Shame on Alaska Legislature

Around 7,000 of our senior citizens here in Alaska just got the snub from our Legislature. Our Legislature, in their infinite wisdom, failed to renew a bill that has since 2003 helped out our more needy senior citizens with their drug prescriptions. Have you check out the prices of what not to long ago was fairly reasonable drug prescriptions? I have and it is not pretty.

Further, with recent laws forbidding the right of any U.S. citizen to purchase reasonable to down right cheap drug prescriptions online out of Canada, this move by our Legislature is a double whammy.

These are the people that gave us the freedom we enjoy today, fought for our freedoms in several different wars — World War I and World War II and Korea — lived through the Depression, stood in the bread lines, lived though the Dust Bowl Days, the diseases like TB and Polio, got rid of the cold war and the imminent possible nuclear confrontation it represented, the trail blazers, the homesteaders, the rebuilders and the people that fully half of all inventions known in the world today came from giving each and every one of us the simple to complex things that make our lives so much better and easier to live.

They raised us, nurtured us, protected us and educated us, even putting us through college so our lives would be better than theirs. And they did all these selfless acts without the help of all the programs, welfares or grants and scholarships they have today. And what have we done to them in their hour of need? Nothing short of abandoned them.

I am ashamed and apologize, asking for forgiveness for this cold act. I will be 55 years old this summer. I was 40 only three or four years ago, or so it seems.

Listen up people, take care of our seniors because 1) they took care of us in so many ways, and 2) soon, very soon, we ourselves will be seniors. And if we don’t take care of them, then we will deserve what we get when we reach their age.

Shame on you, Alaska Legislature. You are unconscionable.

Kenny Bingaman

Soldotna