Weekly wrap: Monday, April 20, 2009

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April 20, 2009

Anonymous The Kokomo Tribune Mon Apr 20, 2009, 12:42 AM EDT

Excerpts of recent editorials from Indiana newspapers:

On health fair benefits:

A record 352 people flocked to the Central Noble cafetorium in Albion April 4 for the free health fair hosted by Noble County Extension Services in partnership with Parkview Noble Hospital in Kendallville.

Blood pressure checks and bone density scans were free. The charge for blood tests was a small fraction of the fees outside a health fair setting. For $25 a person could get routine blood tests that would cost perhaps 10 times that amount in a hospital or medical clinic. If you multiply that $200 savings by 352 (the number of attendees) you get a savings that day of $70,400.

Let’s say about five health fairs are held a year in one county. That’s a $352,000 savings in one county alone. Multiply that by 92 counties and you’re talking over $32.4 million. Multiply $32.4 million by 50 states. $1.62 billion. A million here a million there. Real money.

What would happen if health fairs were held once a month in every county? What would happen if all insurance providers (including public insurance providers like Medicare) requested that non-emergency blood work and routine screening, such as blood pressure, bone scans, etc. be done at monthly health fairs?

Might this reduce health care costs? You bet it would.

— The News-Sun, Kendallville

On violence in Indianapolis:

Pain and passion rise in Byron Alston’s voice as he describes how another young black man lost his life to violence in Indianapolis.

It’s become such a common and frustrating story that it’s tempting to believe that such outrages are inevitable — that nothing will change — no matter how many resources are committed, no matter how much the community rallies to help.

But such cynicism, born of despair, cannot be accepted, given how high the stakes are in terms of lives both lost and ruined.

Today, members of the City of Peace Coalition, including Alston, who is the mentoring director with the city’s Ten Point Coalition, and other faith leaders in the black community, are pushing back against both the violence and the despair. They’re challenging the community, everyone who calls central Indiana home, to enter into a covenant to resist the societal forces that leave children vulnerable to violence, that tear families apart and that promote a disregard for the law and moral values.

So the pastors and members of their congregations will be out on the streets at night, heading off violence in tough neighborhoods, checking up on young people and encouraging residents to help themselves by helping their neighborhoods.

Those may seem like tiny blows lodged against the giants of gang, drug and family violence. But changing a culture, and saving lives, may well have to come from the ground up to be effective.

— The Indianapolis Star

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