Valley Views

valley views Invest in our nursing facilities

As Montanans, we care for each other. Across the rural-urban divide, generational divide, and Brawl of the Wild divide. Of all our constituents across Montana, the most deserving are our elderly neighbors who are on Medicaid benefits. They have served Montana well, and at this final stage in their lives seek the promise of compassionate, medically appropriate care. Most of them are out of money, have used up their care options with family members and loved ones, and cannot afford in-home care, which can cost more than $20,000 a month and is rarely covered by private insurance or Medicaid.

Our elder care economy is broken. Since January 2022, more than 10% of Montana’s skilled nursing rest homes have closed. And most of the facilities still operating, whether private or public, are teetering on the edge of closure.

The cancer in Montana’s elder care system is the low Medicaid reimbursement rate. The rate averages about $212 per day per patient, while actual cost of care is well over $300 per day. No facility can remain financially viable under these circumstances, private or public. As a result, most facilities in Montana don’t accept Medicaid customers, leaving few options for those who need services the most.

We represent counties across the state - rural, urban, conservative, liberal, and everything in between. Our message for the Montana DPHHS, Governor Gianforte, and the 2023 legislature is this: please help save our skilled nursing facilities by investing in a rate increase for nursing homes. We need your leadership now more than ever.

County facilities operate economically and efficiently - they make good choices and serve their communities. Our facilities’ financial problems are because Medicaid rates for nursing homes are unconscionably low and don’t come close to covering reasonable costs of care. The state isn’t paying for services they’re asking these facilities to provide. In turn, county taxpayers subsidize the state to keep our local nursing homes open. Legally, these Medicaid residents are the state’s responsibility, but the state is shirking its responsibility.

Most of our counties and critical access hospitals in rural communities support these facilities with property tax funded mill levies. Rural, urban, conservative and liberal voters alike see value in funding crucial care services for our elderly neighbors in need. For example, Gallatin County voters just passed a mill levy to support their county rest home. A majority of voters in every house district precinct supported it, regardless of whether the district elected republicans or democrats to the legislature.

We have skin in the game at the local level. Now we’re asking the state to do its part.

The state has exceeded its budget to run state hospital and other staterun facilities by millions of dollars because of the skyrocketing costs of operating them. But so far, Governor Gianforte’s administration has not recognized that every facility, including private/for-profit and county-run facilities, is experiencing the same kind of cost increases. This administration pays almost $800 per day to fund care for Medicaid residents in the dementia ward of the state hospital. Yet they’re only paying community facilities about $212 per day for senior long-term

Valley Views Mary Armstrong Valley County Commissioner on behalf of Montana counties

The science of happiness

Lately I’ve been interested in happiness - scientifically speaking, of course. That sounds counterintuitive, oxymoronic even. How can the cut and dried factual-based world of science have anything to do with something as instinctive and emotional as happiness?

Turns out they have more in common than I originally thought. Happiness causes physiological changes within us that science is able to use to identify, quantify and even predict happy. I’ve always thought of happiness as external – something that happens to me. Happiness comes from going to Disney World, opening presents at Christmas, saying “yes” to the dress, a brand new convertible, landing that dream job, scoring the last slice of chocolate cake, winning the lottery and so on.

While this might sound logical, external experiences and things that happen to us aren’t the real source of happiness. In truth, happiness comes from within. At least that’s what science says.

And who are we to ar-

Slices of Life Jill Pertler Syndicated columnist care Medicaid residents. All we ask for is parity - raise rates for community facilities and demand for beds at the state hospital will decrease, meaning more elderly Montanans will receive quality care.

We’re in this together. No group is more deserving of a safety net than our elderly Medicaid recipients. We urge Governor Gianforte, and members of the 2023 Montana Legislature, to please fix the rate reimbursement for nursing homes. The house is on fire and we need your help.

