Page 4A
OPINION
East Oregonian
Friday, June 9, 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 tip of the hat to Eli Anderson, profiled in today’s paper. Anderson,
as we’re sure you’ve read by the time you’ve thumbed to page 4A, helped
stop what could have been a very destructive
and even life-threatening fire at Eastern Oregon
Correctional Institution on March 29.
Anderson repeatedly entered the prison’s
carpentry shop with fire extinguishers, likely
stopping the fire from spreading and getting out of
control, causing unimaginable damage to life and
property.
Anderson was festooned with awards earlier this week, all of them
deserved. But a tip of the hat is the cherry on top, and we appreciate his
quick and heroic thinking in a time of serious danger.
A tip of the hat to Darrin Umbarger, the Pendleton man who helped
make the Oregon Capitol more easily accessible for people who use
electric wheelchairs.
Umbarger and Sen. Bill Hansell (R-Athena), worked together to help
secure an $18,000 state grant that he used to create
a unit that could recharge multiple types of electric
wheelchairs. It’s Umbarger’s system that was
installed in the Capitol earlier this week, the first of
its kind in any statehouse nationwide.
“It gives (all) citizens an opportunity to participate
in state government,” he told an East Oregonian
reporter. He also said he hopes the charging stations
catch on and pop up in shopping malls, stadiums, theaters, amusement parks,
courthouses and other places.
Here’s hoping there are more hat tips down the road.
A tip of the hat to the volunteer crew of ASPIRE at Pendleton High
School, a group tasked with helping students apply, attend and make a
financial plan for higher education.
Roughly 81 percent of Pendleton High School students used the in-school
service at least once during their high school career
to talk about college opportunities, work on college
applications, search for scholarships or get help with
essays, the FAFSA, SAT and ACT test prep, career
exploration or tours of college campuses.
Those consultations helped Pendleton’s 185
graduates in the Class of 2017 earn 296 scholarships
worth $2,060,572. That goes to show that hard work
and good grades really do pay off handsomely.
But more volunteers are always needed to help Pendleton youth prepare
for life after high school. Email ASPIRE coordinator Jill Gregg at jill.
gregg@pendleton.k12.or.us or call her at 541-966-3846 to lend a hand.
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
American health care system
an entangled Gordian Knot
The (Macon, Ga.) Telegraph
N
o matter your opinion of
President Barack Obama’s
signature legislative
accomplishment, the Affordable Care
Act, it has become increasingly clear, as
Congress attempts to untie the Gordian
Knot, how difficult it must have been to
wrangle all of the health care players,
lawmakers and various lobbyists to
support the ACA in the first place.
After running into a brick wall
of competing interests within the
Republican Party’s own ranks, House
leaders gave up on an earlier attempt to
repeal and replace Obamacare in March
after the Congressional Budget Office
scored the proposal and said it would
leave 24 million Americans without
insurance within a decade. The House
returned for another bite of the apple
earlier this month and approved and
sent it on to the Senate before the CBO
scored it.
The results of that scoring were
released last Wednesday. It is not pretty.
The House bill would leave 14 million
more Americans uninsured next year
than under the ACA. The House plan
would reduce Medicaid spending by
$834 billion. In a decade, 23 million
more Americans would be added to the
list of uninsured. In 2026, the number
of uninsured according to the CBO
would be about the same as before the
ACA was implemented. The CBO also
reported that the proposal would reduce
the deficit by $119 billion over a decade.
Most Americans could care less
about what goes on in Washington,
D.C. What are the practical impacts of
this proposal? Medicaid, in its present
form, is insufficient. It doesn’t pay
enough now for the services rendered.
Right now, people who did qualify for
Medicaid are no longer eligible because
requirements have changed. The result?
More people are sick and they are
getting sicker, sooner.
And where do the uninsured go
when they get sick? Your friendly
neighborhood hospital. Hospitals have
to care for every person who presents
at their doors, and if the past is any
indicator, those without insurance
present at the facilities’ most expensive
entrances: the emergency rooms. And
those without insurance arrive there
sicker because they haven’t received
regular care.
