Posted: Saturday, December 13, 2008 10:00 pm
Dams' upside: Clean power
Mr. John McEvoy's letter of Sunday Dec. 7 asserts that more dams will not be necessary for future water shortages, as Hasso Hering's editorial theorized.
But that is only one advantage of dams; clean electric power is another.
And considering the huge effect a rush to electric cars will have toward power demands, power is a large part of any future equation.
There tends to be a lack of foresight in any crisis, as there is in the push towards electric cars lauded by Governor Kulongoski and others (Many of these same people wish to break out the Snake River dams with all their power generation, a foolish notion indeed!) Along with those electric cars will be monumental hazardous waste considerations or recycling of the battery banks involved as well as huge new electrical power demands for recharging.
Wind power is minuscule and is not going to come close to satisfying those needs, leaving hydro, gas and nuclear energy as typical possibilities. Of those, hydro power is certainly the cleanest and least risky. (Perhaps future wave power will someday help with Oregon's large coastline.)
So, in spite of wildlife and fish concerns, some balance must be considered towards dams with their advantages of water conservation, large quantities of clean power and recreational opportunities.
Gary Hartman
Lebanon
Drug article was dopey
Froma Harrop's Dec. 7 commentary, "For a truce in War on Drugs," would lead someone to believe that if you are smoking dope, don't write a commentary.
Ms. Harrop and the so-called "Law Enforcement Against Prohibition" (LEAP) are prime examples of what marijuana smoke can do to your brain. Marijuana is the most commonly abused drug in the U.S. The THC in marijuana acts upon specific sites in the brain - usually that part of the brain that deals with pleasure, memory, thoughts, concentration, sensory and time perception and coordinated movement. It also causes confusion in thinking, obviously.
A recent study showed the marijuana use by eighth-graders dropped from 20.3 percent in the year 2000 to 14.2 percent in 2007, 10th-graders from 40.3 percent to 31.0 percent an 12th-graders from 48.8 percent to 41.8 percent over the same period. Legalizing drugs will only increase the usage - exactly the opposite of what education and enforcement has done.
In 1992, $97.7 billion (sounds like a federal bailout in today's speak), was the estimated economic cost of drug abuse treatment and prevention. This was an increase of 50 percent over 1985.
Ms. Harrop and the nutcases with LEAP not only want the legalization of marijuana, they advocate all drugs to be legalized. Ms. Harrop states a savings of $44 billion in enforcement costs and $33 billion in tax revenues from the sales of drugs.
Do you smell marijuana smoke? Something stinks. Why stop at the taxes from dope? Let's make prostitution legal. That way, prostitutes would have to pay taxes on their salary.
Let's just legalize everything and let this country go to hell in a hand basket. We are well on our way and commentaries such as Ms. Harrop's only help to speed up the process.
Larry Crompton
Scio
It worked in Arkansas
Hasso Hering has an excellent idea for providing health care for needy people in Oregon: state-run clinics in every county. In the 1970s, I worked for the Arkansas Department of Health.
The state-operated clinics in every county provided local health care, even in the most remote areas. Anyone could visit these clinics to get good low-cost health care. Each clinic had a local staff of nurses and receptionists.
Local doctors staffed the clinics in the more populated areas. Doctors from the cities would visit the rural clinics, each spending one day a week providing health care to rural patients.
The health department had a large central laboratory in Little Rock to provide support for the clinics. The labs included bacteriology, rabies, water analysis, dairy product analysis, tuberculosis, chemical and drug analysis and other very specialized labs that rural clinics could not afford to provide for themselves.
The Medical Mycology Laboratory I operated was a certified reference laboratory for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. These laboratories were available to all hospitals, clinics and police departments in the state.
When I moved to Oregon, I was surprised at the inefficient collection of small laboratories, clinics and hospitals that provided very limited health care in rural areas.
Many disparage Arkansas as backward, and in many ways it is, but half a century ago, those dumb hillbillies had a much better rural health care system than we have in Oregon today.
Hasso is absolutely correct that this arrangement has to be less expensive than giving money to useless insurance company paper shufflers. After all, even with the insurance scam, the clinics and local staff would still be needed. Cut out the useless middlemen and their red tape, and the process will be faster and cheaper.
Phillip Hays
Corvallis
We want health, not insurance
Yes, Hasso, health care can be done better - better than the proposal to expand health insurance coverage to children. What most of us want is health, not health insurance.
Mid-Valley Health Care Advocates proposed a public plan option to the Oregon Health Fund Board; this public plan option would be available in addition to commercial insurance plans through the proposed Insurance Exchange. An existing structure of state government could take on the role of contracting directly with local health care providers to provide the basic set of essential and effective health services which the Oregon Health Fund Board has proposed. There would be no middle entity taking a big bite out of health care dollars for administration, marketing, extravagant CEO salaries and profit.
A study of California counties reports that the counties that paid health care providers directly, rather than contracting with HMOs, saved 23 percent. If we copied their experience in Oregon, millions in savings would provide significant expansion of health services to children and adults.
The public plan option would ensure quality, affordable health care, not only for children but for all family members. It would be open to small businesses that find it very difficult to afford health care for their employees. In addition to more reasonable cost, a particular advantage of the public plan over the clinic idea is the important value of continuity of care with the physician of choice.
Yes, Hasso, there is a better way: A public plan option open to all Oregonians, children and adults.
Betty Johnson
Corvallis
They want to muzzle the right
Thanks for the George Will column on the so-called Fairness Doctrine (Dec. 7). The knee-jerk liberal response will be to deny that the Democratic Party is advocating the reinstatement of the doctrine. This only means the liberals are lying or are ignorant, I'm not sure which.
House Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid have openly stated their support for controlling the content of political speech on the airwaves. And Senators Feinstein, D-Cal., Boxer, D-Cal., Durbin, D-Ill., Kerry, D-Mass., and Schumer, D-N.Y., have been quoted in numerous publications favoring the silencing of conservative radio through government action. To top it off, President-elect Obama appointed Henry Rivera, an advocate of reinstating the doctrine, to head his team to select the next FCC chairman.
It is undeniable that the Democrats intend to muzzle their loudest critics by any means possible, plain and simple. A simple Google search of the subject confirms this fact.
Gordon Shadle
Albany
Solution: Single-payer system
A couple of facts: First, the taxpayer already foots 60 percent of the total health care bill in this country. Second, the tax deduction for health insurance premiums paid by employers constitutes a tax subsidy for insurance companies.
Recently, Hasso Hering asks what if "the state, instead of embarking on an expanded insurance scheme with all its complications, paperwork and additional indirect costs, straight out paid to operate public clinics in every county in the state?"
The insurance companies would embrace this solution in a heartbeat so they can continue to cherry pick the healthy patients and pit-spit those that unpredictably get sick (by finding any lame excuse to drop coverage); thereby, continuing to profit by covering healthy people (with public subsidies) and represent one of the major reasons health care costs us more that twice as much per capita as the rest of the industrialized world.
Our taxpayer pays twice because we all end up paying for those who have uncovered needs.
If we had a publicly financed, privately delivered health care system, the savings found in having a real system and reducing administrative overhead could be used to pay for those who currently don't have coverage. Having a parallel system for those in need is important, but it doesn't go far enough.
We must control costs, and we aren't going to accomplish that without embracing something that resembles a single-payer system which focuses on health instead of profits.
Paul Hochfeld
Corvallis
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