Posted on: Thursday, May 19, 2005

Letters to the Editor

UH water polo team points out unfairness

I've only recently discovered how Title IX is unfair to college men by reading letters here. Your May 5 sports article "Reaching high-water mark" only rubs salt in the wound.

The article brags about how the UH women's water polo team is ranked in the top four, and I assume the article wanted to drum up support for the team, but how can any college man feel anything except contempt for that team? UH doesn't have a water polo team for men. In fact, UH male students are denied a variety of athletic programs offered only to female students.

It's not fair that the UH men's athletic program makes $3 million for the school and the UH women's athletic program loses over $3 million. UH still denies male students the same opportunities offered to female students because Title IX requires a school to spend as much on female athletes as they do on male athletes, but obviously it's not the same in reverse.

Highway-closing law an invasion of privacy

Your Monday editorial gives the impression that the new law that went into effect May 2 allows hospitals to release patient condition classifications in situations where the police need to know whether to keep a highway closed, in order more fully to investigate an accident scene.

In actuality, the new law requires the hospital personnel, under the criminal penalty of a fine up to $500, to "provide requested information" "that may be of use" to the police. There is nothing in the new law about highway closing decision-making.

Far from being limited to a statement that the condition of the victim of a certain accident has been classified as "guarded" or "serious" or upgraded or downgraded, the hospital personnel must reveal "other pertinent information that may be of use" to the police. No limit is placed on what uses the police may make of the information.

Until May 2, the law was designed to encourage patients freely to tell hospital personnel everything they might need to know in order to select the right treatment, without patients fearing that the police could force the hospital to reveal what the patient had said. Effective May 2, patients who have been hurt in car accidents may be afraid to tell the doctor that they weren't wearing their seat belts or that they had taken (or forgotten to take) certain medications.

Hawai'i prides itself on its dual constitutional provisions ensuring the right to privacy. The new law may be unconstitutional, not only because of the invasion of privacy but because the phrase "other pertinent information that may be of use" is so vague.

Could it possibly be that some of the recent four-hour highway closures were designed to foster blind support for this change in the law?

Rail backers should patronize TheBus

Of all the letter writers I've read in support of rail, not one says he rides TheBus now or will ride rail if or when it's built. It's always for the "other guy" to ride.

It seems to me that if you support a future project, you should use what you have now. Currently, TheBus runs on 20 percent ridership. Like any responsible parent, wouldn't you want your children to use the computer you bought them yesterday before you buy them a new one tomorrow?

Politicians, public workers and supporters of rail: If you all rode TheBus today, we would not need TheRail tomorrow. And leave my wallet alone until you do so.

'Want to have' projects bettered Honolulu

Mayor Hannemann has taken the strong position that his office is now going to concentrate city dollars on "need to have" projects instead of "want to have." This is an attack on his predecessor.

Mayor Harris and his Cabinet have built beautiful walkways down Kalakaua, redesigned and rebuilt the Waikiki Bandstand, planted thousands of trees, erected community signs, provided the opportunity for our citizens to directly influence how city dollars should be spent, built world-class tennis and soccer complexes, put in new bus shelters, installed traffic calming — and hundreds of other projects.

Mayor Hannemann would have us dismiss this all as "want to have" projects. Nice but not necessary. I can think of several things that Mayor Hannemann should cancel if he truly wishes to limit spending city funds to "need to have" projects: the Royal Hawaiian Band, Christmas decorations at Honolulu Hale, and the city parks programs for children and seniors. They are truly nice to have and I don't want them stopped.

It seems to me there is only one major difference between the "want to have" things that we have had for years, and the new "want to have" projects installed while Mayor Harris was in office — and that is Mayor Harris.

Weatherwax, Carroll should be replaced

During the recent sentencing of three former Liquor Commission inspectors, Judge David Ezra again asked the question "Who was responsible for allowing the corruption to continue for so long, not only in this case but in previous investigations involving the commission?" This was merely a rhetorical question.

The overwhelming weight of evidence clearly indicates that administrator Wally Weatherwax and chief investigator John Carroll have utterly failed to manage and supervise the commission and must take responsibility for allowing this situation to occur. Yet they refuse to resign.

It's time for our new mayor to take a hard stand against institutionalized corruption.

Bush plan: Companies will run the country

The $7.9 million that the state of Hawai'i is going to pay three private corporations to help "restructure" the 24 "failing" public schools is just the first step in the Bush administration's plan to funnel public education funding into corporate profits.

This Republican administration and Congress have had no qualms about giving large government contracts to private U.S. corporations in Iraq, and getting corporations into our public school systems is part of the larger plan of having corporations run our prisons, hospitals and all public services. Taxpayer funding of $7.9 million could fund about 200 new teachers to help reduce class sizes, which would help students much more than enriching the coffers of three private educational corporations.

Enough, already

There are at least three companies producing telephone directories, and that is at least 2 million more phone books than our state needs. This is ecological insanity.

When we have finally turned every tree on Earth into a phone book, there will be nobody left here to call.

