Speak Out A 11/06/02

Lack of health care

I CAN'T believe what they have done to the MC+ program in Missouri. My family with five children has to make an income of $1,450 or below in order to be considered in poverty and for my wife to receive Medicaid so she can stay well to take care of our kids. This is awful. I say make the people who decided to make a change in the rules live on $1,500 a month and see if they say it is poverty or not. And then tell them to go get a health-insurance policy for their family and still have money left for food, clothes and utility bills. Lord forbid you have to go into the hospital for a day. I think our government needs to take a clue from other countries that supply their citizens with medical care. The billions of dollars we are sending to other countries could be used to furnish health care to all the U.S. citizens.

Time for blacktop

HAS THE Cape Girardeau County Highway Department ever considered how many county man-hours, equipment costs and gravel expenses it takes to maintain County Road 351? It is a constant effort to keep gravel on the steep hills and the muddy areas. Surely they will soon realize they need to blacktop some areas of the road and stop wasting money, time and effort.

Selective memory

THE CALLER who sees a deterioration in our values may have forgotten the days of back-alley abortions, legalized segregation, growing international communism, the rise of fascism, two horrible world wars, ageism, sexism and other forms of discrimination against which we've made inroads. Things aren't so bad.

Attack question

WE KNOW that most of the al-Qaida leaders who escaped went to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, two of our so-called allies. And we know that northern Iraq, where the administration claims the al-Qaida is hiding, is actually controlled by the Kurds, another of our allies. So why are we attacking Iraq?