Letters to the editor:
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In the Trenches

Joe Sullivan has his facts in order but his conclusions are not ["TennCare Needs Life Support," Vol. 10, No. 10]. When the federal government pays two-thirds of the cost of medical care for people in Tennessee, this is still taxpayer money. We are becoming a mendicant, welfare state. We are required to fund Medicaid by law. We are not required to fund ill people from surrounding states who move here to get "free" care. Thus, returning to Medicaid is far less expensive than TennCare to the taxpayers. Mr. Sullivan does not criticize the insurance industry for dumping all its ill patients on the state. Our legislators should have prevented that and can still require that any insuror in Tennessee take its share of higher risk patients. According to the insurance companies, everyone with a backache is uninsurable. We should not allow companies with employee health plans to dump their employees who become diabetic, for example. This can be legislated. Although underfunding is a fact, thievery should not be overlooked. Virtually every TennCare provider has learned to throw at least half of the claims they receive by mail in the trash. They have developed a variety of schemes to delay or deny payment. There is a time value to money, and they are stealing it in enormous gulps. Notice that Vanderbilt sued Access Med Plus. The individual physician cannot afford to pay lawyers for every $50 or $100 claim not paid or delayed by the insurors. Those sums add up. I have never been involved with organized crime, but it can't be much worse than what the insurors are perpetrating in Tennessee. Where is the help from the state? Where is the enforcement?

Where are the audits?

This program has failed in every way and only its demise can offer hope of anything better.

Stephen E. Natelson MD
Knoxville

Wrecking Ball Blues

Well, it appears as if the first precursors of demolition have become visible on another historical home in the Fort Sanders area. Specifically, the blue and pale yellow Victorian style house (1416 Clinch Ave.) that is at the corners of James Agee Boulevard and Clinch Avenue. Actually, this Victorian-style structure is the last residential structure on this entire lot: Clinch Avenue-James Agee Boulevard-White Avenue-Fourteenth Street. Currently (aside from a very flimsy and small tool shed belonging to UT), it is the last structure still standing on this section/lot in Knoxville. It now stands on a piece of land that appears to have a destiny of become one big UT parking lot. (Go Vols!..?)

1) The wrought-iron fence that once surrounded the house has been removed.
2) Within the last few weeks, the garage has been demolished.
3) The building appears to be vacant.
4) Windows are broken, wide open, or have been removed.
5) Large empty holes appear in the walls where window frames have been dislocated. 6) According to a WBIR-TV Channel 10 news report at 6 p.m. (04/03/00): "Any remaining residents need to be out by April 13, 2000."
7) Front door and back doors are wide open.

As I stood there in the laundry-mat waiting for my clothes to dry, looking at that grand structure I noticing that many of the small panes of stained glass had not been removed, nor had the metal (copper?) peak on the building's cupola. Certainly, they aren't going to be left to the wrecking-ball, are they? I also noticed that the windows and frames that were torn out were all in the attic. Was the owner positively making sure that the rain got in? What was the owner's intentions (by removing the attic window and frames) to make sure that the rain would get in high up in there and then spread out down through the old structure? Did anyone else notice the anguish the grand old structure was suffering—did anyone even care?

James Agee had lived just a few blocks from this historic structure.

"'Knoxville: Summer 1915,' by James Agee, is one of the finest pieces of short prose in American literature....In 1957, after Agee's death, the original vignette was included as the introduction to Agee's autobiographical novel A Death in the Family. The book won the Pulitzer and is now an American classic...living a briefly happy childhood with his family on the 1500 block of Highland Avenue in Fort Sanders...it describes a Knoxville we might not recognize right away."
—Jack Neely, Metro Pulse

Agee had written his award-wining novel using Fort Sanders and his experiences in Fort Sanders as a guide. Sadly, it is now quite appropriate to express the current feelings among many residents in Fort Sanders by using his novel's title: "A Death in the Family."

Stephen M. Olah
Knoxville

Editor's Note: The house's owner, Robert Shagan, declined to comment on the future of the building or his plans for the lot. In the past six months, Shagan has torn down several houses on Clinch and Laurel avenues in Fort Sanders and appeared to be moving toward demolition of this 1895 house, known as the DeArmand House. However, City Council passed a 180 moratorium on demolition in the Fort Tuesday night.