Letters To The Editor

Health care

See to it all can get needed drugs

The rising national cry for prescription drug coverage has caught our attention and we are dismayed by the rising costs of prescription medicines that make it more and more difficult for families and individuals, especially seniors, to meet their health care needs. As women religious who believe that all people in our nation deserve fair access to medicines they need to stay healthy, we join with others working for a solution to this situation.

Rising prescription costs have made it so that one in five Americans does not fill some prescriptions and 42 percent of people without insurance cannot buy all the medicines doctors have prescribed for them.

Some politicians have begin to recognize the problem but remedies are slow in coming. Congress must mandate for all people fair prescription coverage which covers all prescription drugs, gives additional financial assistance to people with low incomes and/or very high prescription expenditures, and provides cost relief by using the government’s purchasing power to negotiate reasonable prices, passing the savings on to consumers.

The time is now for the public to demand that Congress and those running for president take a stand on this important issue. Sisters Ann Pizelo, Laura Michels, Linda Riggers Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, Spokane

Agency’s mission misconstrued

Staff writer Ken Olsen’s July 26 article, “Health district may change fee policies. Push for more aggressive collection of payments worries some advocates for the poor,” is misinformed.

The article goes on, “Advocates for the poor say the changes may make it more difficult for some to get health care.” It is not the mission of Spokane Regional Health District clinics to provide health care. We provide public health clinics to prevent the spread of disease in the population: tuberculosis, sexually transmitted diseases, vaccine-preventable diseases and infections imported from overseas.

Since we are dedicated to our mission of preventing the spread of disease, we are equally conscientious about diminishing any obstacles to these services, including cost.

Spokane Regional Health District works closely with our partners who are responsible for health care for the poor, the community health centers like CHAS and the Indian Health Center, the residency programs, and many other providers, to lower barriers and improve access to care. Kim Marie Thorburn, M.D., M.P.H. health officer, Spokane Regional Health District

Tight-fistedness not hospital’s fault

Yes, Eastern State Hospital’s census is high. There are more people who need those mental health services. But Milt Priggee’s July 25 cartoon depiction was in poor taste, discounting the quality services people receive at Eastern State Hospital and the efforts made by the staff to care for them professionally and with respect and dignity.

We all must take responsibility to provide help to those who need it. What we can’t do is expect the government to be responsible for issues we don’t want to address in our community but then insist that the government eliminate funding which would provide those services in a public facility. Shirley Maike 26-year Eastern State Hospital employee, Medical Lake

Wildlife

Wolves should have a place

The July 23 article on wolves was at once thrilling and disheartening. The sightings confirmed what many of us have suspected that with public support and federal protection, wolves are finally returning to North Idaho.

Public sentiment has certainly changed, with a century of dishonorable, indecent, heavy-handed extermination to reflect on. The overwhelming success of wolf reintroduction in Yellowstone and Central Idaho attests to this.

Still, there are paranoid individuals who live by the “shoot, shovel and shut up” credo, like the rabid rancher who thinks he spotted a wolf and pledged, “If that SOB comes back, I’ll kill him.” It is curious but not surprising that this supposed wolf was not noted to harass or kill any livestock. Somehow, such a violation of traditional hunting ethics manages to persist in the West.

A number of studies in Minnesota, British Columbia and Alberta have found depredation in primary wolf habitat to be rare, occurring on 1 percent or fewer farms per year. In fairness to those few ranchers who do suffer losses, conservation organizations have willingly provided compensation.

There is enough space in the West for wolves, if we have enough room in our hearts to learn to coexist. John K. Franson, M.D. Spokane

Don’t reclassify wolf status

Editorial writer Jackie Van Allen hit the mark (Opinion, July 14), chastising the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s proposal to change the status of gray wolves from endangered to threatened. The wolf should not be reclassified because it’s still perilously close to extinction across all of Washington and North Idaho.

Wolves are an essential part of the ecosystem. Wolves keep rodents and other predators, including cougars, in check.

But, then there are the opinions of some ranchers and apparently, editorial writer D.F.Oliveria, who despite their bloodthirsty love of meat will deny - no, destroy - wildlife such as the wolf for having similar appetites, even where programs exist to compensate them for livestock killed by wolves. Perhaps someday they, too, will recognize such hypocrisy.

Even though livestock are more likely to be killed by a dog than a wild wolf, dogs often run free and are found in every region of the country. Why do we sentence wolves to diminishment for being wild but easily forgive our own creations? Unlike wolves, we don’t sentence dogs to a strip of mountains in Montana or northern Minnesota. No, we breed them, often with mindless neglect.

Wild wolves need your help. Please attend either the public hearing Aug. 15 at Cavanaugh’s Inn, 303 West NorthRiver Drive, from 1-3 p.m. and 6-8 p.m., and/or by writing to: Content Analysis Enterprise Team, Wolf Comments, 200 East Broadway, PO Box7669, Room 301, Missoula, MT 59807. Or send e-mail to: graywolfcomments@fws.gov Timothy J. Coleman Republic, Wash.

The environment

Keep what’s roadless just that way

There has been a debate about the wilderness areas remaining roadless. I say leave what few of those areas we have left roadless. Can you get anymore selfish? Gee, only 95 percent of the entire United States has roads!

Loggers and developers want access to these areas. They say there is this huge problem of diseased trees and douglas fir beetles. They say this will cause fires and all the forest will be gone for good. Fires and diseases are not the threat. Roads and the development associated with them are. Nature has done just fine with the forest, that’s why we have them. They were their long before we came around. Fires and diseases are as old as the forests.

Nature already is selectively logging with these occurences. All of the little fires we extinguish are parts of a whole. Eventually, the big one hits. Unfortunately, humans’ neglect of fire safety is common.

I can see giving nature a little hand in high-use recreation areas by selective logging. We also need wood products, I have no problem with that, if it is managed well.

As for the roads into wilderness areas, it is no longer wilderness once the roads are there. Leave them, it’s all we have left forever. Loggers say wilderness is “land of no use.” Good for them. I will use it for backpacking and sightseeing! Chris Lee Post Falls

Mismanagement poses danger

Omitted from the Associated Press story on the July 27 front page, about wildfires raging in 10 Western states, with more to come, was the following.

The fires are almost all on public land, which is twice as likely to burn as private land.

The cost of such fires is not only public timber and grazing worth trillions of dollars but private property, including homes, when the fires inevitably spread. Wildlife forage and shelter, salmon and other fisheries, decreased soil fertility and catastrophically increased soil erosion and flooding are also factors.

The fires were predicted (by the federal General Accounting Office, among others) and could have been prevented or dramatically reduced in severity by management - salvage logging, for instance, fiercely opposed by such groups as the Sierra Club.

Permanently banning management on tens of millions of acres - more by this administration than any other in history - guarantees even more such fires in the future. And, a bill just approved by a Senate panel would allot $3 billion each year, money that could go to save Social Security, for buying millions of more acres from private owners to burn and for lawsuits and lobbying by environmental groups to prevent management.

Is this how we want to spend our tax money and steward our public land? It belongs to all of us, not just to some misguided nature worshipers. Edwin G. Davis Spokane