We live in a strange world. Civil discourse used to be the norm. This is no longer the case. In the Kansas City region we are lucky to have several mayors who are able to look past partisanship and focus on results and collaborations. Two of those mayors are Mayor Sly James from KCMO and Mayor Joe Reardon from the Unified Government of Wyandotte County/KCK.

As the US debt ceiling debate continues in Washington, DC and various budget cut proposals are made public, it is hard for one to not lose hope. How can the these health and social programs for the poor, the elderly, the underserved be cut in such a dramatic fashion without causing chaos?

Clearly the federal government budget has to be trimmed significantly. But alongside those cuts needs to be efforts raise revenues to allow federal officials to preserve domestic social service and educational programs.

A few years back President Obama defined the word HOPE in the following way:

Drug testing of welfare recipients was recently signed into law by Missouri Governor Nixon. While no one wants tax payer money being spent on purchasing illegal drugs, it is very disheartening to focus this kind enforcement on just the poor. What about legislators, farmers, state workers, doctors, hospitals, nurses, teachers, social workers, and businesses who receive tax credits who also receive state money – why not drug test them? The answer is very simple—they have enough political clout to keep this from happening. Unfortunately poor people don’t have enough political clout.

It all started with a post card!

In late 2008 HCF sent a postcard to residents of Cass County alerting them to the various funding opportunities available through the foundation. The morning after the postcard arrived in the mail, our office was overwhelmed with phone calls from low income families who wanted to know how they could access dental services in Cass County. There seemed to be no dentist in Cass County who would accept new Medicaid patients because of low state reimbursement rates.

Did you ever want to be on a health foundation board? Well you now have an opportunity to apply to be considered to be on the Board of the Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City. Go to the HCF web site and you can print off a board application form that when completed will be considered by The Community Advisory Committee (CAC).

I am sure many of us have heard some unbelievable stories of heroic efforts of ordinary people who came to the aid of victims of the tornado in Joplin one month ago. I personally have heard stories about nurses carrying patients down 7 flights of stairs. I have heard stories about ordinary citizens with pickup trucks acting as ambulances in transporting folks to locations in order to receive medical care. I know many folks who have personally been to Joplin just to help out even though they do not personally know anyone there. All of these folks are heroes in my book.

I spoke last week to the Downtown Rotary Club 13 about the new health reform law. I was impressed by the turnout, by the quality of questions and how open minded the Rotary members were about this issue.