The recent tragic events brought on by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have dramatically underscored what can happen to our nation's poor and disabled - the most vulnerable among us - when government protections and health care services disappear. The vivid images of the most helpless people, fending for themselves, are not ones that I, or any other American, will soon forget.

Unfortunately, some government proposals, currently under consideration in Washington, have the potential to rip the rug out from under this country's neediest people again.

The U.S. Congress currently is considering $10 billion in cuts in the Medicaid program over five years. The Medicaid program covers the poor and disabled, more than 50 percent of whom are children. Yes, Medicaid spending needs to be contained, but not in a way that will limit access for patients and end up costing more in the long run.

Nearly half of the proposed Medicaid budget cuts, $4.7 billion, will come from pharmacy, even though pharmacy reimbursement formulas currently being discussed would mean that pharmacists would actually lose money for every Medicaid prescription they dispense. The result would be pharmacies being forced to drop out of the Medicaid program, patients losing access to needed medicines and higher ultimate costs when patients end up in the emergency room or a nursing home.

Community pharmacists are in a unique position to help drive down Medicaid prescription drug costs while at the same time maintaining the health care safety net on which so many people depend. By encouraging patients to switch to generic drugs, billions of dollars could be saved every year.

The percentage of Medicaid recipients who currently fill their prescriptions with generic drugs varies from state to state, but averages about 52 percent nationwide. A modest 8 percent increase in the use of generic drugs would save the Medicaid program $19 billion over five years - more savings than called for in the president's budget.

A sensible and fair reimbursement formula for pharmacists, one that would encourage dispensing generic prescriptions, would be a win-win solution: A win for patients, a win for Medicaid cost containment and a win for pharmacists.

Unless modified, the cuts in Medicaid, currently being debated in Washington, are worse than shortsighted. They are a prescription for disaster.

(Hill is the executive vice president of the North Dakota Pharmacists Association. - Editor)

All agreed Saddam had the weapons

Here we go again.

The Democrats are crying that somehow the Republican administration manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to sell the war in Iraq. Some Democrats have accused the White House of twisting the intelligence to exaggerate the threat posed by Iraq.

Let me make this very simple. We have known for years that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. All of our leaders, past and present, agreed on this.

Since the war has been going on, we have been unable to locate these WMDs. That doesn't shine much light on our president.

But the alternative would be Saddam having these weapons and using them or giving them to some other nutcase. Then we would have something to cry about.

Get it, Democrats? I doubt it.

It's simply a

diversion tactic

It's a pretty sad state of affairs that the five Republican legislators who took an Antiguan government paid trip last month feel the need to pounce when it was announced that Agriculture Commissioner Roger Johnson was going on a trade mission to Cuba.

Johnson has been leading a delegation of North Dakota farmers and businessmen to Cuba for the International Food Fair held in Havana the past several days.

It is unfortunate that these legislators want to turn a genuinely bipartisan trade effort into a partisan matter. Since the Cuban market became open for food importation, thanks to the congressional efforts of a Democrat, Sen. Byron Dorgan, and a Republican, former Sen. John Ashcroft of Missouri, North Dakota has taken full advantage of the opportunity.

Gov. John Hoeven has been to Cuba, Lt. Gov. Jack Dalrymple has been there and Johnson has led delegations a number of times. The result has been more than $20 million in sales. Of all the efforts made by state government to promote exports, the Cuban marketing effort has given the biggest bang for the buck.

It's amazing what some legislators will do to try to divert the public from their own deeds.

Glad terrorist

war is overseas

I see Gary Berube's recent letter has sure raised the hackles of the fanatical left. Funny how some put the misguided interests of their party, ideology and the rabid hatred of Bush ahead of the best interests of the country.

In case some have forgotten, we are still at war, one that got started back in the late '70s, but we never started to fight until 9/11 and one that will be as important to the way we live as World War II was.

The terrorists we fight today hate us worse than Hitler or Tojo did and will stop at nothing to try and kill us. Sadly, the only solution to this is to kill them first, and I, for one, am glad it is being done overseas and not here.

If Bill Clinton had aggressively pursued the terrorists after the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the war would look a lot different now, but he did nothing. Even after two more embassy bombings, the Kobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, the attack on the U.S.S. Cole and a couple of opportunities to take out Osama bin Laden, still nothing was done.

This inaction told the terrorists they had free rein in killing Americans since we didn't retaliate. They perceived us as weak, and the result was 9/11.

If the cut-and-run crowd get their way, we'll run again and the terrorists will win and we'll be seeing bombings not in Baghdad but right here at home.

Not only that, but we'll be looked on as a paper tiger by the rest of the world, including China, which now has improved Long March nuclear missiles and guidance systems thanks to Loral, Hughes and Lockheed Martin in exchange for campaign contributions to Clinton and the Democratic National Committee.

I sometimes wonder if the radical leftists are actually Americans or just pretenders. General Honore said it best when he told people in New Orleans to get their brains off stupid.