June 28: Choosing a doctor, school taxes, energy talk, MTA

June 28, 2008

Get involved in choosing doctor

Although the new patient safety legislation that includes the state's release of identities of physicians being probed comes from the acts of substandard care given to one doctor's patients, it's not about good or bad doctors ["Naming the names, publicly," News, June 24]. It has to do with getting the public more involved in their health care. Taking steps to choose a doctor by knowing something about them is a large part of it.

Ilene Corina

Wantagh

Editor's note: The writer is president of PULSE of NY, a nonprofit patient safety organization.

Enough taxes to fund schools

Letters and opinions about school taxes on Long Island are almost certain to be in all the newspapers on a regular basis. Money seems to be the key word. Most taxpayers can't afford the increases. Most school districts want more money each year.

More than 20 years ago, when the lottery was proposed for New York State, the bottom line was the lottery would solve the school tax problem. Well, we've been waiting a long time, and it hasn't happened yet.

We have expanded the lottery, and the school taxes are even more serious.

I do not believe that either side looks at the problem seriously. There should be enough money for the children, teachers and the administrators. Perks and illegal use of funds gobble up large amounts of money. It only stops when someone is caught. Where is their conscience? Where are the school boards? Where is all that lottery money going ?

Jane Mastromonica

Coram

More than talk on energy needed

I've finally had it with all the talk and no action regarding the energy crisis. We need people to serve the country, not individual fiefdoms. If all the people get behind an energy "Manhattan Project" we could be energy independent within 2 years. When we needed rubber during WWII and rubber plants were not available to us we had to find an alternative, which was artificial rubber. We solved the problem. Why can't we agree on such a project now?

We now have the technology: Fuel cells, compressed air, hybrid vehicles, and can develop more and better alternatives.

Let's get started before the winter comes and people start freezing. We did it before, we can do it again. We just need the national will. Which elected officials will accept the challenge and forego petty bipartisanship?

Martin C. Julius

Bellmore

Right on MTA, wrong on race

Congratulations to Newsday regarding the MTA board's perks. Well done. Let's hope the legislature comes through.

It is unfortunate, however, that Newsday played the race card in "" [Editorial, June 23], by pointing out that the board was "mostly white." What does "mostly white" have to do with anything here? The entire state, in fact, the entire country is mostly white. So what?

It is not really Barack Obama, nor his detractors, who are making race an issue in the upcoming election. It is the media, which seizes upon every opportunity to sensationalize race.

J. J. McCarthy

Hicksville

Study medical care before plan

I am so glad that NUMC decided to launch NuCare next June to give the uninsured prime medical care ["," Editorial, June 23]. However, only now are they "working to get a handle on the size and nature of Nassau's medically underserved population"? Should not this study have been done prior to the decision to launch the project?

I predict that when this program starts, the facility will be swamped and unmanageable. I hope I'm wrong, but I recall when insurance companies, including Medicare, complained that people were visiting doctor's offices for myriad inconsequential ailments that didn't require medical attention, even though the patient and/or employer was paying premiums.

Free? How do these NUMC proponents think this is going to evolve? And, who is going to end up paying?

Selma Musicant

Whitestone