A sampling of recent editorials from Colorado newspapers:
NATIONAL:
The Daily Sentinel, Sept. 27, on financial news and the election campaign:
The famous line from Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign—”It’s the economy, stupid!”—held true for most elections before Clinton’s, and it’s likely true for this year’s campaign two decades later.
The problem, both for candidates and for political observers attempting to predict how the economy will affect Campaign 2012, is that it appears our economy is stuck in a mediocre holding pattern. For every step forward there is another backward, and it rarely seems there is indisputable evidence of recovery or relapse.
Consider some of the economic news of the past few days:
— Housing prices in this country’s largest metro markets rose 5.9 percent from July 2011 to July 2012, according to the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller 20-city index. That’s the largest one-year increase since 2005.
Part of that price rise is due to decreasing inventories of foreclosed homes, which depress prices. But experts also say consumers are growing more confident about getting back into the real estate market, especially since interest rates are remaining low. These factors may make many voters feel more positive about the incumbent in the White House as the election approaches.
— New figures released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics Wednesday revised upward by 386,000 the number of jobs created from April 2011 to March 2012. That means there was a net increase in jobs created from February 2009 to March 2012, giving President Barack Obama more ammunition for his claim that his policies are working and the economy is slowly recovering.
Countering those arguments, and giving Republican Mitt Romney additional campaign weapons, are news items such as these:
— Last Wednesday, the U.S. Commerce Department announced it had revised downward its estimate of economic growth in the second quarter of this year from 1.7 percent to 1.3 percent. Economists say a growth rate of around 3 percent is required to create enough jobs for all new workers entering the job market.
— Even worse, the Commerce Department reported Thursday that sales of durable goods—everything from appliances to automobiles to aircraft—dropped 13.2 percent in August.
That’s the worst drop since January 2009, and it spells trouble for near-future manufacturing activity and factory employment. It also suggests the third-quarter numbers for economic activity will be as anemic as the second quarter and the unemployment rate is unlikely to drop much from where it has hovered at just over 8 percent.
The economy may indeed be the primary issue that determines the outcome of this year’s presidential election. But the jury’s still out on which candidate will benefit most from the seesawing economic news.
Editorial:
———
The Denver Post, Sept. 30, on a move to electronic patient records as hospitals:
The federal pitch to move to electronic medical records came enveloped in promises of lower costs and better care.
It all sounded pretty good.
Recent reports, however, have raised questions about whether doctors and hospitals are using this new-found digital efficiency to cheat government-run Medicare and Medicaid programs.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Attorney General Eric Holder last week issued a stern warning to those who are using e-records and sophisticated software to “upcode” services in order to collect more from the government.
Promising vigorous investigations is a good start, but they need to take more systemic action.
The government should create an oversight system, something it failed to do when it began pushing the digital conversion with $30 billion in stimulus money to help doctors and hospitals buy equipment.
Monitoring the many different types of billing and medical software in use around the country is a complex but necessary task.
The American Medical Association has recommended federally mandated testing assuring that electronic billing systems are accurate and not structured to make upcoding easy.
The Office of Inspector General is investigating the matter, and that assessment of problems should be useful in devising solutions.
While the issue has been percolating as long as e-records have been debated, it came to prominence in recent weeks with reports from The New York Times and The Center for Public Integrity about potential electronic record abuses.
The Times, which examined Medicare data, asserted the move to e-records “may be contributing to billions of dollars in higher costs for Medicare, private insurers and patients.”
The Times found hospitals had received $1 billion more in Medicare reimbursements in 2010 than they had five years previously, a rise at least partially attributable to changing billing codes for emergency room patients.
Another factor may be the ease with which providers can cut and paste treatment descriptions, and software prompting doctors to check a box saying a more thorough examination had occurred when perhaps it had not.
To be sure, Affordable Care Act reforms, which move from a fee-for-service model to one that pays fees based on outcomes, could help slow such abuses, and that’s good.
A multi-pronged approach emphasizing oversight and systemic reimbursement revisions could go a long way toward minimizing fraud in this otherwise beneficial health care innovation.
We live in the digital age, and a change to electronic patient records was inevitable, but the use of these new systems to cheat must not be.
