New partnership aims to reduce cost of asthma medication

Coughing, wheezing and shortness of breath are the symptoms of asthma, something with which many people are all too familiar. Whether you suffer directly from asthma, asthma affects St. Louis City in serious ways. St. Louis is ranked among the worst cities in the country for asthma, and has twice the state average of asthma sufferers, leading to missed school and work days and increased emergency room visits and hospitalizations.

These problems wield a significant economic impact for individuals and for taxpayers. Medications are one of the most important components of asthma care, and people with moderate to severe asthma often need three different medications. With asthma medications costing anywhere from a $35 co-payment to hundreds of dollars monthly for the most commonly prescribed medications, it's hardly surprising that reports show that up to 80 percent of prescriptions written for asthma in the city of St. Louis go unfilled. A new partnership addresses this gap, deserving our attention and praise.

AstraZeneca, producer of critical asthma medications, will provide Grace Hill Neighborhood Health Centers medicines at no cost to qualifying patients through AstraZeneca's AZ&Me Prescription Savings program. In 2009, Grace Hill has provided health services to more than 49,000 patients, nearly 60 percent of whom are uninsured.

The St. Louis chapter of Asthma and Allergy Foundation and members of the St. Louis Regional Asthma Consortium applaud the partnership between Grace Hill and AstraZeneca in helping all St. Louisans breathe easier.

Joy Krieger • St. Louis County Executive Director, Asthma and Allergy Foundation, St. Louis Chapter

Senate must move forward on food safety

After the recent recall of half a billion eggs because of salmonella contamination, it's unacceptable that the U.S. Senate is at a stalemate on a bipartisan food safety reform bill.

Since July 2009, when U.S. Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-St. Louis, and U.S. Rep. Russ Carnahan, D-St. Louis, voted to bring the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's food safety authority into the 21st century, Missouri has had 54 food recalls. That's 54 times Missourians have been told that food in our kitchens was unsafe to eat.

We should not be at risk of illness and death from the food we eat.

U.S. Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond, R-Mo., and U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., should support quick passage of the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act to increase the frequency of inspections at food factories and give FDA the authority to issue mandatory recalls so that we can keep unsafe food off grocery shelves and off our dinner tables.

Matt Erickson • St. Louis Program associate, MoPIRG

In the name of safety

In 2007, the Missouri Legislature and governor accommodated St. Charles County's many rock quarries and crushed-rock haulers by waiving the statewide vehicle-weight limits for this county's secondary highways. The change was exclusive to St. Charles County and essential safety and taxpayer protection measures were not addressed. Since 2007, these heavier dump trucks, which neither can stop safely nor maneuver suddenly to avoid collisions, have crowded the county's many miles of winding, shoulderless highways.

In 2010, bicycle enthusiasts, whose identifiable political contributions probably did not keep pace with that of trucking lobbies, have found their "Tour of Missouri" unfunded and thus killed by Missouri's governor and the St. Charles County government plotting to ban all bicycles from the very same winding, shoulderless highways that were opened to the giant rock haulers in 2007.

The ban reportedly will be in the name of — you guessed it — safety.

Wayne Clark • Lake Saint Louis

All cleared up

Bill Hannegan, in his letter to the editor "Systems test" (Sept. 21), questions the validity of the system tests in a Washington University study quoted in the editorial "Quelle surprise!" (Sept. 12), about the ability of air purification systems being able to remove all remnants of secondhand smoke from an indoor environment. Mr. Hannegan even alludes to support for his position from a 2006 surgeon general's report.

Fortunately, this whole issue is well documented by study published June 25, 2008, by the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air-Conditioning Engineers Inc.

These are the people who are best able to develop and test the systems their employers wish to promote. Their conclusion is that there is no system available that can safely remove all remnants of secondhand smoke. With their best engineering efforts, they fail to do so. Anyone with Internet access can access this information at www.ashrae.org/docLib/20090120_POS_ETS.pdf. The paper's first three pages are a summary of the report. Mr. Hannegan may wish to read the whole report, as may those restaurant and bar owners who have been led to believe that their ventilations systems remove all remnants of environmental tobacco smoke.

Have they been subjected to a hoax?

Ernest Wolf • Ladue

Merchants of death are getting the message

In a letter to the editor ("Systems test," Sept. 21), Bill Hannegan, who promotes air filtration systems to combat secondhand smoke, decried the methodology of the testing reported in the editorial "Quelle surprise!" (Sept. 12). While it is entirely possible that he is correct in his criticism, he misses the point. The point is that the tobacco industry will use any excuse to promote the use of its poison.

As ban after ban is enacted, it must be disheartening for Big Tobacco to realize that it has lost the hearts and minds of the vast majority of the public, even among addicts, who wish they could stop smoking. The merchants of death have been lying for so long about their products, they have lost all credibility. The message is we don't want your smoke— firsthand, secondhand or near our kids. We want clean air for ourselves and future generations.

Now if only Republicans would get the message. U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Springfield, is in a tizzy because a member of the Carnahan family is getting stimulus money for a wind-energy business, a business in which he has been involved for half a decade. Wind energy cuts air pollution from fossil fuels and cuts dependency on foreign oil and, thus, keeps money from going to governments that support terrorism.

This is the same Mr. Blunt who tried to sneak favorable tobacco legislation into the Patriot Act in the middle of the night. He is married to a former tobacco lobbyist.

Rich Brown • St. Louis County

Tilting at windmills

Regarding "Tom Carnahan stimulus grant provides more fodder for GOP" (Sept. 21): I assume the Post-Dispatch will be all over the deal Tom Carnahan received from the stimulus funds, just as the paper was all over Halliburton (rightfully so) and former Vice President Dick Cheney.

Because the paper is "of no party," the fact that the president and the Carnahans are Democrats will have no effect on its reporting.

When will we learn that when President Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said things will change in Washington, what they really meant is that it was time for their cronies to reap the rewards of our taxes?

Where is Don Quixote when we need him?

Phil Rose • Affton