A healthier future for new Missourians

Earlier this month, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced an expanded definition of "lawfully residing children and Pregnant women" to make it easier for state governments to provide Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program benefits to legal immigrant children and pregnant women.

The federal government lifted the five-year waiting period for children of legal immigrants to have access to the health care safety net. The Department of Health and Human Services will provide enhanced federal matching funds to states that cover these children and pregnant women, thus making their health insurance nearly cost-free to the state. Giving these children access to Medicaid and CHIP will have a healthy impact on the lives of nearly 4,000 Missouri children who, until now, have had limited access to the state's health care safety net.

When so much negative attention has been given to Arizona's anti-immigrant law, we are demonstrating our American sense of fairness by not punishing the children of immigrants who played by the rules, came here legally and paid taxes like every other citizen.

Gov. Jay Nixon should direct the Missouri to provide immigrants access to Medicaid and CHIP to invest in the healthy future of these new Missourians.

Dr. Kevin Minder • Olivette Center for Immigrant Healthcare Justice

Appointment anger

The recess appointment of Dr. Donald Berwick as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services was not necessary ("Obama skips Senate, fills health care post," July 8). It bypassed the normal Senate confirmation process. The Senate should have had the opportunity to hold hearings in order to ask the nominee questions. Dr. Berwick has made a number of controversial statements, including on rationing health care, redistribution of wealth and praise for the British nationalized health care system.

Recess appointments have been used by both parties. But a recess appointment should be the last step in a process and used only in response to flagrant and inordinate delaying tactics. There were no attempts to delay the confirmation of this nominee; Republicans had requested hearings.

The president and others in his party accused Republicans of stonewalling and forcing his hand on this recess appointment. The vetting process had not been completed. If the president thought it imperative to fill the vacancy, why did he wait 15 months to nominate someone? In reality, the reason for this recess appointment was to avoid discussion of this nominee's controversial statements and continued debate on unpopular health care legislation and administration policies.

This flies in the face of the president's vow of transparency.

The nominee may be qualified for the post. He may have rational explanations for his controversial statements. We'll never know. The people should have the right to hear him answer these questions.

Rich Stanze • Manchester

Tax money up in smoke

Regarding "Campus smoking is under assault" (July 9): This is more outrageous government waste. Why should stimulus funds be spent on such a program? Ask any one of the millions of unemployed people if they think this is a good use of our tax funds.

And politicians wonder why citizens are angry and frustrated.

C. Flieg • St. Louis

Issue distortion

Apparently Leonard Pitts considers himself a member of the "cantankerous apostles" of old-school journalism. In fact, a review of his "When strong opinion avoids facts" (July 4) reveals him as the patron saint of misinformation.

In his own words, he tosses "the raw, red meat of emotion for the benefit of the heart" by repeatedly lambasting the Arizona governor's failure to "quantify" illegal immigrant drug traffickers attempting to enter the United States. This is issue distortion. Our national concern is the phenomenon of illegal immigration itself.

He quotes a border agent union representative telling CNN that Arizona Gov. Jan. Brewer's claim doesn't "comport with reality." Mr. Pitts' intention is to paint Ms. Brewer, and the illegal immigration bill, as psychologically unsound.

Mr. Pitts, in reference to the dominance of drug mules, wrote, "I will say right here that I have no idea whether that claim is true but I suspect it's not." Mr. Pitts is a professional reporter who conveniently doesn't continue his sentence with "although by the growing number of cartel-related deaths in Juarez, Mexico, the problem cannot be denied."

Most devious of all is the beginning of the piece, disparaging "certain conservative bloggers and the gullible people who believe them" so that if one jumps on his bandwagon immediately, a negative perception of conservatives (and Tea Partiers?) is reinforced throughout the work. The "wiser, more-enlightened citizenry" Mr. Pitts referenced is coming — in spite of issue-distorting propagandists like him.

Brian Turney • St. Louis County

Correlations

In "Truth and candor" (July 4), Charles Krauthammer tries to make the argument that we have to realize that Muslim fundamentalism is the root cause of the terrorist attacks on the United States and other Western countries. He attacks Attorney General Eric Holder for not wanting to lay claim to this "truth." But he leads one to believe that all Muslim fundamentalists are terrorists. All Muslim terrorists are Muslim fundamentalists, but not all Muslim fundamentalists are terrorists.

The same thing could be used against Christian fundamentalists. Some Christian fundamentalists join militias and become violent. But there are many Christian fundamentalists who are not violent. Mr. Krauthammer doesn't understand that when Mr. Holder doesn't want to make a correlation between Muslim fundamentalism and Muslim terrorism, it is because, as a good American, he may disagree with what a person says, but he will defend to the death the right to say it. Violence against others is the indefensible behavior.

Mr. Krauthammer is correct that we need to confront Muslim fundamentalism in the marketplace of ideas. This is what Malcom Nance proposes in his book, "An End to Al-Qaeda." He suggests that if we show people who might be drawn to this ideology how it is the opposite of an enlightened interpretation of the Koran, we might narrow the pool of potential recruits.

One problem is our education system. When the average young American thinks Abraham Lincoln was president during the Revolutionary War, how can we teach the nuances of mainline Islam versus Muslim fundamentalism?

John Stopple • Kirkwood

Potential disaster

In just the July 2 edition of the paper, we have two perfect examples of the potential disasters we face with additional government control of our health care system. In "Cochran dental chief put on leave," we learn again that the government can't keep its few U.S. veterans' hospitals safe for those to whom we owe a tremendous debt. Almost 2,000 patients were put at risk because the hospital couldn't even be kept clean under government supervision.

Added to that is an article about government waste, "40 million doses of flu vaccine expire." The government that plans to tell us how to operate our health care system overestimated the need for swine flu vaccine by more than 70 million doses. This means that more than $400 million of vaccine will be incinerated.

This is an example of the government's involvement in health care. Is this what you want for your future?

Eleanor Reichert • St. Charles

Melody, grace

Life is a melody. Family and friends are the harmony. Beautiful music provides the grace note. KFUO-FM Classic 99 certainly brought us much grace.

Mary McGinnis • Oakville