Senator hears advocates' concerns during McCook visit
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McCOOK, Neb. — A sexual predator who completes a prison sentence can obtain food stamps and housing assistance, but not someone convicted of selling marijuana.
Children on Medicaid who need dental care may have to drive hours for a filling, and dentists willing to care for them may face and extensive audit to ensure that every penny received for the service is spent correctly.
Public health efforts would be easier if COVID were treated like venereal disease, but current law prohibits release of vital information for smaller counties.
Too many rules are “black and white” when it comes to providing assistance for those in need, and Southwest Nebraskans pay a price for living in a rural area where services are hard to obtain, our area’s new state senator was told Wednesday.
“But we’re not moving,” Barb Ostrum of Mid Nebraska Community Services told Sen. Dave Murman and his aide, John Adams, Wednesday.
They listened to concerns from the McCook Child Advocacy Team at a gathering at McCook Christian Church following an appearance at the Gazette’s Coffee With a Cop.
Ostrum, working after retirement at Mid Nebraska’s McCook office after retirement on a temporary pandemic program and filling in for a maternity leave, also had a request regarding the local office of the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services.
“Never, ever, ever take our office away!” she begged Murman, who serves on the Legislature’s education and health and human services committees.
Murman, a dairy farmer until six years ago, recently began representing Red Willow County has part of a revamped District 38. He is eligible to serve one more term if reelected.
He recently returned from scaling Mount Kilimanjaro with several other lawmakers and has an adult daughter with severe disabilities.
Dentistry is a problem for local adults and children on public assistance, with the closest dentist to accept Medicaid practicing in Grand Island.
Local dentists are doing what they can, Ostrum said, and a recent program provided basic exams, cleaning and X-rays for 50 children at $100, but those exams could reveal problems costing hundreds of dollars to cure.
Dentists have a two-fold problem, she said, with Medicare not paying enough to cover the cost of services, but then requiring “excessive” accounting audits.
Plus, if patients don’t turn up for their appointments because of transportation problems or a variety of other reasons, the dentist loses money from other patients that could have been scheduled.
A 1996 law denies SNAP benefits to those with drug felonies unless they go through a treatment program, but many struggle with mental issues and basics such as rent and surviving on a minimum-wage job. A local shortage of housing also makes it hard for felons to turn their lives around, making a relapse into crime more likely.
Myra Stoney, director of the Southwest Nebraska Public Health Department, said the DHHS and local health departments hope to make it easier to report data in smaller communities to facilitate public health efforts where they are most needed.
The current law is designed to protect privacy, but also prevents public health officials from concentrating efforts where they will do the most good. COVID data in smaller counties was only available when governor’s directed health measures were in effect, for example.
COVID is a hot-button topic, Stoney said, but if people would think about that virus the same way they might think about sexually-transmitted disease, they might be more willing to allow public health measures. Omaha, for instance, has one of the highest rates of syphilis in the nation, but similar data is not available for smaller counties. If public health officials knew the rate of mouth cancer in Hayes County, for instance, efforts to reduce the use of chewing tobacco could be concentrated there.
Milva McGhee, Early Childhood Community Coordinator for the McCook Economic Development Corp., said she didn’t realize until moving to Nebraska how much there was a lack of childcare and support for providers. Each of the 12 local in-home care providers and child-care centers that serve children from birth to preschool have a waiting list of months if not a year.
They also have trouble finding dedicated childcare workers, and being able to charge enough “to keep the lights on.”
A lack of benefits is also a detriment to attracting childcare workers, Dennis Berry said, with few providers able to compete with climbing fast-food wages, for example.
Fortunately, expanded Medicaid services have made it somewhat easier for lower income individuals like childcare workers to obtain coverage.
Murman, in his fourth year in the Legislature, seemed to agree with the idea that increased salaries could change the makeup of the Unicameral, which is now largely made up of “independently wealthy or retired” members.
The Child Advocacy Team includes a number of agencies and organizations concerned with issues affecting children, including groups such as the Family resource Center, Court Appointed Special Advocates, counselors, courts, TeamMates Mentoring, schools, Head Start, Domestic Abuse/Sexual Assault Services, the Educational Service Unit and many others.