The Gilmer Mirror (Gilmer, Tex.), Vol. 136, No. 12, Ed. 1 Saturday, February 9, 2013 Page: 4 of 12
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Page 4A — The Gilmer Mirror, Gilmer, Texas February 9,2013
Medical care cuts
Texas doctors lobby for dual-eligible patients
Dozens of physicians from across Texas took time away
from their medical practices this week to ask state leaders
to reinstate cuts that harm access to care for thousands
of Texas’ dual-eligible patients. Dual-eligible patients are
old enough to qualify for Medicare and able to qualify for
Medicaid assistance because of their income.
Texas Medicaid slashed program funds over a year ago
at the direction of the 2011 Texas Legislature, creating a
medical emergency for hundreds of thousands of dual-
eligible patients and the doctors who care for them.
“The increased regulation and low Medicaid payments
are forcing doctors to leave the Valley or retire early,” said
Victor Gonzalez, MD, Hidalgo-Starr County Medical Society
president, and member of the Texas Medical Association
(TMA) and Border Health Caucus (BHC). “It’s impossible
to recruit young physicians.” The ophthalmologist lost
six young physicians he trained and who received retina
fellowships under his program. Dr. Gonzalez explains,
“When the health-care infrastructure collapses, it hurts
all patients in the community and in neighboring cities. If
patients can’t get care in a Harlingen emergency depart-
ment (ED), they will end up in a San Antonio, Houston or
Dallas ED at a much greater expense.”
For nearly a year, TMA and BHC physicians organized
rallies, met with state leaders, and lobbied to get the
cuts reversed. BHC is a confederation of county medical
societies that work together to improve patient care and
public health throughout South and West Texas. Many of
the BHC doctors take care of large percentages of elderly,
low-income patients.
“Texas must fully reinstate the Medicaid cuts to ensure
dual-eligible patients receive the health care they need
to survive,” said Stephen L. Brotherton, MD, TMA’s
president-elect. “We must take another step to stop Texas’
medical emergency that’s harming access to care for
thousands of patients and their doctors.”
Medicare and Medicaid pay dual-eligible patients’ medi-
cal bills, with Medicare paying a majority of the tab. In
January 2012, Texas Medicaid stopped paying the patients’
Medicare deductible, which was $140 — this year it’s $147.
Medicaid also stopped paying the patient’s coinsurance
(due if Medicare’s payment to the physician exceeded what
Medicaid pays for the same service, which is usually the
case). The coinsurance had been an 80/20 split, with Medi-
care paying 80 percent of the patient’s doctor bill and in
most cases, Medicaid paying the remaining 20 percent.
These cuts affected approximately 320,000 dual-
eligible patients in Texas, who are the oldest, sickest
and most frail, and who rely on regular physician care
and prescription medications. Doctors kept seeing these
patients, even though Texas Medicaid was not paying the
patients’ deductibles nor fully paying all of the 20-per-
cent coinsurance. Many doctors were forced to tap sav-
ings, obtain loans, cut staff, retire early, or move away.
Some patients lost their doctor altogether.
Other patients were more fortunate, like the 5,000 dual-
eligible patients of Javier A. Saenz, MD, a family doctor in
La Joya, Texas. “For months early last year he worked 12
hours every day, caring for his patients’ needs the best he
could, while the State of Texas paid him basically nothing
for providing all of that care,” said Dr. Gonzalez. “He
exhausted his personal savings account of $50,000 and
took out bank loans so he could keep his doors open and
continue to care for the people of his community.”
Finally last week, under the direction of the Texas
Legislative Budget Board, the Texas Health and Human
Services Commission restored coverage of the Medicare
deductible for dual-eligible patients in 2013.
“That’s a start,” said Dr. Brotherton, pleased that some
relief has arrived. But the 20-percent coinsurance cut
remains.
“We’re asking state leaders and lawmakers to fully re-
store the funding for our Medicaid-Medicare dual-eligible
patients,” said Luis M. Benavides, MD, the Border Health
Caucus vice chair. “Our patients need us.”
