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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 28, 2017)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Saturday, October 28, 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 EO MEDIA GROUP East Oregonian • The Daily Astorian • Capital Press • Hermiston Herald Blue Mountain Eagle • Wallowa County Chieftain • Chinook Observer • Coast River Business Journal Oregon Coast Today • Coast Weekend • Seaside Signal • Cannon Beach Gazette Eastern Oregon Real Estate Guide • Eastern Oregon Marketplace • Coast Marketplace OnlyAg.com • FarmSeller.com • Seaside-Sun.com • NorthwestOpinions.com • DiscoverOurCoast.com OUR VIEW Steps needed to restore health care predictability Open enrollment for Affordable Care Act coverage starts Nov. 1 and runs through Dec. 15 for health care policies starting Jan. 1, but it would be understandable if many Americans are unaware of these important dates. They should at least review their current coverage, in order to avoid being locked into something they don’t like. The Trump administration has cut back on efforts to inform people about deadlines and other matters pertaining to the ACA — part of a strategy of sabotaging the national health care system sometimes called Obamacare. The White House also has axed billions in funds to subsidize insurance policies for Americans covered by the act, suggesting the payments amount to a taxpayer-funded subsidy for insurance companies. (This is a valid point; the ACA was modeled on a Republican-designed system in Massachusetts that was highly accommodating to private insurers.) None of this should come as a surprise, considering Donald Trump and congressional Republicans ran for office on a platform of undoing Obamacare. Unfortunately for ordinary citizens, the haphazard way they are going about it is making matters worse instead of better. There are so many changes and uncertainties, it’s hard to keep straight what to do, what will be covered and what it will cost. Since insurance depends on sophisticated analysis of facts and risks, the marketplace is reacting to all these open questions by raising prices on the policies some Americans are legally obliged to buy. The good news in Oregon is that coverage options and financial assistance remain available. The president’s elimination of subsidies — apart from causing insurance companies to raise premiums in anticipation — isn’t expected to have a dramatic impact on those who make up to 2 1/2 times the federal poverty level. For a family of four, that comes to $60,750 in 2017. What they lose in more expensive premiums, they will make up in income tax credits. This will end up costing the U.S. Treasury even more. “The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office forecast that ending cost- sharing reductions would increase the federal deficit by $194 billion over a decade, because the tax credit amounts would increase and because more people would receive them,” the Washington Post reported. People in the next income tier — up to four times the federal poverty level — also make out OK in the short run. It is Americans in the highest tier — those ineligible for tax credits — who will be hurt the most directly by rising premiums. These premiums are becoming more and more crushing, at the same time coverage becomes more limited. It’s hard to imagine this trend being sustainable for the relatively small percentage of people who buy their own policies, rather than being covered through their employer or by Medicare or Medicaid. Last week, U.S. Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee, and Patty Murray, D-Washington, proposed a two-year extension of subsidies in order to stabilize the insurance marketplace. This is a smart idea, but the president appears to be against it. Besides all the angst this causes for Americans wondering what our health care laws will be from one year to the next, the real significance of all these political gyrations is how it discombobulates a huge segment of the U.S. economy, one on which we rely for essential services. Hospitals like St. Anthony in Pendleton and Good Shepherd in Hermiston — and all their individual medical providers — depend on predictable payments by private and public insurers. Medicare reimbursements have declined and slowed for years. And now the private leg of the health care platform is getting more and more shaky. We all face a steep price for incompetent management of this literally life-and-death business. Speaking about Trump’s decision, an industry expert said: “I think it will create a lot of uncertainty — and it’s a cumulative uncertainty created not only by this decision of this administration, but the executive order, the question of will Congress step in, what will the agencies do.” The ACA is far from perfect, but most people were getting used to it. But jerking it all around is making it more expensive and less reliable. This is not what any sensible person wants to happen. It’s time for responsible steps to restore health care predictability for all. 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 The national crackup I never cared for the “melting pot” black occupant of the White House metaphor, in part because it treats a had fathered five children with three nation of immigrants like a stew with women, attacked grieving combat all the cultures cooked out of it. Nor widows and exploited the office for was I a fan of “gorgeous mosaic,” personal gain. which sounds fine coming from a But when people shame fellow kindergarten teacher but is flat as a citizens with the blunt edge of identity political rallying cry. politics, they only encourage the I prefer “the American experiment.” Timothy backlash that gave us Trump. It’s just as inartful, yet closer to the White people who are not Egan truth. The audacious idea that people privileged — the poor, the uneducated, Comment from all races, ideologies and religious the struggling — feel belittled when sects would check their hatreds at the elite whites scorn their “privilege.” door after becoming citizens is our sustaining What’s privileged about living paycheck to narrative. paycheck? About 8 million citizens voted for Within our borders, Protestants don’t Obama — twice — and then flipped their vote fight Catholics, Sunnis don’t go after Shiites, for Trump. Most of them, surely, are not racist. Armenians share neighborhoods with What they heard from Obama was the best Turks, and a family that can trace much of American music. “In no other country is my its ancestry to slavery story even possible,” he occupied a White House said in his 2008 speech built in part by slaves. on race. After noting But that tenuous that he won some of the construct is breaking whitest counties in the apart. We are retreating country, he criticized a to our tribal, ethnic and view “that sees white primitively prejudicial racism as endemic, and that elevates what is quarters. Everything is wrong with America about race and identity. above what we know is We come from privilege, right with America.” or oppression. We choose To dismiss white concern over busing or politicians based on whether they help our affirmative action as racist “only widens the tribe or hurt People Like Us. This is