MAILBAG: Addicts’ families suffer when love held hostage

In the mathematics of drug addiction, the real losers are the parents who sacrifice so much to try to change the addict.

The addict frequently consumes much of the family resources and sanity.

Parents do have the honest option to let go of the addict and let the system do its job. Police officers will gladly arrest the drug addict, and the telephone call to bring narcotics officers of the law is not so hard to make, when you realize the enormous suffering the family has endured.

We as a society do not owe rehabilitation to anyone. Billions of dollars are lost, lives are disrupted, and society as a whole suffers from the drug addict.

The time has arrived to support our police officers in their attempt to serve and protect the communities.

The addict often holds the parents’ love as hostage in negotiating a rehabilitation plan, and there the mathematics get real. Few, if any addicts, ever become productive members of society without deciding on their own to get off drugs, and stay off drugs.

Drugs are a deprivation of cities, rural and urban strength. Drug addicts caught with drugs do not belong in our free society.

SARAH MOSS

Costa Mesa

I will not pretend to have all of the answers to the current dilemma concerning health matters in our nation, but I do know drastic changes are needed.

I am now retired but having spent most of my working career in the insurance industry I have a deep understanding of insurance underwriting and how insurance works. This background has led me to the conclusion that the insurance industry has no place in providing coverage in the health field.

Insurance companies exist first and foremost to earn profits. Insurers love to take in premiums but hate paying claims. Their primary goals are to earn the greatest profits possible, maintain shareholders good will, keep the corporate jets maintained and to pay fat bonuses to the corporate executives.

Far down the priority list are policy holders’ interests, claimants’ health issues and payment of doctor and hospital bills.

Health insurance companies left to their own devices wish only to insure young, healthy individuals who are less apt to fall ill but reject older persons with past medical conditions.

So how do we arrange for a health care system where everyone, young, old, healthy, ill and everywhere in between has affordable and reliable medical coverage? I wish I had an easy answer, but I do know the first step is to get the insurance industry out of the picture.

Sen. Tom Harman’s approach, which is to continue tinkering with our present age-old system which has never worked and never will work, should be dismissed for the folly it is.

THOMAS J. MENALO

Newport Coast

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