Editorial Roundup: North Carolina

Recent editorials from North Carolina newspapers:

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Jan. 31

The Charlotte Observer and The News & Observer of Raleigh on the state’s rate of black infant mortality:

State programs and efforts by private organizations have reduced North Carolina’s infant mortality rate to its lowest ever, but the state still has a stubborn problem with high levels of black infant mortality. According to 2018 statistics, black babies are more than twice as likely to die than white infants.

Overall improvements haven’t changed that. Indeed, the gap was wider in 2018, the most recent year for available statistics, than it was 1999. An in-depth report by The News & Observer’s Lynn Bonner, with the support of a USC Annenberg Health Journalism Fellowship, recently explored why this sad disparity persists in a time of general improvements in health care for infants.

Of the 806 infants who died in 2018, 43 percent were black babies, although blacks are only 22 percent of the state’s population. In some counties the gap is stark. In Pitt County in 2018, no white infants died in their first year while 11 black infants died before their first birthdays.

Dr. Mandy Cohen, head of the state Department of Health and Human Services, said of the higher mortality rate: “It’s an atrocity and we need to address it.”

State officials, researchers and health care providers say there are several reasons for the difference. A higher level of poverty among blacks is the major cause, but there are others: a lack of rural hospitals, doctors who don’t listen well to pregnant black women and the stress of racism that affects black women of all education and income levels.

While the causes that put black babies at higher risk are many, one necessary response is clear: expand Medicaid. A study published in the American Journal of Public Health concluded that “Infant mortality rate decline was greater in Medicaid expansion states, with greater declines among African American infants.”

This connection is not enough to move Republican lawmakers who are blocking Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. The federal government would pay 90 percent of the costs of making the insurance program available half a million low-income North Carolinians. But Republicans who control the General Assembly think the state’s 10 percent state share would be too costly.

Low-income pregnant women qualify for Medicaid coverage during their pregnancy and for 60 days after giving birth. Medicaid expansion would close gaps in health care for women in a state where 15 percent of women ages 19-44 are uninsured, the 10th highest level in the nation. Without regular access to health care, some women are unaware of health problems, such as diabetes or hypertension, that could affect developing babies.

The link between regular access to health care and healthy mothers giving birth to healthy babies is obvious. But some Republicans are still in denial. Sen. Ralph Hise, a Republican from Spruce Pine who opposes Medicaid expansion, told Bonner that a study showing ties between Medicaid expansion and lowered infant death rates wasn’t proof of an effect. “They’re showing a correlation, they’re not showing a causality,” Hise said.

If the senator and other Medicaid expansion opponents aren’t convinced about the causality, they ought to go to counties where mothers without insurance grieve for lost children. They can ask those mothers about the health care, if any, they had before getting pregnant and what happened when they lost Medicaid two months after giving birth. Otherwise, those lawmakers are turning a blind eye to what the state’s top health official rightly calls an atrocity.

Online: https://www.charlotteobserver.com

Online: https://www.newsobserver.com

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Jan. 29

The Wilmington StarNews on the recent death of a North Carolina soldier:

For thousands of Southeastern North Carolina families, the wars aren’t over, although you might have forgotten about them.

Wilmington Spc. Antonio I. Moore, 22, died Jan. 24, in a vehicle accident in Syria. Moore was a graduate of John T. Hoggard High School, where he played on the football team.

President Trump pulled troops out of Syria, but changed his mind, and some 500 soldiers are still there. Moore, assigned to an Army Reserve unit, was engaged in “route-clearing.”

This is a useful reminder: Military service is dangerous business, even when bullets aren’t flying. Since 2006, some 16,000 personnel in the armed forces have died while on duty. Nearly half died in what the military calls “overseas contingency operations,” i.e., places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

Nearly 2,000 died in duty-related motor vehicle accidents, right here in the USA. More than 30 percent of all deaths were accident-related; of these, many involved training operations. When you handle explosive ordnance and large, complicated machinery, a lot of things can go wrong. It’s dangerous work.

We all should salute Moore’s service, and we should offer prayers and condolences to his family. But we need to do a lot more.

