Smoke and fire: Nothing like sitting down with Chief Harry
Beck of the Mesa Fire Department and finding out that your house is in one of those neighborhoods where timely service is a problem.Specifically, the department’s average response time is over four minutes in my neighborhood. It’s worse in fast growing parts of East Mesa where it is seven minutes.
Because of population growth without fire station and equipment growth, the department’s response time has dropped by 27 seconds in the last two years.
Voters last year defeated a property tax that would have helped, Beck said. Where’s the money to come from?
BTW,
speed bumps may slow traffic for kids whose parents let them play on the street, but they also slow fire trucks, Beck acknowledged. Chalk up one for Ripley and 0 for speed bump advocates.
Insurance and cancer: If you haven’t read Monday’s front page story on a Chandler woman who has cancer and lost her insurance coverage because she failed to report on her insurance application that she had once suffered from depression and also had had a back problems, please, please read it. What happened isn’t right. I don’t like calling for more state regulation; but if the industry isn’t going to respect the spirit of their contracts with their customers, then somebody will step in. Here’s a link to that story:
http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/index.php?sty=83118
Bicycles: I get a lot of head-shakers in my email in-box. Here is an excerpt from one that came in today:
"Bicycles are LABOR-SAVING DEVICES! They were designed NOT for getting exercise, but SAVING ENERGY. And they DO! A decades-old Scientific American article stated that the bicycle is the most efficient form of transportation in the world, surpassing walking and all other means of transportation. Bicycles only increase exercise when they replace motor vehicle use, which is NOT the case for young children!"
The police will have to confiscate a whole lot of bicycles, if this email writer gets to be king of the world.
Something amazing has happened without any public comment. I understand that primary care providers (doctors) cannot treat their patients when they are in the hospital.
I have heard that your personal physician may visit you in the hospital, but cannot see your chart or direct your recovery.
In the hospital, you are treated by someone you have never seen before and have not chosen to care for you. Someone who doesn’t know you from Adam.
I wonder why we go to all the trouble of finding a personal or family physician only to have some stranger take over care in serious situations.
I’ve heard that it is because insurance companies won’t pay private practice doctors. I have heard that “staff physician” is a new specialty area developing for some sort of crisis management. I really would like to know what the real situation is and the reasoning behind it.
Has anyone there at the paper checked this out? I’ve only been in Phoenix for a couple of years so I’m don’t know whether or not this is standard procedure or something new. But it is new to me.
Based on my conversations with others, a lot of us would appreciate any light you can shine on the phenomenon.
Thanks. Claire Hamilton