Readers Write: July 28

Republicans just don’t know how to govern

The Republican party has the House, the Senate and the presidency. They have had almost eight years of complaining and threatening to do something about the Affordable Care Act. Yet, in all that time, they have obviously not spent much time or effort on putting together a reasonable alternative. The Senate leadership is tossing ideas out, sort of like making pasta, throw it against the wall and see if it sticks. It looks like after years of dragging their feet and vowing to do nothing, they have only learned their lesson too well, and now do not know how to accomplish anything. It’s hard to make America great again when you don’t know how to govern.

EDWIN PRINCE, SUWANEE

Bookman wrong about health care as a ‘right’

The opinion by Jay Bookman declares that “Health care is now a right,” Opinion, July 23, without defining “right.” Rights have a characteristic not shared by health care. Exercise your free speech rights and who has to bear the cost of that exercise? No one. Exercise your right to worship freely. Who has to pay for that act? No one. Exercise your right of assembly or the right to petition the government, and what price attaches to the fulfillment of those rights? None. We have only one right, a trial by a jury of our peers, that carries the price of time for jurors summoned to service. Health care is delivered by people who have to be paid, through institutions that must be compensated. Should they work for free? Someone has to pay the bill, making healthcare a commodity, not a right. To claim otherwise is either Constitutional ignorance or political deception.

DENNIS MCGOWAN, SNELLVILLE