Editorial:
———
STATE:
The Pueblo Chieftain, Sept. 30, on the anonymous ballot lawsuit:
We were greatly disappointed by the recent ruling in Denver U.S. District Court that people do not have the right to expect their election ballots will be anonymous.
Judge Christine Arguello dismissed a lawsuit brought by Citizen Center, a group that seeks to maintain the integrity of elections. The group argued—with some real evidence—that ballots marked with bar codes used by some counties can be traced to the persons who cast them.
But Judge Arguello dismissed the suit, saying the plaintiffs could not show any “actual or imminent” harm by the inclusion of bar codes on ballots. Yeah, just wait until the damage is done.
Judge Arguello glossed over what the Colorado Constitution has to say about ballot integrity: “No ballots shall be marked in any way whereby the ballot can be identified as the ballot of the person casting it.” That’s about as clear as it can get.
Secretary of State Scott Gessler issued an emergency ruling earlier this year that prohibited any identifying markings on ballots. Boulder County Clerk Hillary Hall then countered, saying her county would repeat each ballot number across precincts so that the number would no longer be unique. Mr. Gessler’s office accepted that compromise—at last for this November’s election.
The handful of county clerks named in the suit argued that the constitutional guarantee that ballots can’t be traced applies to members of the public but not to election officials. In dismissing the case, Judge Arguello essentially agreed with that specious argument.
We don’t want anyone to know how any individual votes—not the public and certainly not the political appointees who count ballots.
Let’s hope that Citizen Center will continue to press the case. We don’t want election integrity to be chipped away, one bit at a time.
Editorial:
———
Aurora Sentinel, Sept. 28, on Cinemark’s decision to reopen the Aurora theater:
Life wins. Mass murderer James Holmes loses. The Century 16 Aurora theater stays.
Cinemark owns the theater where Holmes unleashed a gruesome, bullet-ridden massacre July 20, killing 12, wounding dozens more and shaking the security of Aurora, and pretty much the entire nation. Last week, CEO Tim Warner said his company will yield to requests from the community to keep the theater. Warner said the company will re-configure the complex and reopen it sometime early next year.
It’s the best thing to do for one of the worst disasters in Colorado history.
Clearly, the decision doesn’t come lightly for Cinemark, as it didn’t for most of Aurora. What the community saw of the horrific maelstrom at the theater can’t come close to the terror victims suffered, nor the terror that all of us have imagined as the stories have unfolded. But Warner and most Aurora residents wisely separated a sick, heinous bully from the place he committed his atrocity. The theater didn’t commit these crimes; Holmes did. The theater wasn’t witness to the melee; we were.
While some victims and Aurora residents called for the theater to be razed, it would only take away an empty building, not the loss nor the pain that Holmes let loose here. By giving in to the natural urge to simply blot out what’s too painful to see, we would only have allowed Holmes to claim yet another victim.
Instead, Holmes has failed in terrorizing us any more than he did the night he started pulling the trigger inside the crowded theater. Despite his melodramatic offense, the country continues to fill cinemas and enjoy America’s biggest shared pastime: going to the movies. Because of Cinemark’s courageous decision, Aurora will also resume its love affair with the silver screen at the Town Center of Aurora.
City and theater officials have begun to do their part to set this ultimate tragedy behind us. Now it’s time for the rest of Aurora to do ours.
It’s our responsibility to advise Cinemark, and the city, what we all want them to do. While details of their plans weren’t released, they made it clear that the theater would be substantially remodeled, which is a wise decision.
Undecided is just how much attention the remodeled theater should draw to the tragedy that happened there. Some residents feel that something prominent would only serve to unnerve the public and turn them away, which is contrary to why Cinemark should reopen the theater. Others feel that something too subtle or sedate would be dismissive of one of the most cruel and vile crimes in the state.
Through the city’s website at auroragov.org and its Facebook page, Aurora residents and others can help direct Cinemark where to go from here.
But most importantly, it will be vital for Aurora to return to the theater when it reopens. Returning will not only support Cinemark for bravely choosing to act contrary to instinct, but returning to the theater shows the world, and possibly those who ponder a crime like Holmes’, that the power terrorists hold is fleeting and ends when the shooting stops. The decision to reopen this theater isn’t about Holmes. It isn’t about the building. It’s about us. And we win.
Editorial:
