Page 4A
OPINION
East Oregonian
Friday, June 30, 2017
OTHER VIEWS
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 Kathleen Mollinedo, the 13-year-old girl who spent
a night lost in the woods near Tollgate, and the Umatilla County Search
and Rescue team for bringing her back safely.
Mollinedo deserves a tip for her cool-headed response in a dangerous
situation. She said she was away from camp climbing a tree when she fell,
rolled down a hill and became disoriented. She
walked away from camp instead of toward it, but
soon realized her mistake.
Instead of panicking and continuing to wander the
wilderness, making a search more difficult, she found
a clearing and stayed put. She listened for voices and
shouted whenever she thought she heard something.
She slept under a tree once the sun went down, but
returned to the clearing at sunup where she was found later that morning.
Getting lost in the woods can be frightening, and at night it becomes
particularly dangerous. Mollinedo did the exact right thing and the local
search and rescue unit was able to find her. That’s a win all around, and a
good example for any stray camper to follow.
A kick in the pants to the faltering fireworks show in Pendleton.
Seasonal celebrations are often taken for granted, with a small handful of
people doing a whole lot of work for the community at large to enjoy. Such
is the case with the Fourth of July fireworks show, which has been passed
around among organizations and most recently taken on by the Eagles and
most specifically by member Becky Marks.
Marks and the Eagles helped rally the event
in 2015 after it was nearly canceled, and took
the lead in 2016 as well. But she told the club
she wouldn’t be in charge of the 2017 show.
Now, with only a few days left until the
Fourth of July, word is out that there will be no
fireworks. And that’s a shame.
But it’s up to the citizens of Pendleton to
decide how to move forward. It’s no small feat to raise $10,000, and there
are certainly plenty of valuable places to donate our hard-earned dollars.
We nevertheless believe it’s an event that can be accomplished without
funds from the city. If Hermiston, Stanfield and Ione can put on a fireworks
show, Pendleton should be able to make it work, too.
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
Health care changes must
be a bipartisan effort
By Aurora (Colo.) Sentinel
T
wo things are easy for everyone
to agree on: Obamacare was a
noble idea that isn’t working,
and what Republicans are pitching
as a replacement is far worse than
Obamacare.
Beside those certainties, American
health care reform is chaos.
How American health care
works — or more accurately, doesn’t
work — is vastly complicated and
exasperating. It’s a hodgepodge of
philosophies, regulations, laws and
endless contradictions. Obamacare
was an attempt to reduce the individual
costs of health care and force insurance
companies to deliver value and fairness.
It was doomed from the beginning
because it tried to create a better system
for consumers without structurally
changing it. Without regulating costs
and controlling premium hikes, suppliers
endlessly hiked prices and insurance
companies demanded higher premiums.
While Obamacare infinitely improved
how consumers were treated by
insurance companies, fewer people in
the vast middle class can afford it any
more.
Trumpcare, as proposed by House
and Senate Republicans, only makes
an increasingly bad health care system
dangerously worse.
Numerous outside experts and
analysts agree that it would immediately
make health insurance more expensive
for Americans who are already
struggling with the cost of Obamacare.
If you’re between the ages of 50-65,
you’ll pay more than anyone, and you’ll
pay much, much more than you do now.
If you don’t pay, your employer will,
putting millions of American jobs at risk
as companies struggle with these costs
just like citizens are.
Trumpcare would not only push
people out of insurance immediately, it
would result in better than 20 million
Americans becoming uninsured above
what uninsured predictions are with
Obamacare. Who’s demanding “no”
votes on this bill? Just about every
single organization of doctors, nurses,
technicians, hospitals, the AARP, myriad
patient-advocate groups and almost
every health-insurance company.
The only winners with Trumpcare are
the very rich.
Setting aside the ethical quagmire
Trumpcare unleashes, here’s what
Congress must deal with to come even
close to solving the problem:
There are millions of Americans who
pay nothing or relatively little for health
care each year. The country spends about
$600 billion a year just on Medicaid
spending. On top of that, hospitals
provide about $40 billion a year in
“uncompensated” care to sick people
who don’t have insurance or Medicaid.
