Letters to the Editor: ‘How Great Powers Fall’

Americans live beyond their means and spend money on useless wars. Unless corrective action is taken, America's fall could be a reality.
S. Raghunatha, Alappuzha, India

Niall Ferguson's article cites steep debt, slow growth, and high spending as empire killers. Was greed too irrelevant to be considered a major factor?
Joseph Creasy, Falls Church, VA.

We have chosen to risk our credit and the security of future generations rather than make hard choices. This is not just Congress's fault. Who voted recently for the candidate who said he would raise taxes and cut entitlements and defense spending?
David Doney, Chicago, ILL.

'Why Dick Cheney Should Run In 2012'
Jon Meacham's proposal that Dick Cheney run in 2012 misses the mark. Cheney does not embody the conservative principles that disgruntled GOP voters want in a candidate. He epitomizes why the Bush administration was, from a PR perspective, the most vilified presidency since Nixon's. Mike Huckabee is the only GOP hopeful with any chance of derailing the Obama juggernaut.
Constantinos Scaros, Cliffside Park, N.J.

We have already had a proxy for the election that Meacham imagines. Sen. John McCain did not distance himself from Cheney's hawkish positions and lost by a hefty margin.
Richard Meindl, Kent, Ohio

'ABORTION'S NEW BATTLEGROUND'
Ruth Marcus is correct that women stand to gain much from health-care reform. However, I disagree that the benefits of expanded insurance coverage justify further restrictions on access to abortion care. Eighty-seven percent of employer-based health plans provide coverage for abortion care. If the Stupak amendment—or equally restrictive language—makes it into the final health-care bill, millions of women could lose their coverage. Using women's reproductive health as a pawn in the debate is not the way to meaningful and inclusive reform.
Vicki Saporta, President and CEO, National Abortion Federation, Washington, D.C.

'THE HOSPITAL THAT COULD CURE HEALTH CARE'
This article misrepresents my objection to "the argument that salaries reduce costs." It says my skepticism is "based less on the data than on [my] knowledge of human nature." I showed your reporter that the same database that shows the Cleveland Clinic's expenses were "nearly 50 percent below the most expensive" system's costs for Medicare beneficiaries in the last two years of life also shows that University Hospitals of Cleveland, a mile from the clinic, had almost exactly the same costs, even though its physician practice was organized very differently. When two major academic medical centers down the street from each other have the same costs, and only one pays its doctors by salary, the data suggest salary is not the key variable.
Joseph White, PH.D., Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio