As a mother and grandmother, I read the article on cab service for teenage drinkers with mixed feelings. It's laudable that youth would take a step to seek to prevent harm to their peers from drunken driving. However, drunken driving is only a symptom of the larger problem of underage drinking in New Mexico. Our state and youth pay a high cost for underage drinking, which includes: higher probability of scholastic failure; high-risk sexual activity; physical and sexual assault; increased risk of suicide and homicide; unintentional injuries, such as burns, falls and drowning; alcohol poisoning fatalities.

Based on a study just released by the International Institute for Alcohol Awareness, underage drinking cost New Mexico $706 million in 2005. Over half the costs were attributed to motor vehicle crashes and youth violence. Drunken drivers usually start drinking before the age of 21. Youth who start drinking at an early age have five times the risk of becoming an alcoholic and a future drunken driver.


Public option or bust

It is unconscionable for Congress to abandon all efforts to include a public option. The Democratic leadership wants us to believe that "there is enough good in this bill," and the president is pushing quick passage in spite of his campaign promises. More than 50 percent of the public wants out from under the current system's crushing costs and uncertainties of care. Now we are in jeopardy of being forced into private health insurance while asking the insurance companies to play nice.

With the cost of housing at around 30 percent of household income, taxes another 24-plus percent, and another 13 percent to 15 percent for health care, how is the average family going to adequately meet all other living expenses on the remaining 31 percent to 33 percent? It is time to abandon the pretense of a private-sector solution and develop health care programs that take enormous profits out of the equation while ensuring universal health care.


Lobby too strong

Pure and simple, America needs a single-payer system. Nobody wants to cater to insurance companies who raise prices and deny coverage. Who would!? Seniors on Medicare, a single-payer system, are fortunate. The rest of the middle class cannot afford to pay the escalating costs, and millions are going without health care because of that fact. The poor haven't been able to afford it for many years now, and millions more have died because of no health care.

This is beyond insensitive; it's inhumane! A public option is like putting a Band-Aid on a massive wound, but a weak public option like the one being proposed, administered by the private sector, would be laughable if it weren't so outrageous. The American people are crying out, but it seems that Congress is deaf. One would hope that by now it would be painfully obvious to everyone that many politicians' careers are being financed by insurance and pharmaceutical companies. Just think what we could do for health care if we took away the corporate lobbyists' multimillion-dollar salaries! However, the bottom line for Corporate Congress is greed, not health care. They already have their single-payer system in place.


Reconsider public option

Our "progressive" senators need to hear from us. Conservatives from both parties are trying to gut a meaningful public option from health care legislation, even though the vast majority of the American public wants this provision. Our senators need to know there are a number of "political" reasons not to cave in, not to mention the ethical considerations. First, the public wants a meaningful public option. The public will take notice if a watered-down bill passes, and it will result in a lose/lose situation for both conservatives and weak progressives.

Second, If progressives stand strong and include a meaningful public option, and then that legislation is defeated by a coalition of conservatives, progressives will be applauded for their courage. This will actually lead to greater likelihood of a just bill passing before too long, and a surge in popularity for those who truly represent their constituents.

Andrew Gold
Santa Fe