Letters to the Editor
From our weekly issue dated October 15
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Underage drinking in I.V.
From Chris Stauffer
Selma
It is estimated that, nationwide, approximately 5,000 people die each year as a direct result of minors under the influence of alcohol. This does not include deaths from alcohol poisoning or long-term health problems attributed to alcoholism.
Underage drinking is especially prevalent in rural communities like Illinois Valley. Unfortunately, most federal or state funding allocated to Josephine County for underage drinking goes to Grants Pass, and Illinois Valley is largely neglected. Grants Pass programs like Alateen, an Alcoholics Anonymous group for minors, is open to Illinois Valley teen-agers, but transportation to and from Grants Pass is a major obstacle for most of them.
The U.S. Surgeon General recently acknowledged that underage drinking is a national problem in his Call to Action to Prevent & Reduce Underage Drinking (www.surgeongeneral.gov/topics/underageddrinking/).
Besides placing severe personal, social, and economic burdens on adolescents and their families, underage drinking affects entire communities. Among other aspects, it is extremely costly. In Oregon alone, taxpayers were burdened with $697 million a year in medical costs, lost productivity, pain and suffering, and other costs associated with underage drinking and its consequences, according to the Pacific Institute for Research & Evaluation.
That translates to a cost of $2,074 per year for each youth in the state -- money that would be better spent in areas such as education and health care.
Many teen-agers who drink alcohol began doing so before the age of 12, so prevention education is appropriate even at the elementary school level. More important than prevention education in the schools is the influence of parents and other adults in the community. In Oregon and nationally, research shows that parents who deliver clear, consistent messages have more influence on teens than most people think.
Even if parents drink alcohol themselves, laying down rules for their children is vital to the children’s futures. Of adults who started drinking before the age of 15, around 40 percent say that they have signs of alcohol dependence, four times higher than for adults who didn’t drink until they were 21.
For more facts about this topic and to learn more about what you can do to help Illinois Valley teens steer clear of underage drinking, visit www.faceitparents.com, an Oregon campaign to help reduce underage drinking, or dial (877) 553-TEEN for Oregon Partnership’s free Alcohol & Drug HelpLine.
(Chris Stauffer is a third- year medical student from OHSU in Portland who just completed a five-week rotation in rural medicine with Dr. Kathy Mechling in Selma.)
‘Devil in the details’
From Richard Weaver
Kerby
I am a Vietnam veteran who receives a modest V.A. pension check each month along with a Social Security check due to my 100 percent spinal cord injury disability.
Having Part A of Medicare, the V.A. authorized Medicare to hire and pay a home health agency from Grants Pass to care and dress my open wounds. I thought this was a good thing because my housemate had just moved to Medford temporally, which was also a criterion of the V.A. Remember, Part A of Medicare covers payment for these home health nursing visits, but however not for lab work.
If labs by the home health nurses are needed to discover what bacteria is growing in a wound, then prior authorization is needed from a V.A. doctor and here lies the devil in the details, Getting authorization for treatment for lab work from a V.A. medical doctor is different than getting authorization of prior payment from the V.A. for this procedure. If both are not addressed prior to the lab work then a veteran may accumulate a substantial medical lab bill.
Medicare denies lab work to a Part A patient for home health agency purposes because it falls under the Medicare Part B category. The V.A. will deny any payment to a home health nursing agency that is not authorized for payment prior to treatment -- and guess who gets the bill? Correct, the veteran.
And as time passes, this bill if not paid becomes a lien against the veteran. If you are as assertive as I am you spin it back at them and call it what it really is, and that’s fraud. According to my Medicare Summary Report, Medicare fraud is a false representation by a person or business to get Medicare payments.
A home health nursing agency which does not know how to acquire prior authorization from the V.A. is an oxymoron statement. They deal with many veterans yearly and have been through this before and know they cannot honestly tell a veteran they have prior authorization to do a Part B procedure to a Part A patient knowing the home health agency lab department will make great financial gain by allowing the veteran to believe he is getting a service covered by either the V.A. or Medicare when not.
‘Building an empire’
From Bud Couron Cave Junction
I have been a property owner in Illinois Valley for nearly 40 years, and in all that time we have never had a really serious problem with fires in the valley.
I believe that there is a difference between the duties of our rural fire district in the valley and the duties of the fire departments that manage fires that occur on federal forest land around us. I know that some will remember the 2002 Biscuit Fire, but the sad reality of that was that it could have been prevented had the U.S. Forest Service gone down there and put it out when it first started. As a result it got out of hand and became a major problem.
