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Summit Daily letters: Lake Hill workforce housing development an assault on Frisco

Lake Hill an assault on Frisco

Dillonthorne and Wreckenridge are uninhibited by natural boundaries, they can grow from Kremmling to Fairplay. The talk about a 400-unit Lake Hill project on the Dillon Dam Road is an assault on the town of Frisco.

The forest island of Frisco has not added 400 units combined in the past 30 years. The infrastructure of Frisco cannot handle the ill-thought-out, high-density project proposed by the County Commissioners.



It is a mistake to think that the majority of Frisco residents, second-home owners and business people will support this unbelievably out-of-proportion project. Yes, we need employee housing but this proposal is not exclusively employee housing.

Unfortunately, the laissez-faire and absentee leadership the town of Frisco has suffered for several generations has opened the door for the County Commissioners to come in and walk all over us.



Frisco is a small and unique village of maybe 3,500 people, 7,000 dogs and 10,000 bicycles. Frisco cannot be everything for everybody. If you live in Frisco and think life is good “under the bubble” you need to speak up now.

Rob Philippe

Frisco

Another bone to pick in Centura-VSO break

There have been misguided views concerning St. Anthony Summit’s decision to sever ties with VSO for emergency trauma surgery. The Aug. 18 article states Panorama Orthopedics was named as the new contractor for such surgery as they are willing to “…accept Medicaid and other insurance options, where VSO has not shown willingness to accept those provider rates.” There are Medicaid recipients dependent on St. Anthony for care, but cannot obtain it from VSO if it’s not an emergency. Recall that St. Anthony is part of a larger organization (Centura Health) whose goal is service to the entire community, not only for those of us fortunate to be insured elsewhere. Please note that VSO is not leaving the county.

Furthermore, (Aug. 22) VSO has been participating with other orthopedic groups for at least a year and a half to build a competing facility. Thus, it’s disingenuous to say that VSO was “blindsided.” The hospital had to be aware of the plan and took necessary steps to maintain emergency orthopedic care.

A tempest in a teapot.

Lowell Graves

Silverthorne

***

Re: Norman H. Stoller’s Aug. 24

letter to the editor.

We all thank you for your professional opinion in yesterday’s SDN related to the evolving orthopedic options that will be available to the people of Summit County — and to the visitors that we host. In addition to a Medicaid option, that Vail-Summit Orothpaedic disdains, the potential for some measure of free market competition will, I assert, in one of the costliest surgical markets in the nation, tend to benefit the whole population of the county for years to come.

No resident or visitor will be denied VSO care if that is what they choose.

I like options.

Mike Dugan

Dillon

The clash of cultures in America

American medical care is the best care the world has ever known, and it has all the potential to be even better — but only if left to the heart, soul and hands of the free, individual, human caregiver. We have experienced a difficult time in the last 10 years as the course of political change has ended that individual freedom for both the patient and the caregiver. More and more “the culture of death,” as in abortion and euthanasia, has taken control of America’s caregiving or, sadly, care-denying.

In many ways American health care has burst forward in both quality and quantity in the last century. Why were so many patients coming to our shores for our caregiving when so many places in the developed world had what was called free or socialized government care?

In the historical view of our American health system, we were very much indebted to the Judeo-Christian concept of the “culture of life” with human life as a wonderful gift of God in His image and likeness. For many it shined forth as Saint Anthony’s, Mount Sinai or Baptist Hospital — all in some way the ultimate appeal to the scientific and spiritual life we had gifted to us as Americans. Our medical world in many ways spoke to us of the sacredness and the unique God-given worth and dignity of each individual human life.

Medical care is quite different in most of the world. Stalin’s first directive was to bring the state into complete control of all health issues. Mao squelched all Western medicine, allowing instead only the cult medicine of the “barefoot doctors” and mandatory abortions. For many reasons, godless reasons, much of the world has descended into a “culture of death.”

Now America is faced with a chance to turn away from socialized health care and the culture of death to the culture of life by freely choosing a Supreme Court that will protect our God-given right to life. We can return to a health care system that became the best in the world because of the freedom of the individual patient and caregiver to decide their own destiny. Our health care professionals are the best trained and gifted the world has ever known, but their talent and dedication can only be expressed in the freedom found in our nation’s founding document. We must allow patient and caregiver to keep their unalienable right to life and the pursuit of happiness. It will be a labor of love. So help us God.

Donald Chisholm MD

Dillon


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