Not much has changed since Rudyard Kipling penned his “Tommy Atkins” (the British equivalent of the generic GI Joe). We treat our troops as heroes, especially when we’re scared and we need them. Then we get less scared, and we tend to treat them like overpaid, ungrateful help.

Earlier this year, for example, the Defense Department cut funding to replace an old and rundown elementary school for service members’ children at Fort Bragg and expansion on an ambulatory care clinic at Camp Lejeune. Instead, the funds for these projects were transferred to pay for the U.S.-Mexico border wall project - the one that Mexico was going to pay for.

Then, there’s the condescending tone certain politicians take toward folks in uniform.

We don’t necessarily mean hippies spitting on Vietnam veterans. We’re talking about President Trump, who said that 34 service members injured in an Iranian missile attack in Iraq “had headaches” and weren’t badly hurt.

A man whose bone spurs kept him out of the military should be a little more respectful of a soldier’s wounds, we’d argue. These soldiers suffered concussions from close proximity to a missile blast, with a chance of traumatic brain injury. Eight were sent to military hospitals. These are not “boo-boos.”

Football players whose brains get shaken up too much, too often, can suffer permanent impairment and forms of dementia. Having high-powered projectiles land next to you is a lot more serious.

Really, after spending so long criticizing his predecessor for dissing Our Boys and Girls in Uniform, President Trump should be a little more careful with his words.

Platitudes about our debt to service members rain down, generally around Veterans’ Day and Memorial Day, but they need to be more than words.

They need to be paid. They deserve decent pensions and medical care, especially if their conditions are service-related.

Online: https://www.starnewsonline.com

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Jan. 27

Jacksonville Daily News on ending gridlock in the North Carolina’s Legislature:

When the University of North Carolina’s Board of Governors criticizes your management style, boy, are you in trouble.

But that’s the case with North Carolina’s legislature, which still hasn’t passed a state budget and shows no signs of doing so any time soon.

The Honorables at the Legislative Building, as you’ll recall, are at odds with Gov. Roy Cooper, a card-carrying Democrat. Cooper vetoed the Republican-written budget. Since the GOP lost seats in the last election, they can’t override that veto.

Grownups, in this situation, would normally negotiate a compromise, but compromise in politics, as we all know, is for sissies and snowflakes. So, the Republicans passed a bunch of “mini-budgets” to keep some offices running and decided to hunker down on the rest.

Now, this is not exactly a catastrophe. Unlike at the federal level, a budget impasse won’t mean the government is shutting down. Basically, the state will just default to its last budget.

And what’s wrong with that? Enter the Board of Governors - or BOG, as they’re somewhat affectionately known. These worthy gentlemen (actually 19 men and five ladies) owe their jobs to the legislature and they are almost exclusively Republican - not a Bernie-crat in the bunch.

Nevertheless, the BOG passed a resolution Jan. 17 unanimously calling on the legislature to quit monkeying around and pass a budget, for Pete’s sake.

As the BOGgers pointed out, not passing a budget is holding up $800 million the state’s university system really needs, including $130 million for repairs and renovations, building projects on multiple campuses and funds to aid poor students with tuition.

And that’s not all, folks. Without a budget, the state’s teachers aren’t getting any raise at all. (The GOP offered a pay increase that Cooper considered paltry - but again, no bargaining, no compromise.) Some $20 million in funding for housing for low-income and handicapped folks in rural areas is on hold.

Meanwhile, Moody’s, the investment service, has been making noises that if the state doesn’t clean up its act, its bond rating might have to be cut. Translation: The state - meaning taxpayers - will have to pay more interest on bonds and loans.

So, what’s the holdup? The size of the teachers’ raise, for one. Extension of Medicaid coverage to some lowwage workers, for another; Republicans think this smacks of Obamacare, even though other “Red” states have gone along and are collecting millions in federal funds.

If this were a kindergarten class, the warring parties would be taken into a corner and told to make nice and make up. Good advice: Negotiate and break the deadlock. Now.

Online: https://www.jdnews.com