Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 2, 1995 TAG: 9508020025
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
They want to put it between U.S. 220 and Virginia 672, right across from Jenny Hubbard's farm where many of us go to buy apple butter or ride our bikes on the weekend, when we're lucky.
The proposed industrial park would be the largest in the entire Roanoke Valley. My neighbors and I are baffled by this proposal. Botetourt County has close to zero unemployment and a surplus of some $18 million in its budget. Our population is growing because people want to live in this lovely place - they come to escape traffic, noise and bright lights.
We want to spend our tax money on better schools and amenities for our families, not on developing industry. We're not anti-progress, but progress in this county need not mean leveling hillsides for factories.
MARY-EVE ZANGARI
DALEVILLE
Linkous is the man for the House
REGARDING articles in The Roanoke Times on July 20 (``Ramblin' Allen offers checks, GOP support'') and July 21 (``Howdy, pardner!'') and the picture of House of Delegates candidate Larry Linkous with Gov. George Allen:
I commend your newspaper on its unbiased articles concerning Linkous and Allen.
Unbiased and truthful reporting will assist your readers in having the capability to cast their votes on Nov. 7 for the man who will best represent us as our delegate. That is, a man who for years has been, and is now, actively and visibly involved in the concerns of our area; a man of integrity, both personally and professionally.
And, that man is Linkous.
CAROLYN GREEN
BLACKSBURG
Medicaid must go to managed care
REGARDING your July 24 article ``No money; now, no physician'':
I appreciate the fact that Linda Poindexter is distraught at the thought of changing physicians at this point of her illness. However, I don't see why she feels that Medicaid recipients should be exempt from the ever-present HMOs and managed care. If anything, all federal and state insurance programs should have been the first in line to join this system of managing health-care costs.
Most employees who are members of an HMO pay expensive premiums to have an employer or insurance carrier dictating to them their choices of providers. When someone such as Poindexter has someone else footing the bill for her health insurance, I don't see where she has cause to complain. Because her physician chose not to join Medallion's HMO preferred-provider list, she may have to change physicians - or be willing to pay additional costs charged to her by her physician.
It's better that the state take measures now to reduce health-care costs, so that later she doesn't get a letter in the middle of one month stating that funds have been exhausted and her Medicaid assistance will be terminated effective the first of the following month.
I advise Poindexter to appeal to her physician to join the HMO, or look for another one who isn't employed by a for-profit health-care system.
DEBI FIREBAUGH
ROANOKE
Drug-related story had negative skew
IN YOUR July 20 newspaper, there was an Associated Press article about a survey of drugs and adolescents. I was disappointed in the headline, ``Study: Drug programs not useful,'' and in a sentence in the first paragraph: ``But nearly half said school anti-drug programs do little, if any, good.''
What should have been emphasized is that half of the young people surveyed suggested that school anti-drug programs help them positively to not use drugs.
Why should the press see the study as half empty instead of half full? We need all the positive information available about the issue of assisting our young people in this area of their lives.
Since ``only 9 percent said anti-drug programs in the classroom help keep kids from using drugs and 41 percent said they help a fair amount,'' I wish your headline had read differently.
PHYLLIS T. ALBRITTON
BLACKSBURG
by CNB