Letters to the Editor

The following are letters to the editor that appeared in the Nov. 18 print edition of The Peninsula Gateway. To submit a letter, e-mail gatewayeditor@gateline.com. Please keep letters submissions to 250 words.

Phone directories are a waste of money, time for local residents

Well, it’s happened again. In spite of protests, another phone company has littered our neighborhood with phone directories, each encased in a white, non-biodegradable plastic sack.

Tossed on the shoulders of the roads near our mailboxes, many will lie there for weeks; a blight on our community.

We did not ask for these books, and most of us will just toss them in the recycle bins; a waste of our money and time.

Yes, our money! Our phone bill payments finance this. We also pay for hauling them away.

If you share my sentiments about this littering, I urge you to make your feelings known to code enforcement at the appropriate agency.

For unincorporated Pierce County, you may fill out a simple form at www.co.pierce.wa.us/pc/services/home/environ/pcresponds/forms.htm.

Since this latest outrage was apparently committed by Verizon, you may contact them at www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/contact/index.jsp.

Ask them to come back and clean up our streets!

Rich Shankland, Minter Bay

It’s good to see so many ‘cheers;’ My favorite Halloween costume

A quick note of appreciation for the Oct. 21 edition.

I’ve been away from Gig Harbor for a few years, and reading the Gateway is often a great trip down memory lane.

In that issue, no fewer than a dozen different names and events that were mentioned evoked those good memories.

I especially enjoyed the positive spin of the “Cheers” column, since I typically skip over the jeers.

And in case anyone else recalls the dances held at the Fishermen’s Civic Club, the best Halloween costume I ever saw was Tom Greer dressed like an artichoke!

Pam Halsan, Edmonds

Gig Harbor courtyard approach would provide better use for land

Kudos to Gordon Rush for providing a view to a better future.

I believe his courtyard approach helps create a sense of community, makes better use of land and material and implies a house is a home, not a monumental statement of one’s financial success.

Of course, the people of Gig Harbor could elect to stay the course and “Los Angelize” their city. Urban sprawl is not that bad if you prefer asphalt jungles to forest and open space, traffic gridlock in place of public transportation and pedestrian walkways, colossal shopping malls instead of local shopping centers and overbearing mansions rather than more friendly cottages and townhouses.

We wish the best for Gig Harbor and watch the ongoing controversy with considerable interest.

Dave Ogilvie, Gig Harbor

Donations to FD 16 is one way to help with levy lid lift failure

I’ve talked to several of our neighbors, and we have come up with an idea to save our Key Peninsula Fire District 16. This is a great tragedy that could easily be remedied.

For those of us who voted for the fire district’s levy lid lift this November, I think we should donate the amount we would have had to pay on our taxes. It was 14 cents per thousand, which amounts to a latte twice a month.

At least this way we could keep Fire District 16 going through this year.

The donations have to be specified for operations only. We don’t need to lose one ambulance; we actually need three.

If we don’t, our response time will be too much. Lives are at stake.

This is a great fire department, and I don’t want to see it going backward when we have worked so hard to improve it over the years; it’s a waste of time and money.

After figuring out the amount I would have had to pay on the levy for a house of value of $241,000, it was only $34.71.

I had not actually figured out the amount.But it turned out to be so little, I can actually say I’m really ashamed of the people who did not vote for the levy lid lift.

Such a small amount that would have made such big impact on our fire department.

I feel that, with the budget crunch, the fire commissioners’ fees should be waived until this fire department gets the money they need to operate. We don’t need any unnecessary expense.

I want to be the first to get the ball rolling. They’re getting my donation tomorrow.

Judith R. Elliott, Gig Harbor

Needlessy wasting resources is a problem all too common

I watched two members in the Gig Harbor YMCA locker room take two and three towels each. There is a sign posted that asks members to “Think Green” and only use one towel per visit in order to save energy and water.

“Three-towel” had a long crewcut hairdo and didn’t shower. I don’t know what she used the towels for, but it was terribly wasteful.

“Two-towel” dropped a third on the floor outside the basket of freshly laundered towels and left it there. She then wrapped her entire body in towels, steamed for less than five minutes and got dressed.

The crew who keep the Y clean and stocked work so hard at their jobs, and in that moment, I was offended for them, as well as our world.

My jaw dropped open as I stared.

They didn’t notice.

The waste and gluttony I witnessed in a few minutes in the locker room was shameful.

I wanted to hold up the “Think Green” sign in their faces and say, “Please read this.” But I didn’t.

Instead, I moved the sign onto the basket of towels, hoping to gently educate others.

In our community, there are an increasing number of homeless and displaced people freezing and starving every night, close to where we shower in hot water and dry our hair in warm air blowers, in the luxury of a safe place that gives us clean, dry towels at our fingertips.

I like the YMCA in Gig Harbor. It is a regular fixture in my routine, and I feel blessed to have it. But when I saw that, I felt guilty to be part of all this when others are suffering so much.

My message is: Please pay attention to how you live your life.

Don’t overuse resources, just because you can. Live well, but live thoughtfully.

Be grateful for what you have, and think about this: When you are careful with resources, you are saving them for someone else to use.

Think about others, not just yourself.

Heidi Henson, Gig Harbor

Single-payer system wouldn’t work in Washington state

Last week, one of our citizens opined about the benefits of a single-payer system as the answer to our health care cost problems. I do not share that opinion.

If we were to institute a single-payer system similar to Medicare, we have a look at our future based on our own state regulations for all state-funded health care coverages. Hard budget caps would mandate the single-payer plan could not grow more rapidly on a per-capita basis than by the measure of inflation. After 2019, it could grow only at the rate as GDP, plus 1 percent.

The Wall Street Journal states that the governing commission would come to function much like the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, which rations care in England. Or a similar Washington state board created in 2003 to control costs. Its handiwork isn’t pretty.

The Washington state commission, called the Health Technology Assessment, is manned by 11 bureaucrats. They consider the clinical effectiveness, but above all, the cost of medical procedures and technologies.

If they decide something isn’t worth the money, then Olympia won’t cover it for some 750,000 Medicaid patients, public employees and prisoners.

So far, the commission has banned knee arthroscopy for osteoarthritis, discography for chronic back pain and implantable infusion pumps for pain not related to cancer.

This year, it is targeting such frivolous luxuries as knee replacements, spinal cord stimulation, a specialized autism therapy and MRIs of the abdomen, pelvis or breasts for cancer. It will also rule on routine ultrasounds for pregnancy, which have a “high” efficacy but also a “high” cost.

Currently, the commission is pushing through the most restrictive payment policy in the nation for drug-eluting cardiac stents — simply because bare metal stents are cheaper, even as they result in worse outcomes.

If a patient is wheeled into the operating room with chest pains in an emergency, doctors will first have to determine if he’s covered by a state plan, then the diameter of his blood vessels and his diabetic condition to decide on the appropriate stent. If they don’t, Washington will not reimburse them for “inappropriate care.”

The reason that physician discretion — not Washington state’s cost-minded judgments — is at the core of medicine is that usually there are no “right” answers. The data from large clinical trials produce generic conclusions that rarely apply to individual patients, who have vastly different biologies, response rates to treatments and often multiple conditions.

Is this the future that you want for yourself or children?

Michael Fisher, Gig Harbor