Transcription outsourcing a shame

Thank you for running yet another article that demonstrates what is wrong with our health care system/economy in general.

Are we really supposed to be impressed that the Skagit Valley Medical Center has outsourced the transcribing of our confidential medical records to a whole other country? Especially when they had perfectly good local transcriptionists (whom they were already “saving money” on by never providing medical benefits for them) who turned their transcription around within 24 hours?

What an exemplary way to support the community. I’m sure the local employees you laid off are the most impressed by your “budget consciousness.”

Samantha Ridenhour
Sedro-Woolley


Alaska drilling column got it right

The opinion page is always interesting with a few researched facts and many incorrect ones, along with wild interpretations of facts. On Deroy Murdock’s “Open Alaska to oil drilling,” I couldn’t agree more.

His facts and figures are accurate, according to my research for this letter. I might add that I have pictures of caribou feeding a few hundred yards from the refineries and crossing under the pipelines when the snows have melted. They have no fear of man where they cannot be hunted.

I have hunted big game in Alaska nine different years in the pristine southern half, loving the country’s many areas I saw.

Since my first hunt there in 1969, I’ve subscribed to the Alaska magazine, which shows the country and its abundant wildlife. I knew from pictures, the lies of the environmentalists and politicians who are paid one way or another to not drill oil there, calling it pristine forestland.

Last May, I booked a Toklak grizzly bear hunt above the Arctic Circle —about 200 miles northeast of Kotzebue and immediately below our Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 4 in the Brooks Range, where the lakes were still frozen 7 to 8 feet deep.

After I harvested the color-fazed grizzly, I had the bush pilot fly me west to Cape Wale, about 250 miles from Russia, then east toward Prudhoe Bay as far as the plane could go and return to the gas-shack.

There was not one tree in hundreds of miles of flying, not one bird, not one other plane. Only one plane, a pilot and one determined hunter, who wouldn’t go back if paid twice the hunt cost!

If you want cheap gasoline, create thousands of jobs, be independent of those who hate us, vote out every politician who voted against drilling Alaska oil!

Lloyd Loop
Bow


Fluoride has made big difference

I am fearful that my children may attempt to cross the street without looking, that the antibacterial handwash at the homes they visit could cause their immune system to be deficient and that the reduction of our natural world may eliminate their understanding of the beauty and integral connection to what has sustained the human race. I am not afraid of my children ingesting fluoride as a preventative action.

Open the mouths of my wife and I and you will unquestionably know who had fluoridated water throughout their childhood. I would publish a picture if allowed to show such a simple example. Pain, suffering, time away from work, expenditures for visits and oral surgery is greatly reduced, if not eliminated, by fluoridation.

Without effort — or potential overdose from 100 red, cherry-flavored pills in the home — communities that have embraced this simple step have significantly improved oral health.

I urge you all to talk to individuals who grew up with fluoride in their everyday water consumption. We are not suffering the anguish “they” imposed on us and cannot fathom the controversy that is occurring.

Kevin Barber
Mount Vernon


Munks wants to protect water?

Don Munks goes to Congress — at taxpayers’ expense — to protect our clean water, while back at home his cronies are shoving poison in the water.

How ludicrous is that?

James E. Newbaker
Sedro-Woolley


Medical center ships out local jobs

We have much to be proud of in Skagit County, and we do take pride in our lifestyle choices, our ability to govern ourselves, and our cultural and educational opportunities.

The Economic Development Association of Skagit County exists to develop the economy of this area. Staff members work hard by helping existing businesses expand and inviting new businesses to come and look us over.

We cheer their successes and mourn their losses. We realize the economic vitality of this little corner of paradise affects every resident and makes it possible for us to continue to expand our horizons.

It’s curious, isn’t it, that during this time of economic uncertainty, our medical center, which is so dependent upon our publicly owned hospital, has chosen to ship 20 local jobs across the country where they may eventually pump up the uncertain economy of a foreign nation?

Nanette Hough
Mount Vernon