Readers share thoughts on veterans, diversity and Medicaid expansion
Support disabled vets
Some online news recently reported that jobs were being taken away from disabled veterans and the work was transferred overseas. The veterans had been making products supplied to our military forces overseas.
Why not do more stories about this? The General Services Administration is a government agency charged with budgeting for these activities that have been supplying jobs to our veterans, and more details need to be furnished to the public. If we are sending our tax money to support foreign workers, who then supply our military forces in the United States, I am going on record as being opposed to this practice.
I fully realize that the government needs to watch expenses, but taking jobs from our disabled veterans is a bit much.
Tom Spath
Lenexa
VA loan dilemma
For 60 years, I paid monthly premiums and reinvested annual dividends into a $10,000 GI life insurance policy. To get the paid-up cash value of the policy to pay my wife’s final medical expenses, funeral and burial expenses, I had to take out a 5 percent Veterans Affairs loan.
The other shoe dropped when I received a bill from the VA for $966.99 for the annual interest payment.
Here is my dilemma:
If I make the interest payment on the loan, in addition to the monthly premiums, within 10 years I will have invested 70 years of monthly premium payments and almost $10,000 in interest payments on a $10,000 policy.
If I don’t make the interest payments, the VA will deduct the compounded interest from the remaining $10,000 policy. After 10 years, and 70 years of premium payments, there will be no money in the policy to pay for my funeral expenses.
I should have taken out a payday loan.
Glenn Cherry
Kansas City
BOTAR diversity
I’m writing to take exception to the letter of Nov. 6 citing a lack of diversity in a Sunday magazine photo of the 2014 BOTAR class.
I have to ask, had this been a photo from the National Black Feminist Organization, or the National Congress of Black Women or the National Council of Negro Women, or any of a number of very exclusive organizations, would you still have written your letter? I think not.
Why is it that there are any number of groups in the country that exclude another person for various reasons of gender, race, ethnicity, religion and so on, but someone will immediately throw out the race question if it’s a white group, but not other groups?
Why has it become so wrong in this country to want to fraternize with people of your own kind?
Scotty Moore
Blue Springs
American nightmare
The American dream used to be that with hard work, a person could make something of herself.
My daughter was recently fired from a job as manager of a new toy store. She had nothing but glowing feedback from the owners and staff. When she got back from vacation, they told her she was no longer a fit.
They also fired several of her staff members via email. How can someone who has been told she was doing a great job, had worked many long days to get the store up and running and had to deal with countless growing pains in a new store in a new shopping area be fired for no reason?
They also made sure she couldn’t qualify for unemployment because she was there for only five months. They did not really give her a chance and, with only positive feedback, she had no idea if she was doing anything wrong.
If business owners can do this to people even when they are doing a great job, there is no incentive to do good work. American worker productivity will suffer, and America will become a second-rate country.
I have lost all faith in the American dream. God help us.
Duane Downtain
Overland Park
Illegal immigration
It is interesting how we send money, doctors and missionaries to help refugees in war-torn areas and trouble spots all over the globe, but when refugees, in the manner of children, come into our country, fleeing inescapable horrors, we turn a blind eye.
Or even worse than a blind eye, we turn aggressively on them, suggesting they be denied basic human needs such as food, shelter and medicine.
Or some insist that we send them back to Mexico, a country they are not even from.
Some people in this country treat them as if they were all the same. What do you think would happen to the 11-year-old girl simply dropped off somewhere in Mexico?
Even in Nazi Germany there were good, pious Christians who took in Jewish and Roma children.
Where are the pious good Samaritans now in the United States? What we see and hear are the shameless, narcissistic hypocrites.
Murphy Dickson
Overland Park
Patient advocate
If you or someone you love has had a surgical procedure, a perioperative registered nurse was directly responsible for you or your loved one’s well-being throughout the operation.
While all of the other medical professionals in the room, including the surgeon, anesthesia provider and surgical assistant, are focused on their specific duties, the perioperative registered nurse focuses on the patient for the duration of the procedure.
Perioperative registered nurses provide specialized nursing care to surgical patients before, during and after surgery. This is Perioperative Nurse Week, an annual celebration of perioperative nurses and their commitment to safe patient care.
The Association of Perioperative Registered Nurses is the national association representing the interests of more than 160,000 perioperative registered nurses in hospitals and outpatient surgery centers. AORN’s 40,000 registered nurse members manage, teach and practice perioperative nursing.
We as perioperative nurses want to let you know that we are working hard to protect you, our patients, when you are most vulnerable.
Join us in celebrating perioperative nurses and our dedication to safe patient care for 2014 Perioperative Nurse Week.
Christine Blackburn
Kansas City
Rights of people
In Citizens United, the Supreme Court ruled that a corporation is a person. In the Hobby Lobby decision, the justices ruled that if a corporate “person” has religious scruples against part of a law (the Affordable Care Act), this “person” doesn’t have to abide by it.
Hobby Lobby supporters may be pleased with the Supreme Court’s ruling.
But they may see the problem with the ruling when a corporation owned by a member of Jehovah’s Witnesses refuses to cover the cost of blood transfusions for its employees. Or when a company owned by a believer in faith healing refuses to provide health-coverage at all.
Far-fetched? We’ll see.
When a corporation is allowed to become a very powerful “person” whose religious beliefs are ruled more important than the law, what happens to the rights of ordinary people?
Liz Craig
Mission
Medicaid expansion
Without Medicaid expansion in Kansas or Missouri, an unacceptably large number of people are without access to health care. This is an issue of national security, not just a social issue.
People without health insurance don’t seek out health care as soon as they get sick but usually wait and see whether their problem gets better. But when we have a deadly epidemic or pandemic (“when” and not “if”; this will happen at some point), delays in diagnosis and treatment will cause it to worsen and spread, making it much harder to contain.
Currently, two serious diseases are spreading in parts of the world with the potential to cause a deadly pandemic of catastrophic proportions: a new strain of avian flu (H7N9) and a new type of coronavirus.
Diseases don’t care whether a potential host is a Republican or a Democrat, a legislator or a street person.
Our lawmakers are responsible for providing for our national security from diseases as well as from explosives.
It’s unfortunate that so many Kansans and Missourians still lack basic health care because of our legislators’ stubborn refusal to accept Medicaid.
Janice Grebe
Roeland Park
This story was originally published November 10, 2014 at 3:55 PM with the headline "Readers share thoughts on veterans, diversity and Medicaid expansion."