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Your View - letters to the editor
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Health care: Time to re-examine assumptions of debate |
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Tuesday, 29 December 2009 |
I spent more than 30 years working in areas involved with medicine. In particular, I researched issues connected to the so-called health care crisis and the abortive Hillarycare effort of Bill Clinton’s first term. Much of that work is summarized in the 1992 book I edited, “Project 2010: On the Current Crisis in Health Care and Its Implications for the Hospital of the Future.” Change a few numbers and dates, and this book could have been written last year.
My concerns, and the concerns of the people I worked with, were health care quality and cost. I studied the extensive literature on these matters thoroughly and came to the conclusions that:
• The issues were extremely complex.
• The health care system we have is exactly what you get if you follow the logical consequences of our assumptions about what it means to live in the world. If those assumptions are not changed, no real and lasting solutions to the problems of health care costs, quality and delivery will happen.
For these reasons, I have not bothered to respond to the amateurish commentaries on health insurance and the American health care system that appear in these pages with annoying frequency. No one has the beginnings of a grip on a solution to these problems, myself included.
But when I see something as daft as the idea that people are dying because they have no health insurance – a tiresome talking point favored and savored by the likes of Harry Reid and Joe DeMasi – I crack.
People die from thousands of causes and for thousands of reasons. Can one say that a person who has excellent health insurance, who promptly goes to a physician for treatment, gets wrongly diagnosed and improperly treated died because he had insurance? Has someone with insurance committed suicide if he fails to get treatment out of fear of the possible diagnosis of his complaint and therefore dies? Can we get past witless liberal talking points larded with exclamation points!!!!!!
Does Joe DeMasi, in his wildest fantasies, believe there will ever be universal access to liver, lung and heart transplants? Well, maybe – for members of Congress. Does Joe believe that a world can be created free of disasters that take everything from us? Illness is not the only such disaster. The current administration might be considered much worse. Government in general does this in many ways, but perhaps most often these days in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Yes, people are suffering, people are dying, and they always will. But in our high-tech times, there is virtually no limit to what can theoretically be spent on medical treatment, and research continually extends this limit. All the money we have – indeed, all the money we can imagine – can be spent on the prevention and treatment of disease. It is time to re-examine our most fundamental assumptions about life in this world.
Dennis Stillings
Stillings lives in rural Valley City. |
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Health care: U.S. Chamber not in place to direct debate |
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Wednesday, 23 December 2009 |
Since the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is spending tens of millions of dollars across this country trying to convince people that any attempt to improve our health care system is a horrible thing to do, I thought it would only be fair to tell people what the U.S. Chamber has been up to lately.
A few years ago, an American woman named Jamie Leigh Jones was sexually assaulted by co-workers while working in Iraq for Halliburton. She wanted to bring her case to court, but a clause in her Halliburton contract was designed to prevent this basic right.
Legislation was introduced in the U.S. Senate to address this unbelievable situation. Instead of stepping up and saying something needed to be done to fix this, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce lobbied against the bill. Yes, they lobbied against an American woman’s right to bring her attackers to court.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has become little more than a front for the right-wing component of the Republican Party and their friends.
Just something to keep in mind the next time you see an ad paid for by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Lauren Hedman
Fargo |
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Animal abuse: ND has weak laws for protecting animals |
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Wednesday, 23 December 2009 |
According to a recent annual nationwide report conducted by California-based Animal Legal Defense Fund, North Dakota is one of the top five states with the worst animal protection laws. Why is North Dakota in the doghouse when it comes to animal abuse?
According to the ALDF, which also named Hawaii, Kentucky, Idaho and Mississippi amongst the worst, “legislative weaknesses seen in these states include severely restricted or absent felony animal cruelty provisions, inadequate animal fighting provisions, and lack of restrictions on the future ownership of animals for those convicted of cruelty to animals.”
It’s time for North Dakota to take cruelty to animals seriously – for both animals and humans.