That fire leapfrogged our fire chief into a large short-term tax levy that he used to build himself a couple of new fire houses that we didn’t really need, and now he wants us to give him another levy so he can hire a full-time fire crew we have never needed to man those fire houses. It is my opinion that our fire chief is out to build himself a Castle in the Sky Empire, and if we allow that to happen the taxes involved will not be a two- or three-year levy this time, but a permanent fixture attached to our tax bills that will increase annually as his wants grow.
Think also about what it will cost if the fire levy and the sheriff’s levy both pass.
O&C commitment
From Josephine Couron
Cave Junction
As regards the tax levy for the sheriff’s office, I believe that the counties involved in the O&C funds have had and still have a firm commitment with the federal government for those funds.
I also believe that the government cannot just decide one day to stop paying what is owed to the O&C counties without being sued for breach of contract. So why is it that those we have elected to manage our county seem to believe that it is easier to get the money from local taxpayers than to require the government to pay what it owes?
Billions of our tax dollars are being given away to people all over the world, but nothing seems to be available to pay for the O&C contract. If this levy passes it appears that the sheriff will have his own tax fund that neither the county nor the taxpayers will have any control over, and so the vote we had a while back to control the tax gouging by taxing agencies will have been circumvented.
I don’t know about other people, but it took us a lot of years to save the money to buy a home, and I resent the attitude that property owners have money that government has a right to spend. I have seen how county government used 40 years of O&C funds, and I have no intention of giving them the first nickel outside the current legal tax requirements. ‘
Thanks, America’
From Wally Aiken
Kerby
In 1971, I enlisted in the military out of a very misguided sense of patriotism and duty to country during a time of war. I served my four years of what Herman Wouk termed “polite, penal servitude” and received the Vietnam Service medal and the Vietnam Campaign award with a bronze star.
In return, my country promised that I would be able to access free medical care for the rest of my life; not exactly a fair trade, but when a pig flies you don’t complain that it didn’t stay aloft for long.
Five years ago, after I got sober, I began receiving my medical care through the V.A. in White City. This care included paroxatine HCL and Trazodone. With the help of these medications I was able to maintain a certain small amount of stability in my life. Previously I used the “program” of self-medication through alcohol, a very common element in PTSD.
These drugs allowed me to stay sober and relatively (although many would disagree) stable mentally. This last year, the V.A. decided that I had to pay for my prescriptions. When I didn’t have the money, they took my income tax return and that rather pathetic “stimulus” check. Unlike the government, I couldn’t just keep running up bills with no hope of paying them off, so for the last two and a half weeks I have been experiencing a living hell of withdrawal. Understand that these medications are in no way possible recreational. They did, as I said, give me some mental stability.
Today, I am in total mental meltdown. I called the crisis center and was told they could do nothing because even though the V.A. is denying it, they have the obligation to provide the necessary medications.
I am a Vietnam vet who has simply been discarded by my government and my society because I am not cost-effective. Meanwhile, our congressman and senators provide a four-year welfare program to the property owners of the O&C counties simply because the property owners don’t want to pay the appropriate property taxes.
Our congressman and senators provide billions to bailout the wildly irresponsible lenders who were allowed to run wild under the banner of deregulation. Notice that it is the lenders being bailed out, not the people losing their homes.
Meanwhile, those of us who honorably served this country during war are thrown aside like so much garbage. Thanks, America.
No 2009 law levy
From John Harlelson, CPA
Josephine County treasurer
During the candidates forum hosted by “First Steps” on the 6th in Cave Junction, I misstated the intentions of the Josephine County Board Commissioners to put a law enforcement levy on the ballot in 2009.
The “bail-out” on the 3rd and the resulting partial extension of the O&C “Safety Net” changed the county’s financial environment significantly. To the best of my knowledge the commissioners are not planning a local option levy for 2009. I apologize for misleading the audience during that forum.
If the districts fail to gain approval, I am hopeful that the county commissioners will quickly hold extensive public meetings on law enforcement funding. It is clear that the partial extension of the “Safety Net” will not provide enough funding to significantly restore lost services in the sheriff’s Patrol or Jail divisions, the District Attorney’s Office or Juvenile Justice. The extension of the “Safety Net” starts at 90 percent in 2008, decreases significantly each year, and will end in 2011.
I urge the citizens of Illinois Valley to support the Sheriff’s District measures 17-25 and 17-26 and expand the conversation with their elected officials.
In addition, I urge I.V. citizens to look closely at the contested races for commissioner and treasurer. They should look at qualifications, applicable experience and work history, and then choose the best person for the jobs.
We live in one of the most desirable places in the USA, so let’s work together to make it safe for all Josephine’s citizens.
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