Please contact state Rep. Marcus R. Oshiro and ask him to schedule a hearing for HB2116 HD1, which appropriates funds for the provision of health care services to uninsured people through nonprofit community health centers. This bill releases funds that have been long denied. Dental and other services for the poor were cruelly cut a decade ago.
Please remind Rep. Oshiro that Hawaii's poor patients are enduring long-term oral infections, which studies have proved cause serious health problems. Increased heart, kidney, vascular and immune system diseases cause suffering for patients and their families, and increase the cost of their health care to the state.
If you could see the poor folks waiting to a repairable tooth pulled, or talk to Tamiko Jackson of the Hawaii Office of Veterans Services about how difficult it is to tell veterans and their spouses that there is no dental help for them, you would feel their urgent need.
Is the economy so bad that we must turn a blind eye to human suffering? Can we morally fund bike paths, parks and ponds without caring for the poor?
Rekindle Hawaii's spirit of aloha and request a hearing and passage of HB2116 HD1.
Mary Overbay
Puunene
