Published: June 04, 2008 04:40 pm            

LETTERS: June 5, 2008

Athletic director thanks doctors

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Dr. Adam French and Dr. Bill Hoke of Charlestown Primary Care for providing sports physicals for almost 100 student-athletes at New Washington Middle and High School on May 20.

The $20 fee provided our community members with a low-cost alternative to fees charged at other facilities. In addition, Charlestown Primary Care will donate the fees collected back to the New Washington Middle and High Athletic Department.

Along with Dr. French and Dr. Hoke. I would also like to thank staff members from Charlestown Primary Care and Star Physical Therapy of Charlestown, and nursing students from Ivy Tech in Sellersburg for providing assistance during the physicals.

This is a great service to our school community that I hope will continue in future years.

— John Hobson, New Washington Middle/High athletic director, New Washington

Cuts to Medicare and Tricare payments to doctors

I wonder how many of your readers are aware that the Congress of the United States is currently considering a 10.6 percent cut in Medicare and Tricare payments to doctors.

To many of us older citizens, this will be devastating. It is now, and is becoming more so, difficult to find a doctor that will accept Medicare payments for their services. A cut of any sort will gravely affect all of us over 65 years of age. This also applies to Tricare, the program similar to Medicare that covers current members of the Armed Forces and Tricare For Life that covers military retirees. Medicaid is not affected.

There is a bipartisan bill, S.2785, introduced by Sen. Debbie Stebenow (D-Mich.) that will reverse these cuts for the years 2008-09 and currently working its way through Congress. This will provide two years for Congress to find a permanent fix for this recurring problem.

It is essential to all who read this and are concerned, and agree that Medicare and Tricare payments should not be cut, to call their congressman. State that you want him or her to vote against “Cuts to Medicare and Tricare.” You can do this by simply calling the local numbers listed below:

Rep. Baron Hill, 812-288-3999

Sen. Evan Bayh, 812-218-2317

Sen. Richard Lugar, 317-226-5555

It not only affects persons on Medicare, but soldiers in our state’s National Guard and their dependents, as well as other reservists who would be required to visit an active military post, such as Ft. Knox, if no physicians in their area accepts lower Tricare payments. Some military families whose soldiers are overseas are already affected. It is not fair to send our troops in harm’s way, while causing them to worry whether or not their doctor might stop seeing their families because of cuts in Tricare, or that they might have to travel long distances to receive proper care.

Your call is important to all of us over 65, our spouses and dependents, and to our troops and their families, to whom we owe so much. Please call immediately. This law is slated to go into effect July 1 this year, less than 30 days from now.

— Robert H. Kreutzer, Sellersburg

His reasons to oppose sewers in rural areas

been asked why I oppose collective sewage disposals (sewers) in rural areas. The answer is simple — failure and expense. The public discussion is far from simple. Few other issues have generated as much lying by proponents and frustration among victims.

Proponents of sewers usually claim that septic systems do not work and that septic systems are only a temporary solution where sewers are not available. Proponents are primarily developers and land speculators who profit by platting more houses per acre. We have had some public officials and one county health officer in that category. Our County Plan Commission and Board of Zoning Appeals have a mysterious allegiance to these economically powerful interests.

Our newspapers regularly report the failures of wastewater treatment plants from tiny Laconia to Louisville’s Metropolitan Sewer District.

New Albany has spent more than $40 million on its WWTP and sewer system upgrade and adds customers as fast as the Indiana Department of Environmental Management and EPA will allow.

The addition of customers has not lowered the sewer bills of New Albany customers and the problems are not corrected. Adding rural customers to the New Albany sewer system will not help New Albany’s customers, it will only make bad matters worse.

Georgetown residents allowed the wrong people to get control a decade ago, and now find themselves in a horrible crisis. The current president of the Georgetown Town Board moved in from another state two years ago. He may not have known what he stepped in. He recently said, “the more people we have on our system the easier it is on everyone.” That statement is enough to frighten anyone within a 10-mile radius.

Greenville is now on the verge of following the disastrous example of Georgetown. Developer Don Thieneman has been unable to sell enough houses in Heritage Springs subdivision to get permitted to operate his treatment plant and Greenville proposes to buy the plant and put the town on it. The worst of history would repeat itself.

In wandering outside Indiana during the last few years, from Maine to California, I have read numerous local newspapers. Wastewater treatment plant problems have been featured in more than a few of these papers and it was obviously a random sampling. The problems are typically similar and solutions are universally evasive. Plants invariably pollute the receiving stream, the riparian land and the air. Cluster systems have the perpetual risk that one individual can ruin the entire system.

We need to utilize on-site sewage disposal (on the property where the sewage is generated) as much as possible. This requires individual responsibility for disposal without any form of pollution. On site-disposal is far more effective and much less expensive. In rural Floyd County, there is a small percentage of land that is not amenable to on-site disposal; these areas should not be developed.

Everyone, without exception, contributes to the sewage disposal issue, but too few are familiar with the various methods of sewage treatment.

— George Mouser, Floyds Knobs

        

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