Los Alamos Medical Care Clinic understands the anguish that Christus St. Vincent is feeling in its decision to not renew their Lovelace Health plan contract. We made the same decision several years ago. Most of the other primary care providers in Los Alamos have chosen to not contract with Lovelace Health Plan.

When our clinic was contracted with Lovelace, it was almost impossible to obtain payment for claims in the time frame agreed upon by both parties. Meetings with Lovelace personnel, innumerable man hours and repeated re-filing of claims would lead to eventual payment of claims.

The public needs to realize in today's health market that negotiations involve more than dollars. Regulation changes and increased costs that providers will see in the future may force more contract terminations.


Left in the lurch

I think it is a travesty that, rather than negotiate in the best interest of its members, Ardent Lovelace is asking its most vulnerable members to ride the bus to its Albuquerque facilities to receive care.

They have not even bothered to apologize for this horrible inconvenience. They have instead attempted to shift blame to the hospital, all while their profit-hungry Nashville bosses call the shots.

Making this even harder on members was the fact that Lovelace didn't even bother to inform anyone that they intended to leave their members in this horrible situation.
I thought they were supposed to give use
30-days notice when they drop a provider!

This is time for all of us to rally around our community hospital. We do deserve better than what Ardent Lovelace is doing to us.


Albuquerque bound

I am a retired teacher with medical insurance from CIGNA through my employer in Virginia, not Lovelace. I was referred to a dermatologist to check a mole for cancer. No Santa Fe dermatologist was in my network, so I was given an exception to see Dr. Auerbach. The receptionist told me that they would not accept CIGNA because they bill through Lovelace. They would not even accept me as an out-of-network patient.

I then called Dr. Kaczmarek's office and got the same response and was told there might be doctors in Albuquerque who might see me. I don't know what the problem is between Lovelace and the medical community here. However, their dispute leaves many Santa Feans without care. So off to Albuquerque I go. God forbid I should have an emergency; I'd have to go to Albuquerque. It's care versus greed.


Civil rights battles continue

Bravo Christine Stansell for highlighting the struggle to pass the 19th amendment in the Aug. 29 commentary, "The almost forgotten suffrage."

Anti-suffrage forces held it up for decades; it was not an inevitable progression of events. Adelina Otero-Warren's three-hour speech convinced uncommitted senators to support women's equality.

The memory is very much alive with the League of Women Voters, which was active here in the 1920s and is 90 years old. The Santa Fe League is 60 years old. The fight for voting rights did not stop in 1920. Many women who helped to achieve suffrage continued to advocate for civil rights and equality through the newly formed League of Women Voters U.S. The league now also advocates for civil rights for all citizens, including the right to marry. We look forward to many more achievements "in the public interest" and to the day when we shall all be treated equally under the law. Join us! lwvsfc.org.


Same old columnists

So The New Mexican has had it's big "makeover" but we still have that pipsqueak, Rich Lowry, whose main talent seems to be throwing spit balls at President Barack Obama. Then it's sad to see Gregg Bemis, who is old enough to know better, getting swept up in the wave of paranoia and hysteria over a "ground-zero mosque" churned up by such as Rupert Murdoch and his Fox "News" demagogues.

And he can't get his story straight: first he describes the planned "Manhattan mosque near 'ground zero' " then later moves it a couple of blocks declaring, without evidence of any relationship, that "the associates of the attackers want to build a mosque in N.Y.C. at the scene of the attack." Finally, he has no qualms about substituting his Islamophobic feelings for facts: "I feel certain that it is not a coincidence that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf picked this spot to build his mosque."