TMA itexmed. org) is the largest state medical society in the
nation, representing more than 47,000 physician and medical
studentmembers.ItislocatedinAustinandhas 120 component
county medical societies around the state. TMA’s key obj ective
since 1853 is to improve the health of all Texans.
Majoring in minors
By JOHN W. WHITEHEAD
JUST AS the 9/11 terrorist attacks created a watershed
between the freedoms we enjoyed and our awareness of
America’s vulnerability to attack, so the spate of school shoot-
ings over the past 10-plus years from Columbine to Newtown
has drastically altered the way young people are perceived
and treated, transforming them from innocent bystanders
into both victims and culprits. Consequently,
school officials, attempting to both protect and
control young people, have adopted draconian
zero—tolerance policies, stringent security
measures and cutting-edge technologies that
have all but transformed the schools into
quasi-prisons.
In their zeal to make the schools safer,
school officials have succumbed to a near-
manic paranoia about anything even remotely
connected to guns and violence, such that
a child who brings a piece of paper loosely
shaped like a gun to school is treated as harshly as the young-
ster who brings an actual gun. Yet by majoring in minors, as it
were, treating all students as suspects and harshly punishing
kids for innocent mistakes, the schools are setting themselves
and us up for failure—not only by focusing on the wrong in-
dividuals and allowing true threats to go undetected but also
by treating young people as if they have no rights, thereby
laying the groundwork for future generations that are alto-
gether ignorant of their rights as citizens and unprepared to
defend them.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the increasingly harsh
punishments and investigative tactics being doled out on
young people for engaging in childish behavior or for daring
to challenge the authority of school officials. Whereas in the
past minor behavioral infractions at school such as shooting
spitwads may have warranted a trip to the principal’s office,
in-school detention or a phone call to one’s parents, today
they are elevated to the level of criminal behavior with all
that implies. Consequently, young people are now being
forcibly removed by police officers from the classroom, strip-
searched, arrested, handcuffed, transported in the back of
police squad cars, and placed in police holding cells until their
frantic parents can get them out. For those unlucky enough
to be targeted for such punishment, the experience will stay
with them long after they are allowed back at school. In fact,
it will stay with them for the rest of their lives in the form of
a criminal record.
Consider the case of Wilson Reyes, a 7-year-old elementary
school student from the Bronx who got into a scuffle with a
classmate over a $5 bill. In response to the incident, school
officials called police, who arrested Reyes, transported him
See WHITEHEAD, Page 5A
Courtesy Photo
“THE ‘CHATTER BOX’ run by Bill and Carrie Grantham and located just out of Gilmer in the
Bettie Community was the greatest place in all of East Texas for the finest home-cooked food.
Good food, friends and fellowship were the hallmark of this establishment and people flocked
to it a few short years ago and still talk of it wish it were here to this day.” So remarked Jeff
Baird when he posted this photo to Facebook’s GROWING UP GILMER group last week.
The Town with an Alias
By BOB BOWMAN
OMEN, a small commu-
nity of about 150 souls, may
be the only town in East
Texas that once went by an
alias.
Located on
State High-
way 346 in
southeastern
Smith Coun-
ty about two
miles west
of Arp, the
Omen area was settled by
Arnold O’Brien and his fam-
ily in 1848.
The following year, the
Smith County Commission-
ers Court decided to build the
Laarissa-Shreveport Road
through the northern part
of O’Brien’s land, making
the area accessible to other
pioneers.
When O’Brien established
a Post Office in his home in
1849, the area was named
Round Hill.
But when Thomas N.
Gregory replaced O’Brien
in 1851, the Post Office got a
new name, Canton. But the
following year, the citizens
named the town Clopton
because there was already
a Canton in Van Zandt
County.
The Post Office was dis-
continued briefly in 1854, but
reopened with the name of
Troup. Residents, however
continued to call the town
Canton, even in legal docu-
ments.
In 1960, a deed called the
town “Canton alias Troup,”
but a Masonic Lodge was
officially known as Canton
Lodge.
Canton-alias-Troup pros-
pered during the Civil War,
especially with the arrival
of the International-Great
Northern from Gregg Coun-
ty to about four miles south
of Canton alias Troup.
MANY OF the town’s
busnesses moved south
to Zavalla, a new railroad
town, and the Post Office
moved, too, but kept the
name Troup.
