Meeting Colorado’s Medicaid challenges
Re: “State’s Medicaid challenge,” May 6 editorial.
Thank you for your editorial about the challenges of meeting the needs of Medicaid patients, who are, as everyone knows, some of our most vulnerable patients. However, one sentence in particular caught our attention: Colorado “also earned a ‘zero’ for what the report called a ‘poor record on childhood immunization.”‘
Perhaps the writers of the advocacy group report that the editorial refers to had not received the latest data on Colorado’s immunization rates. Recently, Colorado received an award from the Centers for Disease Control for being the most improved state, changing its ranking for immunizations from 48th to 16th. Similarly, Denver Health in 2006 won a prestigious national award from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations for improving its childhood immunizations to 85 percent for 2-year-olds through the use of sophisticated information technology designed to track patient immunization schedules. This is significant because Denver Health cares for 35 percent of Denver’s children in its primary care system. In addition, the community health centers throughout Colorado that care for a large number of Medicaid patients have an excellent record in their childhood immunization rates through their quality improvement initiatives.
We believe that the quality of childhood immunization delivery in the state is being successfully addressed and has improved.
Paul Melinkovich, M.D., Director of Community Health Services, Denver Health
Ned Calonge, M.D., Chief Medical Officer, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment
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As you describe it, both the quality and availability of medical care through Colorado Medicaid are lacking. You also indicate that lack of funds restricts the state’s ability to do much to address the problem. Yet those who point out the poor delivery of medical services to the “poor,” however defined, are usually those who want to vastly extend state control over all health care in Colorado. Would that not just condemn everyone to often unavailable health care of poor quality that Colorado will not be able to afford?
Richard E. Ralston, Executive Director, Americans for Free Choice in Medicine, Newport Beach, Calif.
Possible expansion of Army training site
Re: “Army’s process for Fort Carson expansion,” May 4 Open Forum.
Letter-writer Brian A. Binn of the Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce displays the kind of callous arrogance characteristic of Colorado Springs leaders when it comes to relations with other parts of the state.
Mr. Binn touts the “track record of environmental stewardship” of the U.S. military as he writes about the possible expansion of the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site. The sort of “stewardship” the Army would provide is rather like preserving the Venus de Milo by encasing it in concrete. If the Department of Defense is permitted to storm into southeastern Colorado and take land like a horde of Huns, then that land will be lost forever to use by citizens, to be seen only by soldiers from their armored vehicles and tended by Army employees.
Currently, ownership of the land is dynamic and subject to market, social and environmental forces that make it possible to view, experience and share the treasures there. We cannot let this austere, beautiful land be placed in the dead hands of Army ownership and lost to us for the foreseeable future, simply to help the bottom line of Colorado Springs businessmen.
Dennis Chappell, Pueblo
Have we forgotten why we love baseball?
Lately I have heard calls for a boycott of the Colorado Rockies because of their losing ways.
Have we forgotten why we go to the games in the first place? I grew up in Iowa, and every summer my family would go on a vacation to St. Louis, Kansas City, Cincinnati or Atlanta. We really weren’t following any team in particular – we just loved to watch baseball.
To me, there’s nothing quite as exciting as the feel of a park, grabbing a hot dog, finding your seat and watching the game.
Am I disappointed when the Rockies don’t win? Sure I am. But they still put on a great show. Did anyone happen to see Troy Tulowitski’s triple play? That made major-league history, and it was a Rockies player this season. Has anyone seen Todd Helton’s stats lately? Pretty impressive.
It’s easy to support a winning team, but the real test of a true fan’s faith is supporting its effort no matter what the scoreboard says at the end of the game. As long as I am in Denver, I will support the Rockies, but more than that I will always support baseball.
Gary Raymond, Denver
Why is Wolfowitz still with the World Bank?
The current pressure from so many concerning the obviously wrong and underhanded dealings of Paul Wolfowitz and his lover need to be ended by his resignation or his firing, whichever is required to get rid of him. Any person outside the Bush stable would have long since been sacked and sent packing had they done what Wolfowitz did. Why is it that so many in and around this administration are given such velvet-glove treatment when they break the law or do something underhanded? This is unfair and wrong and is one more reason why most of the world has become anti-American since Bush took office and why George W. Bush’s and Dick Cheney’s personal ratings are so low.
John Ruckman, Lakewood
Questions about China’s policies on food, Tibet
With the revelation that not only pet food but also pork, chicken and now fish may be tainted with industrial chemicals imported from China, I am wondering what is safe for people or their pets to eat. Let’s see, does that leave only beef and vegetables? We never did get the whole truth about mad cow disease and beef, did we? And if fish accumulate mercury from the fallout of coal smoke from power plants, what can keep vegetables from being laced with mercury as well? Apparently, no one has ever asked that question.
As for China, if we cannot trust them to police the safety of foodstuffs they export to us, and the FDA cannot devote the resources to inspect 100 percent of it, I have a solution: Cut off all trade with China. That will immediately address what are some of our most serious problems – food safety, the loss of manufacturing jobs, spiraling air pollution, and a soaring trade deficit.
Jim Bower, Evergreen
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Re: “250,000 Tibetans forced to relocate,” May 6 news story.
So what do we do about China? In last Sunday’s Post, there were reports about the Chinese government’s plan to obliterate Tibet’s entire culture and their mass exportation of contaminated medicine and food.
A large percentage of all consumer goods sold in this country originate in China, so it’s obviously too late for any organized boycotts. They have undermined American copyright laws with a tidal wave of cheap imitation movies, music, designer clothing, you name it (although copyright laws have been under attack from all quarters.) And, as the world’s factory, their pollution of the biosphere is second to none.
China’s ascendancy has paralleled our federal government’s elevation of profit motive above the common good and the gutting of regulations that degrade the public health while enriching a chosen few.
So I suppose there is nothing to be done about China. They are in the driver’s seat of the global economy.
Mao would be very proud, capitalist at heart that he was.
Jim Bernath, Englewood
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