A national health care plan costs less and would restore health care outcomes in the U.S. back into the Top 10, internationally. Currently, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ranks the U.S. around 30th for things like infant mortality.

Private health insurance is in the business of selling insurance, not in the business of ensuring affordable, quality health care for everyone.

Total U.S. health care spending is $3.2 trillion a year, and 35 percent of that is wasted on administrative overhead. Switching to HR 676 Medicare For All would reduce that 35 percent figure by 80 percent, which would allow us to cover everyone. Without co—pay. Without a deductible. Without Medicare Part D, which is both anti-free market — it prohibits drug price negotiation — and it criminalizes buying Food and Drug Administration-approved medicine from outside the U.S.

How do we pay for it? We stop wasting $800 billion per year on unnecessary insurance administration.

Dennis B. Miller

Waikiki

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Let voters revisit decision on rail

Make no mistake, generations of Honolulu families will ultimately pay for the rail. Even though the people may have given tacit approval for rail in the 2008 referendum, the doubling of the costs of rail, from $4.6 to $10 billion-plus, is such a material change that it surely warrants another review and vote.

How many of us have changed our minds when circumstances changed drastically? This decision is too important to leave to politicians and unions. Put it on the ballot and let the people decide to go or no go.

John Moon

Downtown Honolulu

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Finish the rail and extend it to UH

Complete the rail already. Build it to Ala Moana and then to the University of Hawaii at Manoa. I support a permanent general excise tax surcharge and even an increase to build, operate and maintain the rail system. Increases in the GET and the hotel room tax, as well as a small gasoline tax increase, are OK — but not a property tax increase.

Build it and passengers will come, even on the weekends, as traffic during weekends and holidays looks like weekday rush-hour traffic.

Delwyn Ching

Mililani

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Add express buses to alleviate traffic

Why are so many people so determined that the rail is the only solution for our traffic problem?

Is it because there is no alternative?

Express buses can reach more communities and more destinations. Express buses are cheaper to install and maintain. Express buses can have a shorter travel time if we implement bus-only lanes. There are many ways to prevent bus bunching, like new methods of collecting bus fares, getting on and off buses, and the placement of bus stations and bus stops.

The only purpose for having a mass transit system is to have a better and quicker way to get to and from work or school — period.

Ray Horita

Palolo Valley

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GOP, Congress need to rethink Mideast

The ability of Republican politicians to make Middle East policy came under question when presidential candidate Scott Walker showed his lack of awareness of the Muslim world’s basic divide between Sunni and Shia sects.

More recently, President Donald Trump sided with Saudi Arabia and its Sunni allies against the more liberal gulf state of Qatar, repeating Saudi lies about Iran being the source of most terror in the region.

And now Charles Krauthammer has jumped aboard the Sunni propaganda bus, with his argument in favor of “the Sunnis, moderate and Western allied, led by Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, Egypt and Jordan …” (“Countries are preparing for a new Muslim civil war,” Star-Advertiser, June 23).

Will someone please inform Krauthammer that the Saudi kingdom has been the prime exporter of jihadism for the past 30-plus years?

Alas, Republicans are not alone in favoring jihad-aligned Sunni dominance. If both parties in Congress could put aside their long-held enmity of Russia, Syria and Iran, they would sign on to U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s Stop Arming Terrorists Act, which sets the pre-conditions for an end to armed struggle in the region.

Richard Weigel

Salt Lake

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Webster knows about pesticides

Jack Roney questioned Dawn Webster’s accuracy in her observation that environmental protection is weak on Kauai (“Unlikely pesticides are being misused,” Star-Advertiser, Letters, June 25; “State needs to enforce environmental law on Kauai,” Star-Advertiser, Island Voices, June 19).

He claims there is no “liberal application” of pesticides because those chemicals are expensive. Webster was present on Kauai and either saw pesticides being applied or talked with witnesses who saw pesticide application.

Roney also pointed out that the Environmental Protection Agency has regulations about pesticides. Roney must know that the present administrator of the EPA is Scott Pruitt, who apparently does not think that the environment needs much protection.

Thomas Spring

Kaimuki

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Navy dodged queries at Red Hill meeting

The latest Red Hill fuel tanks meeting at Moanalua Middle School, hosted by the U.S. Navy, the Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Health, was a complete dog-and-pony show (“Navy admits lapses in Red Hill flow studies,” Star-Advertiser, June 24).

The shameful spectacle included a dozen or so different shiny presentation boards lacking substantive information on the actual work the Navy is doing to protect Oahu drinking water from potential contamination.

A common answer from the Navy to many of my questions was that it couldn’t tell me because of “national security.”

To the Navy I pose the same question, “Is America’s national security more important than Oahu’ s drinking water?”

Joshua Noga

Hauula