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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2009 > November > 29
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Editorial: Ohio needs health reform more than most
In presidential elections, being a “swing” state can be a pretty neat thing. The whole world watches you.
In legislative fights, however, being a swing state can mean canceling yourself out.
Here we have Ohio’s U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, fighting for the strongest possible health care bill. He wants a version including the “public option,” which frightens off some moderate Democrats. He also wants to strengthen the pending Senate bill to allow the government to negotiate prices with drug companies.
On the other hand, we have Sen. George Voinovich, a Republican, who’s against the Senate package, with the public option being only one reason.
Over in the House, every Ohio Republican voted against the bill that passed, and every Democrat but one (Rep. John Boccieri, of the Canton area) voted yes. That made a 9-9 tie among Ohioans.
So it looks as though, if Ohio sat the whole thing out in Congress, nothing much would change.
That’s not true as to the actual shaping of the bill. On that, for the moment, the fight is among the Democrats.
And yet what’s really important here is the big picture.
More people in Ohio than just about anyplace have experienced firsthand the drastic flaws in the American health insurance system. They have lost their insurance along with their jobs. Now, in the contact sport of life, they are like football players without padding.
Under these circumstances, it is remarkable how many of the state’s politicians can find a reason to oppose a plan that will result in 30 million more people having insurance.
The plan will achieve that not by giving the insurance away, but by requiring people to pay for it (according to their means). And, purportedly, the plan will not increase the federal debt.
The nation needs this. And no place needs it more than Ohio.
The conclusion that the pending bills would not increase the national debt comes from that bipartisan Congressional Budget Office. A few months ago, when the CBO was saying that a pending House bill would, in fact, increase the deficit, opponents were gleeful. They said the CBO made a mockery of the president’s promise not to sign a bill that increased the deficit by one penny.
Now, however, those same people are finding reasons to ignore the CBO. Sen. Voinovich is one of the many Republicans suddenly throwing around the figure $2.5 trillion as the cost over a decade of the Senate proposal, as opposed to the $848 billion the CBO says.
(The Republicans start counting in 2014, not 2010. Even at that, though, the figure appears to be a partisan guess.)
The pending bills would set up insurance co-ops where people who aren’t insured at work can buy insurance from companies that have to compete (and maybe from the government — the public option). And the bills would prevent insurance companies from denying coverage because of pre-existing conditions, among other long overdue reforms.
There are downsides, of course. Individuals would be under a new burden to get themselves insured. But, since people who show up at emergency rooms do get treated even if they’re not insured, that seems reasonable.
And businesses above a certain size would have to provide insurance or face a possible fine. But their domestic competitors would have the same problem. And many of those that are big enough to have foreign competitors already offer insurance.
Much has been made of the fact that the various bills are 2,000 pages long. But that’s partly because the reformers started with the determination not to undermine the good aspects of the existing system. Working around what’s in place was complicated.
The effort to plug the holes in the American health care system has been underway — on and off — for many decades. There is no simple, uncontroversial way. But it must be done. Citizens of other affluent countries do not have to go without health insurance. Neither should Americans.
Permalink | Comments (20) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Health Care, Martin Gottlieb, National Politics, Ohio politics
Ellen Belcher: Mike Peters finds fan in Baghdad
Here’s a Mike Peters story you won’t forget.
Last month, Mike and nine other cartoonists went to Baghdad to entertain the troops.
For Mike, it was the second trip of this sort. On a previous occasion, he and a group of cartoonists went to military hospitals in Germany.
This year they traveled to Walter Reed and Bethesda hospitals near Washington, D.C.; to Ramstein Air Base, where seriously injured military personnel are taken from Iraq; then to staging bases in Kuwait; and finally to Iraq.
During their three days in Iraq, the cartoonists were transported by Blackhawk helicopters to multiple bases around the dusty country.
Some flights lasted an hour; others were longer. Two machine-gunners accompanied them.
Mike said he was hoping the security was just for show, but when he asked about the protection, he was told, “No, sir, we do take fire.”