President Donald Trump’s legacy. racial divide and increases misunderstanding,” He has shattered the idea, eloquently he said. Yet, that is exactly what many liberal expressed by President Barack Obama, that whites and blacks are doing now. Ta-Nehisi we are not “irrevocably bound to a tragic Coates, in his new book of essays, compares past.” In the Trump era, we are neck-deep in gentrification, which comes in many colors, to that tragic past. “a more pleasing name for white supremacy.” Stupidly, the left is playing its part in this He’s been getting pushback from African- crackup, perhaps ensuring that Trump will Americans with a more expansive view. stay in office. When people shout, “Check “Coates has convinced me that his particular your privilege” at a speaker at a public event, brand of anti-racism does more political harm what they’re saying is, “Shut up, your opinion than good,” wrote Cedric Johnson, a professor doesn’t matter because of the color of your of African-American studies at University of skin.” Illinois at Chicago, in an essay last year. Trump is a master divider. He tweets Certainly Steven Bannon knows that. He against football players because he wants has repeatedly said that the more Democrats people to resent rich black athletes. Instead of talk about identity and race, the more it helps sports being our last unifying diversion, it’s his white nationalistic cause. just another platform for hate. If all cultural appropriation is bad — He tweets about saying “Merry Christmas extending even to, say, an Italian-American again,” because it puts people of other chef becoming expert in North African faiths on alert. As Newt Gingrich, a master food — then we are doomed. If everyone is a demagogue himself, said, “He intuits how he racist, then no one can be saved from an awful can polarize.” destiny at birth. Trump opened the door to overt Most Americans now feel their own expressions of hatred. Investment adviser group faces discrimination, according to Marc Faber recently made this observation a new NPR poll. A majority of whites say in his newsletter: “Thank God white people that discrimination exists against whites, populated America, and not the blacks. even though a majority have not personally Otherwise, the United States would look like experienced it. Zimbabwe.” For good measure, he defended This is a tragic result of the retreat to tribal Confederate generals, “whose only crime was quarters, pushed by extremists on both sides. to defend what all societies had done for more If it persists, the United States that Obama than 5,000 years: keep a part of the population celebrated cannot hold. The breaking point is enslaved.” now. Trump, of course, has never apologized ■ for giving comfort to people who marched on Timothy Egan worked for 18 years as a behalf of a confederacy of slaveholders. And writer for The New York Times, first as the we all know that race would be an issue if a Pacific Northwest correspondent. We choose politicians based on whether they help our tribe or hurt People Like Us. OTHER VIEWS Clean Energy Jobs bill will help rural communities and tribes s a fishery biologist, I have on a daily basis. The salmon run worked on Columbia River sometimes arrives late — or not at salmon restoration for all. The migration patterns of birds more than 30 years. As an enrolled and elk, which we have hunted for member of the Confederated Tribes generations, are changing. The native of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, roots in the foothills and mountains I grew up on the reservation hunting that we have relied on for food arrive elk and deer and fishing for salmon. earlier and for a much shorter period My work has involved studying of time. Last year the huckleberries Don changes to our river system. The Sampson were few, arrived early, and the impact of climate change became window of time they were available Comment apparent almost 20 years ago as our decreased from three months to tribes studied the flow of water in the two and a half weeks. These native river at different times. foods have great cultural and ceremonial Since then, our Tribes have worked significance, and to lose them due to climate extensively to document the impact of change means losing part of who we are. climate change on our salmon and Oregon We’re working on adaptation strategies, but many tribes have also begun to focus on rivers due to reduced snowpack and how to prevent and mitigate climate impacts increased drought. For many of you reading by reducing carbon pollution, increasing the this, you know summer wildfires fill our use of wind and solar energy, and developing skies for weeks with smoke — affecting our innovative projects like at the Tamástslikt air, our children, our elders. It is projected Cultural Institute, which is so energy the intensity and magnitude of wildfires in the West will increase due to climate change. efficient it produces nearly as much energy as it uses. We are seeing it now. The Clean Energy Jobs bill, a policy Native Americans and rural communities in Oregon are affected by climate impacts I’m advocating that the legislature passes A in 2018, is important to tribes and rural communities like Pendleton, because it will reduce climate pollution by making large emitters pay for what they pollute, and use the proceeds to invest in clean energy solutions. Investments will be prioritized to help Native American communities and other low income, rural and communities of color that are hardest hit by the impacts of climate change and air pollution. The Clean Energy Jobs bill will also help tribes protect the forest. Trees absorb carbon dioxide, and companies can “offset” some of their contributions to global warming by paying to protect the trees. The Warm Springs Tribe in central Oregon just completed a 20,000-acre forest land project on the east side of Mount Jefferson. This project will help mitigate carbon emissions for the next 100 years while bring millions in revenues to be reinvested the reservation’s rural economy. But this project is being developed under California’s cap and trade program. With Clean Energy Jobs, tribes could participate in the offset program, right here in Oregon benefiting the tribe and all Oregonians. Most tribes in Oregon are developing climate mitigation plans, and the reinvestment resources from Clean Energy Jobs would create an exciting opportunity for tribes to implement those plans. These plans are being developed with our local city, county, and state partners. We could invest in expanding renewable energy like wind and solar and in land preservation, which creates jobs and protects our culture, food, and watershed. Our lives and our way of life are interconnected with the climate. It’s time to transition Oregon from dirty to clean energy while creating jobs and business opportunities. On Nov. 4, we will have a kickoff rally statewide, so please join us and find out how you can help at RenewOregon. org. When the legislature convenes in February, they should pass the Clean Energy Jobs bill. ■ Don Sampson is the former Chairman and Executive Director of the Umatilla Tribe. He currently serves as the Climate Change Project Director for the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians.
