Editor, The Transcript:

You do your readers a disservice when you print political cartoons like the one in Wednesday's Transcript depicting Nancy Pelosi as a doctor taking a patient's wallet. The true cartoon should have depicted a CEO of the health insurance industry picking all of our pockets and a Republican congressman standing behind while the insurance exec. hands over much of the cash.

Recent studies have shown that the health insurance industry spends 20 percent to 34 percent on administrative salaries including CEO bonuses and a plethora of workers trained to deny claims. Medicare, albeit not perfect, has administrative costs of 3 percent to 5 percent. Do you actually think they are going to give up those big bucks without a fight? The only hope of these fat cats feeding at the health insurance trough is to dupe the people with inane arguments like the one depicted in your paper. If they can get enough people to believe in "death panels" and "Socialism" then they can belly up to the trough and begin making those obscene bonuses again.

Pelosi is leading a wave of change to help the uninsured get insurance so that the rest of us don't have to keep paying for their emergency room visits with our increased premiums and deductibles. State workers' deductibles double this next year if no change is initiated.

Please keep the debate civil and logical in the future and keep misleading and downright false information off the editorial page and on Fox news where it belongs.

Larry Steele

Norman