Letters To The Editor

HEALTH CARE

For-profit system about cash, not care

Many managed care corporations operate for their own profit. Fortunately, Washington has a better idea.

Washington State Single Payer Network, WA-SPAN, has developed a health care trust plan which will cover all Washington residents, no matter whom they work for, regardless of their ability to pay. It will save $2.3 billion by stopping the flow of health care dollars to insurance profits, advertising, political lobbying and exorbitant CEO salaries.

Administrative savings will be used to extend care to Washington’s 600,000 uninsured and cover all medically necessary care, including prescription drugs, eyeglasses, hearing aids, mental health and substance abuse treatment, long-term nursing home care and licensed alternative care. Each person may choose his or her doctor free of insurance companies, while delivery remains in the private sector.

Modeled after the Social Security Trust, WA-SPAN, (P.O. Box 30506, Seattle 98103), proposes to limit administrative expense by statute to 8 percent or less. (Medicare’s single-payer administration is 3 percent to 4.5 percent.)

Dr. James Goodwin, writing for The Lancet (April 4, 1988) is reprinted in Public Citizen’s Health letter May, 1998: “Ten years ago, national health insurance was an anathema to American physicians. … No more. Everything in the U.S. is money. National health insurance works pretty well. The mess that we call managed care does not.”

Sunday’s front page told about for-profit agencies competing with Spokane’s great nonprofit hospitals. Please don’t join or use them. The U.S. Senate has not voted on regulation of managed care corporations. We must all speak up. Mildred Stout Pullman

Transplant rules change is bad news

Re: “States plan to oppose HHS policy on transplants” (Associated Press, July 15).

You missed a great opportunity to highlight the transplant program at Sacred Heart Medical Center and the consequence this ruling will have on those in need of transplants in our region.

Gov. Frank Keating of Oklahoma said it best, “The federal government is trying to suck organs from small and middle-sized states and send them to large regional transplant centers.”

Few patients would be able to move their families to large metropolitan areas to receive a transplant. The wait can be from months to a year or more. Most of us are too sick to work, and after transplant most of us could not afford the travel expenses required for follow-up care.

The real problem is the public awareness of the need for organ donation, not new rules. Our current system of organ allocation, United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), works well and should not be changed. Richard T. Cooper Laclede, Idaho

Home care observations right on

Thank you for printing the July 24 Opinion piece by Suzanne Gordon of the Los Angeles Times regarding the crisis in home health care services and the significant impact on patients, their families and care givers, as well as provider organizations.

Gordon’s commentary accurately states the overwhelming cuts in Medicare reimbursements and the restriction of coverage by HMOs and other insurers across the country, including most of those in Eastern Washington, for needed services ordered by physicians.

Her conclusions and recommendations are correct:

“If Congress really wants to be helpful, it must immediately restore its own cuts in Medicare home care services and require HMOs to pay for more of these services for patients under 65.

“Legislation must allow patients and their physicians to decide where treatments are performed, and where patients can recover without managed care guidelines that endanger their lives.”

I strongly encourage people to communicate with our elected officials, policy makers, HMOs and the insurance industry to reverse current policy and practice. Sheila Masteller, president and CEO Spokane Visiting Nurses Association

OVER THE LINE

Godless ways will catch up with us

Re: Post Falls rejects creationism,” (July 14). America was founded on Godly roots by God-fearing leaders; our money is stamped “In God We Trust.” Yet we cannot talk or teach about God. We are heading into a godless era, to be led by godless leaders. This is a scary scenario. Shame on us. Ken K. Fuller Spokane

GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS

NAFTA revealed for rip-off it is

Well, well. Now the Clinton chickens have come home to roost and aren’t we all glad they have!

Boeing is laying off people because there is not enough work. This is not a new thing for Boeing. General Motors has lost billions because of workers on strike. Now, Key Tronic is laying off workers because of not making billions of dollars for its administrators.

Who gets hurt in these situations? All the little workers, of course.

Does anyone remember what Ross Perot said about NAFTA? What this scheme of the Republicans and Democrats would do to the workers? I do, and that is why I voted for him twice.

I never believe what those huge mules and elephants have said in front of the cameras. They told those who listened to their prattle that NAFTA would be good for American workers. Oh, sure it is. Whom do you believe now?

President Clinton has been bragging all over the place that unemployment is down, the economy is up. For whom? Why, those people inside the Washington, D.C., Beltway, naturally.

