My letter is in response to the unsigned letter on Tuesday August 11 entitled: Reframe the debate. Statistics can be "framed" to persuade any side of a debate. I took the opportunity to search life expectancy on the internet and found other studies that ranked the United States higher than 50th in the world, including CIA World Fact Book. There seems to be several reasons that we are not at the top of these lists that have nothing to do with health care. That is: life expectancy takes into account such things as murders and accidents. Some experts believe our obesity problem, our teen pregnancies and gang behaviors greatly influence life expectancy.

As for lobbyists, the trial lawyers are up there fighting against any reform in malpractice litigation. The mandates given by the government concerning coverage and lawsuits are leading causes of the high cost of health care. Medicare is not doing well as it has used up allotted funds. (no worry, we can print more money.)

Our president, in an effort to allay our fears that private insurers would not be able to compete against government run healthcare, gave this example. It seems Fed-Ex and UPS are doing quite well as compared to the U.S. Post Office. Wow! That is what conservatives are afraid of. Government run healthcare will be like the post office. Thanks Obama for the analogy!

Suzanne Allen

Chairwoman, Scotland County GOP

Editor's note: The letter in question was submitted by Debby Hammer of Laurinburg. Her name was mistakenly omitted when the page was printed. The Laurinburg Exchange regrets the error.