And on top of that, hospitals report that
they lose another $60 billion a year
or so from Medicaid and Medicare
reimbursement rates that are well under
actual costs.
It means that we continue to play a
shell game on how to pay for about $700
billion in health care for people who
can’t or don’t pay.
While many Republicans say they
don’t want to offer free care through
Medicaid to so many poor people any
more, it’s not that simple. Besides
being cruel, the notion is naive. What
many Republicans fail to admit is that
the nation’s uninsured and poor have
long received health care and will in
the future. Federal law demands that
hospitals treat emergency patients even
if they can’t pay.
Nobody disagrees that treating
people in emergency rooms is the most
expensive and unproductive thing we
can do. So by providing cheaper care
to poor people before they end up in
emergency rooms, everybody saves.
The way the system works now,
even under Trumpcare, reducing or
even ending Medicaid would only
shift hundreds of billions of dollars in
government spending on indigent care to
the hospitals and providers, who would
pass those costs onto paying customers.
Before Congress decides what it’s
going to do with Obamacare, we first
must decide whether we will allow
millions of people to die or flood
emergency rooms because they lack
health care they can’t afford.
We would hope not. And if we don’t,
then Congress must prop up Obamacare
to keep the system working. Jacking
rates through the roof and forcing huge
expenses onto an already shaky hospital
system, especially in rural areas, is not
only cruel, but it’s political suicide for
Republicans. The only way to create
a compromise we can live with in
the short term is through bipartisan
negotiation. Moderate Republicans and
Democrats are much closer on this issue
than the spectrum of Republicans.
The president versus ‘fake news’
O
f those from whom little is
being susceptible to moral reproach.
expected, much is forgiven. And
Institutions with a conscience have
of those from whom much is
a tendency to be weak. They set
expected, little is forgiven. Such are the
standards to which they are bound to
standards by which Donald Trump’s
fall short, and publicly hold themselves
deliberate assaults on the news media
to account.
need to be understood and feared.
Preserving — even cultivating — a
I write this following Trump’s
capacity for shame, they are easily
latest tirades against the Fourth Estate,
shamed. The shameless, having none,
Bret
including an early morning tweet
Stephens are only too glad to participate in the
Tuesday denouncing “Fake News
shaming.
Comment
CNN” for having been “caught falsely
That’s why it was a mistake of CNN
pushing their phony Russian stories.”
to let the three journalists — veteran
That was followed 17 minutes later by a larger reporter Thomas Frank and editors Lex Haris
eruption, in which the president named NBC,
and Eric Lichtblau — responsible for the
CBS, ABC, The Washington Post and The New Scaramucci story go. The political success
York Times as “all Fake News!”
of Trump’s assault on the press depends on
And in case the message didn’t penetrate,
his conflation of mistakes with dishonesty, of
the deputy press secretary, Sarah
fallibility with fakery.
Huckabee Sanders, denounced
Assuming no dishonesties
the “constant barrage of fake
were involved in CNN’s actions,
news” from CNN and touted
cashiering the journalists does
a video in which conservative
less to uphold the network’s
provocateur James O’Keefe
reputation for probity than it
secretly filmed a CNN producer
does to advance Trump’s work.
(responsible for health stories),
No news organization is going
suggesting that the network’s
— Sarah Huckabee to pass an infallibility test, and
Russia coverage was ratings-
Sanders, advancing a perception that we
driven.
should pass such a test merely
Deputy press secretary sets us up for diminishing public
“Whether it’s accurate or not,
I don’t know,” Sanders added
regard. Journalistic honesty
about the video, lest there be any doubt about
is better measured through corrections than
the White House’s standards for accuracy.
dismissals.
CNN’s sin is to have published a story,
That’s a lesson that bears repeating now, as
based on anonymous sourcing, which
the White House’s media vilification strategy
alleged that New York financier and Trump
comes to resemble a war on truth itself. I’ve
ally Anthny Scaramucci had ties to a
noted elsewhere that Trump’s notion of truth
Russian investment fund supposedly under
is whatever he can get away with, at any given
investigation by the Senate.
moment, for any given purpose.
