Remember fog lights, too

I was glad to see the letter about headlights but want to add the important fact about fog lights. According to the Oregon Driver Manual, “It also is illegal to have auxiliary lights or fog lights on at times when you are required to dim your headlights. These very bright lights make it difficult for oncoming drivers to see.”

You are required to dim your headlights to oncoming vehicles within 500 feet, including any auxiliary lights.

I notice that about 98 percent of the traffic at night dims their headlights appropriately, but 35 percent of the traffic drives with their fog lights on at night (and many during daylight hours). Fog lights can be almost as blinding as high-beam headlights, and on a clear night do you really need the fog lights anyway?

Please be a courteous driver and turn off those fog lights!

Linda Gustafson

Camp Sherman

A sign of the times?

I attended the “Open Public Meeting” convened by a group of concerned citizens calling themselves the TruthinSite Coalition. The coalition posited themselves as a group of folks who are unhappy with the proposed location of the OSU-Cascades campus. I went in the hope that the organizers would propose a process to arrive at a solution.

An example of democracy at work? Yes, some might say, except for one thing. An integral purpose of the meeting, it quickly came out, was the modern-day equivalent of passing the hat. I was attending a fundraising meeting.

The avowed goal? To raise $50,000.

The avowed purpose? As KTVZ reports, “to take legal action against the school to halt the process and force a new look for a new location.”

I have no problem with dissent; it plays an integral role in the democratic process. What I do have a problem with is putting dissent at the beginning of the problem-solving process and not at the end. If that $50,000 were being collected to hire a consultant or kick off an undertaking to arrive at a solution, then great, let’s go for it.

In the course of my attendance, I heard no suggestions on initiating a process to solve the problem, other than from one young lady who was obviously not a member of the coalition. Rather the comments were largely instructing OSU to go somewhere else (mostly Juniper Ridge). Or, they reiterated reasons as to why the west-side solution didn’t work. (As one man put it, “I’m not giving up my quality of life to make a couple of kids happy.” Followed by loud applause.)

I left after an hour. This isn’t the Bend I know.

Jim Schell

Bend

Extra costs at St. Charles

Most people in Central Oregon are not aware of a dangerous gap in their private health-insurance coverage for emergency-room services performed at St. Charles Medical Center — one that puts them at potentially great financial risk at a time when they are most vulnerable.

Even if St. Charles Health System is in your health-insurance network, you may be held personally responsible to pay exorbitant bills from doctors whom St. Charles subcontracts to work in their ER. These doctors have no obligation to accept the payment terms stipulated under the hospital’s group contract with your insurer.

They can bill you for balances that exceed the reasonable and customary charges paid to them by your insurer. The doctors decide how much you must pay them; the amount is unregulated, and St. Charles condones the practice.

Such billing practice is illegal under Medicare but sanctioned when billing patients using private insurance. There is, however, an easy fix: St. Charles can (and ethically should) require all subcontracted medical practitioners working in their ER to accept insurance payments paid at the in-network rate as payment in full for their service. Doing so would stop these doctors from engaging in predatory billing practices for St. Charles’ ER patients.

Predatory billing is unfortunately a nationwide practice that the Affordable Care Act fails to rectify. You can make a change.

Sign the petition to stop predatory overcharges for ER visits at http://bit.ly/1jAeVgT.

Michael Cooper

Sisters