Spokane7
65°Quick links: 2012 graduating seniors • Summer camp guide • Jobs: The Road Ahead • Prep sports • News quiz
Sara Cahoon reads a book while using a nebulizer Friday morning at her Meridian home. Cahoo, 28, has had cystic fibrosis and uses the treatment up to three times a day. Lawmakers are deciding whether to keep a very small program that pays medical bills for patients with cystic fibrosis. Many patients use the program to pay for multiple prescriptions that each cost around $1,400 monthly. The medicines have been key in turning the lung disease from a childhood death sentence to a chronic condition in which patients live well into their 30s, with life expectancies rising all the time. (AP Photo/Idaho Statesman,Chris Butler)
D.F. Oliveria is a columnist and blogger for The Spokesman-Review. Huckleberries Online was judged the best 2008 Idaho newspaper blog by the Idaho Press Club. And the best 2007 news blog in the Pacific Northwest by the Society for Professional Journalist. Print Huckleberries is a past winner of the Herb Caen Memorial Column contest by the National Association of Newspaper Columnists. The Readership Institute of Northwestern University cited this blog as a good example of online community journalism.
999 W. Riverside, Spokane, WA 99201
P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210
Main switchboard: (509) 459-5000 • (800) 338-8801
Newsroom: (509) 459-5400 • (800) 789-0029
Customer service: (800) 338-8801
© Copyright 2012, The Spokesman-Review
Terms of use • Privacy policy • Copyright policy
Find DFO on Facebook
DFO on Twitter
Frum Helen Back on March 18 at 12:53 p.m.
I certainly hope that someone in Boise realizes what cutting this program will do. Very sad if they do. It seems totally immoral to me. And how scarry for the affected families this must be.
lew2nl on March 18 at 2:16 p.m.
Having a niece who passed away with Cystic Fibrosis at age14 and my husband having a nephew who just passed away in Moscow at age 27, I feel that it is an injustice to take away medical bill payments for people inflicted with this horrible disease.