Letters on Project Access, county manager, minimum wage, Obama, GOP

Thanks for support of Project Access

On behalf of the patients, physicians and hospitals engaged in Project Access, we would like to thank the Sedgwick County Commission for its support of Project Access. The supplemental funding approved Wednesday will enable Project Access staff to connect eligible patients to more than 635 area physicians, eight hospitals and 85 pharmacies in order to receive timely, coordinated and donated health care.

In 1999, area physicians led a local partnership to create Project Access, with area hospitals, community clinics, pharmacists, the state of Kansas, United Way of the Plains, the city of Wichita, Sedgwick County and other funders and health care providers. Since then physicians, hospitals and other providers have donated nearly $200 million of medical care to restore the health of more than 12,600 hardworking uninsured neighbors.

The action of the County Commission means it recognizes the critical importance of funding programs that serve to improve the health of Sedgwick County residents. The county and, specifically, the Sedgwick County Health Department have been leaders for decades in managing cost-effective, results-oriented programs to improve our community. We applaud the commission’s commitment to a strong public health focus and taking its role as the Board of Health seriously. We look forward to partnering with commissioners on multiple efforts across the county designed to improve the health of all Sedgwick County residents.

Need experience

For those of you who believe that someone from the business community can fill retired Sedgwick County Manager Bill Buchanan’s very big shoes, please read Page 57, “Why government cannot be run like business,” in Davis Merritt’s new book, “On Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Perfect.” In lieu of that, a Google search for a topic such as “the difference between business and government” turns up many articles that confirm Merritt’s sage assessment.

If the Sedgwick County Commission’s intent is to hire the best, most-learned counsel for the decisions it must make on behalf of the residents and voters in Sedgwick County, the search will specify a person with a degree in public administration and many years of experience.

No harm on jobs

In “Kansas isn’t joining 14 states set to raise minimum wage” (July 7 Eagle), Rep. Jim Ward, D-Wichita, noted that he proposed raising the minimum wage in the past legislative session because it’s wrong to work full time and still be poor. He also noted that working people would spend any increase stimulating the economy.

This brought the usual mythical conservative response that jobs would be lost. After reviewing two decades of research, the Center for Economic and Policy Research (a nonpartisan economic think tank) concluded that there is little or no effect of minimum wage increases on job growth.

World in chaos

When President Obama leaves office on Jan. 20, 2017, he will hand his successor a world in chaos. On every front this man has inflicted damage that will take generations of recovery.

Obama springs from the dissociative thought process of progressive liberalism. His administration has mastered the art of jumping from one deception, one disaster to another without missing a heartbeat. “Truth becomes lies,” “war is peace” – the “most transparent administration in history” is Orwellian.

Great leaders search for answers to the world’s problems, while Obama and Hillary Clinton try to make the world fit politically correct solutions spawned by the ideological elitism of the left. And when they fail, which they always do, it’s at the hands of some vast conspiracy instead of their own incompetence.

To these politicians, the acquisition of power is an end in itself, an entitlement. A word like “ethics” has become a punch line used at fundraisers and always couched in the fiction of looking out for the little guy.

Whose smoke?

“Sleight of hand” (July 12 Letters to the Editor) claimed that various minor activities are the fault of our president and meant to keep us from dealing with the real issues. Let’s get something straight: When President Obama was elected, the Republican Party vowed to keep him from taking any real actions. And the GOP succeeded on many ridiculous levels, calling him a liar during a speech before Congress and using numerous petty stall tactics to block any real actions that would help the people.

It is not Obama who needs to be honest, but politicians who, for whatever reasons, do not show the respect due that office and who have treated Obama with disregard from the very beginning.

If you compare Obama with, say, Gov. Sam Brownback, you would see that our president has tried to do more good than any other politician in the past 10 years. There are more men like Brownback in office than those like Obama. So it really saddens me when I see “all” that Obama has done or not done viewed as a smoke screen.

If it is a smoke screen, you need to be asking: Exactly who is blowing the smoke at whom?

This story was originally published July 15, 2015 at 7:04 PM with the headline "Letters on Project Access, county manager, minimum wage, Obama, GOP."