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Op-Ed: Turning Good Ideas into Good Legislation for PA; State Rep. Jesse White (D-46); Beaver Countian; March 20, 2012.
Mr. White lost the very small part of his district in Beaver County in both 2006 and 2010. According to Mr. White’s campaign website, at one time “He worked … in the Legal Department for the United Steelworkers of America in Pittsburgh.” Mr. White was convicted of defamation and invasion of privacy in April 2011.
Previous White pieces I critiqued are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Mr. White usually posts his comments on both the Beaver Countian website and his own, but when I posted this critique the article was only on the Beaver Countian website. I’ve also seen Mr. White’s pieces on Canon-MacMillan Patch, including this one.
Below are some comments about parts of the subject opinion piece.
Mr. White wrote, “The first bill, HB 2263, would require hospitals to test newborns for congenital heart defects a minimum of twenty-fours [sic] hours from birth. Hospitals would be required to perform a pulse oximetry screening on newborn babies, which is a non-invasive screening that utilizes a sensor placed on an infant’s foot to measure the amount of oxygen in their bloodstream. … an estimated 280 infants with an undiagnosed congenital heart defect are discharged each year from hospitals in the United States.” In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve never been a parent. At the risk of being accused of insensitivity and “wanting to see babies die” (Yes, a local lefty once accused me of that.), consider the following. According to the CDC, there were a little over four million U.S. births in 2009. That means “280 infants with an undiagnosed congenital heart defect” represent about 0.0068% of all births. I don’t trivialize the issue; I’m only putting Mr. White’s figure in context. For Pennsylvania, this means in 2009 about 10 “infants with an undiagnosed congenital heart defect” were discharged. (Yes, I know not all babies are born in a hospital.) In comparison, there were 35,684 induced abortions in Pennsylvania in 2009. Are insurers, obstetricians, and parents too stupid to ask for the test on their own? Where do we stop mandating tests for undiagnosed conditions? Is death because of an undiagnosed condition any less tragic for toddlers, pre-adolescents, adolescents, or young adults?
Mr. White wrote, “The second bill, HB 2261, also known as the Fairness in Copayment Act, is designed to limit copayments and coinsurances for insured medical services. The bill will limit the imposition of copayments and coinsurances for insured medical services to no more than 30% of the total cost of medical services per visit.” It appears Mr. White doesn’t know insurance companies will need to increase premiums to compensate for the revenue lost from lower “copayments and coinsurances” and will eventually result in us paying more overall than we would otherwise. As I noted in my Healthcare paper, hiding the price of healthcare from the actual consumer is one of the contributors to higher-than-necessary healthcare prices. Also, please read the “There ain’t no free lunch” section of my Economics paper. Finally, you may recall Mr. White proposed a law intended to help pets get homes that actually provided an economic incentive for scummy people to adopt a pet solely to get the tax credit and then abandon or kill the pet. Some folks never learn.
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