LETTERS: Congress too good for Obamacare

To the editor:

Obamacare fundamentally changes health care by forcing healthy Americans to pay something for nothing. Healthy people have been able to save untold amounts of cash by living a healthy lifestyle. Obamacare taps into this small fortune and still fails to address the essential issue: making care affordable when it’s needed.

Congress rejected the thought of paying for care and will get subsidies unavailable to anyone else. The doors to the hospital are now open, but at a huge cost when you need care. This sucks, but who can argue when sick? Healthy lifestyles should always be rewarded, and health care should be affordable when it is needed. Paying something for nothing is just a gold mine for the insurance industry. When Obamacare is good enough for Congress, then it should be good enough for the rest of us.

CECIL R. JONES

LAS VEGAS

HOA food fight

To the editor:

Yet another food fight has surfaced in the homeowners association oversight cafeteria (“Conflicts in HOA oversight,” Monday Review-Journal). Overzealous do-gooders such as Jonathan Friedrich, a new Common-Interest Community Commission member and apparently now the reigning Don Quixote of CICs, press the Legislature to enact more laws to further micromanage HOAs and increase our operating costs.

He and others need to get real. NRS 116, the statute governing common-interest communities, needs help. The Legislature needs to stop protecting banks while heaping onerous and costly legislation upon those of us trying to stay afloat here in a sea of statutory gibberish.

The persistent increase in overly complex HOA legislation appears to benefit everyone except HOAs. There is a growing need for involvement by attorneys as the limited expertise of paraprofessionals involved in association management becomes obsolete. Without legislative corrective action, I can envision legal firms eventually stepping in and offering all the same services as the current management companies, but at a much higher level of professional expertise and costs.

The vast majority of HOAs have less than 250 homes, and the level of business, technical and managerial expertise serving on HOA boards is rare and limited. For a board to truly “go it alone,” one would need five members each with a specific knowledge and background: a business manager, a paralegal, an accountant, an administrative manager and a jack-of-all-trades person. Today, this would be a rare commodity for any board or association management company.

One approach is to scale back some of the onerous and ridiculous law that overburden our governance. For starters, the super-priority lien for HOAs should be modeled after the powers granted to the county treasurer, and/or as Barbara Holland stated in a recent Review-Journal column, “just have an impound account for HOA dues.” Either way, this could reduce an HOA’s costs and collection complexity while providing certain outcomes.

In the absence of a rational legislative committee to rewrite NRS 116, HOAs should form a more perfect union. Today, trying to organize the 3,000 HOAs into a reasonable lobbying group is a daunting task. Association management companies lobby mostly for their benefit, as do individuals with an ax to grind or a profit to make: law firms, banks and large master-planned communities. The little guy is left out in the cold.

So who will take up the mantle of justice for all? Not me. I thought I retired years ago. Apparently not.

RICHARD RYCHTARIK

LAS VEGAS

Defending mail

To the editor:

I would like to respond to the Sept. 25 letter from Robert Raider (“Privatize Postal Service”).

I would caution Mr. Raider to be careful what he wishes for. I don’t think he knows what some of the results would be if the U.S. Postal Service went private. Does he think a private mail service would deliver a letter from Bangor, Maine, to Honolulu for 46 cents? Not in his wildest dreams. Does he think a private mail service would deliver a letter to Podunk, Alaska, with maybe only 50 residents? I hardly think so. Our Postal Service is mandated to give universal service, and a private company would not be required to deliver everywhere. It would only deliver to places that are profitable.

In the same day’s letters, there was a letter from Stephen L. Rosin dealing with one possible post office closure in Northern Nevada. If our post office was privatized, thousands of unprofitable offices would be closed, affecting mostly rural residents. If a private company takes over for the Postal Service, the sanctity of the mailbox would be lost. Every mail service in business would be allowed to fill Mr. Raider’s mailbox with anything they choose. These are just a few of the ramifications that I am aware of, after talking to postal officials.

Our Postal Service is the only one in the world that delivers six days a week, and it is considered the best Postal Service in the world. When I first moved here 13 years ago, I received letters from back east in three days, which was good service. Today, I consistently receive letters from the same people in two days. That is exceptional service.

I find surly employees and lines every day at banks, department stores, and grocery stores. The Postal Service doesn’t have a lock on that.

WILLIAM H. ISAAC II

HENDERSON