Gary Crooks

It’s interesting to watch a new policy take the blame for a long-developing problem. The doctor shortage is gaining attention now that the Affordable Care Act is the law of the land. But this is like blaming cancer on your last cigarette. Nonetheless, pundits and politicians are weighing in with the haughty observation that while the newly insured will gain an insurance card, they won’t necessarily see a doctor. Oh, look at the silly people thinking they have health care now.

Imagine Spokane Mayor David Condon announcing that a particular business would not be licensed in the city because the owner’s liberal beliefs did not reflect “Spokane values.” It would be a clear violation of the First Amendment. The backlash would be resounding. And yet many liberals are cheering leaders in Boston and Chicago over announcements that the Chick-fil-A fast-food chain would be barred from their cities because of the owner’s conservative views on gay marriage. In an interview with Baptist Press, Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy stated, “We are very much supportive of the family – the biblical definition of the family unit.”

Tim Eyman, longtime spokesman for the people, recently said this about Initiative 1185: “Taxpayers desperately need protection from job-killing, family-budget-busting tax increases.” Actually, he says this about all of his tax initiatives, and if any of them were to end this alleged desperation, he’d need a new line of work. Anyway, this initiative would get the two-year clock running again on the supermajority requirement for tax increases after the Legislature set aside the previous initiative to help balance the budget.

In the run-up to the 31st vote in the House of Representatives to repeal health care reform (maybe this time’s the charm?), U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers appeared on “The Daily Rundown” on MSNBC and lobbed this grenade: Five out of six doctors have considered quitting because of the Affordable Care Act. You’d think that would’ve been in the news by now, so I went to the Drudge Report, where the “true facts” are kept on life support. And sure enough, among the headlines such as “Government peddles food stamps with soap operas – in Spanish!” and “Obama cracks down on bath salts,” there was “Report: 83 percent of doctors have considered quitting over Obamacare.”

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts called a penalty a tax before upholding it. President Obama called a tax a penalty in defending it. GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney is now calling the health care tax he signed in Massachusetts a penalty so he can criticize Obama’s penalty as a tax. But what’s strangest of all is that for many people these word games actually matter.

In light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s gutting of Arizona’s immigration enforcement law, it’s tempting to let Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer declare victory and move on. In response to the ruling, she said her state’s law “has unanimously been vindicated by the highest court in the land.” So what are all of those outside agitators complaining about?

Now that Dr. House has vanished from his TV practice, it would be nice if he could turn his attention to this puzzler: What would Republicans do if the U.S. Supreme Court makes their day by dumping health care reform? A man of House’s skill for negotiating red herrings and emotional traps would be perfect for this case. Plus, his mantra – “everybody lies” – would serve him well. If you think this is an easy case to crack, follow me to the white board.

The prices for many brands of hard liquor have gone up as a result of Initiative 1183, which closed state-run stores. Some shoppers are acting as if they’ve been scammed, but why they thought prices would plunge is beyond me. Then again, I’m among the dwindling number of people who regularly read a newspaper (full disclosure: I work at one). So who are these alleged flimflam artists who gave us higher booze prices? Well, that would be voters, by a really wide margin. Not much recourse there. Can’t recall them. Can’t even rescind their registration.

The Congressional Budget Office toted up the consequences of the scheduled year-end budget cuts and the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, then delivered the bad news. The economy would probably sink back into a recession in the first half of 2013 and then snap out of it in the second half. The spending cuts and tax increases are on autopilot, so Congress need not act. You can bet it will. On the other hand, if Congress were to let this happen, it would reduce the federal budget deficit. Delaying action on that front would ruin the economy for future generations, because they will be forced to raise taxes and cut spending to avert the fate of Greece and other overextended nations.

So when the nation was engaged in that big, messy health care reform debate, did some people really not understand that this was a life and death matter involving actual human beings? Must each person contract their own cancers and chronic conditions before finally understanding the deadly and debilitating nature of our system? And yet, here is poor Kathy Watson, an opponent of health insurance mandates but a fierce protector of the coverage she secured thanks to health care reform. In an Associated Press article that ran in this paper Friday, we learned that Watson, a businesswoman from Florida, struggled to obtain coverage because her white blood cell count was high.

What in the name of John Wayne is going on in the Idaho primary? In the Old West, if you had a disagreement with someone, you settled it face to face. At 10 paces, if needed. But peek over yonder today, and all you see is a bunch of back-shooters. “Idaho House leaders attempt fratricide” proclaimed an Idaho Statesman headline on Wednesday. Veteran reporter Dan Popkey revealed all the details of lily-livered dealings.

While exercising in the basement, I watched some of the televised debate over the ordinance to change Spokane’s initiative process. I thought this was about tweaking it to provide for fiscal notes and objective summaries of ballot measures, but what I was hearing suggested that our very democracy was at risk. And here I was sweating on a bicycle going nowhere.

