Medicaid no entitlement

I am appalled by the "advice" presented in the Family Finances article appearing in your Jan. 27 edition titled "Don't wait to plan for nursing coverage." The authors would lead the readers to believe that Medicaid is somehow an "entitlement."

Unlike Social Security and Medicare, which are entitlements because American workers pay into those programs, Medicaid is a welfare program intended for the poor. Medicaid was never intended to pay long-term health-care expenses for middle and upper income Americans.

There will be a financial tsunami in this country when 70 million baby boomers start needing long-term care if Americans expect state and federal governments to pay the freight via Medicaid. After all, where do Medicaid dollars come from? American taxpayers! Do we really want to bankrupt the country?

Don't the people giving away all of their assets, so that Medicaid is forced to pay for their long-term care, understand the type of care they are going to receive? The time will quickly come when nursing home patients will be lined up in rows and rows of beds similar to the old tuberculosis sanitariums because there simply isn't enough money to pay for semiprivate rooms.

Rather than gifting away all of their assets, middle and upper income Americans should be saving for their long-term care. If they don't want to pay the expenses out of pocket, they should seriously consider long-term-care insurance, and the sooner, the better.

It is time for Americans to wake up and realize that Medicaid is not the solution to long-term health care.

ROGER S. CUNNINGHAM
Forest Hills

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Tighten reins on financial data

Regarding the Jan. 27 story on ChoicePoint ("Stolen financial data leads to $10 million fine for ChoicePoint"), the company "admitted no wrongdoing" -- this despite a reported 800 victims of identity theft, and the financial records on more than 163,000 Americans having been compromised.

One assumes this situation is a direct result of ChoicePoint's lack of security routines, and carelessness with financial records. Who knows to whom this "data broker" or data bandit, as such outfits have been described -- see your article dealing with "data brokers" and the selling of phone records -- may have sold Social Security numbers. And how is it that ChoicePoint had them in the first place?

ChoicePoint had $1 billion dollars in sales last year. Given a small fraction of a penny from that, what sort of data security could have been purchased and installed? I suspect a significant amount of the data security that was so obviously lacking; but ChoicePoint presumably had other priorities or felt that the security of data it had accumulated simply wasn't worth the bother and expense. After all, their bottom line was involved. And we all know about the sanctity of corporate bottom lines, don't we?

All of this leads me to wonder when, if ever, will our elected officials curb the antics of these information mongers who operate in what is precious near to being a regulatory vacuum? How high will the pile of "dead and injured" resulting from the cheapskate methods of ChoicePoint and their "co-religionists" become before our elected officials are moved to act, putting these data bandits on the shortest of all possible of leashes?

ALAN SCHULTZ
McCandless

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Nuclear power dangerous

In a world plagued by recurring themes, the demand for nuclear power, in all aspects of the term, has risen dramatically over the past few years. We are now experiencing the hard and fast effects of increased prices in oil and natural gas. But instead of focusing exclusively on safe sources of renewable energy, the call for change comes in the form of increased nuclear power? ("Another U.S. Energy Firm Seeks New Westinghouse Nuclear Plant," Jan. 28).

The localized and transnational re-evaluation and implementation of nuclear energy as a viable and appropriate option for energy sector development will ultimately degrade a universal standard of life. Our tendency to constantly move forward, toward a more progressive future, often denies us a chance to reflect on our own past. My initial reaction to the active public endorsement of nuclear power is that history has once again eluded us.

Recently, President Bush took the time to consider nuclear power a "clean, safe" source of energy in his State of the Union address, followed by a rush of applause. However, statistically speaking, nuclear energy is nuclear waste. The United States Department of Energy accounted for 49,000 metric tons of discarded nuclear fuel in 2003, and projects an increase to 105,000 metric tons by 2035. Instead of burning fossil fuels, nuclear generation simply provides a slower, but steady destruction of our environment.

When considering the "bright future" of Westinghouse Electric, a local site of nuclear propagation, take a moment out of your ever-busy lives and look around you. It was not that long ago when only silence filled the room as the executive branch addressed the deteriorating state of our nuclear power facilities.