Submitted by Mary Armstrong, Valley County Commissioner, on behalf of the county commissions of:

Gallatin

Glacier

Golden

Jefferson

Pondera

Rosebud

Lake

McCone

Mineral

Madison

Judith Basin

see page 11 Phillips Daniels Valley Roosevelt Wibaux Hill Big Horn Missoula

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gue with science?

Scientists have studied happiness and they’ve found it happens naturally. (Duh.) But, (here’s the kicker) it can also be manufactured. Harvard psychologist, Dan Gilbert, describes “synthetic happiness.” It’s the happy we create when we don’t get what we want.

Sort of like seeing the glass as half full.

As it turns out, when we don’t get what we want, the happiest among us take on a new perspective and choose to see it another way.

Key word in that last sentence: choose.

Happiness is a choice.

Absorb the power in that for just a minute, because it is great. It is gigantic.

You get to choose your own happiness. How flipping awesome is that? Flippingly! Because choice is power. And the power is in your hands. No one else’s. You are in charge.

Flippingly in charge. Damn grand.

From my very limited research, along with (extensive) lifetime experience, I’ve concluded that happiness is a habit. As with all habits, it gets easier and more natural with practice. In contrast, the opposite is also true. Choosing a dim outlook on life can also become a habit. You can send two people to the county fair on the same day. One will see dirt and dust and crowds and long lines in front of the food trucks serving greasy food. The other will see the roller coaster, ferris wheel and delicious corn dogs on a stick.

Same fair. Same day. Same experiences. Different outlooks. Different outcomes.

The people in the white lab coats tell us happiness is a choice, and in that, they have a few other gems that can help us find our own Happiness Boulevard. Here’s what their studies suggest:

Gratitude increases happiness. If we spend time thinking of all that we have, we commit less brain energy to all things we want or don’t have. Gratitude, like happiness, is a habit. They are best friends and are often seen having coffee together on Tuesday mornings at the cute little pastry shop down the street - visibly exuding appreciation and love for one another over lattes and donuts.

Happiness can be increased by (Ready for this shocker?) engaging in activities you enjoy. Do what makes you happy and you will more likely be happy. Standing ovation for the obvious.

Understand that your emotions are your choice. Even in dire circumstances, you choose how you feel. It may be bad, but it will get better and could possibly be worse. Most of our challenges won’t even be on our radar a year from now, much less five years from now. Even if they will be, life won’t always be the same as it is today. Ponder and remember that. Allow yourself to give it perspective even if it has to be one conscious breath at a time.

The happiest people believe in something greater than themselves. This lifts the weight of the world off of their shoulders. Perhaps we are not in control after all. Understand this and accept it. Embrace it for the gift it is.

I grew up believing “things” made me happy - experiences, good fortune, other people. Turns out I was only half right. Happiness might (sometimes) come from our environment, but most often it is already within us - waiting for us to embrace and recognize it. It is there for the taking. Go ahead, scoop up a healthy portion for yourself.

You’ll be glad you did.

Jill Pertler is an award-winning syndicated columnist, published playwright and author. Don’t miss a slice; follow the Slices of Life page on Facebook. vj

I’m dreaming of a warm Christmas

Two a.m. Boink! My eyes pop open. It’s Christmas Eve, but it’s not that I just heard Santa wandering through the house. It’s far more banal: gotta use the bathroom. I crawl out of bed, step bare-assed into . . . oh my God . . . a learning experience.

Another one!

The heat was off. The furnace had shut down. And it was below-zero outside – apparently way below zero. The

previous day, weather advisories had flowed in: lots of snow, cold as hell. And now here I was, naked in a house that had lost Valley Views its heat. Uh . . . now what?

Robert C. Koehler PeaceVoice Step one, of course, was to complete my intended task: go to the bathroom, which I did. But at 2 a.m., I couldn’t envision any further productive action. I crawled back into bed, pulling the covers around me. I fell back to sleep, resee page 12

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from page 11

turned to the coziness of dreaming, at least for a while. But eventually I got up for real. Getting dressed didn’t stop with putting my clothes on. I also wrapped myself in a winter jacket. Then I called the furnace guys. Problem solved, right?

