Readers write for Friday, Sept. 4

If U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann wants to slit her wrists to create a "covenant" to defeat health care reform (Star Tribune, Sept. 2), let her. At least she would have good enough health insurance coverage to get treatment for her self-inflicted wounds.

All those Americans she wants to slit their wrists in a show of solidarity, on the other hand, might have trouble getting the care they need.

JAMES MATHEWSON, FARIBAULT, MINN.

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Rep. Bachmann wants to spill blood to stop a health care bill from being passed. What about the thousands of people who die prematurely each year because they lack health insurance? Haven't we spilled enough blood already? And to think Bachmann has the audacity to call herself prolife.

RICK GROGER, ST. PAUL

I found the article on medical price transparency very interesting and strongly support cost containment through transparency and payment reform (Star Tribune, Aug. 27). This was the focus of the 2008 health care reform legislation that invested $12 million to implement measures that would ensure cost containment, payment reform, price transparency and prevention through public health initiatives.

However, it is disingenuous for anyone, including the governor, to think these efforts weren't paid for through government funds -- they were. Even the online tool the governor announced was paid for by the Minnesota Health Plans, a nonprofit coalition of the major health plans operating in Minnesota. Its funding comes from the premiums we all pay to our health insurance companies.

While the debate about health care reform sweeps the nation, Minnesota leads the country in its health outcomes and low rate of uninsured. We are actually an example of how health care quality and accessibility can be achieved when government is a partner in working toward change. To think otherwise flies in the face of our experience.

SEN. LINDA HIGGINS, DFL-MINNEAPOLIS

So Anoka-Hennepin teacher Diane Cleveland's attorney says that her being called on the carpet for taunting a student with gay slurs "has been very traumatic for her." Hmmmm.

How does she think Alex Merritt felt? I know that one of the worst things anyone can do to a student in school is accuse him of being gay. Her strategy apparently worked; he needed to transfer to get some comfort and to get away from the likes of her.

JERALD LEE, MINNEAPOLIS

The Aug. 30 article on Memorial Stadium reminded me that it was more than the site of some great football. It was also the arena where thousands graduated from the University of Minnesota, including me.

However, Gate 27 of Memorial Stadium will always be my most treasured memory of the stadium. Behind Gate 27 was the facility for the Physiological Hygiene Laboratory. The lab enabled me to work my way through school during the '60s doing odd jobs, such as washing test tubes and filing chest X-rays. Dr. Ancel Keys, a world-famous U of M professor of physiology, was the head of the lab. He believed that diet and cholesterol were linked to heart disease.

If Keys is not remembered for his cholesterol studies (he retired to Italy where he lived to more than 100 years old), he should be remembered for the development of the K ration during World War II, which sustained countless soldiers and civilians during the war. The development of the K ration was done at Gate 27, as well as the "starvation study" done shortly after the United States entered World War II.

The U.S. government wanted Keys to conduct the study because of a concern about the effects of starvation on health, knowing starvation would be a huge problem among Europeans at the end of the war.

News alert: Ministers of the cloth are human, too, and hence prone to temptation and failure. So when the Star Tribune reported that 16 "johns" were arrested in a St. Paul East Side undercover prostitution sting, why did it feel it necessary to run the headline "Prostitution sting nets Prior Lake pastor?"

What makes this man's crime so newsworthy that we, the prurient public, have to know his name and shame, but the other 15 arrested should be kept silent? What is the common good served here? Either cast 16 stones or preferably cast none.

JIM VALENTINI, WEST ST. PAUL

Why does the Editorial Board feel that the sentiments of those visiting the Vikings' "Fan Central" in any way represent the views of the broader Minnesota population regarding a new stadium ("State Fair reveals signs of the times," Sept. 3)?

It is clear from the location of the participants that this is a biased sample. If you really want to know what Minnesotans feel about a new stadium for the Vikings (funded by the public, because that is the only plan Vikings owner Zygi Wilf supports), why not conduct a poll? Ask a broad sample of Minnesotans if they would like their taxes used to build a nearly $1 billion stadium.