Improve programs instead of panning them

It's common to hear conservatives refer to Social Security and Medicare as failures, as Ron Lessman did in his Jan. 18 letter. He compared both of them to Enron.

Social Security and Medicare, like the Post Office, are the targets of a lot of undeserved abuse. They actually work quite well. Social Security and Medicare have funding problems ahead of them, but the situations are different.

Social Security's problem can be fixed with minor tweaking. Instituting a mere 1 percent tax on money above the current cutoff level of $106,800 would fix Social Security for as far as the eye could see. Nobody likes to pay more tax, but 1 percent is a modest amount.

Medicare is a more serious and urgent problem that can be fixed only if health care costs are brought under control. The health care reform bill attempts meaningful cost reduction through the bundling of payments, gathering of data, a strengthened Medicare advisory commission and fee-for-performance experiments. Those things will have a big cost-cutting impact.

We need to pass reform now and work to improve it over time.

Brian Ochs

Marion