There was a time when hospitals
could cost shift — charge paying
patients and those with good insurance
plans more for procedures to help defray
the cost of the uninsured and to cover
the medigap. Those days are gone.
Insurance companies have played hard
ball with providers to get the best prices
and to improve their bottom lines.
Hospitals are already operating
on razor-thin margins. According to
Becker’s Hospital Review, 21 hospitals
closed in 2016. Five have declared
bankruptcy this year.
The House health care proposal now
sits in the Senate and a working group
there has basically said they are ignoring
it and drafting their own bill. Why? The
House bill has clearly identified winners
— young, healthy and wealthy — and
losers, those on Medicaid, children, the
disabled, poor, sick and older Americans.
Add to that list something the CBO
recognized. The House bill would
destabilize the health-care system. An
amendment that was added would turn
some of the responsibilities for what’s
covered over to states. Some states could
allow offering insurance plans that cover
next to nothing, as was the case before
Obamacare, allowing lawmakers to crow
that they made insurance available to
everyone.
Obamacare clearly needs fixing. It
is far from perfect, but it has taken a
huge step toward fulfilling its promise.
If lawmakers are sincere in their efforts
to provide health insurance to many
Americans who would clearly be left
out in the cold if this House proposal
were ever to see the light of day, they
will fix Obamacare, re-brand it, claim
credit and live to fight another day. If
they don’t, the Gordian Knot they are
attempting to unravel could land around
their necks with the electorate pulling
the ends ever tighter.
OTHER VIEWS
Guess what week it is?
H
appy Infrastructure Week!
very iffy presumptions about using tax
OK, I know some of you are
credits to get private investment in the
distracted by competing current
roads and bridges. Under the very best
events. But the Trump administration
of circumstances, it would mean a lot of
would prefer that we all concentrate on
tolls. It would also require a lot of smart
the president’s plans for improving the
government oversight, and we are
nation’s roads and bridges.
talking here about a White House that
Trump promised he’d be discussing
has yet to figure out how to nominate
infrastructure with all the major players
an ambassador to Great Britain.
Gail
“in great depth next week.” This was
Plus, the president’s budget actually
Collins
right before he went into a meeting with
cut $206 billion the government had
Comment
legislative leaders Tuesday. You may be
already committed to infrastructure
wondering why he didn’t discuss it with
projects. So Wednesday, when Trump
them in great depth right at that moment. Since was in Cincinnati standing by the mighty Ohio
this is, you know, Infrastructure Week.
and extolling the glories of river transport,
One possible answer is that the president
cynics gloomily recalled that he wants to
likes promising to discuss important policy
slice a billion dollars from the Army Corps of
matters in the future much more than he likes
Engineers, which fixes the dams and locks.
working on them in the present. But to be
Did he brag about winning the election?
fair, one of the Republican
He always does that in his
leaders did report later that
speeches.
Trump had mentioned the
Yeah, there was a little
wall along the Mexican
mention of how Ohio “was
border, which would
supposed to be close. It
definitely be a structure. The
wasn’t.” He spent much
president revealed he wants
more time praising himself
to pay for it by putting solar
for approving the completion
panels along the top.
of the Dakota Access
Wait a minute, I thought
Pipeline, which required him
he hated renewable energy!
to courageously stand up to
Where did you come
environmental groups that
from? No, he doesn’t hate
had not supported him in the
renewable energy. Just
election. (“Nobody thought
wind power, and that’s
any politician would have
just because the Scottish
the guts to approve that final
government put some
leg. I just closed my eyes and
turbines near one of his golf
I said: ‘Do it.’”)
courses.
What’s wrong with
But let me tell you a little
investing government
more about Infrastructure
money on roads? President
Week. While the whole world was talking
Eisenhower did the biggest highway
about James Comey, Trump launched it with
construction program ever, and he was a
a plug for privatization of part of the Federal
Republican.
