Georgia editorial roundup

Recent editorials from Georgia newspapers:

Nov. 26

Marietta (Ga.) Daily Joual on state health-insurance exchange:

State-based health-insurance exchanges are to play a key role in transforming the nation's health care and insurance industries under The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. The exchanges are designed to serve as markets for individuals and small business to shop for private insurance coverage, under greatly enlarged federal regulations.

Each state can decide for itself whether or not to create its own exchange. And nearly 20 states — after weighing the expected costs and bureaucratic nightmares involved in the exchanges — have already told the Obama administration, in so many words, to take their exchanges and dump them in a bedpan.

Georgia is the latest state to do so.

"We have no interest in spending our tax dollars on an exchange that is state-based in name only," declared Gov. Nathan Deal in a press release Nov. 16. "I would support a free market-based approach that could serve as a useful tool for Georgia's small businesses, but federal guidelines forbid that. Instead, restrictions on what the exchanges can and can't offer render meaningless the suggestion that Georgia could tailor an exchange that best fits the unique needs of its population."

Deal went on to cite the unknown costs of such exchanges, their lack of flexibility and the loss of state control. Add to that the fact that they would be an administrative nightmare full of incredibly complex rules and mandates, probably requiring the creation of additional costly state bureaucracy. ...

The original deadline for goveors to decide whether to create such exchanges was Nov. 16. But the response has been such a belly-flop that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has now extended the deadline to Dec. 14. In other words, an extra month of arm-twisting by Team Obama.

Deal should stick to his original decision, thereby helping shift the burden and costs of the exchanges back on the administration that passed the law.

Online:

http://www.mdjonline.com

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Nov. 25

The Telegraph, Macon, Ga., on jobless benefits:

Washington's focus on the "fiscal cliff" — a potentially disastrous combination of tax increases and spending cuts scheduled to go into effect Jan. 1 — has shifted attention away from the biggest problem in the economy, which is the more than 12 million Americans still unemployed. More than 5 million of them have been sidelined for more than half a year, which means they're no longer receiving unemployment insurance benefits from their state. Instead, many are receiving extended unemployment benefits paid for by the federal govement. Unless Congress agrees to renew the program, however, that support will end as well, even before the country reaches the fiscal cliff.

It would be tragic if Congress abandoned the unemployed in order to clip a relative smidgen off the deficit — about $30 billion of a deficit of $1 trillion. According to the most recent federal survey of job vacancies, there were about seven applicants for every two openings. That's an improvement over the worst days of the recession, when the ratio of applicants to openings was more than 10 to 2. But it still means that there aren't nearly enough jobs available to put everyone back to work, especially when you consider the more than 9 million Americans who are either stuck in part-time jobs when they want full-time work, or who've become so discouraged they've dropped out of the workforce.

Nevertheless, Republicans and Democrats have battled for more than two years over how to offset the cost of the benefits, and more recently whether to continue funding them at all. There's a legitimate debate to be had over whether the country should continue borrowing money to pay for unemployment benefits. But the usual argument for cutting off benefits is risible when there aren't enough jobs to take.

Online:

http://www.macon.com

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Nov. 23

Columbus (Ga.) Ledger-Enquirer on state's criminal justice sentencing and corrections system:

One Georgia panel, with the blessing of Gov. Nathan Deal, has been at work for a couple of years now on recommendations for reforming Georgia's criminal justice sentencing and corrections system.

As previously reported, another panel has been involved in the same kind of study with regard to juvenile justice. Some of the problems — cost, risk, recidivism — are the same. But when the offenders involved are young people with, statistically at least, a far better chance of straightening out and tuing their lives around, the stakes are even higher.

A 21-member state council working with the Georgia Juvenile Justice Department has come up with some ideas for changing the way youthful offenders are handled — and saving Georgia taxpayers some money into the bargain — and will have a list of recommendations ready for the upcoming session of the Georgia General Assembly. ...

Similar reforms in Texas and Ohio reportedly have been followed by both lower recidivism rates and substantial public savings.

Both would be welcome in Georgia, the former for its own obvious reasons and the latter because taxpayers in the state currently shell out about $300 million a year for juvenile justice — not counting court costs and the pay of attoeys and judges. Each Juvenile Justice Department bed costs a minimum of about $29,000 a year (facilities for high-risk offenders are three times as expensive), mostly for young people who have committed misdemeanors.

One of the proposed changes would retu some of that money to local govements: The panel recommended that half of all money saved on detention would be used for local youth counseling, tracking and probation expenses.

A criminal is a threat to public safety and property whether he or she is 16 or 60, and must be held accountable for criminal actions. But if tuing young lives around actually costs us less than the bleak alteative, so much the better.

Online:

http://www.ledger-enquirer.com