If you spend any time reading up on health care solutions, you find yourself bumping into the same names. Two medical centers, the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic, and two insurers, Intermountain Health Care (Utah market) and Group Health Cooperative, are deemed the models for a cost-efficient health care system. Newsweek once called Cleveland Clinic “a hospital trying to become a Toyota factory.” That’s a compliment, as any business executive attempting to apply Toyota’s “Lean Six” principles can attest. The clinic won’t hire smokers and, if it weren’t against the law, would bypass obese applicants, too. Good luck finding Doritos in the vending machines. Extreme? Perhaps.

What state am I? The lowest 20 percent of earners have the highest tax burden. Tax revenue as a share of the economy has dropped from 7.6 percent in the early 1990s to 5.4 percent in 2010. The state payroll will soon shrink by 7,143 workers from its peak during the 2007-09 budget cycle.

It’s astonishing that amid the thermonuclear blowback to the election of Barack Obama, a conservative won’t be on either major party ticket for the presidency. The rise of the tea party, the GOP takeover of the House and the inexhaustible iterations of Obama Derangement Syndrome led me to believe that a rock-ribbed somebody would be cruising to the Republican nomination. But they all ended up in a roadside ditch, leaving the guy who brought universal health care to liberal Massachusetts – and used a mandate to get there! What’s more, he prays in churches most mainline Christians have never entered.

When I wrote about Germany’s health care system two weeks ago, a couple of people referred me to T.R. Reid’s book “The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care.” In fact, it was Reid’s chapter on Germany that inspired that column, and I was remiss in not mentioning that. Reid, a former foreign correspondent for the Washington Post, was in Spokane last October to discuss his global sojourn, which also resulted in the insightful PBS documentary “Sick Around the World.” He traveled to many countries to study their health care systems and to get advice on how to treat an injured shoulder.

In last week’s episode of “Mad Men,” Roger Sterling watches Don Draper’s slinky new wife perform a French serenade, and then quips, “The only thing worse than not getting what you want is someone else getting it.” That must be the feeling of former proponents of a health insurance mandate.

I spent many frustrating hours studying up on the Washington Legislature’s formation of a health insurance exchange called for under the federal Affordable Care Act. The exercise cemented my long-held view that this country is soup-with-a-fork crazy for using the hopelessly convoluted insurance model to deliver health care. Individuals and small businesses will shop the exchanges for health care insurance, if they don’t already have it. The United States is unique in that it has a health care system that fosters the practice of segregating the sick. For-profit insurance companies really have no choice but to attempt to scoop up as many healthy clients as possible to offset the “medical losses” incurred by the rest. The main responsibility of any chief executive is to maximize shareholder gain. It’s in the bylaws.

What happens when you play a country song backwards? You get your job, dog and girl back. What happens when you repeal the Affordable Care Act? You get your uninsured people and old costs back. A while back, Rob Shapiro, a policy adviser in the Clinton administration, toted up the costs of doing nothing, based on the work of Urban Institute economist Eugene Steuerle:

On Friday, Spokesman-Review columnist Shawn Vestal explored Olympia’s budgetary shell games, finding that both parties use gimmicks to avoid some spending cuts. In Boise, the game is played differently, with the goal being greater spending cuts and, ultimately, tax cuts for the not-so-needy. To illustrate the point, let’s start on June 30, the end of the past fiscal year. It was then that Idaho discovered it had $85.3 million more in revenue than projected. Had legislators chosen the forecast of then-chief economist Mike Ferguson, they would’ve had an excess of only $11.5 million. Former Gov. Cecil Andrus was so certain that current Gov. Butch Otter and the Legislature were low-balling expected revenue that he bet Otter $100 that Ferguson’s number would be more accurate. Andrus, of course, knows how the game is played, so it was easy money.

You’ve heard complaints about presidents and Congresses spending like drunken sailors. So where has this money gone? The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities is on the case, and it turns out that there is a chief culprit. Defense spending? No. Welfare? Wrong. Earmark boondoggles? Sorry. Relative to GDP, spending on these items has declined in the past 50 years. Interest on the debt is devouring a larger portion of the pie, because debt itself keeps growing. But why?

My emotions have weaved between outrage and resignation since the news broke about the drunken Spokane police officer who was awarded a job and back pay after challenging his 2009 termination. Since then, the decision has been suspended. Currently, my thoughts are idling on resignation – as in, I wish he would, but I doubt he will.

On Feb. 10, more than 250 people crammed into a Boise hearing room to listen to lawmakers discuss a bill that would prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and sexual identity. The “Add the Words” campaign sought to expand Idaho’s Human Rights Act beyond the categories of race, religion and gender. It took five minutes for the Senate State Affairs Committee to kill their hopes, with all but two members voting against the introduction and printing of a bill, despite an emotional plea from Minority Leader Edgar Malepeai. So, Idaho landlords and employers can still legally discriminate against gay and lesbian renters and workers.

So, what was this year in politics going to be about again? Oh yeah, jobs. Don’t feel bad if this slipped your mind after last week’s fast and furious battles over social issues. The week started with Susan G. Komen for the Cure announcing that it would rescind its decision to cut off breast cancer screening funds to Planned Parenthood. Then the foundation’s vice president, a pro-life politician from Georgia, suddenly quit, which is odd, because Komen said this officer had nothing to do with a decision that had nothing to do with abortion.