Thank you for the excellent Sun Sentinel editorial last Sunday, March 31, “Infant Mortality: an intolerable Florida tragedy.”
A bit of history is revealing.
In 1996, the League of Women Voters of Broward County’s Children’s Issues Committee spearheaded a campaign along with other community organizations and citizens to create a Pediatric Pathology Program that would document specific causes of infant deaths. The information registry would include factors that contribute to the racial disparity in birth outcomes and would be free to Broward residents.
After seven years of concentrated advocacy, the Pediatric Pathology Program was approved on Feb. 4, 2003, and was thought to be the first of its kind in the nation. (An article by Sun Sentinel reporter Nancy McVicar on Feb. 14, 2003, “Program offers parents autopsies on newborns,” described the initiative).
Here it is 21 years later, and we still haven’t solved this problem.
Carol Smith, Coral Springs
The writer is past president of the League of Women Voters of Broward County.
Where Trump belongs
Why isn’t Donald Trump already in jail for this behavior, as any other person would be? (Judge expands Trump’s gag order after ex-president’s social media posts about judge’s daughter, April 2).
“Oh, but that’s what he wants, to be a martyr,” some say.
I don’t care what Trump wants. Instead of going to rallies and hosting deplorables in Palm Beach, he should be sitting in a concrete block room with a stainless steel toilet.
James Carbone, Fort Lauderdale
All you need to know
The juxtaposition of two front-page stories in the March 29 Sun Sentinel tells all you need to know about living in Ron DeSantis’ Florida.
One article describes Gov. DeSantis, self-proclaimed guardian of children’s rights, signing a bill permitting retail sales of larger bottles of wine standing against a backdrop of enormous wine bottles in a store in Fort Lauderdale, as a lectern’s sign proclaimed “Carpe Vinum” (enjoy wine).
Also on the front page was an entirely different article, headlined “Some ill kids to get dropped from Medicaid.” It chronicled the nightmare story of a mom learning second-hand that her medically fragile child would lose Medicaid coverage, and her fight to preserve coverage for her son’s condition.
Our good old governor, whose mantra is “Let kids be kids,” has his bloody hands all over this. Florida has chopped nearly 1.3 million people, including 460,000 children, from Medicaid in one year. That’s a strange way to “let kids be kids.”
Now the state will begin terminating children with complex chronic medical conditions from Medicaid due to “procedural issues.” DeSantis knew this was coming, as the federal government warned the state as to what the situation would become with a delay in processing appeals.
Apparently the “children’s governor” was more concerned with the populace being able to buy larger containers of wine than how and who would treat and pay the bills for kids with cancer and other debilitating medical conditions. DeSantis and his people can try to deflect blame, but the bottom line is if you’re a child living in Florida and you need Medicaid benefits for treatment, you may be out of luck.
It’s easier to buy wine in volume than to get KidCare. How truly sad.
Dr. Mark Neil Levine, Coconut Creek
Console yourself, Florida
To struggling Florida parents who may have to watch your state’s Medicaid-stripped children sicken and die from otherwise treatable illnesses, cheer up!
You’ll soon be able console yourself with an oversized bottle of wine.
And to those Florida women with medically complicated pregnancies who may be turned away from lifesaving medical care by the state’s new six-week abortion ban, cheer up!
You’ll soon be able to enjoy your demise by smoking a legal joint.
Laurence Miller, Boca Raton
