Black and white and read all over

These are some things that are white: people, salt, snow, polar bears.

These are some things that are Black: people, coal, coffee, and pepper.

We seem to show a preference these days for Black — the uppercase “B” is used. It's the lowercase “w” that is common for white. Years ago, maybe the opposite was true. Is it likely that we will soon be seeing only BLACK and white? Merely flipping things around solves nothing.

Neil Meliment

Hartland

The catastrophe of high-deductible health care plans

What used to be called “catastrophic” insurance has been rebranded as “high-deductible” insurance. It used to be on the cheaper side because the insurance company’s liability didn’t kick in until you had already paid a large amount. While you were covered if something truly catastrophic happened, it encouraged you to avoid seeing a doctor for day-to-day complaints because you had to pay the whole amount out of pocket. Delaying doctor visits until conditions get much worse is both bad for your health and ultimately more expensive.

In the rebranding of “catastrophic” to “high-deductible,” insurance companies apparently figured out they could actually charge an arm and leg for this lousy health care. The innocuous term for this is “underinsured,” meaning you pay a high premium for insurance with a deductible so high you still can’t afford to see a doctor.

How bad is this? Consider what might be my insurance. I pay $7,000 a year out of my paycheck, and my company pays another $14,000. The deductible is $10,000. If I have $10,000 worth of health care expenses — not uncommon in this land of runaway medical costs (Vermont being higher than the national average) — I pay $17,000 out of pocket. Add in the $14,000 my company pays (money they could’ve paid to me), and the total is $31,000. Of that $31,000, the insurance company made off with $21,000 without paying out a penny; hospitals made off with the remaining $10,000. A so-called “high deductible” plan should really be called a “ridiculously expensive catastrophic” plan. Clearly this is the business to be in!

The $17,000 out of my pocket is equivalent to 25.1% income tax if I have the median income in Vermont. My company paid the equivalent of a 14.8% payroll tax.

Compare that to the 9% income tax and 11.5% payroll tax that then-Gov. Shumlin balked at eight years ago when he pulled the plug on publicly funded universal health care. Exactly what was there to balk at? Universal publicly funded health care seems the obvious solution to our current health care nightmare.

Mark Gibson

Bristol, Vt.

Croydon has a superintendent problem

On an hourly basis, the Croydon superintendent is one of the highest-paid school employees in New Hampshire. What are we getting for that?

A superintendent who would not go into his performance review without three “extras”; two subordinates and one member of We Stand Up for Croydon. Where else do performance reviews allow the employee to bring a support group?

When asked at a School Board meeting how much would ensure academic proficiency the Superintendent suggested that a million dollars per student was not enough, according to a post by Croydon resident Ian Underwood on Granite Grok. I taught my children to read with a hand-me-down set of LeapFrog cards, time, and patience. I had offered to teach Croydon students to read for free, but the superintendent wanted to put a policy in place that had not existed in the past. My offer still stands for any Croydon student; we just need to do it outside of our “place of learning.”

Croydon ranks 74 out of 187 school districts statewide, according to PublicSchoolReview.com.

This year Croydon Village School has budgeted almost $29,000 per student. Is this someone’s idea of getting our money’s worth?

There is now a push for preschool, which Head Start studies have proven show no educational advantage and if there is any it is all lost by third grade. Children who attend preschool have more behavioral problems later in their school years and have less of a connection with their parents.

Cathy Peschke

Croydon

Citizens for Reasonable and Fair Taxes

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