Mailbag:

Should our cherished health-care system continue on its present trajectory we will be the proud participants of yet another too big to fail conundrum. Only consolidation of the existing health-care industry providers can slow the leviathan we know as the health insurance premium starved hounds.

Their business model is flawed and they are acutely aware of this, yet they know of no other avenue to avert future diminished shareholder profits. They are consequently locked into a private health insurance industry paradigm that threatens to consume them during this weakening of our capitalist consumer economy. They have already proven in innumerable cases during the best of economic times that denying coverage and canceling policy holders was necessary to maintain their corporate profits. What must they now do to maintain corporate profits? The answer is under their noses.

A robust public option is the answer. Private health insurance will thrive under the existence of a public option. They will carve out a niche of the American public that will continually ensure their profitability. For those companies whose fortunes are squandered on unintelligent modeling, may their ashes provide the nutrients for other, smarter, brighter and more energetic companies to jump into the fray. After all, this is America in the 21st century. Inexperience is not on our resume.

If we indeed are the greatest country presently on the face of this blue planet, then why are we having this raging debate over something so basic as health-care? Are we not admonished throughout life to choose our battles wisely? Are we deathly afraid of making mistakes? Or is it something quite rudimentary like we simply like to fight?

I believe the latter is true. Therefore, a robust public option will ensure a legion of healthy soldiers.

Glen Catherwood

Huntington Beach

Don’t blame the residents for coyotes

Chris Epting’s front-page article ( “Humans cause coyote problems,” Aug. 6) points out that wild coyotes stalking our residential streets in search of small animals and children to eat is the fault of the families that live in the residential neighborhoods.

Curiously, the article leaves out any causal impact of city planners, developers and corporate interests that pour concrete on the natural, open-area hunting grounds of the predatory animals, thus forcing them to search for food elsewhere. We hear about one coyote that had been “exhibiting certain aggressive behaviors toward people” and was killed by Orange County Animal Control, and then we hear from various “experts” lamenting the coyote’s passing. The cause of the aggressive behavior is then attributed to humans interacting with the coyote.

One “expert” said she “sees coyotes being taunted by neighborhood kids and being reported by people simply for walking through a neighborhood. And it frustrates her that the coyote that was euthanized may have simply been rebelling against human activity.”

Following the tortured pretzel-logic of the “experts” to arrive at their predetermined conclusion is an arduous effort of mental agility. I believe that, using my own expertise in the areas of extra sensory perception, I have come up with an astoundingly simple explanation for the aggressive behavior that got the coyote killed: The animal was starving!

Coyotes do not stroll through our neighborhood streets for aerobic exercise. They come for food. Pets and small children are on the menu, and eventually there will be the catastrophic event that Animal Care Director Ryan Drabek dreads. Coyotes are opportunists.

One of them snapped the neck of my cat, LeRoy, the other night.

We learn that we should not let pets and small children outside unless we are directly observing them. I must admit that I do not have enough time to watch each of my pets 24/7.

The residents of Huntington Beach must pick up the tab for the clean up and collection of the increased garbage, even though the residents are neither tossing the garbage nor profiting from the sale of the garbage. The developer and the commercial enterprise that occupies the former hunting grounds of the coyote has no responsibility nor liability to deal with the impact of the for-profit enterprise. The sweetheart deals made to attract development have exempted new hotels, in the recent past, from being assessed the bed tax that has appeared on every hotel tab that I ever paid elsewhere. In two more weeks the city will rubber stamp yet another development designed to draw more people to Huntington Beach.

There will be more traffic and, consequently, more noise from loud vehicles, car alarms, police and fire department sirens, helicopters endlessly circling escaped drunks while residents try to sleep. The developers and city planners will be nowhere to be seen when these impacts and their costs hit.

The commercial enterprises will deny any fiscal responsibility for the impact of their businesses on the residents, and the city will then sell a gullible public on the need for yet another bond to pay for the impact that no one could possibly see coming before the rubber stamping ceremony of the Downtown Specific Plan.

Mike Kelly

Huntington Beach

Coyotes are going to be here to stay

To Chris Epting: Your article (“Humans cause coyote problems,” Aug. 6) goes a long way in helping reshape our perspective on the “wild” animals. We live in such an intensely urban setting. These interactions with the natural world are here to stay, and we must learn to co-habitate or face losing their part of the story.

Flossie Horgan

Executive director, Bolsa Chica Land Trust