Aviation Administration. He sat down in front
If you’re going to try to imagine Donald
of the cameras and signed what might have
Trump and Dwight Eisenhower in the same
looked, to the uninitiated, like a law, or a
party, we can’t continue talking.
program, or at least a calendar of events. But it
But Trump did bring up Eisenhower’s grand
was really just a letter to Congress encouraging achievement in Cincinnati. “The Interstate
everyone to take up the FAA idea. Which they
Highway System — we don’t do that anymore.
have already made pretty clear they probably
We don’t even fix them,” he complained.
won’t.
There was no explanation of how the fixing
Why would we want to privatize the FAA?
was going to be accomplished through private
It’s not going to make flying safer. If they
investors, who want new tolls, not fewer
wanted to make it better, they could tell the
potholes.
airlines to put in more leg room.
He didn’t say anything at all about how
I could use a little less interruption. But,
his infrastructure plan would work, possibly
yeah.
because it doesn’t appear to exist at this point in
During the presidential campaign, Trump
time. The Democrats do have one, but Trump
called for a $1 trillion program to rebuild the
certainly hasn’t read it.
nation’s roads and bridges and waterways. It
Because he can’t read, right?
was a super popular idea, and once he was
Don’t be mean. He just doesn’t like to
elected, one of the very few bright spots
read at great length. But the president made
congressional Democrats saw on the horizon.
it sound as if, at the first mention of the
They figured Republican fiscal conservatives
word “infrastructure,” the Democrats had
would balk, but they could make a deal to
thrown themselves upon the barricades. “I
deliver the needed extra votes.
just don’t see them coming together. They’re
“I told him — you know you’ll need our
obstructionist,” he claimed.
support,” a prominent Democrat happily told
The emperor has no clothes.
me last year. “And he said, ‘Yeah.’”
Yeah, this one has been buck naked since
This is what conversation sounds like in
the day he took office.
Washington these days. Still, by Trumpian
■
standards, that’s the Gettysburg Address.
Gail Collins joined The New York Times
But Trump’s people never reached out to the in 1995 as a member of the editorial board.
Democrats, who had reasonable reservations
In 2001 she became the first woman ever
about the original plan, which made some
appointed editor of the Times’s editorial page.
Trump didn’t
say anything
about how his
infrastructure
plan would
work, possibly
because it
doesn’t appear
to exist at this
point in time.
YOUR VIEWS
Racism part of daily life for
people of color in Eastern Ore.
We have a serious problem. I am one of
your own, and you could say that I am one of
your successes. I grew up in your community,
my parents have separately given to and served
your community, I was a part of your highly
successful dance team and worked in your
businesses. I have received funds from your
community to help aid my life as I complete
my undergraduate degree at the University of
Oregon.
I am thankful for our community and its
uniqueness; this being said I ask you to please
trust me and follow along while I tell you
how I have been victim to your exploitative
ways, and urge you to transform them. Racist
and sexist ways are of the past, right? Sure,
women are allowed to vote and racist slurs
are not generally accepted anymore, but I
have some hard news: The societally-based
ideals that create these social hierarchies are
not abolished. If I am wrong, come submit
your arguments to the multiple professors and
doctors that discuss these issues in academia at
my university.
I grew up hearing your racist and sexist
thoughts come out in my classmates. I watched
as the amazing Native American culture that
we are lucky to have a front row seat to in our
small community was often criminalized and
disrespected. I have experienced the ignorance
first hand. I watched someone in my life of
color be handcuffed in front of me for a simple
traffic stop. What we’d been accused of hadn’t
actually happened and we didn’t receive a
ticket for it.
Now as I have dealt with assault and abuse
in our community. I have seen it in my life
as a woman, who you believe that you can
undermine — from officers who did not allow
me to use my rights to obtain a restraining
order, which I now finally have since being in
a community that takes victim rights seriously.
Now that I am attempting to work with
Pendleton departments once again I cannot
believe what I have experienced. The most
recent experience consists of being told that
“I just shouldn’t get involved with people like
this.”
Change is hard but important, and as you
continue to raise up young people, you should
continue to protect them. Knowledge is power,
and the young people that you are sending off
to gain it will do you a world more of good,
if they do not have to come to realize the
oppression they may have grown up in.
Celina Taylor
Eugene