Letters on Brownback resolutions, Medicaid expansion, medical cannabis, CURB, WSU football

New Year’s resolutions for Gov. Brownback

Here is the list of New Year’s resolutions for Gov. Sam Brownback:

I will stop robbing from Peter (the highway fund) to pay Paul (the perennially empty bank account that I created with bad tax policy). l will stop increasing the taxes on citizens who can barely afford them to give breaks to those who are more than able to pay their fair share. I will stop vilifying the poor, public education and the courts that just won’t go along with an agenda that is running my state into the ground. And I will most certainly stop saying the sun is shining in Kansas when there is no way I could possibly see the sun considering my head has been stuck where the sun don’t shine for the past few years.

I’m betting that rather than keep any of those resolutions, Brownback will just let them go – like a person who swears he’ll get in shape by going to the gym but quits by the end of January. Considering the horrible workout he’s given most of his citizens these past few years, we can only hope his “spin” class doesn’t get any worse.

Walk in uninsured’s shoes

It is beyond discouraging to read and hear those in positions of privilege, who are adequately covered by health insurance themselves, complain about the high cost of expanding health insurance coverage through Medicaid. Instead, policymakers should take satisfaction in knowing that, in Kansas and across the country, millions of people can share the benefit of having ready access to essential health care services, many for the first time.

The cost, rather than being regarded as a burden, becomes an essential part of what it means for a civilized (even compassionate) society that recognizes and provides for the common good. This can be addressed by putting in place a rational tax policy that spreads the load equitably across the entire population.

Expanding Medicaid in Kansas would be a positive move economically. It would return federal tax dollars paid by Kansans to our state for our citizens’ benefit. It would add a large number of new jobs. It would provide reimbursement to hospitals and other health care providers for services now not being compensated. And perhaps most importantly, it would remove or at least reduce the fear of financial disaster or adverse health outcomes for the 150,000 Kansans now denied ready access to essential services because of inability to pay.

Human rights violation

“Appeasing Castros” (Dec. 27 Letters to the Editor) complained about human rights in Cuba and then said we take basic freedoms for granted, such as freedom of expression, assembly, travel and respect for universal human rights. But we all need to pay some real attention when those rights are violated here, and from time to time they are.

The worst example is that right here in Kansas our governor and his buddies in the Legislature have refused to expand Medicaid to include the working poor. This is the only industrialized country where medical care is not considered a human right. Many poor people will die early from this policy. Their only crime is being poor.

Killing people by denying them medical care is a human rights violation in my opinion.

Allow medical cannabis

I am a patient who deals with multiple medical issues (pain, anxiety depression, etc.). I take six to seven different medications two times a day. I am a wife, a mother and a Christian. What I am not is a criminal.

In some states there is an available medication that could serve in the place of most of those medications. Instead of taking six to seven different meds, I could be down to taking only one or two meds a day, and it could serve as a rescue medication should I need it.

Thing is, my condition is fairly simple compared with that of some of the children in this city. They deal with epilepsy that even the pharmaceutical medications have a tough time controlling. And while on those same pharmaceuticals, they tend to lose the developmental stepping-stones that every child needs.

The medicine I am talking about could help them, too – and hundreds more with similar problems. What is this miracle medicine? Cannabis.

So to the Legislature, I ask: Why are we still waiting, especially when this medication can help better fund our public schools and their teachers?

CURB’s full circle

Anytime the regulatory bureaucracy gives anyone a “seat at the table” – its table – you can be certain the seat will be a massage chair. It is then from such caressing and kneading that we may be witnessing the Citizens’ Utility Ratepayer Board coming full circle from starting out as a consumer advocate to finishing up as a mere bench player for the regulated (Dec. 17 Eagle). The three commissioners atop the Kansas Corporation Commission do not need five bench players on the team.

If CURB should abandon the mission it was legislated to accomplish, then there is no longer a need for it. By redirecting the mission to one that counters the federal bureaucracy’s initiatives for environmental regulation, the four remaining members who exalt themselves in their positions now will find themselves without those positions soon enough. Perhaps that is why former CURB Chairman Brian Weber, whose primary motivation to resign was to return to his private life, saw the writing on the wall and departed the team before the other four are cut from it.

What was said, heard

Will Rogers said, “I never met a man I didn’t like.” His sons did not agree about what this quote meant.

One son said that the emphasis should be, “I never met a man I didn’t like,” meaning that he never prejudged anyone. “You have to know a person first,” Will Rogers Jr. once said. “But once he got to know them, then he could dislike them.”

Jim Rogers said he thought his father meant just what he said.

I can think of many things my father said, and sometimes I contemplate what he meant. Sometimes I like to give his words more meaning than he probably intended. Our understanding of what someone said also can change as we change. Siblings growing up together can remember family events differently and yet know they are remembering the same situation.

When you are with family or friends, start a discussion about something you remember that was said by someone in your family or past. See how the memories can tie you together or show you how the same thing can be interpreted in different ways. Then think about how that difference may be more about individual relationships with the person instead of exactly what was said.

Revive WSU football

The plane crash that eventually led to the end of Wichita State University’s football program so many years ago was a real tragedy. Time alone cannot erase our pain.

But with the dawning of each new day comes an opportunity to compete, to achieve and, yes, to win. This is the true purpose of collegiate sports – to train our youths to be leaders in every sense of the word.

I’ve got a few things left on my bucket list. One of them is to go to a WSU football game.

This story was originally published January 2, 2016 at 6:03 PM with the headline "Letters on Brownback resolutions, Medicaid expansion, medical cannabis, CURB, WSU football."