And where are all the little workers who are the heart and soul of all businesses? Out in the cold, as usual.

I did not vote for Clinton because of his lies to the people. Why did you? Ruth G. Hammack Cheney

Clinton immorality annoys hypocrites

For people, particularly Republicans, to complain about President Clinton’s lack of morals and the decline of morality in this country is pathetic. Let’s talk about morals.

Where were these people when FBI-backed goon squads were terrorizing Native Americans in the 1970s? Where were these people when we were selling illegal arms to the Contras? Where were these people when the CIA was turning a willing blind eye to cocaine dealing by the Contras?

How about arms for hostages? Where were these people when U.S.-backed death squads were decimating El Salvador? Where were these concerned citizens when our social programs were being gutted in the 1980s, despite ridiculous deficit spending?

I’ll tell you where these people were. They were voting their pocketbooks, ignoring corporate welfare and turning a blind eye to any real ethical dilemmas.

Clinton is immoral? Get real. Michael Waldrup Moscow, Idaho

Liberal viewpoint cockeyed, wrong

For those of us who are politically naive or just forget what the difference is between liberals and conservatives, From Both Sides, July 17, is a classic. The argument about Ken Starr and President Clinton is secondary.

D.F. Oliveria’s column is full of facts and is accurate. Rebecca Nappi, Spokane’s own sob sister of liberalism, makes false analogies.

Actually Nappi’s untruth and distorted comparison between Ken Starr and Joseph McCarthy brings her closer to McCarthy than the comparison of McCarthy and Starr, or is it Joseph Goebbels? There was more than one melodramatic Army lawyer that railed against McCarthy. It’s not true that just one person unseated McCarthy, or one group of people. People in the future will laugh but they’ll be laughing at Nappi’s silly column and wondering how she could be so under the spell of a particular ideology that she couldn’t use the actual facts, from the 1950s or the present.

Travelgate did not dead end. Neither did the files from the FBI, that ended in the White House. Starr doesn’t have an obsession; he was appointed by federal judges and his work has been expanded by Attorney General Janet Reno. He’s doing his job and the liberals and press are scared to death they might lose the presidency. There’s little comparison and Nappi, after making her claim, says it probably isn’t true. That’s propaganda.

Nappi worries about the money of Starr’s investigation - not a liberal word about the poor people and children who lost all their money in the Whitewater scandal.

Thank you, Oliveria. Not for being a conservative but for telling the truth. James C. Allen Spokane

Exploiting scandal for money is tacky

I recently received two letters and one phone call in regard to impeaching the president. These solicitations, all from different out-of-state sources, wanted me to contribute money to help establish a “ground-swell” of public opinion to persuade our representatives in Congress to impeach the president.

I am a conservative and very much against the Clinton regime, but this sort of solicitation strikes me as being inappropriate, to say the least. It is attempting to build a lynch mob hysteria which is completely out of place in the decisions Congress has to make. The act of impeachment is not mine to decide and not mine to accomplish.

I helped elect George Nethercutt as my representative to make those hard calls. If he has in hand the facts which call for impeachment, he should do it!

In the phone call, for instance, the caller played a tape by Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., which asked for support in his push to get the support of other members of Congress to sponsor a bill of impeachment. This is a broad-based pitch from out of our state for money that may be used for nothing more than to keep their incumbent in Congress, to continue the fight, supposedly.

Don’t give in to mob psychology. Tell your own representative how you feel, but let him take the action and do the job we hired him to do. Richard T. Brown Spokane

Beal will serve with integrity

Letter writer Jon Tuning presented only one reason why John Beal would be far better than George Nethercutt as our U.S. congressman. Here’s one more of many others: Beal has the strength of character to vote the voice of his constituents in accord with the Ten Commandments and the U.S. Constitution, not in order to gain popularity, prestige or power. Phillip F. McCabe Spokane

Tobacco bill just more meddling

In Arthur F. Noskowiak’s July 21 letter, “Tobacco companies at it again,” he takes the tobacco companies to task for trying to enlist the public’s help in defeating a bill that would lead us one step closer to statism.

Noskowiak contends that a government-mandated $1.10-per-pack increase in the price of cigarettes is not a tax because it is not called a tax but changing its name will not change its nature. A tax by any other name still comes at the point of a gun.

Noskowiak claims this “price increase” would force some smokers to quit (a virtuous use of force?), but if the government was serious about saving us from ourselves, it would ban smoking altogether. But then it would lose much of its tax revenue for social programs and the power that goes with them. The government has just as much interest in keeping people smoking as the tobacco companies do.

