Bush’s Medicare, Prescription Plan

Re “Bush Offers Plan on Health Care,” Sept. 6: George W. Bush’s Medicare plan shows compassion and vision. The promise of an attempt to get bipartisan cooperation to make a better Medicare for Americans is a breath of fresh air blowing into a smoke-filled room filled with untruths, sound bites and scare tactics against those Americans who trust the most but understand the least.

The Bush plan is indicative of a constructive government effort that judiciously steps in to help those who need it and at the same time gives Americans the opportunities to keep more of their hard-earned money (tax cuts), get a better return on their Social Security investment (voluntary partial privatization) and, upon death, pass their estates on to their families (death tax repeal), so they and their posterity can rely more on themselves and less on government.

GARY RUDNICK

Palm Desert

* The insurance industry welcomes the Bush prescription drug plan because it would be involved and it would make money. One merely has to take a macroscopic view of the economics involved here and consider it from the point of view of a zero-sum game. In order for the insurance industry to make money, where would the money come from?

MARVIN STERN

Atascadero

* As a sensible alternative to the Bush or Gore plans to help people pay for prescription drugs, Times readers might want to contact their representative to support House of Representatives bill H.R. 3240 and Senate bill S. 2520. Both bills, if passed, would allow Americans to import into the U.S. FDA-approved prescription drugs manufactured at FDA-approved facilities overseas. Since foreigners pay substantially less for most prescriptions than Americans pay for the identical drugs, passage of these bills would result in considerable savings to all Americans, not just senior citizens.

The two bills have numerous Democratic and Republican sponsors but are being strongly opposed by the powerful pharmaceutical drug lobby.

MICHAEL WIENER

Encino