What shocked me most reading Christie Chisholm’s report on health care in rural Kenya [Re: News, “Aid From Afar,” Nov. 26-Dec. 2] is the absence of doctors in even overnight facilities that sick patients walk many miles to get to.As in Kenya, the U.S. too has a shortage of doctors in what we call underserved areas that include rural New Mexico. You would think that our medical associations would therefore jump at the opportunity afforded in today’s reform climate by ensuring a bigger supply of doctors. Instead we have all these doctor-turned-politicians in the Republican party blocking any reform at all. Instead we have the AMA bringing out commercials with yet more thinly veiled threats to patient access if Medicare reimbursements to doctors are not raised to the high fees they get on the not-so-open market from insurance carriers (not that us patients are privy to how much that is or told in advance of a doctor visit). Instead we saw a group of white-coated medical students march up to the mic in a shoutdown hall and raise only the “need” for tort reform (Why don’t they call it what they want: caps on awards from proven malpractice?). Instead we the people roll over to their lobbying like sick puppies so grateful to get attention, we do not question.Small wonder then that all the government can think of is giving doctors more “incentives” to work where no doctor’s pocketbook dares to go; incentives to not “be forced to shut the doors” so as to “maintain their practice,” as I hear in this debate time and time again. These are dangerous exaggerations. When was the last time you heard of a doctor going broke from lack of income? When was the first time?
Letters: Bill O’reilly Doesn’t Hate America Bill O’reilly Doesn’t Hate America
I have to wonder where Raudy Steele has been all these years [Re: Letters, “Bill O’Reilly Hates America,” Nov. 26-Dec. 2]. Did he not see on 9/11 all those people dancing in the streets in the Middle East? Those people were not Protestants or Catholics. Among them were Palestinians to whom we have given millions of American tax payer dollars over the years. Has he not heard about the myriad bombings of American embassies, or the successful and unsuccessful bombings in Spain, England and other places? Those responsible for all those bombings are Muslims who openly declare their intent to kill as many Americans and American allies as possible to ensure their own Islamic rewards after they themselves die. They do not care that an official declaration of war has not been issued by any government.The old established political nicety of declaring formal war on us has not been followed simply because there is no central government anywhere who would dare openly do so. But there are those governments in Muslim countries that brazenly support those who murder innocent people in the name of Islam.We are and have been in a state of war against those murderers who declare themselves soldiers of Islam and they should be tried as soldiers when captured. This is a new and different sort of war and enemy. They follow no civilized rules. To grant them the protections of an American court that so many Americans fought and died for is beyond insane. By the way, [Khalid Sheikh] Mohammed has stated that he is guilty and wants to die a martyr.If Raudy Steele does not recognize the situation as a formal state of war I suggest that he ask the survivors and other victims of the 9/11 atrocity as well as the military veterans of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan whether it matters to them that we are fighting in an "informal state of war."All Muslims are not terrorists but most terrorists are Muslims and we must remain alert to that fact and not allow them to get away with murder any longer. O’Reilly and those who agree with him are true patriots, and Raudy Steele and his ilk are the true blindfolded haters of America.
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