Sep 15, 2017 4 min read

Editorial voices from newspapers across the United States:

A new Iowa law regarding texting while driving is producing positive results in terms of enforcement.

According to the Associated Press, the Iowa State Patrol issued 230 tickets for texting while driving in the first two months of the new law, far more than ISP issued for all of the previous year.

The law made texting while driving a primary offense, rather than a secondary offense, meaning law enforcement officers can issue a ticket for texting while driving without another traffic violation taking place.

According to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, some 660,000 drivers use cell phones or manipulate electronic devices while driving at any given daylight moment. The National Safety Council reports use of cellphones by drivers causes 26 percent of the nation’s car accidents, resulting in some 1.6 million crashes each year.

Our hope, of course, is texting while driving will decline across Iowa as the number of tickets for violations grows and the awareness of increased potential for tickets spreads.

We urge the Legislature next year to take an additional step in the name of public safety and debate a ban on all uses of a hand-held cellphone while driving.

We do not want to believe that our neighbors might be going hungry. But it is a reality.

According to a study, “Household Food Security in the United States in 2016,” released earlier this week, 41 million Americans lived in households struggling with food insecurity last year. This is a slight improvement compared with 42.2 million households reporting food insecurity in 2015.

Hunger remains a national crisis.

An estimated 87.7 percent of American households were food secure throughout 2016, meaning they had access at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life. The remaining households, 12.3 percent, were food insecure at least some of the time during the year, including 4.9 percent with very low food security, meaning that at times the food intake of one or more household members was reduced and their eating pattern was disrupted because the household lacked money and other resources for obtaining food.

Hunger’s effects are far-reaching.

Multiple national studies show that food insecurity harms health, the ability to learn, productivity in the workforce, and our state and nation’s economic strength. But access to food is more than an economic indicator, and people are more than consumers or workers. Food security is fundamental to the dignity of every person, and guaranteeing security is essential to any humane social policy. Alleviating hunger is the right thing to do.

The health care system is difficult to understand, and so is the insurance market.

But state and federal agencies dealing with these matters have billions of dollars at their disposal and, hopefully, these funds will be put in the places that need it the most.

Mississippi is one of the poorest states so it receives one of the highest percentages of federal Medicaid funding.

But this year, the state recovered $8.6 million in misspent Medicaid funds.

With that much money being misspent, we have to wonder, where is it going? How does the state recover it? And what effect does that have on health care providers when that money is taken back?

Health care administrators hold a lot of power, and so do federal and state agencies. That’s why it’s so important for checks and balances. With this amount of funding being misspent, it’s time for the private sector health care systems to get a grip on spending taxpayers’ money.

While providing adequate health care to all is essential, it has to be done in the right ways to prevent further harm.