TheWiseOldFart

  Op-ed by TheWiseOldFart In the United States, a single night’s stay in a hospital will cost $2607. A normal birth of a child, $14,768. The least expensive heart surgery: angioplasty: $28,200. Open heart surgery with a highly rated surgeon: $200,000. Care for Leukemia: annually, $156,000. And the list goes on and on. These are all costs to patients like me who have no healthcare. When my wife and I were eligible for Medicare, healthcare we paid for all of our working years, we could not afford the monthly cost and keep our home. Now we cannot afford the penalties because we couldn't afford it several years ago. Is Medicare a viable option for all seniors? I don’t think so. I believe that no senior American should be required to pay anything for healthcare. I fail to understand politicians when they claim that America is the richest country in the world. I don’t live in that country. If this is true, there is no excuse why the United States is the only country in th...

  Op-ed by TheWiseOldFart   My wife and I refuse to fly on any commercial airline. The last time we flew together was in 1998. We traveled to Florida to celebrate our daughter’s 21 st birthday. On the way home we stopped in Denver to visit my brother. This experience, a combination of very bad weather, and the complete lack of customer service, combined with blatant lies from employees of United Airlines, was painful and unforgivable. We vowed never to fly on a commercial airline again. I wrote a letter to United’s vice-president of customer relations, explaining that I had been an employee of an airline between 1967 and 1976 and informed them that I would never again fly on their airline. I received a return letter containing an apology and two $100 vouchers for future air travel. I returned the vouchers with a short note informing them that I meant what I said and would never patronize their company again. In 2009 and 2010, I was employed by the 2010 Decennial Censu...