Guest Comment: A curmudgeon’s questions

How much money would we be able to save on prescriptions, if the money which pharmaceutical companies expended on television and print advertising, were instead used to reduce costs to the consumer? After all, we, the actual consumers, cannot buy those highly touted medications, unless a physician prescribes them for us. Those ads are actually a thinly disguised coercion on the part of the drug companies to influence doctors, possibly to our detriment.

How much better would Medicare and Social Security be for the general public if members of Congress were enrolled under the same exact guidelines? If the average citizen would have gotten the same increases to his/her income that Congress has voted for its members, over the last 20 years, your monthly checks would be close to double what they currently are.

If only one-tenth of what has been spent on space exploration and our wars overseas, not to mention the unbelievable waste in military procurement and social welfare programs, had been used for medical research, don’t you believe that we could be enjoying breakthroughs in cures and treatment for Alzheimer’s, cancer, diabetes, AIDS, and our many other medical problems?

If our federal government were seriously committed to solving the illegal immigration problem, why are they not cooperating with the Mexican government to eliminate the situations which cause people to want to come into this country?. For example, rather than spend billion of dollars on ineffectual fences and additional patrol agents, put the money into social and educational programs to raise the standard of living for the putative migrants, so that they could enjoy their families, while providing more humane living conditions for them.

Thomas J. Ackerman has been a resident of Green Valley for 12 years. Before retiring, he taught at the college level in Maryland, Florida, and California.

Comment on this story online at www.gvnews.com

The views expressed are the author’s and not necessarily this newspaper’s