Professor A.W. Orr did a
lot to revive the community
with a successful private
school, Summer Hill Select
School, which attraced stu-
dents from Smith and sur-
rounding counties. Many
boarded with local families,
and others moved into the vi-
cinity to attend the school.
In April of 1879, Dixon
Bonner petitioned the U.S.
Post Office Department to
renew the local branch and
the town got a new name,
Old Canton.
But a year later, Old Can-
ton was renamed Omen at
the suggestion of Dr. Orr.
IN FOUR years, Omen
had a population of 250, three
doctors, a blacksmsith, two
carpenters and two grocers.
By 1892, the town had 550
residents, including a justice
of the peace, a mayor, a con-
stable and a sawmill.
Summer Hill School had
335 students, a courthouse
was built on the town square,
and the Post Office at Lock
was transferred to Omen.
After merging its school
with Arp in the early 1940s,
the town began to decline.
Andrews’ Store, the last
business in the community,
closed in the 1960s, and in the
1970s Omen had two church-
es, about 40 dwellings, and
two cemeteries.
Its population in 2000 was
only 150.
(Bob Bowman of Lufkin
is the author of more than
50 books about East Texas.
He can be reached at bob-
bowman.com)
The Road Back to Serfdom
By WILLIAM A. COLLINS
Here I am
In working prime,
But all the jobs
Are just part-time.
THE ANCESTORS of
many Americans came here
- -1 toescapemin-
N, gymonarchs,
oppressive
* f priests, and
I baleful bar-
3# jf '.‘|J j' ons who con-
I trolled all
aspects of
communal
life back in their countries.
They bravely left everything
they knew behind in a quest
for freedom.
OK, so our slaves didn’t
exactly come here in search
of their freedom and nor did
our migrant farm workers.
But this freedom business
is something of a religious
creed for what Bill O’Reilly
likes to call “traditional
America.”
And the truth is that we
do have freedom today. We’re
free to be poor, uninsured
and exploited. Not surpris-
ingly, any mass of immi-
grants contains a number of
up-and-coming new barons,
and ours soon climbed the
ladder of avarice, just like
back home. Compare that to
what happened in Europe,
where the repressed, close-
knit working classes, upon
finally achieving political
power, generally took much
better care of their own.
Sure, there have been in-
spiring exceptions, such as
the advent of the New Deal
and the several decades of
declining economic inequal-
ity that followed it. But in
America, you’re basically
on your own and our home-
grown barons once again
hold all the cards. They buy
enough influence in Con-
gress and state legislatures
so that they needn’t pay you
or Uncle Sam very much.
And they can beat you down
in the courts if you organize
to fight back.
Republican filibusters
have prevented filling va-
cancies on that brilliant
legacy of the New Deal, the
National Labor Relations
Board. Budget cuts there
had already stymied the
panel’s actions, before a re-
cent court ruling that jeop-
ardizes all of the NLRB’s
work during the past year.
ONE OF the better things
about the Affordable Care
Act is its requirement that
employers of firms with at
least 50 workers provide
their employees with health
insurance. However, our lax
labor laws are too tooth-
less to prevent employers
to use this as an excuse to
cut their workers back to
29 hours per week. That’s
what Darden Restaurants,
which owns the Olive Gar-
den, Red Lobster and Long
Horn Steakhouse chains has
threatened to do.
Plus, many states have
now passed so-called right-
to-work laws that gut the
power of unions to operate.
Not coincidentally, wages
are 3.2 percent lower in
those states than the rest
of the country, according
to the Economic Policy In-
stitute.
Washington even exports
this corporate crusade
against labor rights. The
World Bank and the Inter-
national Monetary Fund
spread the “race to the bot-
tom” to every nation where
they operate.
Today’s barons have little
interest in long-term, full-
time employees. Even in
traditionally labor-friendly
France, 82 percent of new
hires are on temporary con-
tracts, The New York Times
reports. In our own country,
part-time work is also the
new normal, paired with
low-wage jobs and hours
subject to change without
much notice.
