Letters To The Editor
HEALTH CARE
Many delay getting health insurance
I work for a medical insurance company as a customer service representative. I routinely get calls from people who want to sign up or who have just signed up for insurance because they recently got sick.
Deborah Senn, the Washington state insurance commissioner, ignorantly refers to this and other concerns by insurance companies as “discrimination.”
Her tunnel vision has prevented her from accepting that many of the 600,000 uninsured Washingtonians don’t have insurance not because they can’t afford it but because they don’t want to afford it - until they get sick.
Senn continues to dodge these issues with sarcasm and sidestepping. There are no data to support how many of the uninsured could afford insurance but choose to place the burden of expensive health care on the responsible many who plan ahead.
Maybe she should have gathered these data before supporting reforms that doom us to increasing health care premiums. Lesley Hutson Spokane
Program encourages new lifestyles
Doug Floyd (Off the News, July 5) has missed the point of needle exchange and condom distribution.
During the five years that Spokane County Health District outreach workers have handed out condoms and taught IV drug users to bleach needles, and in the three years we have been providing needle exchange, our most important tasks have been education and disease prevention.
We provide products to help our clients avoid HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. We provide education and support to help people make meaningful lifestyle changes - and many have changed their lives.
One former client, who will celebrate four years of being drug- and alcohol-free this summer, was named “employee of the year” at a large Spokane business. Another former client has three years clean and works two jobs. Another woman was an honor-roll student at Spokane Falls Community College.
Meaningful and lasting changes do not occur overnight for any of us, least of all for those who are drug/alcohol addicted. Developing trusting relationships with members of the system takes time, repeated words of support, and acts of encouragement.
One hundred individuals have entered treatment with assistance from outreach workers. We have worked cooperatively with many local agencies to coordinate services for those individuals. We now see those in recovery from addiction begin to work and volunteer in our community.
Without community support and interagency cooperation, our task would be even more challenging. I feel fortunate to work in a community which most often works together to extend a helping hand - not hand out judgments. Lynn Everson, outreach worker Spokane County Health District
HOW WE TREAT EACH OTHER
Don’t blame the victims
In response to Michael Gurian’s recent column on family violence, I’d like to offer some rather startling statistics as provided by the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.
Once every 15 seconds in the United States, a woman is battered.
Ninety-five percent of victims of battering are female.
Fifty percent of victims seeking medical treatment are pregnant.
One-third of all female homicide victims in the United States die at the hands of their husbands or lovers.
A woman’s chances of being seriously injured or killed increase by 35 percent when she finally leaves an abusive relationship.
Battering is not about being “provoked,” but rather about the need to dominate, intimidate and control another person through the use of physical force.
Most batterers are male and many of them will tell you that they grew up in families where they saw their mother beaten. Many more will tell you that they were also the victims of childhood abuse and neglect.
In attempting to focus attention on “who provokes whom,” we may be presenting yet another barrier to treatment for men who batter. We know that batterers’ treatment programs can provide a safe place for men to express their rage regarding childhood abuse and to learn healthy ways of relating to others. Let’s not get off track by blaming the victim for a national tragedy. Carolyn J. Morrison Director, Alternatives to Domestic Violence Program, YWCA
Initiatives take away rights
Proponents of anti-gay rights Initiatives 608 and 610 claim they are merely denying “special rights” to gays and that initiative opponents have nothing to fear (advertisement, June 30). Take a careful look at these initiatives. You will see that this is not true.
What “special rights” would these initiatives deny? The right to hold a job based on the quality of your work. The right to housing based on your ability to pay for it. The right to raise your children. Far from special rights, these are some of the most basic rights that underlie our society.
Under either initiative, a person fired or denied housing because he or she was thought to be gay would have no legal recourse. I-610 allows employers to consider “private, lawful sexual behaviors” as non-job-related factors for firing public employees - gay or not.
I-610 would take people’s children away from them in divorce or custody proceedings. The court would have to determine that the parents do not “participate in homosexuality” before they could grant custody. Any state resident could accuse a parent of being gay and the burden would be on the parent to prove otherwise.
We all have a right to hold and express our beliefs. But we do not get to discriminate in hiring, renting, child custody, etc. because of someone else’s religious beliefs, political affiliations, marital status, etc. Through I-608 and 610, however, anti-gay agitators want to claim for themselves the special right to discriminate.
Let’s not give it to them. Julia Schauble Chairwoman, ACLU, Spokane
We need to respect each other
As I read through the editorial page today (July 6), like I do every day, I am struck again by the realization that we are of a people divided. Democrats vs. Republican, right-to-life vs. pro- choice, Christian vs. gay/lesbian - the list goes on. And all this sparring has left us as a people full of contempt and hate for our fellow man. The amount of disrespect coming from our minds is heartbreaking. And we wonder what is happening to our youth today.
Like it or not, there is not a single person who doesn’t deserve respect. I am not called to respect the views or the lifestyles of all, but what I am called to do is respect the person, the human being that lies beneath.
