Readers react to Donald Trump, wage inflation and Medicaid expansion
Trump’s appeal
Perhaps I have missed comments about Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s monetary influence on the political arena. If so, I apologize.
For me, the reason other Republican candidates (and some Democrats) have not gone after Trump in an effective manner is their fear of not receiving his monetary support in the future. The exception lately is Jeb Bush, who has his own money.
Mr. Trump is a formidable, virtually untouchable candidate because of his wealth coupled with his ability to arouse fear in gullible people.
The media have been reluctant to raise this issue, frankly because of their entrenchment with the establishment and Trump. When politicians are beholden to those with money, the truth never seems to surface.
That’s the problem with politics. Hopefully, the Trump tidal wave can be stopped by “The Necessary Wall” built by fearless, truthful candidates interested in the future of our nation. The Democrats also need to get their builders there.
This political season is a circus, and now Sarah Palin has been added to the bill of performers.
What’s next?
Danna Boehm
Kansas City
Fuel for inflation
Raising the minimum wage would cause inflation. Businesses cannot absorb the increase.
They will simply pass the cost on to consumers. Therefore, within a year, the recipients of the minimum-wage increase would be back to almost where they had been financially.
Increasing the minimum wage and inflation devalue the dollar. Costs go up on goods and services.
Government doesn’t make jobs. Free enterprise does.
Sam Walton’s idea was to give profit-sharing each year and 10 percent off the cost of products to employees.
Allen L. Hawkins
Sedalia, Mo.
Expand Medicaid
Kansas elected officials have refused to expand Medicaid or to even seriously debate it, even though doing so could provide health insurance for an estimated 150,000 low-income people, most of whom are counted among the working poor.
We believe this refusal to take action is a serious mistake with flesh-and blood consequences that play out daily around us.
From the work of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, we know that individuals with serious mental illness are over-represented among those most likely to lack health insurance and as a result often go without treatments that could benefit them.
The cost of this problem is enormous in personal and financial terms for the individuals and families who are directly touched and for employers stemming from lost productivity. In Kansas, these costs exceed $1 billion a year.
Expanding Medicaid would dramatically reduce this financial burden on our state. Most important, it would change the lives of thousands of uninsured Kansans coping with untreated mental illness.
Please join me in urging our leaders to put aside political differences and to step up on this important matter.
One in four Kansans will experience mental illness in any given year. The time to act is now.
Rick Cagan
Executive Director
National Alliance
on Mental Illness
NAMI Kansas
Topeka
Needed services
After many years of association with and volunteering my services to Planned Parenthood, I feel it is unconscionable that our state and federal government want to decrease or totally cut funding to such a great organization.
I understand the arguments against abortion.
However, abortions represent a small percentage of the services Planned Parenthood offers to predominantly low-income women.
More than 95 percent of its patients go there for myriad female-related problems, ranging from routine pap smears and pelvic exams, advice and help with birth control (which further helps prevent any need for abortions) to counseling and testing for sexually transmitted diseases, routine breast exams (occasionally discovering early breast cancer) and other non-abortion-related problems.
Planned Parenthood offers a safe, medically efficient and professional way of providing these services, which otherwise may not be available or economically feasible to the women they serve.
Any local, state or federal lawmaker working toward defunding Planned Parenthood should first visit one of the clinics to see and learn firsthand the outstanding services provided.
Paul L. Riekhof, M.D.
Prairie Village
This story was originally published February 19, 2016 at 9:00 AM with the headline "Readers react to Donald Trump, wage inflation and Medicaid expansion."