Studies show people who abuse animals are just getting warmed up. In three surveys of women’s shelters in Wisconsin and Utah, 74 percent of women living with companion animals reported an animal had been threatened, injured or killed by their abuser.
A study conducted by Northeastern University and the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals found people who abuse animals are five times more likely to commit violent crimes against humans.
Animals cannot vote, but those who love and care about them certainly can. Please encourage lawmakers in your state to work to adopt and enforce stronger laws that protect animals and punish abusers. After all, laws that protect animals protect everyone.
Amy Skylark Elizabeth
Senior writer, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals |
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Health care: People are dying due to lack of care |
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Wednesday, 23 December 2009 |
I was shocked by Mercy Hospital Chief Executive Officer Keith Heuser and North Dakota Health Care Association President Jerry Jurena’s assertion that people aren’t dying because of a lack of health insurance. They are obviously living in the state of denial, not the state of North Dakota!
Just about every week, we see fundraising events to help people raise money they need to battle an illness, and many of these people have insurance. Medicaid only covers you if you have no assets.
Yet there are many people, like myself, who own a modest home and have a bit in savings but would be wiped out financially in the case of a serious illness. Many people in North Dakota are asset-rich yet cash-poor.
Many are self-employed and facing sky-rocketing premiums and many have jobs but can’t afford health insurance. Many people don’t go to the doctor or emergency room because they can’t afford it, so they wait until their condition gets really bad. What might have been stage 1 cancer isn’t diagnosed until it is stage 4 and, yes, people die!
My former neighbor was 61 when she found out she needed a liver transplant. Her husband was on disability from his job and they had no health insurance. They owned a home and had a small savings but there was no way they could afford the $150,000 to $200,000 transplant. Their only choice was to hope she stayed alive until she turned 65 and could get on Medicare.
Unfortunately, she never made it. She passed away last year.
We can do better in this country. We must do better. The No. 1 cause of banktruptcy in this country is because of illness and most of those people had insurance!
People are suffering, people are struggling and, yes, dying! That may be an inconvenient truth we don’t want to admit here in the richest country in the world, but remember, you can’t change what you don’t acknowledge.
DeMasi lives in Valley City. |
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Health care: Reasons to support health care reform |
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Wednesday, 23 December 2009 |
Why do I support or not support health care reform?
It’s an important question I think too few North Dakotans have asked themselves. We hear advertisements; we hear claims of deficits and debt, of bankruptcy and rejection. Yet we should each look inside ourselves and examine why we feel the way we do on this pivotal issue.
I support health care reform because I think one North Dakotan death every week due to a lack of insurance is a moral blight on my beloved state. I support health care reform because a rancher in Watford City should have the ability to shop and provide health insurance for his family without threat of being dropped if his wife gets sick. I support health care reform because a self-employed farmer in Valley City can’t get insurance due to a pre-existing condition; because a woman in Bismarck will file for bankruptcy due to unpaid hospital bills by the year’s end; because a single mother or father working two part-time jobs in Grafton cannot afford insurance with premiums outpacing wage increases by 800 percent in the past 10 years.
Most of all, I support health insurance reform because every life matters, and I don’t want to see or hear about one more ruined life because of our broken system.
God bless and happy New Year.
Lynette Seminole
Fargo |
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Republican party: GOP not what it once stood for |
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Tuesday, 22 December 2009 |
“We are going to make this country the best country in the world to do business with.” – Dick Cheney
Are those claiming to represent the Republican Party true conservatives? I think not. As a Republican myself, I’ve seen the growing evidence over the years that those representing the Republican Party are neoconservatives, supporting our American economic and military influence with power and profits from wars and aggressivness.
I feel sorry for Barack Obama, as the Republican Party and their representatives have clearly left our country in another Vietnam-type mess.
Let’s say you are a businessman and are highly invested into this war-making machine. Wouldn’t it behoove you to want to have a war now and then to justify your investment? Or if you are career military personnel, high-ranking enough so that you don’t have to physically go into battle. Wouldn’t it be great to test and hone your skills in some kind of warfare now and then?
