Whose side is paper on?

"Is Newspaper's Anti-Rohr Campaign Over the Line" (May 22) describes a gaggle of well-known people who always have their hands out to the public purse holding a pep rally for the latest big dipper into the taxpayer's pocket. It sounds as if it were written by a cheerleader.

The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and most venues in the Cultural District constantly beg for and receive taxpayer dollars. What they collect from middle-class taxpayers who can't afford the venues is used to subsidize wealthier folks who dine at fine restaurants and ride in limousines to events.

The piece has quotes from quite a few people, but you identify the political persuasion of only one, Jake Haulk, whose think tank you tag as "conservative." How come?

You didn't indicate the political persuasion of Carol Brown; Grant Oliphant; Maxwell King, the former editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer; former newspaper editor and now professor of journalism ethics Edward Wasserman; or media ethics teacher and values teacher Bob Steel. Why didn't you tag Mr. Steel's think tank with a political modifier as you did with Mr. Haulk's think tank? May I assume that all the people mentioned, except Mr. Haulk, are big liberals?

Your story and your newspaper continue the long tradition at the Post-Gazette of standing up for the less fortunate and downtrodden among us.

DAN STUTHERS
Churchill

We need single payer plan

Thanks for the article on hospital CEO compensation ("UPMC Chief's Payout Hits $3.3 Million," May 23).

The facts you present are an obvious basis for the fact that overhead/administrative costs for health care in this country are so much higher than in other developed countries, including those with equal and even better health maintenance statistics.

Combined with the gross inequities in health care (for the wealthy vs. the poor) and the existence of more than 46 million uninsured and many more underinsured, it constitutes what seems to me an irrefutable argument that we need a single-payer health plan that covers all.

In a humane, democratic and affluent society, money assigned to health care ought to provide it to all before excessive profits and administrative costs are allowed.

I hope you will persevere and build on your excellent article by going more deeply into the subject and the injustices our current system perpetrates.

ROBIN W. BRIEHL, M.D.
Professor, Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Bronx, N.Y.