MEG VOORHIS
Shadyside

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Opportunity and exploitation

What planet is Amity Shlaes living on (" 'Worst' label doesn't stick with Bush on economy")? She called President Bush's economy "a Porsche 911 zooming along." Even when they talk about the economy Bush, supporters can't not say "911."

The economic inequality in our country is the worst it has been since the Depression. It's only a great economy if you're on top. If you're near the bottom, you would be a lot better off in a country that provided basic health care to its citizens and living wages to its workers.

Ms. Shlaes' article is an insult to the people who clean up after her, prepare and serve her food, wait on her in stores, take care of her children and labor in farms and factories.

Consider these statistics from Inequality.org: The top 1 percent of Americans now make more money than the bottom 40 percent. In 1960, the wealth gap between the top 20 percent and the bottom 20 percent of Americans was thirtyfold. Today it's more than seventy-fivefold.

A child with parents in the bottom-earning fifth of Americans now has roughly a 7 percent chance of reaching the top fifth as an adult.

I am afraid that great American middle class -- so evident in the '50s and '60s -- is a thing of the past, and that we are now returning to the status quo -- opportunity for the rich and exploitation of the poor.

MARY LEE RESNICK
Butler

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Is Equitable Gas joking?

Was Equitable Gas' spokesman Dave Spigelmyer actually able to say, "We don't think customers like to see prices jump and down" with a straight face? With double-digit price increases, that is Equitable's reasoning not to pass along recent price decreases as Columbia is? When I was an Equitable customer, it didn't appear the company minded passing along cost increases. How noble of Equitable to wait until its quarterly filing to pass along the savings, when it's required by law to do so anyway.

HELEN CALDWELL
Cranberry

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Environmentally aware firms

Thank you for printing some good news about one U.S. company's strategic action for energy and the environment ("Green dream in Texas," Thomas Friedman Jan. 19.) It gives me hope to know that not all U.S. businesses are just looking for the cheapest way to make and sell their goods. We must care for whether we will be able to afford to buy goods and whether our earth will support us in doing so, long into the future.

I'm reminded of the contrast between the typical U.S. industry response to government regulation and that of Japanese companies. When I had the opportunity to discuss countermeasures for greenhouse gas emissions with Japanese bureaucrats in 1992, I learned that, instead of fighting government regulation tooth and nail, many Japanese companies viewed Japan's Global Climate Change Action Program as an opportunity, a challenge to develop new and better products that would lead to a strategic advantage.

In the meantime, Detroit was busy with lobbyists, opposing any increase in the CAFE fuel efficiency standards, and evading them by shifting their product mix to vehicles that weren't included (light trucks and SUVs). If a majority of U.S. companies were as forward-thinking as Texas Instruments, perhaps all the government regulation would be unnecessary. But in the real world, I give thanks for the federal appliance energy standards and the Energy Star Program.

BARBARA LITT
Squirrel Hill

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Don't take rights lightly

I was disappointed by the Sound Advice column Jan. 21. Mr. Lindich recommends correctly that those concerned with the preservation of their CDs make backups. However, he offers Apple iTunes as a solution. This raises the issue of copy protection as Apple will honor it in various forms and impose its own -- i.e. iTunes may not let you back up certain CDs and may limit how you use the backups it does allow.

A better suggestion would have been the FLAC format to back up CDs. It is open-source and has broad support on various players. Best of all it provides no provisions for copy protection so you can never be locked out of the music you own. Mr. Lindich also should have mentioned that the Constitution guarantees a citizen's right to make backups of any media they purchase regardless of any copy protection scheme.

It's called "Fair Use." And that's not said often enough. There are various copy-protection schemes already in use as well as laws like the DMCA and the pending DCPA that outlaw subverting copy protection even to exercise Fair Use rights. The best way to combat this is to contact your representatives in Congress and demand they protect your rights -- whether it be to copy a CD for your car, make a backup of your kid's favorite DVD or record a TV show to watch later. Because it's not about re-re-buying your music; it's about your rights and shouldn't be dismissed so lightly.

DONALD J. DEELEY
Imperial