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Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Friday, January 27, 2017 Founded October 16, 1875 KATHRYN B. BROWN Publisher DANIEL WATTENBURGER Managing Editor TIM TRAINOR Opinion Page Editor MARISSA WILLIAMS Regional Advertising Director MARCY ROSENBERG Circulation Manager JANNA HEIMGARTNER Business Office Manager MIKE JENSEN Production Manager OUR VIEW Tip of the hat; kick in the pants A kick in the pants to the Hermiston School District’s attempted sleight of hand Thursday morning, as it once again tried to get us all to look over there while problems exist right here. The Oregon Department of Education releases hard and fast graduation statistics each winter, breaking down how many diplomas were handed out in each district and individual school the previous year. Hermiston has made it a point to publish a rosy press release when state reports become available to boast how well its schools are doing. And it’s true, looking at a sliver of the data, that the high school is performing better than the state average. Trumpets, confetti. But take one half step back and you’ll see Hermiston high schoolers as a whole are performing worse than both the state and the region. Of all the students considered the class of 2016, only 65.7 percent graduated. On the front page of today’s East Oregonian you’ll see that ranks it last among area districts. The discrepancy between reality and spin comes because the school district doesn’t include — in the data it’s promoting — the now-defunct Innovative Learning Center, where students who fell off the traditional path to graduation can seek out an alternative education, In that program, which had 98 students, only four graduated on time. Many were on a path to a five- or six-year diploma, or a GED, or had life circumstances get in their path to graduation. That’s understandable, and certainly a consideration in every district. The program was closed after last school year. The point is, it’s deceptive for the school district to put out a public message ignoring those students. It’s disingenuous to pretend that just because they’re counted in a different column in a state spreadsheet, they’re not indicative of the school district’s mission of getting diplomas to every student. And the school district should end the now-annual practice of falsely representing data in only the best of lights. If it wants to put out a message, we’d suggest it lay out the numbers directly from the state, talk about where it succeeded and where it hopes to improve. There is a time and a place for cheerleading, but this isn’t Kennison Field. A tip of the hat to everyone who has helped care for nearly 200 malnourished and neglected cattle found recently on a ranch outside Hermiston. That includes Umatilla County and its sheriff’s office, which is paying handsomely to help care for and feed the animals. It also includes BMCC students, local veterinarians and dozens of community members who are spending their time and money to chip in where they can. Our story in Thursday’s paper painted a grim picture — 17 cattle are dead and others remain sick, many never to recover. But it also painted a rosier one too. The community resolve has saved the lives of many animals, and it showed how this community responds to tragedy. It looks for actions that cause improvement, not pointing fingers and assigning blame. That’s our local justice system’s job. And the owner of the animals, Michael Hockensmith, will likely soon face multiple charges of first- and second-degree animal neglect. All we can do now is care for these animals as best we can, like Hockensmith should have. And we tip our hat to the many who are doing so. Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East Oregonian editorial board of publisher Kathryn Brown, managing editor Daniel Wattenburger, and opinion page editor Tim Trainor. Other columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not necessarily that of the East Oregonian. OTHER VIEWS Trump could benefit from thicker skin The Altoona (Penn.) Mirror W hen incumbent President Harry S. Truman held up a Nov. 3, 1948, edition of the Chicago Daily Tribune, he had grounds for his bemusement over the large headline stretching across the top of the front page: “Dewey Defeats Truman.” The fact was that Truman actually had defeated his opponent, New York Gov. Thomas Dewey, despite polls that had “made clear” that there was no way the president would be elected to a term of his own. Truman had become the nation’s chief executive after the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945. An incorrect headline like that one of November 1948 is every editor’s and every publisher’s nightmare. But headlines and news accounts addressing public attendance at Friday’s inauguration of President Donald Trump didn’t warrant the kind of embarrassment and ridicule that the Chicago newspaper subsequently endured. The reason: Friday’s inauguration attendance was much lower than what greeted the inauguration of Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, even though Trump and some of his aides branded the news accounts about the attendance incorrect or, worse, outright lies. About the inauguration attendance, the news media didn’t err. Rather than wasting time denigrating facts— verified facts —that are inconsequential when stacked up against the monumental tasks and responsibilities that are ahead for the administration, Trump and his advisers should ignore them and simply move on to the important, critical tasks at hand. Facts are facts, and journalists shouldn’t be criticized for reporting facts, whether they’re complimentary or otherwise. The Trump administration makes a mockery of itself and erodes its credibility when it offers what it calls “alternative facts” that aren’t really factual. Trump would do himself a favor if he’d abandon his Twitter account and devote himself fully to his presidential duties. There always will be opposition to whatever he does; that’s a fact of life in all levels of government. It’s overdue for him to accept that. His responsibility is to do what he feels is best for the nation and not become aggrieved and combative every time others criticize or try to second- guess his decisions. That’s good advice for his advisers and aides as well, one notable one being Kellyanne Conway, who on Sunday described the attendance coverage as “symbolic of the way we’re treated by the press.” Truman accepted no small amount of criticism and ridicule during his presidency, and Obama consistently was the object of criticism during his eight years in the Oval Office. Trump needs to accept the fact that news coverage and criticism come with being president— and that the ability to “live” with them displays strength and stability, not weakness. OTHER VIEWS Repeal and compete M odern conservatism, at least care in cash and by giving them more in its pre-Donald Trump freedom in what plans they’re allowed incarnation, evolved to to buy, you would end up with less believe in a marriage of Edmund spending, lower prices and less cost Burke and Milton Friedman, in inflation. (And you wouldn’t need the which the wisdom of tradition and heavy, innovation-squashing price the wisdom of free markets were controls that single-payer systems use complementary ideas. Both, in their to get there.) different ways, delivered a kind The peril is that there would be Ross of bottom-up democratic wisdom too wide a gap between what the Douthat — the first through