THE SOLUTION to an
individual worker in these
dire straits might be finding
a new job. Unfortunately,
the big job growth is mostly
in fields dominated by low-
income opportunities. Home
health aides, nursing home
workers, fast-food servers,
store clerks, hotel maids,
farm hands, food processors
and security guards are all
promising career paths if
you want to be sure you’ll
have a job tomorrow. It just
might not be a good job.
At least, in America you’re
quite free to start your own
business. That way you can
go hungry at your own pace.
As Mitt Romney says, this
is easy if you just borrow
the start-up costs from your
parents.
OtherWords columnist
William A. Collins is a for-
mer state representative and
a former mayor of Norwalk,
Conn. OtherWords.org
Smoke, Smoke,
Smoke That
Cigarette!
By JIM “PAPPY” MOORE
THOSE MY AGE and
older probably remember
that catchy tune heard on
radio often in the late 1940s
and 1950s. It was an upbeat
song, which seemed to recog-
nize the addictive quality of
smoking and the health dan-
ger, as well. I do not think it
caused anyone to stop smok-
ing. I smoked
for 35 years
after hear-
ing the song
many years
and singing
it with glee
many times.
I’m not sure
when I smoked my first real
cigarette, but by age 151 was
sneaking them regularly.
Anyone could buy cigarettes
back then, so getting them
was no problem. Not getting
caught smoking them, or
with them, or even smelling
like them was the mandate
when it came to interacting
with our parents. Even par-
ents who smoked didn’t want
their teens smoking. That “do
as I say, not as I do” thing did
not work.
By the time I was 16, I
was smoking openly and my
parents knew it. They did not
like it, but since I was work-
ing so much and paying my
own way, they gave me wide
berth on such matters.
We had a smoking circle at
the high school, out behind
the Shop Building. Smokers
—all boys—could go out there
after lunch and smoke. There
would be ten to 30 boys out
there smoking at lunch.
When I joined the mili-
tary in 1968,1 found out that
cigarettes were incredibly
cheap on base. I used to say
“I can’t afford not to smoke!”
In the military, smoking was
a bonding ritual and a break
among fellow service mem-
bers. “Smoke ‘em if you got
‘em” was the order we got as
the break began. There was
also a phrase added which
cannot be written here,
but can be summarized as
squeezing the last burning
part of the cigarette out onto
the ground, stepping on it to
put it out, rolling up the filter
and paper which remained,
and putting it into one’s
pocket. Once we were near a
trash can, we would place the
rolled-up filter into it.
I was a pack-a-day guy. I
never smoked when I first
woke up. I did not like to
smoke right after eating. I
smoked filtered cigarettes.
I didn’t smoke them down
to the filter. I could tell they
were hurting me, and as
I crossed the 50-year line,
I decided I needed to stop
smoking. So, I did. For good.
The first couple of years, I
would still get the urge now
and then. That first drag on
a cigarette was the reason I
smoked. Then one day, I quit
having the urge at all. In fact,
I started hating the smell of
cigarettes. Now I’m one of
those obnoxious reformed
smokers.
Health is the reason I
stopped smoking. I could
feel its negative effects on
my body—my nose, my ears,
my throat, my lungs, my
vascular system, my head. It
does all the bad things they
have warned us about for
decades.
I remember those early
warnings about cigarettes. I
remember they were largely
ignored. Most cigarette
smokers had an attitude
which can be summarized
as “yeah, so what?” Time
has proven the warnings
well-placed.
By my estimation, I smoked
over 250,000 cigarettes. Now
I hate walking past smokers
standing outside a building.
Now, I don’t allow smoking in
my home or car. I won’t eat
anywhere there is smoking.
I understand smoking, but I
understand choosing not to
smoke, too. My lungs sure
do feel good.
©2013, Jim “Pappy”Moore,
All Rights Reserved.
Jim “Pappy” Moore is a na-
tive son of East Texas who still
makes the Piney Woods his home.
oaktreefm58@juno.com
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Overton, Mac. The Gilmer Mirror (Gilmer, Tex.), Vol. 136, No. 12, Ed. 1 Saturday, February 9, 2013, newspaper, February 9, 2013; Gilmer, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth650490/m1/4/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Upshur County Library.