On Nov. 12, the paper printed an article about fines to dentists. Somehow it said a lot of nothing, or at least I think it did. We are told fines are assessed amounting to $200,000 to individual dentists and as much as $800,000 in total to the state’s dentists. We are told that by the dentists and that assessment of the fines was basically nitpicking.

One of the fines was imposed because the dentist’s name was on the wrong line. This all may be true, but as far as I can tell the only source in the article is from the dentist and had not been verified.

The Department of Health and Human Services says that if the dentists didn’t like the fines then they should appeal them. That sounds reasonable enough, and then we may find the true story about the fines, not from a few dentists with unverified amounts.

Then the next day we get up-to-date news that the MaineCare website is not producing applications, and it looks like the Affordable Care Act is to blame. Officials from the state say that there has been no noticeable increase in Medicaid applications from the federal government. No increase may be for a variety of reasons, the simplest one being people are not applying. We really do not know why, but the paper reported “The Website Fails.”

But then it occurred to me that maybe those reporters graduated from “The Lara Logan School of Journalism.”

Thomas J. BrazierWaterville


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