Let’s talk safer boating

Last night after getting the newspaper off the porch, I opened it to the front page and began reading. My 7-year-old son was standing next to me and was looking at the picture of the three girls riding in a boat at the flooded Bryant Park (Friday, Jan. 2).

My son’s first question was, “Mom, where is this happening?” I explained.

His second question was, “Where are the lifejackets?”

I looked back at the picture and he was right — no lifejackets! I explained to my son that what these girls were doing was very risky. First, they were not wearing lifejackets; second, they were in an inflatable boat in very cold water (not sure of the depth), and third, even though it was at Bryant Park, that body of water is still part of the Willamette River, a river with a current.

Thank you, Mark Ylen from the Democrat Herald, for allowing my son and me to have a great conversation about boating and swimming safety!

Sherry Watkins, Albany

At the border with Mexico

“If the Mexican state of Sonora was taken over by people who started shooting short-range rockets into south Arizona, how long would the United States sit still before sending in the Army?” That was from the D-H.

My sister lives in my parents’ house just north of Nogales, Sonora. The modern Trail of Tears is a minute away by car. Hundreds of garments and trash like milk jugs line the path. Illegals have been crossing the border for decades. Many are mules, whether they want to be or not, carrying illicit drugs.

Coyotes not only charge them a fortune to enter, but force payment from many that did not. Anyone with money or valuables will probably lose it. Females that are pretty, and even ugly, are taken advantage of over and over. Many of these immigrants commit crimes here in the States. Many here get hooked on drugs and then prey on other Americans. I have been at the border when dozens in Mexico threw large rocks at U.S. officials as a distraction, or just for fun.

Soldiers fresh back from Iraq have been sent to that border area. When approached by what appeared to be armed Mexican forces, our troops were ordered to withdraw.

The Mexican authorities do not try to stop this. In fact they are corrupt to the extreme. Probably six to eight are killed every day in Tijuana. Many believe the numbers are higher near Nogales. There is a full-blown drug war going on with inept police doing little.

We should thus send bombers across the border to eradicate the bad people. If we kill 300 innocents, so be it. If they were truly not involved, they would elect better officials. And if we killed 200 to 300 for each one of ours killed that would be acceptable. I am sure we could say this was to give freedom to the Mexican people and they would love us for helping them.

The rockets and shells landing amidst all Palestinians were U.S.-made and/or paid for. The pilots were U.S.-trained and maintained.

We don’t expect Mexicans to change their country. We do expect Palestinians to change theirs. And Americans don’t understand why so many in the world hate us with a vengeance.

Roger Hawthorne, Albany

Cooling might have helped

The eight teenage girls that attempted an escape from Oak Creek youth correctional facility should have been locked out in the central recreation yard to cool off for at least 24 hours.

Joy Alton, Sweet Home

That’s some bill for pills

I recently read in this paper about hospitals experiencing monetary problems due primarily to nonpayment of patients’ bills.

Is it possible the hospital has created its own woes?

My grandmother spent two days in the hospital last October. The hospital’s policy is that all medications taken by a patient must be supplied by the hospital.

According to Providence Home Services (which provided me a list of all her medications) and Regence BlueCross BlueShield (which provided me a copy of the prescription claims for the same period) the total cost for all her medications, if purchased over the counter with no insurance claim, is only $221.82 (about $7.34/day) for an entire month’s supply.

The insurance company will allow the medication claim to be paid only once a month and having already paid for that month’s supply, rejected a bill by the hospital for the same medications.

The hospital now wants my grandmother to pay $312.08 for a two-day supply of the same prescriptions for a per diem cost of $156.04 — more than 21 times her actual over-the-counter, non-insurance covered cost!

I can appreciate the hospital’s need to ensure the medication is not tainted or otherwise tampered with in order to protect itself or limit its liability. I can even appreciate their desire to use this policy as a means to make some extra money.

But at this cost?

If this is a sample of standard hospital billing procedures, I can’t help but wonder how they stayed in business this long.

Nor can I garner any sympathy for their problems.

Jeanne Gold, Albany

Everything’s upside down

A man stands at a podium surrounded by colleagues and media and accuses a politician of a crime. What happened to innocent until proven guilty in a court of law?

An ad on the radio tells us 23,000 children go hungry every day, yet thousands of children are killed every day at the hands of doctors and nothing is said.

Businesses are run poorly and the top officers are paid individual amounts that would bankroll a small country, yet all that can be said is what can be done to bail them out.

We are told that cows must stop farting or the climate will be destroyed, yet it has survived Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the industrial age, Mount St. Helens, Exxon Valdez and any other natural or man-made calamity that has ever befallen our world.

Today’s news agencies no longer report the facts but thrive on speculation and confusion.

Prayer is said in our Congress, but schools and governments cannot reference anything Christian.

“Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever.” — Thomas Jefferson

Dwight Wolfe, Albany