There's better way to solve transportation problems

John B. Goody and Dr. Khalil J. Spencer's article "O'ahu needs to be safer for walking, bicycling" in last Sunday's Focus section is right on target. They point out that "Our travel demands are just too complex for a single fix" and use the metaphor of a toolbox, with the car being the only "transportation tool" we have.

Taking this toolbox metaphor one step further, it is my opinion that our government leaders are now looking at rail transit as the transportation tool they want to add to the toolbox. The problem is that the cost of rail transit will take most of our transportation budget and yet evidence indicates that less than 10 percent of commuters will use it.

The vast majority (around 80 percent) of commuters use their private automobiles, even in cities with excellent rail systems. The cost of building and maintaining a rail system will leave very little for such other "tools" as bike paths, improved highways, safer pedestrian walkways, or other means of getting around O'ahu.

What we should be looking to buy is a "Swiss knife" or "Leatherman" tool — a tool that can service most of our needs. In other words, the $3 billion expected to be raised by the GET increase in the next 10 years should be spent on a system that will serve the vast majority of O'ahu's commuters. Is there such a system?

An innovative transportation system known as "dual mode" is, I believe, the "Swiss knife/Leatherman" solution. It is a 21st-century technology that can serve citizens who bicycle, ride mopeds, motorcycles, Segways or electric carts, or drive cars. It combines the advantages of both, a private vehicle and a mass-transit vehicle. Renderings and specifications of an interesting version of a dual-mode system can be found at http://faculty .washington.edu/jbs/itrans/ vmts.htm.

Versions of this system can accommodate all types of vehicles that can piggy-back on these large bus-like vehicles that drive on roads and freeways. Commuters will thus have door-to-door solutions, utilizing the mode of their choice. By condensing their space on the freeway/guideway, highway capacity is increased from four to 10 (or more) times.

Another version of a dual-mode system, called BladeRunner, is currently being tested in Great Britain. It is a bus-like vehicle that carries cars that can run along roads and highways, then mount rail tracks for long-distance runs. Photos and details of BladeRunner can be found at http://faculty. washington.edu/jbs/itrans /bladerunner1.htm.

How to keep doctors in Isles

In view of the recent headline "Hawai'i losing its doctors" and the editorial comments by Dr. Barry Blum, I would like to comment further on the subject. I was engaged in general practice on Moloka'i for some 35 years. I spent most of those years desperately trying to recruit competent doctors to practice on Moloka'i, which had a chronic shortage of M.D.s.

Doctors came and doctors went. Some left because they couldn't cut the mustard on a competency level, but many others left because they couldn't cope with negative factors: inadequate income; overburdening expenses, especially for insurance premiums; long, excessive working hours without sufficient coverage or relief; unavailability of medical specialists for consultation on difficult cases; and, of course, the ever-present specter of malpractice suits.

As far back as 1986, our small clinic, which was the only doctors' facility on the island at the time, was forced to give up delivering babies because we discovered that our insurance premium for obstetrics was approximately $10,000 per year more than the fees that we could collect for delivering all the babies on the island.

Another disturbing statistic was that every Medicaid patient who came through our front door generated expenses that were considerably higher than we could collect for that patient visit.

In those years, we not only were manning the daily office practice, but also covering the hospital emergency room 24 hours a day, caring for hospital inpatients, making trauma calls to on-site accidents because there were no paramedics for many years, and doing necessary surgery, orthopedics, urology, even radiology.

It is most fortunate that Moloka'i General Hospital and its administration doggedly strove to do its utmost to maintain an adequate healthcare environment for the island during those years. Otherwise, Moloka'i would very likely have become a medical wasteland.

Early in the game, the hospital undertook to hire M.D.s for full-time coverage of the emergency room, a godsend for the island. It then hired a competent staff of midwives to handle the uncomplicated deliveries and established an effective screening system to single out high-risk cases that could be referred to Honolulu for specialty care.

Recently, the hospital has hired two full-time family practitioners and provided them with office space, employees and adequate salaries to help ensure sufficient on-island medical manpower. The hospital has provided some excellent stop-gap steps for Moloka'i, but the problems persist on all of the islands, as alluded to in the recent news items.

What can be done? For one thing, our state Legislature, which is completely dominated by the government employee unions and is also in the hip pocket of the trial lawyers of Hawai'i, steadfastly has ignored all pleas for medical malpractice tort reform over the years. Legislators seem to think this is the price doctors have to pay to live and practice in Paradise. However, pleasant weather and nice sandy beaches are not enough, as evidenced by the increasing exodus of well-trained doctors from Hawai'i.

To keep good doctors in Hawai'i, there needs to be meaningful malpractice tort reform, there needs to be appropriate adjustments in fee schedules by third parties like HMSA, Medicaid, Quest, Medicare. It would also be most beneficial if there were less burdensome, needless government regulations that plague all small businesses in Hawai'i, including doctors' offices.

The ultimate alternative, if nothing is done very soon to improve the current situation, would probably be the eventual enactment of socialized medicine, a dire aspect that would be detrimental to all concerned, especially the consumer.