Opinion

Positive thinking to build community

SAINTS PERSPECTIVE, SCCC President Brad Bennett

If you follow Seward County Community College on social media, you have probably seen a series of photos this month, featuring students, faculty, and staff. Each of them holds a placard with reflections on what community means to them.

Some of their answers are classic: community means working towards a shared goal, unity, and showing up when someone needs help. Others tap into humor, like the student who defines community in terms of baseball. One of our Saints wrote simply, that community is “Everything.”

Let’s make sure Medicare’s latest cost-cutting plan doesn’t backfire

GUEST COLUMN, Dr. Mathias P. Bostrom

Here’s a healthcare puzzle. When a doctor administers chemotherapy in their office, Medicare pays one rate. When the same doctor performs the same procedure in a hospital’s outpatient facility down the street, Medicare often pays more.

This disparity is at the heart of a push among some lawmakers for “site-neutral payments,” which would broadly require Medicare to pay the same rate for the same service regardless of where it’s performed. A bipartisan framework from Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., estimates that site-neutral payments could save Medicare over $100 billion in the next decade.

Tinkering with taxes

GUEST COLUMN, Greg Doering, Kansas Farm Bureau

My local public library has perhaps the best marketing of a tax-provided service ever. Patrons who check out items there receive a receipt that details the savings achieved by using the library. In 2024, my wife and I “saved” close to $5,000, according to this accounting.

There are some generous assumptions made to achieve that figure. The biggest, of course, is that we would have paid the retail price for every book we checked out. Then there’s the matter of the property tax we paid directly to the library, which would knock about $200 off the alleged savings.

Messiah: born under the Law

MY PERSPECTIVE, Gary Damron

Continuing a study of the historical Messiah, Galatians 4:4 has been a theme: “when the fulness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law.” Today we’ll try to examine what it means that Jesus was “born under the Law.”

There were two events in Jesus’ childhood, one shortly after His birth, and the other about 12 years later, that fulfilled the Mosaic law. (Later in adulthood He would sometimes forego cumbersome regulations, but they were some that had been added by religious leaders.) In the first instance, an elderly man Simeon entered the temple in Jerusalem the same day that Mary and Joseph came to present the child and fulfill two legal requirements - the redemption offering for a firstborn son, and the purification of His mother. After the rituals, and Simeon and Anna’s astonishing pronouncements (Luke 2:27-38), scripture tells us, “And when they [Joseph and Mary] had performed everything according to the Law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own city of Nazareth” (Luke 2:39).

Capping local increases not as simple as it sounds

GUEST COLUMN, Ron Ryckman, 38th District Senator

Even though Week 2 of the 2025 Legislature turned out to be one of “information overload,” no one could complain when it started out with a terrific pancake breakfast, courtesy of our kind folks from Liberal.

We did take a vote approving the Senate Rules — as well as 11 appointments by both the Governor and Attorney General, but there were no substantive debates on bills under what is called “General Orders.” Instead, we were inundated (can we use that term when talking about water?) with briefings and updates on everything from, yes, water, to public service to unemployment systems to rural attorney shortages, all in preparation for legislative decision-making ahead. This is fairly typical of the beginning of a Session, where we study and learn in preparation for the “heavy lifting” to follow. Come to think of it, it is not unlike being back in school taking everything in before later being “tested” on the exam-equivalent of votes.

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22nd November, 2025 - 2:07

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Visibility: 32,808 ft

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Opinion

Positive thinking to build community

SAINTS PERSPECTIVE, SCCC President Brad Bennett

Let’s make sure Medicare’s latest cost-cutting plan doesn’t backfire

GUEST COLUMN, Dr. Mathias P. Bostrom

Tinkering with taxes

GUEST COLUMN, Greg Doering, Kansas Farm Bureau

Messiah: born under the Law

MY PERSPECTIVE, Gary Damron

Capping local increases not as simple as it sounds

GUEST COLUMN, Ron Ryckman, 38th District Senator

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