While there are many who have profited from war, the American people have seen its crippling and devastating effect on its credibility. But what do Americans know about peace? Maybe what this country needs is a way to invest in peace ... and profit from it.
Think about it. A Peace Department serving alongside the War Department. Both departments could keep each other quite busy with taxpayers’ money so we don’t have to go to war. Now there is a tax I could go along with. Pathetic, isn’t it?
Our actions overseas speak quite loudly, and have for many years. Our government agencies have committed serious crimes in countries such as Iran, Iraq, Cambodia and Vietnam. As a result, many in the world have learned to hate and mistrust Americans, and it’s going to take decades to mend the multitude of problems left behind from the Bush, Ford, Nixon and Johnson administrations.
While I believe the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were huge mistakes, I am giving Obama a chance to fix this problem because he couldn’t possibly do the extent of damage that his predecessors did.
I’ll tell you one thing, though. I am losing my patience. I’ll continue to give Obama the benefit of the doubt, because he hasn’t abused his power yet. However, I, along with many others, am growing weary of the rhetoric as this war drags on.
Through his words, our young president is damaging his credibility, and perhaps losing any possibility of a chance for another term. Maybe that’s just fine with me. But what won’t be fine with me is my Republican Party making a real joke of themselves by thinking that Sarah Palin is going to be the answer. That kind of thinking shows me that this party still doesn’t have a clue that the American people are done with those who stole the party away from what it once stood for.
As politicians, they are in the minority, but Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich seem to me the only ones talking common sense these days. It’s sad to see them get so little acknowledgement. To men like Bush and Cheney, Kucinich and Paul’s thinking is dangerous to what they consider necessary to the American economy because if they get what they want, we as a country would spend less on the military and put it into other places, like rebuilding our damaged reputation, economy and infrastructure.
Why aren’t mainstream Republicans thinking more like this? You got me, but if they don’t start, even Hillary Clinton will be able to beat them in the next election, even though she doesn’t have nearly the purdy legs as Palin does. Haaa!
Paul Stenshoel
Valley City |
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Valley City High School: Student section seating saps sporting experience |
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Monday, 21 December 2009 |
Recently, I attended a sporting event at the Valley City High School Activities Center and, as always, I was impressed with the facility. What a beautiful place to have for the school and community. Valley City is very fortunate to have something so nice. I was also impressed with the school spirit and unity displayed by the student body with many students in attendance.
Unfortunately, all the good impressions I had are now marred by the fact that I didn’t get to see half the game I paid full price to see. Why?
The student section reserved for Valley City students is located on the visitors’ side and takes up an entire section from top to bottom. The entire section was packed with students. They stood on the bleachers for the entire game, not just now and then, but for the entire game. I could not see the left side of the court from my seat in the middle of the gym.
I was told if I wanted to see the game, I should go sit higher in the stands. Excuse me? I am pretty sure my admittance fee was higher than any student’s there, and I was told to go sit in the nosebleed section with the folks videotaping the game.
What about the four senior citizens sitting a few rows below me who don’t want to walk up those stairs and don’t have the physical capability to stand for an entire event? They sat and watched the back sides of a group of students who were showing their “school spirit.”
Halfway through the game, three young girls wearing VCHS T-shirts came over and asked if they could sit in front of me because they couldn’t see anything sitting in the student section. Is this how the administration wants their student body to show their school spirit?
I think the VCHS students and administration did a poor job of showing respect for other people.
Please remember: If you are a visiting team and attending a sporting event at the HAC in Valley City, make sure you do not sit on the visitors’ side of the gym. You won’t be able to watch the whole game and you won’t enjoy your evening.
Make sure you sit on the home side amongst the Valley City fans who support their students by creating a student section on the “other” side of the gym. I wonder why that is?
Maybe they didn’t like not being able to see, either.
Corinna Buttke
Fingal |
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