Letters to the Editor

Key to drug card benefits

to the editor:

As a member of the Metro Council, I have received calls from elderly constituents concerned by the new Medicare Prescription Drug Card. I understand their anguish, and I hope Congress and the White House will improve the program. But in the meantime, our seniors still need help buying drugs, and I hope they don't give up.

I have seen several studies, including an independent survey completed by the Kaiser Family Foundation that shows if seniors research what is available, many of them can save money with a discount card. This is particularly true for our low-income elderly, who may be eligible for additional savings of $600 per year this year and in 2005 if they have a card. Of the 41 million eligible seniors who could benefit from this program, only about 4 million seniors are enrolled. For that reason, I held a community meeting in District 29 to help eligible seniors learn more about the program's benefits.

I will host another meeting at 6:30 p.m. Sept. 2 at the Southeast Branch Library, 2325 Hickory Highland Drive in Antioch. The State Health Insurance Program (SHIP) will provide information about the Medicare Prescription Drug Card. If you cannot attend this meeting, SHIP will set up a free counseling session. You can contact a SHIP representative by calling (877) 801-0044 to set up a free counseling session.

Seniors shouldn't have to choose between buying the drugs they need and putting food on their tables.

Vivian Wilhoite

Vivian Wilhoite is the Metro Council representative for District 29.

Hoping to do better

to the editor:

The Republican National Convention in New York this week claims that they are set on fulfilling America's promise: building a safer world and a more hopeful America.

Explain to me what it means to be hopeful when your job was sent overseas and you feel lucky to take that sizable pay cut just to be able to put food on the table.

Perhaps our troops are hopeful that our president's blind arrogance will not lead them to turn the corner into yet another Iraq, Iran, North Korea or wherever Capt. Blazing Saddles decides to lead us. Think we aren't heading there? Think again.

We need a plan that relies not on us feeling that we must simply stay the course, but one that says we can do better.

We can change our economic and foreign policy from dismal failures to successes. We can restore the faith our allies once had in us to keep the peace worldwide.

Moderates, conservatives, liberals and those who simply refuse to associate with any label know this: We can do better.

My friends, we can and must do better than George W. Bush Inc. can even fathom.

37221

Stephen Yeargin

Health care on agenda

to the editor:

John Kerry's economic plan as president is to roll back the tax cut on people with yearly income higher than $200,000. A business magazine reported that this approach will generate $800 billion dollars. Kerry proposes to spend $600 billion on health care and $200 billion on education. This is a lot of money, though it is not the trillions in unaccounted expenditures that some have claimed.

The question is: Do we need to spend more money to ensure greater access to health care? To address that question, it is worth noting how the United States ranks among other nations in areas like healthy life expectancy and infant mortality.

In 2001, the World Health Organization examined HLE worldwide and reported that citizens in more than 20 countries can expect to live longer on average than citizens in United States. Although the United States is ahead of most countries, a surprisingly large number of modern industrial countries do better.

What about IM rates? The U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services notes that although IM rate in the United States reached a historic low of 6.8 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2001, the U.S. rate remains higher than that of many other industrialized countries. Indeed, data produced by the CIA in May 2004 show that the U.S. ranking in IM rates worldwide is comparable to the ranking in HLE.

Do these numbers suggest that Americans in all economic brackets need greater access to good health care? I think the answer is definitely yes.

37035

George Green

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