the cumulative money in your health savings account Comment experiments of the human past, the covers and what you need before second through the contemporary your catastrophic coverage kicks in. experiments enabled by choice and In which case many people with consistent competition. health care costs for chronic problems would rack up impossible medical bills in short order. In health care policy, however, Conservatives who want this model to conservatives tend to simply favor Friedman over Burke. That is, the right’s best health care replace Obamacare nationwide believe that the promise outweighs the risk — and this minds believe that markets and competition is, again, a reasonable belief. But it’s also a can deliver lower costs and better care, and belief that hasn’t been tested they believe it even though on any kind of sweeping, there is no clear example of economywide scale. And this a modern health care system is the advantage of Cassidy- built along the lines that they Collins: It encourages desire. governors and legislators to The dominant systems in actually put the conservative the developed world, whether theory of health care to the government-run or single- test without simply reversing payer or Obamacare-esque, the ideological colors of the are generally statist to degrees great Obamacare experiment that conservatives deplore. and immediately turning A few of them — notably the entire U.S. health care Singapore’s, the beau ideal system over to the right’s of right-wing health care technocratic vision. wonks — do have distinctive Of course this would mean elements that conservatives that Obamacare’s existing favor. But mostly they tend problems would persist in the to be much more heavily states where it continues. But regulated and subsidized than those problems — the rise the system that conservative in premiums, the fleeing insurers, the risk of health policy wonks and policy-literate a death spiral downstream — are not equally Republicans would like to see take over from problematic in every state, and they are not Obamacare. fiscally dangerous, as yet, on the scale that Which is not to say that the conservative many conservatives initially feared. health policy vision lacks empirical As the conservative policy thinker Yuval grounding. There is compelling evidence that Levin wrote late last year, the striking thing markets in health care can do more to lower about Obamacare to date is how much costs and prices than liberals allow, and good smaller than expected its effect on the overall reasons to think that free-market competition health care system has been. Fewer people produces more medical innovation than more are being insured on the exchanges than socialized systems. liberals hoped, fewer employers are dumping But still — there is no existing system on high-cost employees onto the exchanges than a national scale that looks like the health care conservatives feared, and as a result, he writes: system that Paul Ryan or Tom Price would “The extremely serious problems we are design, no wisdom of developed-economy seeing now are within the one system that experience that proves that such a system Obamacare created from scratch, the exchange would actually keep overall costs low and system. That system may not survive, and prevent too many people from being shut out its condition has a lot to teach us about the of insurance markets. So embracing even the problems with liberal health economics. smartest conservative Obamacare alternative requires a not-precisely-Burkean leap of faith. But it is a much smaller system than anyone thought it would be at this point, about half And this, in a nutshell, is why Republicans the size that CBO projected, so that the effects should give serious consideration to the of any failure it suffers are likely to be more proposal that Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana contained than anyone might have expected.” and Sen. Susan Collins of Maine have just This containment means that conservatives put forward as a possible health care reform have room and time to be more patient, alternative. cautious and experimental than were the The essence of Cassidy-Collins, and the Obama Democrats before them. If the reason that many Republicans don’t like Obamacare exchanges aren’t ultimately going it, is that it isn’t actually a full Obamacare to work out, then allowing them to persist replacement. Instead, it’s a federalist in liberal states while an alternative system compromise. It lets individual state gets set up in red states is a reasonable way governments decide whether they want to to gradually transition from the liberal model stick with Obamacare or not, which would toward the conservative one. If the right’s mean that the law would remain intact in wonks are right about health policy, the most blue states for the time being, while Cassidy-Collins approach should — gradually redder states would have the opportunity to — enable conservatives to prove it. turn roughly the same amount of money (95 And if the right is wrong, if its model percent) to a different end. doesn’t match reality, if people are simply That end would look like one of the miserable as health care consumers because more plausible conservative alternatives to the system has too much of Friedman and not Obamacare: a subsidy to cover the cost of enough of Burke — well, in that case both a catastrophic health insurance plan, plus the country and conservatism will be better a directly funded health savings account to off if we learn that via a voter rebellion in cover primary care. 10 right-leaning states, rather than through This system could be layered on top of a much more widespread backlash against a the existing Medicaid expansion, replacing nationwide health-insurance failure. (Which is only the Obamacare subsidies and exchanges, something a president with a high self-regard or it could replace the Medicaid expansion and poor approval ratings might have a as well, offering the poor and near poor the particular reason to avoid.) same “catastrophic insurance plus a subsidy” Between this reasonable case and as everyone else in the individual market. legislative reality, of course, falls a variety of Either way the individual mandate would shadows. But more than for the various repeal- disappear, but people would be auto-enrolled and-replace alternatives? I’m not so sure. in a catastrophic plan (with the option to Right now the Cassidy-Collins compromise opt out), meaning that coverage would has few enthusiastic backers. In a few months, be nearly universal (thus fulfilling one of however, it might turn into conservative health President Donald Trump’s various promises) care reform’s best hope. even though its benefits would be less ■ comprehensive than Obamacare’s. Ross Douthat joined The New York Taken as a whole, this approach distills Times as an Op-Ed columnist in April 2009. both the promise and the peril of conservative Previously, he was a senior editor at the health care policy. The promise is that by Atlantic and a blogger for theatlantic.com. having people pay for more of their health There is compelling evidence that markets in health care can do more to lower costs and prices than liberals allow. LETTERS POLICY The East Oregonian welcomes original letters of 400 words or less on public issues and public policies for publication in the newspaper and on our website. Unsigned letters will not be published. Send letters to 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com.