Enough said.
In the hospitals and at the bases, the cartoonists drew cartoons, caricatures and characters from their comic strips.
(The others on the trip were Kettering’s Chip Bok, formerly of the Akron Beacon Journal; Michael Ramirez of Investors Business Daily; Bruce Higdon of Army Times; Garry Trudeau, creator of Doonesbury; Stephan Pastis of Pearls Before Swine; Rick Kirkman of Baby Blues; Jeff Keane of The Family Circus; Jeff Bacon of Broadside and Greenside; and Tom Richmond of MAD magazine.)
Mike said the number of amputees at the hospitals was stunning.
The enemy’s heavy use of improvised explosive devices in both Iraq and Afghanistan has resulted in thousands of these crippling injuries.
Mike, being Mike, defused tension with humor. When the cartoonists were leaving Germany, they were instructed not to tell passport control that they were on their way to Iraq.
The other cartoonists worried that Mike would spill their destination.
When his turn came to go through customs, Mike quietly asked the sober and stern female officer if she would rush out of her cubicle, shove him up against the wall, then frisk him.
It was quite the spectacle when she indulged him.
Another unnerving moment was the landing in Baghdad. As part of the approach, the pilots do a maneuver known as a “corkscrew” — an evasive tactic designed to make it difficult for anyone to take down a plane.
In Iraq, some military personnel waited in line for hours to meet the cartoonists and get signed drawings from them. Mike said that, to a person, all those he spoke with were ready to come home.
“They say they’ve done all they can do,” he said.
Mike said he was hoping to walk around Baghdad. “During the campaign, John McCain said you could do that,” he quipped. But, of course, that never happened.
The tail end of the trip was the shocker. On the next-to-last day, the men boarded helicopters once again and were taken to Saddam Hussein’s palace. Among other uses, it serves as a place for troops to recuperate after particularly tragic experiences.
Its furnishings are splendor on steroids.
The balconies are carpeted with AstroTurf so that the Iraqi leader and his guests could hit golf balls from their bedrooms into a man-made lake. There’s a vast playground complete with caves, apparently built as consolation for the children of two of Hussein’s sons-in-law, whom he had assassinated.
Upon arriving, Mike learned that a colonel wanted to see him at the end of the day. Mike couldn’t imagine why, but, hey, occasionally he follows orders.
That evening, slightly worried about what would come next, Mike walked in to an ornate office with a sprawling table made with rare wood and marble. In came the colonel with, as Mike tells it, a dossier.
To Mike’s shock, it contained a collection of some 20 “Open Mike” submissions that Lt. Col. Stuart Kidder had penned. (Our “Open Mike” contest is at DaytonDailyNews.com; readers are invited to submit a cartoon caption and then vote for a winner from a list of several finalists.)
Kidder wanted Mike to critique his entries. He had yet to win, and, being a competitive sort, was looking for an edge.
How did Kidder discover “Open Mike”?
Before he left for Iraq in March, he was stationed at Fort Lewis in Washington. The Olympian newspaper also publishes “Open Mike.”
Kidder Googled the phrase and found that “Open Mike” winners receive the original Peters cartoon.
Since then, Kidder, who is 45 and the father of two, has been playing at our site.
Kidder said his entire staff gets in on the fun. Humor keeps them going.
“I’m really a political cartoonist junkie,” Kidder said in a telephone call from Iraq. “I find the guys who do them to be masterful thinkers.”
Referring to Mike, Kidder said, “He is my go-to guy. His politics and mine are not the same on everything. … But they (the cartoonists) are all good Americans.”
I know that you’re not going to believe this, but two weeks ago, Kidder won the “Open Mike” contest fair and square. Cross my heart, his e-mail address wasn’t visible to us when we picked his entry as a finalist, and it really did draw the most online votes.
Now the only problem, Kidder complained, is that he can’t play again for 90 days.
But he’ll be back. It’s great for morale.
Permalink | Comments (12) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Ellen Belcher