I have had the privilege to work with and around people whom society has branded in harsh ways simply because they don’t fit their own personal agendas. They are the gays, the homeless, the addict, the pusher, the Democrat, the Republican, the Christian, the black and the white, and they - each one of them - are far more than the labels you and I have put upon them.
We as human beings deserve more than to be shoved into a corner and forced to put on boxing gloves to fight for our honor.
The day that I stomp on the views of another person simply to prove that I am in the right is the day that I wish to quit sharing the air that we all breathe. Patty Dimico Spokane
Christians being persecuted
In the June 29 Spokesman-Review (Opinion), former secretary of education William J. Bennett laments that it’s “open season” on religious conservatives.
Bennett points out that most conservative Christians are promoting strong family values, good schools, safe streets and nonintrusive government and communities where people care for one another. Bennett points out several recent examples of Christian-bashing by the liberal establishment and comments that “The attempt to discredit the conservative Christian movement is an attempt by some to discredit its underlying philosophy. Christianity stands against moral relativism; is the antithesis of the modern age’s worship of the self; is about right and wrong.” Bennett concludes by saying that “the religious right now stands where most Americans stood 30 years ago.”
Our society is now far more concerned with the rights of criminals than with the rights of the victims of crime. The news media constantly promote the acceptance of the gay lifestyle. Who is promoting the acceptance of moral values? Some would even like to see the homosexual lifestyle taught in our schools, and these same folks would be abhorred at the thought of values or morals being taught, or the mere mention of God, in our schools.
Milt Priggee’s possessed-by-Christian-conservatives cartoon that followed only two days after Bennett’s column further attests to the open season on Christians.
But let’s examine the results of some 30 years of big government, anti-God, moral-declining, self-serving and instant-gratification society. Do we take a stand, or do we fiddle as when Rome burned? Dick McInerney Spokane
OTHER TOPICS
Insurance companies at fault
Thirty-eight million American citizens without health care protection and the exorbitant premiums for those who are insured proves there is something wrong with our method of providing health care. The culprit: the insurance industry.
Health care insurance is a parasite in the health care system. The rest of our economy functions without interference from insurance companies. We buy cars, clothing, houses, vacations and scores of other services and goods without paying a meddling insurance company. No insurance company decides if calls to the police or fire department are necessary. No insurance company intervenes when you send your children to public schools. Citizens have a right to these tax-supported services. Is health care less important?
Insurance companies collect billions of dollars and pay back about 73 percent. The rest is profit and waste. The president of Travelers extracts an annual salary of $54 million from his policy holders. In one hour, this health care provider receives more pay than the president of the United States receives in a year.
Eliminate insurance companies. Let the patient choose the doctor and the doctor determine the treatment. Every legal citizen would be covered. All would be responsibly taxed. Taxes would be much less than the premiums we now pay.
Politicians desperately try to make their self-serving promotion of the insurance industry look like a panacea for the health care needs of middle-class Americans. It isn’t - it’s the problem. Single-payer is the answer. Enlighten your congressperson. Arch Jaecks Wenatchee
Levy didn’t provide enough
Steve Johnson (Letters, June 29) asked why outgoing board members had found $400,000 for building projects in “politically and economically powerful sections of Sandpoint” but “couldn’t find $400,000 to build Kootenai School (a poor section of Sandpoint).”
Johnson noted that $300,000 had been spent on Washington School. During a 1993 school board meeting, several teachers explained how difficult it is to teach in the portable classrooms they had been using. The board (which was essentially a new set of trustees as of July 1991) recognized that saving the very high rent of those portables would repay the cost of building classrooms in not too many years. Since they had eliminated a $500,000 deficit in their first year as trustees and had ended their second fiscal year (1992-93) with a $126,000 surplus, they reasoned that the construction would be a wise investment.
The $100,000 dedicated to Project ‘92 probably wouldn’t even pay for the classrooms and restrooms in the proposed athletic complex of Sandpoint High School. Most of the cost ($400,000) is being furnished by community donations. The high school, completed just before the ‘91 board was seated, is very short on classrooms. It was built without many things, including adequate gym space.
All of the 1987 levy funds for construction of Kootenai School ($1.2 million plus interest) are in a separate account ready to use, except for what has been spent for pre-site work. Kootenai faces the same problem that almost every building constructed under the 1987 levy faced - the levy was insufficient for construction costs. Joan Spencer Cocolalla, Idaho
Consultant isn’t needed
By hiring Carol Darby as a $7,500-per-month consultant to the county commission, Commissioners Pat Mummey and Skip Chilberg have proven once again why they should never have been elected to the commission in the first place. Commissioner Steve Hasson, the commission’s lone voice of dissent to the approval of this ridiculous maneuver, is absolutely correct in his observation that the contract is a violation of public trust.
Did not the electorate of this county, by its vote, mandate the formation of the freeholders to study and make recommendations concerning the structure and operation of county government? Why should the taxpayers of this county be required to pay for what amounts to another $90,000-per-year salaried position to receive information it has already commissioned the freeholders to provide?
Both Mummey and Chilberg need to be reminded that as elected officials their job is to serve the community, not bankrupt it. Scott Leyland Spokane