HEALTH: Americans first

I was shocked to hear that it cost $360,000 a year for the medication to keep one child in our community, 9-year-old Brady Schroeder, alive! Nonetheless, helping those who cannot help themselves is the very definition of humanity. Letting the sick and injured simply die would have kept us from ever developing our amazing medical technologies in the first place!

While living in Scandinavia, I found that during the past 50 years Norway has been very careful about letting people immigrate into their country. I never would have gotten a green card and so a work permit if I hadn’t been married to a Norwegian citizen. People do not simply cross the border into Norway uninvited and if they did they would not be taken to a judge and given a lawyer; they would be immediately escorted to the border. Essentially, their generous social services are reserved for their own citizens.

Like socialized countries we too have limited resources. There are sick and injured people all over the world, but we must not deplete our resources at the expense of those in our own communities. Requiring the able bodied among us to work in order to receive Medicaid and other social services, and limiting those resources to our own citizens, is what makes it possible to care for those in our community like the Schroeder boy mentioned above. We are going to have to make a decision here. Our own families, or everyone else on the planet?

STEVE NOVAK

Coeur d’Alene