Well, not exactly. This was Christmas Eve, after all: a.k.a., Saturday, Dec. 24. Turns out people throughout the Chicago area were having furnace problems and initially the person I talked to said she couldn’t schedule an appointment for me till . . . good God, Monday. But she said she could also put me on a waiting list – if there’s a cancellation or whatever, a technician might be able to work me in.

That was the best I could do, and I was left – winter-bundled in my own house – to ponder with awe how fully I take warmth and comfort for granted. Without warmth and comfort, I’m not free to be bored! I’m not free to be self-indulgent, annoyed or even depressed, much less opinionated and politically angry. I just stood there shivering and staring into the unknown. Finally (warning: I’m about to reveal how complex my life is, at age 76) I decided that I might as well drive over to Walgreen’s and pick up the prescription they have waiting for me. I had nothing else to do.

It was on this brief journey, a mile and a half from my house, that I first felt a penetration of awareness – or something. Life amounts to more than just me.

Come on! I already know this. Nonetheless . . .

I parked my car in the lot, walked 20 feet through the frigid weather to the drugstore, and there was a guy . . . there was a guy . . . just sitting on the sidewalk next to the revolving door, a Styrofoam cup in his hand. He needed money on this below-zero day and he was sitting on the sidewalk. My brain swirled in confused empathy. I put a dollar in his cup.

Somehow I felt . . . what? Connected to his plight? I had been shivering that morning as well. We’re all one? I picked up my prescription and, as l left the store, I dug into my empathy and gave him another five dollars.

That was it. I headed home, beset with a sense of collective guilt. Something big is wrong here, right? Even though I already knew this, my awareness in this moment felt, for God’s sake, different: not merely abstract, but physical.

And shortly after I got home, I was informed that a technician was on the way. Wow! Now I felt great. And all that collective guilt vanished as I prepared to reclaim “normalcy.” Alas, it didn’t happen quite that easily. Since this was Christmas Eve, the technician did not have access to the new motor that my furnace needed, and he shrugged: He’d have to come back on Tuesday. And suddenly I was catapulted back into a sense of shivering victimhood.

He left me with a space heater, which was capable of heating up about a foot of space in the house, and I spent the rest of Christmas Eve wedged next it and covered with a blanket, staring at my computer. Ah, life! That night I stacked about 10 blankets on the bed and crawled in without removing anything except my shoes. The house temperature by then was in the low 40s, but the blankets and multi-layers of clothing kept we warm enough to sleep.

The next day was Christmas. Ta da! “We wish you an ironic Christmas,” ran the song in my noggin. Because of unusual circumstances, I had no particular plans that day. I had already celebrated an early Christmas in Wisconsin, with my sister and her family, and I was just planning to hang out, surf the Internet, ponder life and (maybe) write something profound and change the world. I did have one actual plan: to call my daughter, Alison, the artist who lives in Paris. We talked, via FaceTime, and she saw her dad dressed as though he were calling from Antarctica. I tried to make it seem funny – I simply didn’t want anyone to be concerned. But for some reason she was.

And so she called her aunt – my sister-in-law – who a short while later called me and invited me over. Uh . . . I was momentarily hesitant as I sat wedged next to the space heater, but quickly felt the lure of warmth and normalcy. “Gosh, thanks! I’ll be there.” I packed my toothbrush, some socks and underwear, whatever, and headed off to Skokie, to the home of my sister-in-law and brother-in-law. Apparently, I’m not quite the lone wolf I think of myself as. Their invite began warming me before I felt the heat of their house. And suddenly the irony disappeared from Christmas.

I spent the rest of Christmas and all day Monday being happily part of their lives, then returned home on Tuesday. The technician came a little after 9, installed the new motor – which was under warranty, so it cost me nothing – and for the rest of the day the house began warming up from 40 degrees. End of story.

