Be smart with Medicaid

Cutting Medicaid costs, especially at the emergency room, is a poor choice for our health care system. While expenses do run high, the choice of saving money over human health will only worsen the problem.

As Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center Chief Medical Officer Dr. Jeff Collins says, “You’re asking patients without primary care doctors to self-diagnose.”

I think this is where the problem starts. There wouldn’t be a surplus of patients at the ER if they had an option to see a primary care doctor first, especially because two-thirds of the Medicaid patients are children.

While budget cuts are necessary, the $300 million cut needs to be balanced. Instead of Medicaid only paying for three nonemergency visits to the ER, maybe they should include three visits to a primary care doctor as well. I think Collins has a great idea of setting up initial screenings to help filter where patients should go. Then they can build a network of doctors, each specifying to a group of specific needs. This way the number of patients at the ER will be reduced.

This plan may stretch the budget initially, but in the long run it will save money and, more importantly, lives.

Alison Owens

Cheney

Who paid health care bills?

This letter is regarding your April 25 article on Laurie Roth, contender for the Constitution Party’s presidential slot. When Roth had her motorcycle/deer encounter and almost died, she did not have health insurance. Who paid for the helicopter, the time in ICU and months of recovery therapy?

Is Roth paying it off over time, or perhaps Medicaid, or are we, who are fortunate enough to be able to afford insurance, picking up her uninsured tab?

Ted Wert

Sagle, Idaho

Rodgers’ firing is puzzling

I guess none of us outside the Museum of Arts and Culture board knows why on earth Forrest Rodgers was fired. As a former resident of Bend, and donor to their marvelous High Desert Museum, I can opine that Rodgers did a very good job there working with the community as chief executive officer of that treasured museum.

Ward Buckingham

Spokane

Top two not the answer

Any political party should be able to determine its process to choose its slate of candidates for the general election. No party should be able to put forth more than one candidate for an office at the expense of another party’s offered choice.

Washington’s top-two primary system seems to favor dominant parties at the expense of other parties. Your suggestion (May 18 editorial) that this would be a good system for Idaho, considering Republicans are the dominant party, is truly undemocratic and obviously a statement based on your own political leanings.

The citizenry should be adamantly opposed to such a primary system. It should be considered only if no other party has nominated a candidate for the position. In that event, perhaps the second place candidate could be on the general election ballot. This would at least offer the citizenry a second choice.

From my perspective, there is no way a second Democrat candidate should eliminate a Republican for a general election position just because she happened to garner more votes in the primary. As a Democrat, I firmly believe the Republicans have the right to nominate the person they ultimately select, no matter how much blood they shed in their process.

David B. Larsen

Coeur d’Alene