Letters to the Editor is a periodic characteristic. We welcome all comments and can publish a variety. We edit for size and readability and require full names.
A podcast producer and director emeritus of WOUB Public Media zeroed in on our article about stressed docs, sharing his ideas on X:
This should be Trump and Kennedy’s idiotic plan to make American Healthy Again…https://t.co/jABfhALnXI
— Tom Hodson (@thodson) May 29, 2025
— Tom Hodson, Athens, Ohio
Oh, Canada Welcomes American Doctors!
The article “American Doctors Are Moving to Canada To Escape the Trump Administration” (May 30) presents us Canadians with welcome information. In each a part of Canada, in each province, there aren’t sufficient docs. In our metropolis of Victoria, as an example, many individuals would not have a household physician as a result of so many docs have retired; those that are left are unable to take new sufferers as a result of their lists are full. Walk-in clinics are overbooked, the emergency rooms on the hospitals all have overfull ready rooms and docs and nurses are doing 12-hour or longer shifts. We want docs and can welcome American docs right here with wide-open arms.
There are many features of Canada’s well being system that might assist lure American docs to affix us. The mortality price for infants and moms within the USA is worse than in Cuba. Ours is significantly better. We would not have a director of nationwide well being preaching towards using vaccination. Our nationwide file for well being care through the covid pandemic emergency was second to none. Our girls’s clinics aren’t suffering from political ideology. Our society has at all times been extra open than that of the USA to immigrants and others of all races.
Doctors who comply with work for the armed forces obtain particular advantages. The expertise is understood to be useful and rewarding.
I’d additionally advocate Quebec as an excellent place to reside and work. This would current a useful alternative for docs and their households to study French. France has a beautiful well being service and can be an excellent place for relations to check and work. Germany can also be an excellent place for drugs and well being care. An added plus, apart from studying the German language, is that the medical faculties and universities, as soon as they settle for college students, together with foreigners, don’t cost tuition. No post-graduation debt in Germany. That has proved to be an excellent coverage for Germany. It attracts brainy college students from all around the world and ensures the persevering with excessive degree of the German well being system.
American docs, Canada is a superb choice for escaping from the specter of autocracy. It generally is a very constructive step to go away the USA after realizing that the world is open to you and your loved ones. Canada suits Americans comfortably. As our Prime Minister Mark Carney advised President Donald Trump in his Oval Office, “Canada will never, never, never be your 51st state.” So, American docs, pack your baggage, come on over and be a part of us. We will welcome you very warmly and assist you to in each approach we are able to!
— Philip Maxwell, Victoria, British Columbia
A Seattle reader delivered a analysis on X:
So I assume this text and the Dr. Interviewed are far left progressive. The US is best off with out them.https://t.co/N7e3UZrb6A
— Daniel Arroyo (@danielarrmaga) May 29, 2025
— Daniel Arroyo, Seattle
Tellin’ It Like It Is, Baby
The article “The New Old Age: Honey, Sweetie, Dearie: The Perils of Elderspeak” (May 9), hit dwelling for me.
Several years in the past, my well being plan referred me to an ophthalmologist’s apply. After one appointment, the girl who was alleged to schedule me for my subsequent one referred to as me “Sweetie.” I don’t keep in mind what I mentioned, however I took umbrage and walked out.
There had been different issues (the physician who examined me didn’t introduce himself, for one factor). I went dwelling and wrote a criticism letter to my well being plan. They gave me one other referral and reported the apply to Medicare.
I solely want I had learn this text a month in the past. I had a biopsy in a hospital final month, and one of many nurses spoke to me as if I had been a 2-year-old. I’d have been ready to take care of this then.
— Sue Kamm, Los Angeles
The director of the Pitt Band on the University of Pittsburgh threw down the gauntlet on X:
Any who addresses me with “Elderspeak” might be handled harshly. You’ve been warned.https://t.co/iaHAfVlCqN
— Harry Bloomberg (@pittbandphoto) May 3, 2025
— Harry Bloomberg, Pittsburgh
Don’t Gamble With Children’s Lives
Concerning Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s suggestion that wholesome kids needn’t obtain the covid vaccine (“Trump’s Team Cited Safety in Limiting Covid Shots. Patients, Health Advocates See More Risk,” May 23), have pre-vaccine problems equivalent to multisystem inflammatory syndrome in kids been forgotten? A western Michigan child misplaced each arms and each toes to MIS-C and can undergo life with prostheses. Please remind individuals of those critical problems which, although rare, can’t be reversed. Not vaccinating is taking part in Russian roulette along with your youngster!
— Gloria Kohut, Grand Rapids, Michigan
An upbraiding on X got here from a reader Down Under:
This resolution – apparently made with none professional session – may have worldwide ramifications, particularly among the many vaccine sceptical. https://t.co/hOaOuWBX3T
— Lesley Russell Wolpe (@LRussellWolpe) May 27, 2025
— Lesley Russell Wolpe, Sydney, Australia
Core to California’s Prosperity: The Fruits of Immigrant Labor
I discovered your article to be incomplete in terms of providing the angle of undocumented immigrants (“After Promising Universal Health Care, California Governor Must Reconsider Immigrant Coverage,” May 13). According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, undocumented immigrants contribute $8.5 billion to the California financial system. It is disingenuous to current the price of medical growth to undocumented immigrants as a sort of handout, when it’s broadly identified that undocumented immigrants work with none prospect of receiving the advantages of their work in social applications. The proven fact that Gov. Gavin Newsom made the hassle to develop advantages to undocumented employees was the suitable factor to do, and we must always work towards rearranging funding to proceed the growth and never retrench throughout a time when unidentified persons are apprehending undocumented employees on their technique to work and greater than ever face the opportunity of struggling human rights abuses. If you, as a information group, don’t do them justice by inserting their contributions into the dialogue, then you’re being complacent to their dehumanization.
