Letters to the Editor | Nov. 17, 2023

A careful reading of The Inquirer article regarding the Jefferson Hospital system trimming its losses, as it attempts to regain profitability, is revealing. Behind the machinations Jefferson is employing to reduce costs are the contracts Jefferson has with both for-profit and not-for-profit health insurers that govern reimbursement. Those contracts, when all else is stripped away, amount to the rationing of health care. In the United States, we pay health insurers to ration care, while raking in excessive profits, at the expense of providing adequate care for patients. We do this rather than creating a system that covers far more people and provides better care, funded via our taxes. When will we wake up to the perverse reality of how health care is delivered in America?

Angelo Sgro, Philadelphia, agsgro@comcast.net

I was in California recently and decided to catch a preseason Lakers basketball game at the Honda Center (capacity 18,609) in Anaheim. I got a taxi and found it hard to get near the facility. There was a big traffic jam, and I chose to walk three blocks. Apparently, even for an exhibition game in the middle of the week, the crowd was the size expected for a playoff. It took me until 7:30 p.m. to get in the line at the box office for seats. By that time, the first quarter was over, so I did not proceed.

Instead, I walked to a nearby restaurant where I found the staff sweeping up. One person told me the place closes at 7 p.m. on game nights because business dries up. As I looked around, the only people on the deserted street were two hat vendors. No stores were open, just light traffic and a full parking lot. I saw a similar dead zone next to the arena in Los Angeles years ago.

There’s a lesson here for Philadelphia. Chinatown merchants are right to be leery of the Sixers’ proposal for an arena on Market Street, and city officials need to consider that business will dry up thanks to traffic jams on game nights. In fact, as soon as building starts, Chinatown will suffer from construction zone inaccessibility. I suggest visits to Los Angeles, Anaheim, and Memphis to see the dead zones around downtown arenas. Then I suggest finding a better location for the Sixers.

Peter Silverberg, Delanco, peter_silverberg@yahoo.com

When I was 11 years old, I found out that my beloved Grandpa Ben had lied to us: He wasn’t Irish at all, he was Jewish. He confessed that he had made up the family name and history in his teens, never revealing his real past to anyone until now, in his 80s, on his deathbed. Afterward, my family became excited about adding Jewish cultural traditions to their Christian faith practices. Though not interested in converting to Judaism, Israel became a place we viewed with a certain possessiveness. To highlight this, I remember genuinely being confused when an acquaintance told us he was from Palestine. “I think he means Israel,” we said to each other later.

I feel this story has something to say about the way we engage with each other around the war in Gaza. In the same way that I did as a child, many of us have appropriated our affinities with minimal knowledge of both (or any!) of the actual communities involved. We often use dismissive language about those we see as the other side. But our partially formed opinions carry a terrible weight, erasing whole groups of people or forcing them into hiding. My grandfather suppressing his “too Jewish” identity all those years ago is an impulse many still understand, unfortunately, especially with the rise in antisemitism and Islamophobia.

By contrast, we need no special knowledge or qualifications to condemn murder whether it comes through the hands of terrorists or through state-sanctioned violence. This is a core truth we can unify around — it is not killing, but our human connection that keeps us safe. If we can truly see ourselves in each other, we can begin to turn the tide of violence. I believe that this is not wishful thinking but a sturdy fact.

Abigail Nixon, Philadelphia

Why are U.S. taxpayers paying about 16% of the entire Israeli military budget? How many more deaths are needed to satisfy Israel before a cease-fire seems reasonable? Rebuke of the heavy-handed retaliation over the Oct. 7 massacre is not antisemitic, it is anti-genocide. What makes one life more valuable than another? Occupation is an obstacle for peace.

Tina Thornton, Philadelphia

School boards in 466 of Pennsylvania’s 500 school districts have passed resolutions calling for commonsense reforms to the state’s 26-year-old charter school law, such as those included in House Bill 1422. That’s several thousand locally elected, volunteer school directors — Republicans and Democrats — responsible for levying taxes on their neighbors to fund public education. In July, the state House of Representatives, in a bipartisan vote that saw 20 GOP members join with Democrats, agreed with those school directors, and voted for H.B. 1422, which makes comprehensive and long-overdue reforms to the way cyber charter schools are funded and governed.

Most importantly, H.B. 1422 establishes a statewide tuition rate of $8,000 per non-special education student and a tiered tuition rate for special education students that more accurately reflects the lower cost of providing a virtual education and that provides resources based on a student’s special education needs. Statewide, the reforms included in H.B. 1422 could save school districts — and taxpayers — more than $400 million. This is not a Republican or Democratic issue. This is not a school choice issue. This is simply about the most efficient and effective way to use limited resources to provide public education.

Robert Gleason, former chairman, Pennsylvania State Republican Party and president, Westmont-Hilltop School Board, Johnstown and Lawrence Feinberg, director, Keystone Center for Charter Change at the Pennsylvania School Boards Association

I am a Realtor and found recent articles on a court decision that found real estate companies conspired to artificially inflate brokerage commissions misleading. One: No rules set agent commissions; our fees are negotiable by law. “Collusion” is illegal. Two: Most multiple listing services do not require listing brokers to compensate buyer brokers for showing, selling, and settling their property listings. Three: Most buyer brokers accept compensation from listing brokers with buyers making up any difference between what they agreed to pay them and what listing brokers offer.

Four: Having buyers compensate their agent ignores the fact that commissions are “built into” loans and pricing. Many buyers struggle to save for a down payment and other costs, including inspections, and do not have the funds to pay their agent. Given concerns about disparities in home ownership, why consider doing anything that might exclude more people from owning their own home? Five: Some studies have shown that “noncompetitive” buyer broker compensation may result in houses taking longer to sell and their achieving lower selling prices, likely offsetting any “perceived commission savings.” I am against anticompetitive practices such as collusion. I think, respectfully, that changing a system that has worked well for many years may do more harm than any perceived or intended good.

Andrew Wetzel, Havertown, awetzel@comcast.net

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