Print edition: 
As the speaker of the Kansas Silver Haired Legislature, I am in a unique position to feel the pulse of Kansas senior citizens. And I must say, many Kansas seniors are becoming more and more concerned about the direction our state officials are taking to control Medicaid costs. A recent Eagle article made it even more alarming ("Aid changes could force seniors out of assisted living," Oct. 17 Eagle).
There were many mean-spirited and uninformed comments posted online in response to The Eagle article. Many were from young people who obviously don't believe that they, too, will be old someday and may need assistance.
The reality is that about 85 percent of seniors in need of care are taken care of by family. However, some have the misfortune of having outlived their family, or they never had children and have no one to help them.
Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security shouldn't be called entitlements, with the connotation that people are getting something for free. Working people have been contributing their hard-earned money into those systems from the moment they drew their first paychecks.
Those who propose cutting services that seniors have paid into and rightly expected to receive when they retired are being penny-wise and pound-foolish. If cost reduction is the purpose, moving people to nursing homes is certainly not a solution. Nursing homes are more costly.
On behalf of the Silver Haired Legislature and the thousands of frightened Kansas senior citizens who have shared with me just how devastating such cuts in Medicaid could be, I hope the decision makers in Topeka will reconsider and not cut Medicaid benefits. Their "nursing-home solution" is more costly than the status quo, and there are other, less-damaging ways to cut costs — such as postponing the new Kansas visitors center that is scheduled to be built.
I respectfully ask the governor to allow input from the Silver Haired Legislature and find a different solution, before the system to assist older Kansans is destroyed beyond repair — and a lot of innocent lives along with it.
WENDELL TURNER
Wichita
