Letters to the Editor is a periodic feature. We welcome all comments and will publish a selection. We edit for length and clarity and require full names.
A podcast producer and director emeritus of WOUB Public Media zeroed in on our article about restless doctors, sharing his thoughts on X:
— 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 news. In every part of Canada, in every province, there are not enough doctors. In our city of Victoria, for instance, many people do not have a family doctor because so many doctors have retired; those who are left are unable to take new patients because their lists are full. Walk-in clinics are overbooked, the emergency rooms at the hospitals all have overfull waiting rooms and doctors and nurses are doing 12-hour or longer shifts. We need doctors and will welcome American doctors here with wide-open arms.
There are many aspects of Canada’s health system that could help lure American doctors to join us. The mortality rate for infants and mothers in the USA is worse than in Cuba. Ours is much better. We do not have a director of national health preaching against the use of vaccination. Our national record for health care during the covid pandemic emergency was second to none. Our women’s clinics are not plagued by political ideology. Our society has always been more open than that of the USA to immigrants and others of all races.
Doctors who agree to work for the armed forces receive special benefits. The experience is known to be valuable and rewarding.
I would also recommend Quebec as a great place to live and work. This would present a valuable opportunity for doctors and their families to learn French. France has a wonderful health service and would be a great place for family members to study and work. Germany is also a great place for medicine and health care. An added plus, besides learning the German language, is that the medical schools and universities, once they accept students, including foreigners, do not charge tuition. No post-graduation debt in Germany. That has proved to be a great policy for Germany. It attracts brainy students from all over the world and ensures the continuing high level of the German health system.
American doctors, Canada is an excellent option for escaping from the threat of autocracy. It can be a very positive step to leave the USA after realizing that the world is open to you and your family. Canada fits Americans comfortably. As our Prime Minister Mark Carney told President Donald Trump in his Oval Office, “Canada will never, never, never be your 51st state.” So, American doctors, pack your luggage, come on over and join us. We will welcome you very warmly and help you in every way we can!
— Philip Maxwell, Victoria, British Columbia
A Seattle reader delivered a diagnosis on X:
— 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 home for me.
Several years ago, my health plan referred me to an ophthalmologist’s practice. After one appointment, the woman who was supposed to schedule me for my next one called me “Sweetie.” I don’t remember what I said, but I took umbrage and walked out.
There were other problems (the doctor who examined me didn’t introduce himself, for one thing). I went home and wrote a complaint letter to my health plan. They gave me another referral and reported the practice to Medicare.
I only wish I had read this article a month ago. I had a biopsy in a hospital last month, and one of the nurses spoke to me as if I were a 2-year-old. I would have been prepared to deal with this then.
— Sue Kamm, Los Angeles
The director of the Pitt Band at the University of Pittsburgh threw down the gauntlet on X:
— Harry Bloomberg, Pittsburgh
Don’t Gamble With Children’s Lives
Concerning Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s recommendation that healthy children needn’t receive the covid vaccine (“Trump’s Team Cited Safety in Limiting Covid Shots. Patients, Health Advocates See More Risk,” May 23), have pre-vaccine complications such as multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children been forgotten? A western Michigan child lost both hands and both feet to MIS-C and will go through life with prostheses. Please remind people of these serious complications which, though infrequent, cannot be reversed. Not vaccinating is playing Russian roulette with your child!
— Gloria Kohut, Grand Rapids, Michigan
An upbraiding on X came from a reader Down Under:
— Lesley Russell Wolpe, Sydney, Australia
Core to California’s Prosperity: The Fruits of Immigrant Labor
I found your article to be incomplete when it comes to offering the perspective 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 economy. It is disingenuous to present the cost of medical expansion to undocumented immigrants as a type of handout, when it is widely known that undocumented immigrants work without any prospect of receiving the benefits of their work in social programs. The fact that Gov. Gavin Newsom made the effort to expand benefits to undocumented workers was the right thing to do, and we should work toward rearranging funding to continue the expansion and not retrench during a time when unidentified people are apprehending undocumented workers on their way to work and more than ever face the possibility of suffering human rights abuses. If you, as a news organization, don’t do them justice by inserting their contributions into the discussion, then you are being complacent to their dehumanization.
