Letters

What is best

I am new to the eastern Washington area, coming over here last fall to take the job as medical director at St. Luke’s Rehabilitation Institute in Spokane.

I have held a faculty appointment in the University Of Washington School Of Medicine for the past 20 years.

I am a huge fan of UW, and it is truly a world class institution and medical school.

However I must say I am very impressed with the programs Washington State University has set up in Spokane.

WSU is already a bona fide world class research organization with a myriad of excellent health science programs already in place.

Given the outstanding technical capabilities of the local medical community, I think developing an independent WSU medical school is the next logical step and the right thing to do for our citizens.

The benefits to the region are worth the efforts needed to do this.

We are in a time of grave shortages of health care providers, particularly physicians. Nowhere is that more felt than in the rural communities of eastern Washington. The new healthcare law poses even more pressure on an already over-burdened health care system. It is estimated that at current graduation and training rates, the nation could face a shortage of as many as 150,000 doctors in the next 15 years. This is from data collected by the Association of American Medical Colleges, with the greatest demand being for primary-care physicians.

Having a single medical school for a state the size of Washington makes no sense and can never meet the need.

In my humble opinion, the time for a WSU School of Medicine to happen is now.

In fact it probably should have happened 10 years ago.

Open a WSU School of Medicine and you will have thousands of applicants.

In fact, each year, hundreds of students have to leave Washington to attend medical school in another state or country.

Those students are more likely to practice medicine where they go to medical school and where they receive their graduate medical education.

In addition, WSU medical students would serve in hospitals and clinics around the region.

Another huge advantage is that having an independent WSU School of Medicine will help attract more federal dollars to fund research.

That would add to an already impressive core of federally funded research already existing at the WSU health sciences campus.

The next step beyond that is expanding current and developing new local residency programs for the WSU students as they graduate.

This is not about UW versus WSU or any such rivalry. This is about doing what is best for the citizens of the state of Washington and the greater Pacific Northwest. I am voicing these opinions not only as a physician but also as an aging adult wondering who will be around to take care of my health care needs as I grow older. All of this is eminently doable. It needs to be done and the time to act is now. Political and academic agendas should not stand in the way of protecting the future of healthcare for the citizens of eastern Washington.

Gregory T Carter, MD,

Spokane

Artificially high

We have an artificially high rate of new drug addictions caused by a government program. Perhaps a rate 10 times higher than we would have without that program.

In 1914 the Harrison Act was passed, prohibiting the use of narcotics, except that doctors could continue to treat addicted patients. Trouble is, the U.S. Treasury Department saw an opportunity to grow its bureaucracy. In 1919 they suckered the U.S Supreme Court into ruling in favor of Treasury’s selfish interpretation of the act. Now, here’s the government program: the Treasury Department inserted itself between doctor and patient, throwing the addicted patients onto the black market.

Creation of an absolute black market, with police enforcement of its provisions, creates a risk factor that allows black market merchants to charge monopoly-style prices. Now, here’s the multiplier effect: to acquire the sums needed to purchase black market drugs, some addicts will sell drugs to family, friends and anyone else. Some of those new customers will turn around and sell to newer customers. Some of these newer customers will turn around and sell to even newer customers.

It’s this pyramidal selling program that has created the high levels of drug addictions and related crime that we have lived with for 95 years — for three, four or five generations.

We’ve lived with it for so long it seems to be normal, natural and unavoidable. But it’s artificial. It’s a product of bureaucratic growth.

We can kill it.

Of 10 families who have lost a child into the world of drugs, perhaps nine of them didn’t have to. They were sacrificed by government employees who feed off of their misery.

We can and we should kill that government program. We can and we should pull big government out of the doctor/patient relationship.

Wiley Hollingsworth,

Pullman