Readers Write (May 1): Health care, fireworks, Mad Men, Secret Service

I've watched the recent coverage involving Fairview Hospital and a hired collection agency with great interest. It seems as though a collection company asked patients in emergency rooms for money before they received services.

While I have strong feelings about the abuse of ER services for people who do not have emergencies, I am pretty aghast when I hear about people with kidney stones who were asked for $800 in prepayment.

Why are we upset about this? Obviously, it is because people should not be bothered with finances when they are in physical or mental distress.

As we watch the news coverage, we are incensed: The practices of the collection agency, and Fairview by association, have violated our right to health care.

Health care is different from buying gas or groceries. Otherwise, nobody would care that a business is collecting money for providing a service. The action violates what we value. We see basic health care as a right.

It is hard for me to reconcile the disconnect between people who perceive this collection process as inappropriate yet oppose the general concept of universal health care. We are upset when somebody can't get basic health care in an emergency room for financial reasons, so ought we be upset when somebody can't get basic heath care elsewhere for financial reasons?

It is the same violation of values, except we see ourselves as a person in the emergency room who shouldn't be bothered with finances and we can't imagine a situation where we couldn't pay for the other health care ourselves.

* * *

Gov. Mark Dayton's rationale ("Dayton vetoes fireworks bill, citing hazards," April 29) does not add up. Using his logic, consider:

• Drunken driving surely injures or kills more people each year than fireworks have or would. Yet the governor readily approved the bill to allow alcohol at TCF Bank Stadium, a move that could result in adding more drunken drivers to our streets.

• Gambling addiction has a clearly negative impact on overall quality of life. Making gambling more readily available to fund a Vikings stadium only increases the risk of addiction. Yet the governor supports electronic pulltabs as a solution to build a new stadium.

• Pro football players bring more violence to a community (as evidence by the April 29 story of the backup Vikings running back being arrested after an altercation at a party). Yet Dayton calls news conferences to encourage legislative action to keep the Vikings in Minnesota.

* * *

I began my work life in the same era that Myles Spicer did ("The 'Mad Men' era had a few things worth celebrating," April 28), in my case as a part of the burgeoning profession of a contract interior designer for offices and institutions with my own firm. That was the start of cubicle workspaces that led to what Spicer describes as a breakdown of interoffice congeniality and company loyalty. Yes, that concept contributed perhaps, but other social factors had greater influence, as the cubicles gave way to "flexible spaces" more conducive to collaboration.

My own experience as a woman in that period was no different than that of the secretaries portrayed in "Mad Men," even though I was a professional with a master's degree. When I watch "Mad Men," I cringe in remembrance of the slights, the dismissals of my plausible ideas until one of the men at the table offered the same idea, and the sexual innuendos, such as the hotel clerk "making certain" with a wink that when I was traveling with a male colleague, we had connecting rooms. Wonder why I became an early advocate of the women's movement?

KATHLEEN LAURILA, CRYSTAL

* * *

"Self-respecting" seamen would never commit "the worst sin of all: refusing to pay a whore." After applauding seamen for their moral superiority to the Secret Service, Loiederman warns us not to "romanticize the seedy life of drunken seamen" yet to hope that Secret Service agents aspire to the same "ethical standards."

Thanks for that moral compass. I don't think we need to worry that anyone is romanticizing the economic and social conditions that fuel prostitution. But Loiederman is right about one thing: Women should be paid for their work.

Too bad we earn just 77 cents to the male dollar. Too bad that much of women's work throughout the world -- child care, cooking and cleaning -- never even makes it to the table for salary negotiation.

If Loiederman is right and failure to pay prostitutes is a crime of karmic proportions capable of taking down a ship or the Secret Service, maybe we finally have a viable explanation for the global economic meltdown: failure to pay women for our work.