To the editor:

It was upsetting watching NBC News about Congress passing a bill to stop Medicare from saving more than a billion dollars a year and still provide the same service to seniors. News reporter Myers reported that Congress has been talking about all the waste spent from Medicare. So Medicare decided to do something about it; it was found that they were paying 12 times more to rent some equipment, as it would cost to buy the same equipment etc.

In all, they estimated a 26-percent saving, which equates to over $1 billion a year.

Why did Congress vote to stop the saving? Well, the drug and equipment lobby spent more than $6 million to show why it would be in our (U.S. citizens’) best interests not to save a billion-plus dollars a year. There were 70 votes from the Senate to stop the saving.

If this bothers you, then write to your senator and find out how they voted and let them know your concern about the importance of saving taxpayers’ money.

Note: These are the same people who want to run our national health program.

While you are writing or calling, you may want to voice your opinion if you are one of the

70 percent who believe we should drill for oil, use our coal for fuel, wind, solar and all other ways to get off foreign oil. This would help relieve the pain of working people and give some hope of a future to those people who would like to retire before they die.

I believe we should get off oil as fast as we can; but that technology is 20-plus years away. If we continue to send as much money overseas to buy fuel as the last 12 months, we can destroy our economy as we know it today. We can help save our economy by not spending $400 billion overseas in countries that do not like us, yet they will have the money to buy America while we keep enlarging our national debt and will burden our kids and our grandchildren.

We should be ashamed of ourselves if we fail to get up and demand that they act on our part. We must let our elected officials know that we have more power than the lobbies.

We have the technology to drill and to obtain fuel from coal, offshore drilling, etc. We could be helping the greenhouse gases instead of buying our oil from countries that pollute far more than the U.S. for each barrel. After all, this is a global world.

For some of you who may not know, China is drilling 50 miles offshore, not from China, but from Key West, Fla and sending the oil to Cuba.

Don Hill

Freeland