No Doom and Gloom in the Old City

Regarding "Last Call" in the Feb. 12 Metro Pulse [an "Eye on the Scene" item on Manhattan's closing, Vol. 7, No. 6]: The headline would have been better if it were a little more accurate, such as "Sour Grapes."

All of the merchants in the Old City feel a loss when any of the businesses close, but change is part of life and before you sound the death knell of the Old City, maybe you should have talked to some of the other merchants.

The Old City is an entrepreneurial zone and a certain amount of turnover in business is to be expected.

We have three businesses in the Old City: Knoxville Cigar, 195 Degrees (formerly Java), and Excelsior, Inc., all of which are doing very well.

Now specifically about Manhattan's: Kris Kendrick didn't hold a gun to their heads when they signed the lease. If it was too high, then they should have negotiated to reduce it prior to signing. Their primary music focus was blues, and there is just not a high enough percentage of people into that music to pack a place every night. And finally, small business, to succeed, needs to be either unique or be better at what they do than their competitors. Manhattan's was neither.

As your article stated, Manhattan's has changed hands three times in two years. But what you failed to mention was the first closing was after some three years in operation, the second was after less than a year, and the final was because of under-capitalization and an unclear vision of what needed to be done to remain in business.

Ms. Lyons is right about a couple of things: We do need to receive some attention and backing from the city of Knoxville, and the "perceived" crime problem needs to be addressed publicly.

The Metro Pulse, out of all the media, should be touting the positives about the Old City rather than printing doom and gloom.

James Zaring, Excelsior Inc.
Knoxville

Profits vs. Health

I enjoyed your cover story on healthcare in Knoxville very much ["Corporate Health," Vol. 8, No. 5]. There's only one thing that should, perhaps, be added. And that is that there really isn't any need for the corporate takeover of healthcare to occur in this country.

Clearly, the private sector does some things much better than government can. We are learning the hard way, however, that health insurance is not one of those things. As any MBA will tell you, the only duty of a CEO is to maximize returns for a corporation's shareholders, and that mission is fundamentally at odds with the basic mission of providing healthcare to those who need it most—that is, people who actually get sick.

Private insurance has already failed to provide adequate, affordable coverage for the elderly; that's why we have Medicare. Private insurance similarly failed the poor; that's why we have Medicaid/Tenn- Care. Private insurance failed those who fought for their country; that's why we have VA health benefits. And now, even though the public sector has absolved the insurance industry of the responsibility for these high-risk groups, private insurance is failing the middle class by rationing and denying care through the misguided policies of for-profit HMOs. Ironically, these are the very actions feared by the foes of "socialized medicine."

In the United States we allocate far more of our domestic spending to healthcare than any other industrialized nation, but what do we have to show for it? No greater life expectancy than countries with national health plans, plus about 42 million U.S. citizens with no health insurance at all. And these are mostly people from families with full-time workers.

Must we sentence people to beg for access to doctors here in the richest nation in the history of the world? Even many doctors are coming to realize the folly of "free market" health insurance. One group, Physicians for a National Health Plan, has an excellent proposal, "Why the U.S. Needs a Single Payer System," available at their Web site, http://www.pnhp.org. Consumer Reports and even Business Week—hardly a "liberal" publication—have endorsed such a proposal.

It's time to admit that for-profit health insurance has been a costly, deadly failure. It's time for universal single payer coverage in the United States.

Stan Ivester
Knoxville