Author: Danielle Levy

PrescriptionSolutions is a large mail order pharmacy which among its many thousands of clients serves a large percentage of AARP members. Not only does it have several call centers throughout the nation, and several pharmacies, its mail service division is separate from its pharmacies. When one calls one is routed to the nearest call center and that request is then referred to a pharmacy in that person’s geographical area. If one calls to ask a pharmacist a question, however, that pharmacist could be anywhere. What all this seems to add up to is numerous opportunities for errors. In fact my dealings with them have inevitably resulted in one error or another. When I’ve attempted to speak to customer service representatives, I’ve felt I was talking to people who had been programmed like androids and who could not respond with much relevance to what I was asking. When I wrote to them, I received—promptly I must admit—a reply that showed the same level of comprehension, for the answer was not in direct relation to my question. PrescriptionSolutions is a private business. It runs as do other big private concerns like phone, cable and other utilities companies, like the bureaucracies they are. And like the stereotype we hold of any bureaucracy they evidence errors, inefficiency and less than superior service.
In all my years of dealing with the Social Security Administration on behalf of parents and others, I’ve never encountered serious problems. Government bureaucracies may have their issues, but they may be better and surely no worse than any other.

A survey by the Public Policy Institute of California had some revealing, if disturbing findings. Californians haven’t any idea where the state gets its money or how it spends it. And yet the survey shows Californians want themselves to be in charge rather than the governor or the legislature. The institute pollster Mark Baldassare found that only 6% of Californians could identify both the biggest revenue source and the biggest expenditure. “It seems to me that what you need as a starting point are some basic facts about where the money comes from and where it’s going, to make sound fiscal decisions, and they don’t have that base of knowledge,” he said. Voting in the dark can hardly be called responsible. Thinking you know what’s involved in the issues when you don’t can’t be the basis for anything good. And yet, it does seem that is what happens, in California as in other states, with local as with national issues. Regardless, here is a big problem that is easy to fix and without any price tag—let’s be informed.

An honor killing in southeast Turkey is renewing the debate about the practice. A 16-year old girl was bound and buried alive by her family last December for talking to boys. The family held a meeting and the grandfather approved the measure. Authorities have since arrested and are still holding both the father and the grandfather. The mother was detained and later released. About 200 honor killings occur each year in Turkey representing about half the country’s murders. The southeastern province where many of these killings occur is among the poorest. The isolation of poverty notwithstanding such killings defy norms of understanding. Obviously honor is valued above parental love. Still, isn’t infanticide a stain on one’s honor? What logic or archaic notions, what levels of ignorance lie behind a father or other male family member feeling entitled to take a life? Let’s hope as the debate is carried out in Turkey and elsewhere that some of these questions are dealt with and lead to what can end the practice. That would redeem an otherwise useless killing.

Massachusetts has become the first state to require tooth brushing in pre-schools and day care centers for any child who has at least one meal there or attends more than four hours a day. The program came as a result of a 2003 state study which found that one in four Massachusetts kindergartners have dental disease. Parents who feel strongly against can opt out. One would think such a small program dealing with health, education, prevention and young children, would have general approbation. Of course, it doesn’t. There are those who believe it an intrusion of the government—though it would seem less intrusive than traffic laws—and there are those who even are concerned about the spread of germs from toothbrushes and the spitting associated with brushing—though that would be so for any tooth brushing in anyone’s home. The inevitable objections may be a sign of the age we live in, where general approbation is elusive even for the most benign issue, but it does not make it constructive.