Contentious atmosphere is hard to comprehend

Sharon Raghavachary’s column on Jan. 20 prompted me to sit behind the computer and write a letter to the opinion page.

So Republicans voted to repeal the health-care reform bill that our president had put so much heart into.

I am not sure when, maybe it was in high school or even earlier, that I learned about the hostility between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland. For me, it was hard to understand how they had carried out so much feuding between each other and fought bloody fights for centuries.

Weren’t they all children of the same God and accepted Jesus as their savior?

Today, a similar scenario: a deep rooted anger prevails between two civilized parties, the Republicans and the Democrats of the United States. Again, I don’t understand all the nasty attitude or venom-spewing of Republicans toward Democrats. Turn on the Fox channel and you can hear all the mean-spirited rhetoric, and how emotions run high about a much needed insurance reform that could give many Sharons one less worry in this treacherous world.

God save us from worse.

Catherine Yesayan

Glendale

Repeal health-care law, raise social security cap

Regarding the Jan. 20 column “I’m Just Sayin’: The necessity of health-care reform,” whatever that AP-GfK poll claims, in some quarters, feelings against President Obama’s health-care overhaul bill are still running high!

Take Obama’s guileful, out-of-pocket “doughnut hole,” prescription-drugs-cost-coverage-improvements bouquet aside, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Chief Actuary Richard Foster projects that under the new law, overall out-of-pocket costs for various benefits including Medicare Advantage will rise from $326 in 2011 to a whopping $923 in 2017.

It would be fairer all around to repeal Obamacare’s Medicare Advantage cuts and lift the annual payroll earnings subject to the Social Security tax in their stead.

Harvey Pearson

Los Feliz