The story failed to undergo CNN’s usual
No serious news organization can stand
vetting procedures and was later retracted. For
for it, which is why this president and the
good measure, the three journalists behind the
press would be destined for an adversarial
story resigned and the network apologized to
relationship even if their ideological leanings
Scaramucci, who was gracious in accepting it.
were more in sync. Call it the clash of
As for this White House, graciousness
epistemologies — truth as a construct of
becomes it about as well as napalm becomes
facts versus truth as a collection of wants and
an igloo. And the president must have been
wishes. And never the twain shall meet.
relieved to have something to do with his
In the meantime, the news media ought
thumbs other than twiddle them, as Mitch
to take care not to underestimate the threat
McConnell struggled to get a Republican
it faces from this White House. We have set
majority for the Senate’s health bill.
ourselves up as guardians of Truth, a hard
Yet before dismissing Trump’s rants as
job in any circumstance, made additionally
evidence of his mental state, it’s worth taking
difficult by our inevitable errors in judgment
them seriously as proof of political acumen.
and reporting, by an earnestness often
On Monday, Gallup released its latest annual
mistaken for arrogance, and by our conviction
survey on confidence in institutions: It found
that we are owed answers to whatever
that confidence in the presidency had fallen
questions we wish to ask.
since last summer, to 32 percent from 36
On the other side is a president who
percent.
believes in none of this; who commands a
That may be bad news for Trump, but
following that believes in none of it; and
it compares well against the 24 percent
who knows the power of holding the media
confidence level in TV news and 27 percent
accountable to its stringent standards and
newspapers (although both are a bit up over a
holding himself accountable only to his own.
year ago). Among Republicans, just 14 percent
How do you shame the shameless? You
of respondents had confidence in TV news,
can’t. But you can at least deny him the right
and just 12 percent in newspapers, but 60
to shame you. Something to consider over at
percent had confidence in the presidency.
CNN.
If nothing else, Trump has the bully’s
■
cunning to pick on a target more unpopular
Bret Stephens won a Pulitzer Prize for
than he is. And like a bully, he knows that
commentary in 2013. He began working as a
his mark suffers the additional weakness of
columnist at The New York Times in April.
“Whether it’s
accurate or
not, I don’t
know.”
YOUR VIEWS
Walden stands up for farmers
in Port of Portland issue
Mayor should push back
against bitter detractors
Most of us in Heppner aren’t too
concerned with the politics going on over in
Portland, but I recently learned of one big
issue that is going to affect all of us.
The EPA recently announced that they’re
going to be implementing a cleanup plan at
the Port of Portland Harbor that will cost an
estimated $2 billion and take nearly 13 years
to complete. Not only will the cost of that
plan likely be passed onto Oregon taxpayers
and ratepayers, but the plan includes dredging
along 10 river miles near the Port, which could
have a substantial impact on the movement of
products through the Port of Portland.
As someone who relies on the Port to
move products, I am concerned that the EPA
didn’t make any efforts to discuss their plan
with farmers in Eastern Oregon. I am grateful,
however, that Congressman Greg Walden
is making an attempt to work with the EPA
to develop a plan that will work for all of
Oregon, not only those in Portland.
I commend John Turner for addressing the
issue with Rick Rohde.
Rohde seems to get his pleasure in life by
spreading ill will and discontent. His main
means, as he shows by his retraction letter of
June 23 is sarcasm, a savage and bitter form
of humor usually intended to hurt or wound.
This sarcasm invites conflict with others,
present and future.
By his retraction he shows just how much
his opinion is worth. In his failure to win a
city council seat this showed just how much
his opinion is respected.
Rohde has a good head on his shoulders
but fails to give a balanced view. Perhaps if
he could do this he could be elected to a city
council position. As a fellow Pendleton citizen
concerned for the common good, I call upon
him to consider this.
Ron Gavette
Pendleton
Charles Anderson
Heppner
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. The newspaper
reserves the right to withhold letters that address concerns about individual services and
products or letters that infringe on the rights of private citizens. Submitted letters must
be signed by the author and include the city of residence and a daytime phone number.
The phone number will not be published. Unsigned letters will not be published. Send
letters to managing editor Daniel Wattenburger, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801
or email editor@eastoregonian.com.