Grocery Strike Is the Tip of Health-Care Woes

Re “Tired and Angry, Shoppers Want Grocery Strike to End,” Dec. 24: Enron. Halliburton. Tax rebates for the wealthy. Corporations are waging a war on the poor. Now the grocery workers are fighting back.

They are giving up a great deal as the grocery chains try to break their union. Are we going to sit back and say it is too much of an effort to find smaller markets? Are we going to refuse to pay a little more to help in this workers’ struggle? Or are we going to say that we have had enough of this abuse of the poor and middle class? Let’s stay away from Vons, Albertsons, and, yes, Ralphs, too. Ralphs workers may not be picketing at Ralphs, but they are still locked out.

I too am tired and angry, but if we don’t start fighting back now, then when?

Marilyn Goodman

Santa Monica

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Re “Sick and Getting Sicker,” editorial, Dec. 23: For once I agree with The Times. It is time that grocery workers recognize that they, together with businesses, have to find common ground in resolving the growing crisis in health care. The current war between labor unions and Albertsons, Ralphs and Vons helps no one.

There has to be a willingness on both sides in order to resolve the current crisis. Health care is a national issue and demands both cooperation and leadership to resolve it.

The grocery stores offered a fair and reasonable package months ago. The union refused to accept it, and now its members are facing the loss of their medical benefits altogether, as their coverage runs out. Further jamming emergency departments with patients who had access to health care and lost it over a dispute caused by economic changes will not fix what’s wrong in health care today. Labor unions need to recognize the financial realities of the marketplace. Health insurance is not practically free any longer.

Linda K. Okun

Glendora

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Re “Shortsighted States Are Putting Health Care on the Chopping Block,” Dec. 22: Ronald Brownstein has it exactly right about the shortsighted state policies regarding publicly supported health insurance, especially for California children. For the Healthy Families program (California’s implementation of CHIP, the Children’s Health Insurance Program), the federal enabling act provides $2 for every dollar the state appropriates.

A substantial portion of those federal matching funds are dollars that California taxpayers sent to Washington in the first place. We get them back and insure thousands more uninsured children with them. If the program is cut, some other state gets our money.

Emery B. Dowell

Member, Calif. Managed

Risk Medical Insurance

Board, 1990-2001

Gold River, Calif.