Except . . . no way is it the end of the story. For instance:

“As people across the country brace for upcoming cold weather, many of those set to suffer the most are incarcerated in prisons and jails,” writes Katie Rose Quandt at Truthout. “Each winter, people in old, drafty facilities shiver for months in their cells, struggling to function and fearing for their health. They have no control over cell temperature, and often little access to warm clothes or extra blankets. Inevitably, some outdated heating systems across the country will fail, leaving people in dangerously frigid temperatures.”

And that’s just one piece of it – men, women, children caught in the lethal cold, caught well beyond their own control, without hope, without space heaters, across the country, at our borders, around the world. I sigh into my own private warmth.

Robert Koehler (koehlercw@gmail.com), syndicated by PeaceVoice, is a Chicago award-winning journalist and editor. He is the author of Courage Grows Strong at the Wound.

letters

Live life peacefully

The only control I have in life is over myself. Regardless of the condition of my body, I am totally in control of my mind. “My thinking makes it so,” Rev. Larry King

We are witnessing the tremendous advances our world is making exploring and learning about outer space. It occurs to me that we humans should be working just as hard on exploring our inner space. By this I mean how we each choose to think, speak, and act in our daily lives. The answer I discovered for myself is the spiritual teachings of “A Course in Miracles.” This is a self-study program of spiritual psychology and a mind-training in the relinquishment of a thought system based on fear and the acceptance of a thought system based on love. There are also many other self-empowering teachings available.

My point is that our world is obviously amidst tremendous chaos, confusion, battles and betrayals. But each of us has the personal power, through our thinking, to live life harmoniously and peacefully rather than with constant confused thoughts, worries and fears. “Seek and ye shall find.”

Bob McClellan Missoula

Governor appeals judge’s decision

News from the office of Governor Gianforte

HELENA — Governor Greg Gianforte recentlly announced his administration has filed its briefing in the appeal of a judge’s decision denying the state’s petition for stay after the Biden Administration approved the American Prairie Reserve’s request to graze bison on Bureau of Land Management land in northeast Montana.

In briefing, entitled a Statement of Reasons (statement) and submitted to the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Board of Land Appeals, the Gianforte administration again requested a stay of the decision pending appeal, highlighting failures by the judge in denying the stay this fall.

First, the administration argues the judge failed to sufficiently analyze the state’s legal arguments.

“This summary denial inadequately addresses the Executive’s statutory authority arguments and completely ignores the Executive’s regulatory authority arguments,” the statement reads, restating the arguments in favor of a stay.

Second, the administration asserts that in denying its petition for stay, the judge failed to properly assess the magnitude of harm to the State because it limited its review to the harm caused to one allotment.

“The Final Decision authorizes permits on all allotments in this case. The Executive requested a stay of the Final Decision in its entirety—not just those portions APR feels inclined to affect on a given day. To find otherwise subjects the Executive to an untenable game of whacka-mole,” the statement continues. The statement explains that the denial of a stay infringes on the State’s ability to manage state trust lands.

Following the judge’s order, DNRC notified APR that bison are not presently authorized under state law to graze state trust lands on several of the allotments at issue in the case. In response, APR expressed plans to implement a new fencing regime in an effort to avoid state trust lands and utilize a portion of the allotment. The administration highlights this departure from the BLM’s Final Decision in its statement.

“Allowing APR to proceed in deviation from a contested Final Decision, in the absence of analysis and public involvement, is not only legally fraught but disingenuous to the process leading to the Final Decision.”

Finally, arguing the judge failed to adequately analyze public interest, which weighs in favor of a stay, the statement continues, “It is not in the public interest to permit such an offense to persist, especially pending appeal.”

The statement also contends public interest weighs against usurping the State’s authority over state trust lands as well as against federal administrative agencies, bending the law and exceeding the scope of its authority.

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