivers worse than average lifespans. We know how to supply affordable and high quality healthcare found in nearly every country except ours: It is called Medicare For All, and we get rid of the HMOs who now control 18% of our economy.

Gardner and Hickenlooper both have the same plan: HMO profits.

Michael McNeil

Mead

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