Healthcare dominates again

Each week, The Times’ editorial and opinion pages receive a few thousand emails sent to letters@latimes.com, most of which are spam, messages sent as part of letter-writing campaigns and more. After deleting those messages, I’m usually left with 500 to 1,000 usable letters to the editor to consider for six weekly pages. Between 60 and 70 letters end up running in the paper during any given week.

Here is a snapshot of this week’s mailbag:

529 usable letters were sent to letters@latimes.com between 10 a.m. Friday, June 29, and 10 a.m. this past Friday.

160 letters weighed in on healthcare reform, the week’s most-discussed topic.

43 of those letters were on Jonah Goldberg’s “Live free — and uninsured.”

13 Readers discussed corporate money in politics, the week’s runner-up topic.

For the second week in a row, the volume of letters discussing the Supreme Court’s decision last week on President Obama’s Affordable Care Act -- and how the ruling might come into play in the presidential campaign -- dominated the mailbag. But unlike last week, when the ruling on healthcare shared the top spot with the court’s decision on Arizona’s immigration law, there was no other hot-button issue that drew dozens of reader responses.

And next week? Judging by the steady stream of letters continuing to pour in as of 4:30 p.m. on Friday, and barring any important news or an article that touches a particularly sensitive nerve, don’t be surprised to see healthcare reform finish on top again.

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