Sherry Allen – 5/10/09

This page was last updated on May 14, 2009.

Time to get behind health-care reform; Sherry Allen; Beaver County Times; May 10, 2009.

Ms. Allen wrote three previous letters I didn’t critique. One (“Conserving water for future,” 1/13/08) asked us to conserve water (primarily by not eating meat) and another (“Say ‘no’ to push polling,” 2/10/08) complained about alleged telephone “push polls” by Republicans, and the third was (“Plant a garden to offset oil usage,” 8/1/08). In one letter I did critique, Ms. Allen gushed about a book she found “that has hundreds of ideas on how to save our planet.” In a partisan letter, Ms. Allen concluded with “Let’s endeavor to walk together peacefully.” In one letter, Ms. Allen related a story of disaffected Republicans voting for Mr. Obama. In another letter, Ms. Allen tried to compare abortion and war in an effort to promote Barack Obama over John McCain. Other letters from Ms. Allen were entitled “Let’s be proactive on the environment” and “Arena a valuable community asset.”

Below is a detailed critique of the letter.

“Fortunately, the swine flu outbreak won’t be as physically and financially serious as health officials thought.”

[RWC] Please read my paper entitled “Healthcare.”

“Imagine what could have happened to 50 million uninsured Americans and millions more of us who are underinsured. Is this our wake-up call?”

[RWC] Apparently Ms. Allen buys into the philosophy of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. You may recall Mr. Emanuel said shortly after the election, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. What I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before. This is an opportunity. What used to be long-term problems -- be they in the health care area, energy area, education area, fiscal area, tax area, regulatory reform area -- things that we had postponed for too long that were long-term are now immediate and must be dealt with. And this crisis provides the opportunity for us, as I would say, the opportunity to do things that you could not do before.”

“A congressional bill (HR676), written to provide universal health care, needs our help. Interestingly, it has ties here in western Pennsylvania. Last spring, a local doctor wrote a letter to the editor saying she and many doctors in our country are for this bill because they believe it would benefit their patients.”

[RWC] Ms. Allen is referring to the letter “Dump ‘mangled care’” from Suzanne Vogel-Scibilia.

“When presidential candidate Barack Obama was campaigning last spring, he supported the bill but said he didn’t have a magic wand. He said the people would have to get behind it.

“This Wednesday, many people from surrounding counties will be calling and asking U.S. Rep. Jason Altmire to become a co-sponsor for HR676. Please join us.”

[RWC] I responded to this letter with a letter of my own.