J.D. Prose – 3/5/11

This page was last updated on March 7, 2011.

Terrible Tom’s travesty; J.D. Prose; Beaver County Times; March 5, 2011.

As you read this opinion column, keep in mind Mr. Prose wears at least one other hat for the Times. In addition to being an entertainer/pundit, Mr. Prose is a part-time reporter covering political stories. Ask yourself this. When a pundit gives his political opinions in one part of the paper, can he be trusted to report politics objectively elsewhere in the paper? After all, would a person whose opinion is 1+1 equals 3 report 1+1 really equals 2? Does he have a “Chinese wall” in his head to keep his opinions from bleeding into his reporting? (You may recall NPR claimed it fired Juan Williams for doing exactly what Mr. Prose does.) If it can get worse than that, Mr. Prose has made name-calling and personal attacks a foundation of his columns. If pushed, I’d be willing to bet Mr. Prose would try to excuse his writing by claiming he’s paid to be controversial and stir debate. The problem is, you don’t need to get into name-calling and personal attacks to accomplish those goals.

You can find the archive of my Prose column critiques here.

Below is a detailed critique of portions of this column.

In the “TERRIBLE TOM” portion of his column, Mr. Prose writes about “increasingly right-wing Gov. Tom Corbett’s decision to let adultBasic, the health-insurance program for low-income Pennsylvanians, expire and leave subscribers to enroll in a more expensive program.” Mr. Prose later refers to adultBasic subscribers as “our most vulnerable residents.” Not exactly. According to the “2010 adultBasic Annual Report,” “The purpose of this program is to provide access to basic health coverage to adult Pennsylvanians, ages 19 through 64, whose incomes are too high to qualify for Medicaid.” If adultBasic subscribers earn too much for Medicaid coverage, how can they be “our most vulnerable residents?”

Regarding funding, the report says, “The program has been funded by some of the proceeds of the state’s tobacco settlement along with payments made by Pennsylvania’s four Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans pursuant to the Community Health Reinvestment (CHR) Agreement, an agreement that expired at the end of calendar year 2010. In the 2010 calendar year, those two sources of funding permitted $166 million to be spent on adultBasic benefits. Administration of the program was funded through the General Fund. Enrollees also contribute to the cost of coverage in the form of statutorily determined premiums, as well as modest co-payments and co-insurance. No federal financial participation has ever been received for the program.”

Regarding participation, the report says the average monthly enrollment was about 43,000 during 2010 with a waiting list of nearly 479,000 eligible persons in December 2010. This means only 8% of those who applied and were eligible for adultBasic during the Rendell administration were accepted. Looking at it another way, 92% of adultBasic-eligible persons already had “to enroll in a more expensive program.” Funny how Mr. Prose failed to note this, isn’t it?

Finally, I checked both the Pennsylvania and U.S. constitutions and neither talk about the government getting into the medical insurance business. Should people in need get help? Of course, but from private charities funded by voluntary contributions.

Mr. Prose concluded this section with “If Corbett’s first month in office is any indication, it’s going to be a long, sickening four years.” I could be wrong, but I suspect Mr. Prose wrote that sentence as soon as he learned Mr. Corbett announced his candidacy.

In the “SEEN & HEARD” portion of his column, Mr. Prose noted Rep. Jason Altmire (D-PA4) was “participating today [3/5/11] in the 46th anniversary commemoration of Selma’s ‘Bloody Sunday’ march” then wrote, “Careful, Jason. If you keep doing stuff like this Faux News will ban you.” Mr. Prose knows Democrats/leftists ran the South at the time of “Bloody Sunday,” doesn’t he? Of course, Mr. Prose may know and hopes his reader doesn’t.

Finally, Mr. Prose beats the “Jason’s centrism” drum again, as he did in last week’s column.