Letters on Brownback’s Kansas experiment, unbalanced reporting, in-store clinics

Other states are learning from Kansas

The rest of this country should be truly thankful to the state of Kansas. For years, conservatives have been screaming that the answer to unbalanced budgets is to simply cut expenditures. A number of other states have tried that, but reasonably cracked under the pressure when they found that the voters did not really want a number of those expenditures cut.

It seems that those voters really liked their children to attend schools with teachers and working bathrooms, they really didn’t care for a three- or four-hour wait to get a driver’s license renewed or a birth certificate issued, and they seemed to resent bridge signs that told them to go somewhere else to cross the river. They seemed to like judges who were not tied to a governor’s apron strings, and they even appear to have liked a doctor to be around when they were in danger of dying.

Not Kansas. Our legislators never crack. So, finally, legislators and voters all over the United States can watch the great experiment carried out to its predictable and inevitable end – third-rate education, small hospitals closed, state services almost laughable, highways that will only slow down (but certainly not stop) the exodus of those people we would want most to stay, and legislators who will only have to spend their time deciding the fate of the prairie chicken.

Unfair, unbalanced

Do we deserve columnists Davis Merritt (“GOP deserves Trump, but we will all pay,” March 8 Opinion) and Leonard Pitts Jr. (“The Republican Party has become an incoherent mess,” March 7 Opinion)? Maybe not, but we need to know what the left is thinking. So we pay for the newspaper, laugh at the comics and Opinion Line. We like holding a paper in our hands, we scan the obits, and we wonder how headlines are chosen.

We subscribe to newsletters, watch Fox News and listen to talk radio (conservative) to balance what we hear, read and see. For example, we knew President Obama was a Marxist Muslim.

We have always supported black and Hispanic conservatives, even though they are few. We expect unfair and unbalanced reporting in most mainstream media. We support Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, not Donald Trump, but are deeply disappointed in many who are called Republicans.

Conflict of priorities

Parents should be cautious when considering care for their children at retail-based clinics (“In-store clinics offer convenient options,” Feb. 28 Progress 2016). Imprudent use of such clinics creates a conflict of priorities between quality/continuity of care and convenience.

These clinics are typically staffed by physician assistants and nurse practitioners who in a normal medical office setting would practice alongside a physician. These professionals are often not specially trained in pediatrics, do not know your child’s history, and have no after-hours coverage for questions or complications.

Consistency is key to proper health care. With every visit and phone call, primary care physicians learn about your child’s unique needs, enabling them to make knowledgeable decisions to optimize your child’s health. Children’s health care is ideally delivered and coordinated through the child’s “medical home,” the office of the primary care physician.

Young families have increasingly busy lives and time conflicts that may not always allow a primary care visit. If a situation should arise in which a child needs a retail-based clinic for an acute illness, the primary care physician should always be involved or notified, and follow-up care with the medical home arranged.

This story was originally published March 13, 2016 at 7:04 PM with the headline "Letters on Brownback’s Kansas experiment, unbalanced reporting, in-store clinics."