I just wanted to underline an important piece of information that came out of the recent Tri-Cities Regional Economic Outlook conference.

Rand Wortman, president and CEO at Kadlec, commented that the reforms in healthcare (pejoratively named "Obamacare" by critics) have not changed the way medicine is practiced. They have changed how it is paid for. He specifically said no one is pulling the plug on the fictional grandma.

I would hope that those who continue to decry the reforms in terms of driving fictional fears of reduced delivery of healthcare will listen to and hear the word of the experts in the field rather than repeating their own self-serving falsehoods.

There were also repeated references to the Hanford clean-up jobs created by federal stimulus funds, some of which, unfortunately, are now ending because of the end of the funding. It can be extrapolated that if our representatives had supported a higher level of funding, those jobs would still be there. I would also point out that Representative Hastings has, on numerous occasions, declared that the stimulus package didn't create any jobs, a stance contrary to information presented at the conference by their panel of experts.

Richard Reuther, Richland