Farm Bureaus push for plans that skirt ACA rules. Critic warns of health care gaps | Opinion
Not the same
When I was diagnosed with cancer, my insurance enabled me to afford my care. The company may not have wanted to spend the money on the treatment that saved my life, but as a health insurer in Missouri, it had to. Four years out, cancer has become a “preexisting condition” for me, and I still have health insurance because I legally cannot be denied.
Now Farm Bureaus around the country, including here, want laws that would create lookalike insurance plans that skirt Affordable Care Act rules. These plans would be exempt from the patient protections that saved my life, allowing them to deny coverage for preexisting conditions, exclude certain medical expenses, impose caps on coverage and even deny cancer screenings.
These products are marketed as a solution for farmers, yet nearly 2 in 3 farmers have preexisting conditions, and these products would not be required to accept them.
These plans create a false sense of security for consumers, who may discover the gaps in coverage only when they face a serious illness. I’m asking my elected officials to use common sense and keep these junk plans off the market. We can never go back to the days when cancer survivors couldn’t get health coverage.
- Chris Sanders, Kansas City
In your name?
How could we be so clueless that we would take unsubstantiated claims of the worth of people in our communities? Are we so clueless we believe every federal worker is incompetent or corrupt? I bet we all have at least one in our community. They are our friends, relatives and neighbors.
How, in the name of all that is decent and holy, are we party to the abomination of the richest man on the planet starving the poorest children In the world? Then, so be it. May it rest heavily on your heart.
- Rev. Catherine Bogue, Independence
Easy decision
America, which throws away 38% of all the food it produces, is the world’s largest donor of international food assistance, helping with world hunger through the United States Agency for International Development. This food aid to millions on the margins of famine comes from our country’s Judeo-Christian values of feeding our hungry brothers and sisters.
The new administration’s poorly planned and executed sudden closure of these programs means that millions, mostly women and children, will begin to die of hunger in the coming months. You have two choices: You can watch it on the news, or you can get out there and let your representatives and neighbors know this is a travesty against basic human decency.
- Kevin Flattery, Kansas City
In my Bible
U.S. Rep. Mark Alford has repeatedly referred to the right to bear arms as a “God-given right.” When did it become that? Did God line up with the NRA? I’ve read the Bible a few times, and I’m pretty sure God gave us the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, among a few other good things, but I don’t believe he said anything about a “right to bear arms.”
Frankly, I think the good congressman is full of hot air and he owes God an apology for taking his name in vain.
- Barbara Young, Independence
Their share
At his town hall last week, Rep. Mark Alford was busy defending the cuts from President Donald Trump and didn’t hear his voters. (Feb. 26, 1A, “Rep. Mark Alford faces anger over Musk, federal firings”) Americans have always been willing to sacrifice for their country, even during this time of government job cuts. What upsets us is that these essential jobs are being cut so Trump can continue to make more tax breaks for a few of his wealthy friends.
If the richest 1% were taxed for income and Social Security at the same rates as the rest of us, we wouldn’t be having these problems.
- Paul Budd, Sugar Creek
Restore trust
I want to thank you for publishing David Mastio’s thoughtful and important opinion piece about tuberculosis. (Feb. 19, KansasCity.com, “Immigrant status, homelessness or prison ties to TB outbreak should be made public”) Although his point about trust in public health officials is solid, his conclusion is flawed.
I have worked for an end to TB in the U.S. for more than 20 years, and I have never seen our front-line folks who defend us from TB more stressed or short-handed. After decades of public health cuts, especially to TB programs, we asked them to work full time against COVID-19, without reimbursing TB programs or hiring additional workers to, you know, pay attention to the TB.
Since we neglected prevention efforts (a key difference from measles — we have no effective vaccine for TB), the expected rebound was not long in coming. Tuberculosis is slow by bacterial standards, so that is why we see the big increases now. Kansas is one of several states with outbreaks and drug shortages, and prices are stretching them ever thinner.
Rather than demanding more from our totally burnt-out public health workforce, how about we ask our elected officials to pass public health budgets at a level that allows us to defeat tuberculosis and prove we care about all our neighbors’ lives?
- Cynthia Tschampl, Chair, Stop TB USA, Concord, Massachusetts