Readers Write: Diabetes costs, human trafficking, Lutheran churches, restaurants and wages, climate policies, trash

"Diabetes costs skyrocket as crisis looms," read the print headline on a July 3 article. The words "crisis looms" literally leapt out at me, because as an intensive-care nurse at the Level One trauma hospital North Memorial Medical Center, I see evidence of what this article is talking about every night that I work.

On a recent night that sticks out in my mind, we had five admissions come to our 13-bed unit in a span of five hours. All five patients were having a diabetic crisis from not taking their insulin, for whatever reason, properly. All five were put on insulin drips and spent several days in the intensive-care unit.

As a side note, the last I checked the basic cost for an ICU bed is $12,000 per day.

I've been predicting for a while now that people will be dying in the streets from diabetes alone if the cost of drugs and our health care crisis is not solved soon. I do not make this statement flippantly. Each one of those patients was found down by someone and was brought to our hospital by ambulance.

The crisis is not just looming, it's here.

The writer is president of the Minnesota Nurses Association.

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As a blood-cancer survivor who experienced medical care in Switzerland, I continue to be discouraged by our representatives and industries for their inadequate actions toward affordable health care for all. The front-page July 2 article "Soaring drug costs foil treatments" was poignant given the full-page ads by Children's Minnesota and Blue Cross and Blue Shield Minnesota pertaining to those organizations' contract dispute. On the evening news, the majority of ads are for prescription meds. No wonder costs are rising! (Not to mention pharmaceutical profit goals.) We need to work together to find a way to corral this issue like Switzerland has done.

It's good that the Star Tribune Editorial Board is highlighting the seriousness of human trafficking as it did July 2 ("Tillerson, Ivanka Trump must follow words with action on human trafficking"), but there's a whiff of hypocrisy in the air. The Star Tribune Media Co. publishes City Pages, and one need only look at the back pages of that publication to see that women's bodies are for sale in our own backyard. Salacious photos of scantily clad women and provocative ad lines make it clear that the businesses being advertised have low regard for women's worth except as sexual commodities. If we are to rid our communities of the heinous crime of human trafficking in general and sex slavery in particular, that work must begin at home.

It was with considerable sadness mingled with nostalgia that I read the July 2 article about Lutheran churches. I grew up in my Lutheran church in Moorhead in the 1930s, '40s and '50s and lament the changes that have taken place. As I read the article, I was captivated by the many phrases: the "future of the faith," a "new model," "reframe what it means to be church," "bring in 'some entertainment, something uplifting,' " "programs from Zumba to meditation," "people don't know what Lutherans stand for," "Lutheranism … has to evolve" and "God's grace saves them."

The title of the article was "A new reformation." This year we celebrate the 500th anniversary of the day in October when Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses on the door of Wittenberg Castle Church in Germany. This is thought by many to be the initiation of the Reformation, although there were precursors and a host that followed. The essence of Luther's message was a reclaiming of the Apostolic Gospel — the very good news of Jesus Christ.

Lee Schafer's July 3 column about the impact of Minneapolis' approval of a $15-an-hour minimum wage for large businesses by 2022 and small businesses by 2024 ("Wage hike will reshape the Minneapolis dining experience") offers a lot of negative possibilities about rising restaurant prices and declining service quality. However, Schafer never considers the strong likelihood that more people will be walking through the doors of Twin Cities restaurants because they are earning more money.

I've spent much of my career reading interviews with low-wage workers, and perhaps the most frequently mentioned luxury they seek is going out to dinner with family. They are dreaming Pizza Luce, not Oceanaire. Twin Cities restaurants are often crowded on weekends but typically at half-capacity on weekdays. Adding the families of people earning the previous poverty-level minimum wage may preclude staff reduction and should either be a salve against price increases or produce greater restaurant profits.

People of modest incomes are yearning to be consumers, even if scolds admonish them to be savers. The Business section needs a little more economics and a bit less ideology.

On Page A2 of the July 7 issue of the Star Tribune, an article states that California is paying to give away solar power. On page A4, an item notes the Trump administration's desire to open more public lands in California for drilling for fossil fuels. Elsewhere in the paper the same day, articles discuss Tesla's plans to sell 11 million electric cars, Volvo's plan to stop producing cars with gas engines and France's plan to go all-electric.

Does anyone in this administration see the future? Is anyone in contact with reality?

Regarding the July 6 photo package titled "Lake's post-holiday recovery": Kudos to the group that removed the trash from Lake Minnetonka. And shame on those who made the cleanup necessary. Until people clean up their behavior, and until parents teach their children to pick up after themselves, our fragile environment, which includes oceans littered with thousands of tons of plastic, will be harmed as much by trash as it is being harmed by global warming. It's past time to quit kicking the can down the street.