Letters for Sunday, Feb. 19, 2023
Considering the future generation
Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ recent assault on teaching Black history echoes that of many white parents at school board meetings. They aim to deprive our youth of a credible U.S. history course that most students want. Additionally, they apparently don’t care at all about their negative impact on the social-emotional growth and academic achievements of Black students.
Other issues important to youth that also get inadequate responses from most congressional Republicans, particularly Cathy McMorris Rodgers, include: Human-caused global warming that will most impact our youth; mass school shootings, where even banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines would greatly reduce fatalities; reproductive freedom that most affects the future of our female youth.
One issue that Republicans express a shared concern with youth but their votes don’t show it is the rising national debt. They correctly point out that our youth will be most negatively impacted, yet neither George W. Bush nor Donald Trump paid for their lavish tax cuts for the rich. In contrast, Democrats recently funded the Inflation Reduction Act by taxing the rich and the deficit has been reduced under President Joe Biden. (Note: National debt is the sum of all past federal deficits, minus surpluses. In the last 50 years, surpluses occurred only in 1999 and 2000 under Democratic President Bill Clinton.)
Our youth’s future would benefit greatly if the rich and large corporations were paying their fair share in taxes to offset spending, as Democrats advocate, but Republicans always oppose.
Norm Luther
Spokane
Maintenance medications
Do patients have a right to choose who they receive medical and pharmaceutical care from? Do patients have a right to know if medications must be obtained from the insurance-owned pharmacy during open enrollment? As a pharmacist at a local independent pharmacy, I have been fielding questions from outraged Kaiser Permanente patients who began receiving letters indicating prescriptions must be transferred to a Kaiser pharmacy for continued coverage. Starting in January, the Public Employees Benefits Board and School Employees Benefits Board Kaiser plans have a provision requiring “maintenance medications” be filled by a Kaiser pharmacy.
If this information was public knowledge during open enrollment, it certainly wasn’t well advertised to patients. If Kaiser believes this model improves patient care, why weren’t they as vocal about this change during open enrollment as they have been since January when patients are locked into their plan? Within hours of receiving a maintenance medication from their local pharmacy, patients report being solicited for transfers by an impersonal automated system or generic mailed letter. Our pharmacy is more than 50 miles from a Kaiser pharmacy. Wouldn’t it be reasonable for Kaiser to allow rural patients to use their local pharmacy? The best patient care isn’t provided by poorly disclosed regulations and coercive behavior. The best practice in health care is transparent and patient centered.
On behalf of my patients, I challenge Kaiser to reconsider this restriction and allow patients to have an active role in their health care and choose their pharmacy provider.
Kaitlynn Johnson
Oakesdale, Washington
The debt ceiling and health care
If Republicans are serious about the debt ceiling and curbing spending, they should fix health care and save $500 billion per year.
The latest data show our health care “system” continues to eat us alive. It delivers a long list of poor results at an astronomical cost. For this awful report card, we pay about $12,000 per person per year, consuming 18% of gross domestic product. Other wealthy nations average $6,000 per person (half our cost), or about 10% of GDP and provide better care for everybody.
The basic problem is we don’t really have a health care “system.” We have a misfit heap of parts that don’t work together. At the heart of this nonsensical “system” are employer/providers who are helplessly beholden to a dizzying array of insurance companies, penny-pinching gatekeepers who consider every medical service a “loss.” This gives us a patchwork system where life expectancy is currently declining. We rank highest in infant mortality, preventable disease, obesity and chronic conditions. We’re third in suicides. For these terrible outcomes, we pay double what others pay.
How to fix it? A universal single-payer system. Eliminate the insurance middlemen (save 20%). Eliminate doctors and hospitals having to hassle with insurance companies (10% savings). Go after big pharma. We could save hundreds of billions and provide comprehensive coverage for everybody.
Universal health care is a fiscal no-brainer that fits the Republican playbook perfectly: saving billions, reducing debt, making people’s lives better. Give Kevin McCarthy and CMR a call. Democrats will get onboard.
Steve McNutt
Spokane
Critique of Super Bowl pregame show
Colorado Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert’s critique of the Super Bowl’s pregame show is yet another example of big gub’mint’s attempts to interfere with a successful private sector company doing what it does best.
If Rep. Boebert wants a say in the matter, she should give up her cushy government job and compete on a level playing field for a spot on the starting lineup of one of the two Super Bowl teams led by African American quarterbacks in a league whose players are 70% African American. I’m surprised that she had no complaints about the flyover before the game honoring women pilots as a display of woke feminism.
In short, Rep. Boebert’s got no game!
Barry Linehan
Spokane
It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s weather balloon?
It is amazing that hours, if not minutes after the first balloon was observed tracking across America, the internet exploded with UFO-ologists claiming proof. Now that we have three others, it is for some, additional proof positive. Like the first was the mother ship and the others were drones. Of course it was quickly politicized. Shoot the thing. Blow it up. Weather balloon. So what.
For a moment, think. OK, the source was China. They were apoplectic that we would be worried about a mere weather balloon. What a shocker. You mean you don’t trust us?
Well if you have to consider UFOs, then consider this. We figured it was tracking us. But what if the balloon, or the others, were carrying ricin, plague, or some deadly biological agent. And they hoped, along with the American hawks, we would shoot it down it the heart of the country or city. Which is more plausible? President Biden was correct in waiting to down it where it could be collected, analyzed and considered as evidence. I want someone who doesn’t shoot first. Who weighs options. Who trusts and respects the people he considers advisers. That is what a president does.
Jim Bickel
Spokane
Being ‘woke’
The MAGA inspired GOP claims that “The 1619 Project,” the singing of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” at the Super Bowl and other such efforts are just more evidence of a “woke” conspiracy in America are well-founded. Nothing is more threatening to the fear-based, falsehood founded, denial sustained, pseudo-Christian delusions of the GOP alt-right than people being awake.
If we are “awake,” we have to acknowledge the truth of our indefensible history (and continuing tolerance) of racism toward Blacks and other ethnic groups; of our nation’s genocidal policies toward Indigenous peoples; of marginalization, exploitation and abuse of women; of demonization of non-Christian religious groups; of dehumanization of those who simply want to live out their actual sexual and genetic identities; and of our inexcusable mismanagement of the environment. We all need to learn how to face the truths of that history and banning books and attacking attempts to teach it will only prolong the national agony we all now share. We each need to be as “woke” as possible, trusting in the power of truth, rejecting those who preach a fake Christian ethic based on hate and fear, opting instead to put our faith in love, being as much as possible like Christ, perhaps the most woke person in history.
Folks, trust those who are seeking actual solutions to our problems, not those who are profiting from them and understand that being woke is a threat only to those who fear the truth, not those who trust in it.
Steve Blewett
Spokane