I grew up in Oxnard, California, and my whole life was surrounded by the fruits of farmworkers’ labor, lots of whom had been undocumented. If you drive up and down Rice Road at 5 a.m. day by day, you will note hard-working individuals who, through the wintertime, have to remain through the night time to heat up the crops. That kind of affection and dedication to their work — not for his or her profit, however for his or her households and the state of California — ought to be acknowledged. I invite your readers to search for “Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies” by Seth Holmes to begin understanding the bodily toll that working within the fields takes on younger immigrants, even once they arrive as wholesome our bodies. Still, after years of working within the fields, they face a mess of well being issues and general bodily deterioration. They give their our bodies in trade for an American dream which will or could not materialize.
Undocumented farmworkers fill only one important sector of the American labor financial system that doesn’t cease even throughout fires or pandemics, so please do higher in highlighting the humanity of parents who’re extra than simply the work they produce. It is important to state that if it weren’t for his or her low-cost labor, the Golden State wouldn’t be so golden. Look at Florida, the place the criminalization of undocumented employees is resulting in labor shortages now meant to be stuffed by kids.
Health care is a minimal that may be supplied for undocumented employees, not due to another cause than well being care is a human proper, and undocumented employees pay their fair proportion in unclaimed social advantages. Health take care of all!
— Jennifer Diana Figueroa, Oxnard, California
A sociologist who directs social coverage on the Niskanen Center, a nonpartisan assume tank, weighed in on X:
No matter what advocates advised themselves and policymakers, it was by no means politically sustainable:“It’s making people look at the health care that they can’t afford and ask, ‘Why the hell are we giving it for free to people who are here illegally?’” https://t.co/uOUIqhJJKJ
— Josh McCabe (@JoshuaTMcCabe) May 14, 2025
— Josh McCabe, Lowell, Massachusetts
Improving a Prisoner’s Life Sentence
I used to be very impressed with “Prisons Routinely Ignore Guidelines on Dying Inmates’ End-of-Life Choices” (May 15), authored by Renuka Rayasam. I’ve visited jail twice: as soon as to San Quentin as a member of the Berkeley YMCA wrestling group in 1963.
Then, in 1999, I used to be privileged to be appointed to a brand new American Hospital Association committee, the Circle of Life Awards Committee, which was created to acknowledge essentially the most excellent and progressive hospice and palliative care applications within the nation. Among the numerous candidates within the first yr was the Louisiana State Penitentiary Hospice, and it was chosen as one in every of 5 finalists for a web site go to in 2000. I indicated my curiosity in being a member of the positioning go to group. This jail, generally generally known as Angola, is the nation’s largest maximum-security facility, and we had been advised prisoners sentenced to life will die there as a result of there was no parole in Louisiana for such a sentence. We had been additionally knowledgeable that there was an extended ready listing of inmates desirous to be hospice volunteers as a result of this system was so extremely valued.
My most distinct reminiscence of our go to was a dialog with a volunteer who mentioned he had simply come from bathing and feeding a terminally in poor health inmate who mentioned, “I love you.” The volunteer was visibly emotional when noting he had by no means heard these phrases earlier than, not from his father whom he by no means met nor even his mom. These feedback clearly demonstrated the beneficiaries of this system weren’t simply the sufferers; they had been additionally the volunteers.
— Paul B. Hofmann, Moraga, California
On X, one other reader from Australia dove right into a dialogue about fluoridation of ingesting water in response to our protection:
https://t.co/Um9QawAqKDRFK making tooth decay nice once more
— Dan Jago (@dj1au) March 28, 2025
— Dan Jago, Melbourne, Australia
How Fluoride May Hijack Thyroid Health
Stories about fluoride appear to not point out the chemical’s affect on thyroid well being (“With Few Dentists and Fluoride Under Siege, Rural America Risks New Surge of Tooth Decay,” March 27). This appears an oversight as a result of it’s estimated that 10%-20% of the inhabitants may have thyroid points of their lifetimes.
When I used to be an unmedicated hypothyroid individual — not taking any supplemental thyroid hormone — I incessantly had cavities. After filling the cavity, my dentist would do me the favor of treating my tooth with fluoride. And then adopted a interval of lassitude so extreme I felt my job was at stake, undoubtedly putting me within the “fat and lazy” class, as described by Ozark Mountain Regional Public Water Authority Chairman Andy Anderson in your article. It took me a number of remedies to make the connection.
I don’t get cavities now and haven’t for about 20 years. I believe my now-appropriate dosage of supplemental thyroid performs a task in that.
Studies about thyroid and fluoride range of their conclusions. Thyroid deficiencies can have broadly assorted results on our broadly assorted inhabitants. There could by no means be broadly accepted tips. But individuals ought to be cautious about what they put of their our bodies.
— Joy Mullett, Houston
A self-described data expertise well being care entrepreneur acknowledged his opinion merely whereas sharing the article on X:
FLOURIDE is poison!https://t.co/Oaw0p1JG4N Daily Health Policy Report&utm_medium=e mail&_hsenc=p2ANqtz–TOtkdDDnhvAyd8nDZIAFejJobpsKBnLP5smKnlslyZjSC6tT9BHFfvtjE8tnngMhNn7huZCl4MKi1CdAi0QtZkvWmew&_hsmi=353879828&utm_content=353879828&utm_source=hs_email
— Earl Winter (@EarlWinter8) March 27, 2025
— Earl Winter, Nashville, Tennessee
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