I grew up in Oxnard, California, and my entire life was surrounded by the fruits of farmworkers’ labor, many of whom were undocumented. If you drive up and down Rice Road at 5 a.m. every day, you will see hard-working people who, during the wintertime, have to stay during the night to warm up the crops. That type of love and dedication to their work — not for their benefit, but for their families and the state of California — should be recognized. I invite your readers to look for “Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies” by Seth Holmes to start understanding the physical toll that working in the fields takes on young immigrants, even when they arrive as healthy bodies. Still, after years of working in the fields, they face a multitude of health problems and overall physical deterioration. They give their bodies in exchange for an American dream that may or may not materialize.
Undocumented farmworkers fill just one essential sector of the American labor economy that does not stop even during fires or pandemics, so please do better in highlighting the humanity of folks who are more than just the work they produce. It is essential to state that if it weren’t for their cheap labor, the Golden State would not be so golden. Look at Florida, where the criminalization of undocumented workers is leading to labor shortages now intended to be filled by children.
Health care is a minimum that can be provided for undocumented workers, not because of any other reason than health care is a human right, and undocumented workers pay their fair share in unclaimed social benefits. Health care for all!
— Jennifer Diana Figueroa, Oxnard, California
A sociologist who directs social policy at the Niskanen Center, a nonpartisan think tank, weighed in on X:
— Josh McCabe, Lowell, Massachusetts
Improving a Prisoner’s Life Sentence
I was very impressed with “Prisons Routinely Ignore Guidelines on Dying Inmates’ End-of-Life Choices” (May 15), authored by Renuka Rayasam. I have visited prison twice: once to San Quentin as a member of the Berkeley YMCA wrestling team in 1963.
Then, in 1999, I was privileged to be appointed to a new American Hospital Association committee, the Circle of Life Awards Committee, which was created to recognize the most outstanding and innovative hospice and palliative care programs in the country. Among the many applicants in the first year was the Louisiana State Penitentiary Hospice, and it was selected as one of five finalists for a site visit in 2000. I indicated my interest in being a member of the site visit team. This prison, commonly known as Angola, is the nation’s largest maximum-security facility, and we were told prisoners sentenced to life will die there because there was no parole in Louisiana for such a sentence. We were also informed that there was a long waiting list of inmates wanting to be hospice volunteers because the program was so highly valued.
My most distinct memory of our visit was a conversation with a volunteer who said he had just come from bathing and feeding a terminally ill inmate who said, “I love you.” The volunteer was visibly emotional when noting he had never heard these words before, not from his father whom he never met nor even his mother. These comments clearly demonstrated the beneficiaries of the program were not just the patients; they were also the volunteers.
— Paul B. Hofmann, Moraga, California
On X, another reader from Australia dove into a discussion about fluoridation of drinking water in response to our coverage:
— Dan Jago, Melbourne, Australia
How Fluoride May Hijack Thyroid Health
Stories about fluoride seem not to mention the chemical’s impact on thyroid health (“With Few Dentists and Fluoride Under Siege, Rural America Risks New Surge of Tooth Decay,” March 27). This seems an oversight because it’s estimated that 10%-20% of the population will have thyroid issues in their lifetimes.
When I was an unmedicated hypothyroid person — not taking any supplemental thyroid hormone — I frequently had cavities. After filling the cavity, my dentist would do me the favor of treating my teeth with fluoride. And then followed a period of lassitude so severe I felt my job was at stake, definitely placing me in the “fat and lazy” category, as described by Ozark Mountain Regional Public Water Authority Chairman Andy Anderson in your article. It took me several treatments to make the connection.
I don’t get cavities now and haven’t for about 20 years. I think my now-appropriate dosage of supplemental thyroid plays a role in that.
Studies about thyroid and fluoride vary in their conclusions. Thyroid deficiencies can have widely varied effects on our widely varied population. There may never be widely accepted guidelines. But people should be careful about what they put in their bodies.
— Joy Mullett, Houston
A self-described information technology health care entrepreneur stated his opinion simply while sharing the article on X:
— Earl Winter, Nashville, Tennessee