Noskowiak seems to believe ends justify means, so it’s OK to sacrifice individual rights to benefit the collective. This was the premise that created Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. It’s sad that we have come to this in a country once called the land of the free. Sam E. Cathcart Spokane

Quit stealing from Indians

When is the government going to stop taking from the American Indians? When it originally banished the Indians to reservations, it chose the most desolate and undesirable places for the reservations. If the Indians find any way to make a living, federal or state government finds a way to cheat them out of it.

Coal was discovered in a mountain on the Crow Reservation in Montana, so the state took that ground back from the Indians. Now that Indians here in Washington have found way to employ their people, fund schools and have good medical care for a change, the government wants to take away their slot machines. What’s the difference between blackjack, pull tabs or slot machines? It’s all gambling. The only difference is the government wants to get a share of the money.

Not only does the government want to take away their slot machines, it wants to dump hazardous waste on or near their land. Come on, politicians, these are people too. In fact, they are the only true Americans. Why don’t you start treating them like they deserve to be treated? Gwen Ruegsegger Otis Orchards

REVELATIONS

Three women made valid statement

Three cheers for the three women who were courageous enough to be comfortable on a hot day! The time is long overdue where women can be free to dress as they choose, just as men can.

It is not their responsibility to consider how their choice of attire, or lack thereof, will affect others. Of course women’s breasts are sexual, but then so are men’s, and so is every other part of a person’s body. Lips, hair, eyes, arms, legs and feet are all sexual in nature. If you take the sexuality out of humans then you no longer have a human.

Men are very capable of controlling their responses. Sexuality is not bad; it is a gift from God. To suggest that any part of the human body is less attractive or that any one person’s body is less attractive than anyone else’s is absolute lunacy. This thinking is perpetuated by those who wish to control and market the human body.

These women were saying that their bodies are not for sale at any price. So they were free to have their bare chests seen without loss of dignity or value as individuals, and corporate children of God. Their value comes from the fact that they are loved by God in there totality, not from the illegitimate value that society may or may not place on them. I hope that more women take their lead. Donavon A. Garner Spokane

THE MEDIA

Phantom sources make ‘news’ worthless

The “press” just doesn’t get it.

When will media types finally realize they are a major part of our country’s political problem? It’s true that we do not believe most of what we hear and little of what we see in the media. Did it ever occur to our so-called reporters that we do not believe them when the say they can’t reveal their sources?

When someone tells me something they want me to believe, my first reaction is, What is the source of the information? Did the person asking me to believe get the information firsthand (did he or she actually see or experience what’s being reported ?) Is the information second- or thirdhand?

I cannot evaluate the truth of a story unless I can personally evaluate the credibility of the source. Don’t ask me to trust you because I don’t. When you hide behind your “professionalism as a journalist” and refuse to identify your source, you lose me. If a “source” refuses to stand up and be counted in the open give-and-take of ideas, that source is of no value in a democratic system.

Television has become a joke when it comes to reporting the news. Most TV “reporters” are nothing more than high-salaried actors out to make a buck out of sensationalism. Perhaps one day one of our media outlets will get the message and only report when a source can be openly identified. I suppose that is probably asking too much. Bill F. Shawl Spokane

Journalist in the grip of sleazeballs

The headline of your July 26 article, “Journalist finds herself captured by aliens” tells it all. So-called TV investigative reporter Linda Moulton Howe has been captured by the tabloid and TV money moguls who capitalize on a genuine interest in “Star Wars” fiction by portraying our government as diabolically plotting to keep us from knowing the truth. She undoubtedly helps drive people to live in small cabins near Helena.

As an Air Force jet interceptor pilot in the 1950s, one of my missions was to identify UFOs reported by law enforcement agencies or by wealthy or prominent civilians. After spending millions of taxpayer dollars on these jet intercepts - nearly all of which turned out to be weather balloons - the Air Force concluded that not one UFO incident remained unsolved. When we returned from a UFO intercept, we would thoroughly brief our intelligence officer. No one ever ordered me, or any other flight officer I knew, to cover up information. No one in the U.S. government - not Truman, Eisenhower or any president since - ever tried to suppress any facts about extraterrestrial presence.

I hope Howe continues making a fortune off these inventions, but lays off the government conspiracy theories. James W. Ramsey Sandpoint