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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 > July > 25
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Editorial: Obama has tough sell on health care in Ohio; needs to hear skeptics
President Barack Obama came to Ohio Thursday with a difficult case to make. He says he can reduce projected increases in the government’s health care costs at the same time he is extending health insurance to millions more people. It sounds, at first, at least, too good to be true.
To make matters worse for him, a nonpartisan government expert — from the Congressional Budget Office — recently said that a pending Democratic bill would, in fact, increase projected deficit spending.
The president used a trip to the much respected Cleveland Clinic to make the case that high-quality care need not mean high cost. The clinic prides itself on using high technology to control costs while improving quality. It pays doctors a flat salary, rather than per-procedure.
The trip made a good point. But doubts are still in order.
To ultimately sell their plan to the general public, the president and his people must
listen to skeptical nonpartisans and relatively conservative Democrats.
Substantial Republican support is simply not available. The party’s base is in an intensely conservative mood. It feels the party has not been sufficiently true to Reaganesque principles. Some party leaders have the sense that President Obama’s activism gives them a chance to reclaim a clear identity. (Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, said last week that about half the motivation behind Republican opposition to health care is to score political points.)
Solid Republican opposition is an enormous problem for the president. The American political center becomes very skeptical when one party is pushing for an enormous change that is making the other party apoplectic.
In this debate, Democrats have to treasure their own skeptics. Absent real Republican participation, the Democrats must be the Democrats and the Republicans, the advocates and the skeptics. There must be real debate, not just action by Congress, as the president wanted at one point. Otherwise, the result could be a hugely unpopular, bad program.
Rep. Zack Space, a Democrat who represents Chillicothe and Zanesville, wants the party to slow down. He believes the pending legislation must change in a lot of ways, that it doesn’t now control costs enough and that it’s too tough on small business, as well as on small hospitals.
He’s in a group of 50-some moderate House Democrats called the “blue dogs.” Many represent districts that used to be held by Republicans and could be won again by Republicans.
The blue dogs appear to have won one fight already: a tentative agreement in the House to give an outside panel — rather than Congress — the power to make cuts to government-financed health care programs.
The blue dogs should have a big role. And the Democrats must be willing to bend to pick up a few Senate Republicans.
The American health care system is more expensive on a per-person basis than systems in other economically advanced countries. It is becoming hugely more expensive all the time. It’s the biggest obstacle in bringing the federal deficit under control.
And yet it has gaping holes that other modern countries don’t have. One estimate has 60,000 people just in Montgomery County being without insurance, more than 10 percent. That is appalling, unacceptable.
So what the president is trying to do is necessary.
Meanwhile, though, millions of people are largely satisfied with their coverage; and somebody will have to pay if the reforms are not to worsen the deficit.
The legislation is terribly complicated. But open-minded citizens can get a feel for things by noting what independent experts and political moderates say.
When the Democratic mayor of Dayton joins in the effort to drum up support for the Obama effort, as Rhine McLin did last week, that helps get proponents as motivated as opponents. But it’s not going to do much to move the people in between. That’s the hard part. That’s where the focus has to be.
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Editorial: Park repairs can’t wait forever
Budgets have consequences. Remember that when you’re stuffing trash bags into your minivan or backpack instead of leaving them in park trash cans.
Trash removal at Ohio parks fell victim to the budget axe. Busing your own picnic table will save the state $53,000 a year. If that seems like a dinky amount for Ohio to pay to save park-goers the trouble, it only goes to show just how tough it was for state lawmakers to strike a deal while an economic nosedive has tax receipts in a free fall.
But when it comes to state parks, the really big issue got lost in the weeds. So much focus was on cutting — even down to whether to empty the trash — that lawmakers ignored a thornier problem.
A half-billion dollar backlog of capital projects is approaching the crisis point. As easy as it is to back-burner parks in tough economic times, Ohio can’t let its park infrastructure fall totally apart.
Overall, lawmakers made many good choices crafting the budget for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources — the steward for the park system. It did preserve key services and assets.
For instance, the legislature did not kill the threatened Scenic Rivers Program, which helps preserve 4,000 acres of unspoiled waterways. Department officials came up with a good plan: charge a small fee to the primary users of these waterways who paddle them in kayaks and canoes. That effort will raise enough funds to maintain the program’s operations.
Ohio benefits because its abundance of scenic, undeveloped waterways are drawing paddlers by the thousands, and kayak tourism is booming.
In addition, lawmakers didn’t give in to pressure to allow oil and gas drilling on conservation land. They also kept a fee on municipal waste that helps fund soil and water conservation. However, a new fee on mining, that would have helped fund regulation, didn’t make it into law.
Even as the department probably can maintain its core services, the long-term situation is not looking good.
The backlog of overdue improvement projects for the state parks got no attention, and the situation is getting dire. The list is not for cosmetic jobs. Rather, it spells out basic repairs to water and sewer pipes, bridges, roads, dams, buildings and wiring that make the parks usable by the public.
Some of the maintenance issues are dangerous. Last year, a bath house at Caesar Creek State Park finally had to be demolished for safety reasons after repairs never came.
Meanwhile, as the state gets further behind, Ohio could lose out to competing parks in neighboring states.
Spending money on park improvements is not sexy. Even in good times, lawmakers tend to rob from the parks for other pet projects, figuring repairs can always wait. But the reality is that the abundance of parks and natural resources here are a huge asset. Letting them crumble is dumb.
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