Health aide shortage too complicated for one fix to work | Letters
4 min readRegarding “In-household caregivers heading toward disaster — primarily for women of all ages,” a latest op-ed by Linda Siessel of Bayada House Wellness Treatment:
I applaud Siessel’s description of this national difficulty, which is location-on, but disagree with her primary route to redress. Greater lives and living wages for house wellbeing aides will not occur only by approaching condition and countrywide lawmakers for greater Medicaid reimbursement to caregiver organizations.
Now retired, I have labored in several nursing roles in household well being treatment due to the fact prior to Title 18 of the Social Safety Act. This 1966 legislation set up Medicare, reimbursement for property wellbeing organizations, and explained the role, capabilities and approach of reimbursement. This legislation was before long followed by Title 19, which legislated Medicaid, a application co-funded by the states.
Sorry, Ms. Siessel, but household wellbeing aides as people are mainly in the exact same deprived position as they had been in 1966. Except in exceptionally rare instances, they nonetheless get the job done for below-poverty wages, receive no bigger rate for additional time, and absence compensated unwell/trip time, health and fitness insurance policies and retirement added benefits.
The route to these added benefits, which a greater part of American personnel love, is not by way of the legislatures. Our pleas have been slipping on their deaf ears for 63 yrs, and listening to rarely enhances with age.
The alternatives in the end lie in legislated nationwide and state price-developing restrictions, and an instant route for collective bargaining for house health aides. To start with, you have to get the legislatures’ focus.
Lois Youthful, West Caldwell
Liberty incompatible with freeze-outs
The syndicated Leonard Pitts Jr. column that appeared in the Star-Ledger print version on March 27 was proper to observe, as its headline indicated, that the correct to totally free speech does not give the speaker the appropriate to independence from effects.
Dislike speech or vile speech commonly is refuted by the general public at substantial. The issue these days is a unique response to this type of speech than in the past. Right now, everything deemed vile or refutable is condemned by faculties, by media “cancelation” or use of physical pressure. Dad and mom, and some others who suppose parental roles, feel to want to reduce off younger people from hearing nearly anything the dad and mom disagree with.
Pitts and others who look to believe there is absolutely nothing erroneous with shaming or shunning a speaker for a unique opinion should them selves be diminished by any grownup who believes they are intelligent adequate to distinguish in between truth and impression and can pick by by themselves what they favor to hear to.
Pitts and some others need to experience free to argue any imagined on its deserves. Nevertheless, seeking to stop others from expressing ideas in the to start with place is not a fantastic argument towards all those ideas. On the contrary, performing so is an admission of not having a solid counterargument.
Richard W. Ferris, New Providence
Foul shot on NYC vaccination policies
I locate it fascinating to hear about New York Metropolis Mayor Eric Adams’ new “Let them consume cake” double conventional for entertainers and sporting activities figures vs. those for civil assistance and other town workforce.
Adams has lifted a COVID-19 vaccination mandate for these celebs, which until now, has held unvaccinated experienced sporting activities stars from enjoying in metropolis venues. The most evident illustration is the Brooklyn Nets’ basketball player Kyrie Irving, who experienced been unable to participate in in home video games at Barclays Middle.
The community-sector workers were being there throughout COVID-19, no subject what — right up until some of them have been allow go if they refused to get the shots. But now, Adams grants exemptions to the money-makers such as Irving who now can accomplish in the metropolis without the pictures.
I see exactly where the loyalty of Adams — a former New York Law enforcement Division officer and captain — lies. By the way, my spouse and I are fully vaccinated and boosted.
Jim Kerner, Bergenfield
Say exactly where the fentanyl is coming from
“The root bring about.” It’s a phrase that you browse about and listen to all of the time now. Democrats preserve talking about acquiring to the root lead to of our problems. I have listened to Vice President Kamala Harris speak these phrases numerous times.
I go through a extremely exciting posting before this thirty day period in the Star-Ledger, “The transforming confront of opioid dependancy: Overdoses amongst Blacks in New Jersey have skyrocketed.”
The artificial opioid fentanyl appears to be to be the drug that is at “the root cause” the rise in overdose fatalities. Properly, it’s been reported that a history sum of fentanyl is being seized by the Border Patrol at the border with Mexico.
Why, I marvel, is this truth not outlined frequently? It was not cited in the Star-Ledger post. If only there were being real journalists out there to report about “the root bring about.”
Don Montefusco, Maplewood
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