Recent editorials from Texas newspapers

Here are excerpts from recent editorials in Texas newspapers:

Corpus Christi Caller-Times. Aug. 5, 2019.

Who are we?

We ask because of what happened Saturday in El Paso, Texas, where 22 people were killed - and, several hours later, in Dayton, Ohio, where nine were killed.

We ask because the mayor of El Paso, Dee Margo, said: This is not who we are. (We’re paraphrasing.)

He said it with conviction. And he’s right.

El Paso is a peaceful, neighborly city. El Pasoans live their lives harmoniously, interdependent with the residents of Juarez, the city on the other side of the border. It’s how El Paso and Juarez have been for 350 years, Margo said.

El Paso averages fewer homicides in a year than happened Saturday - if you need statistics to show you who El Paso is and isn’t.

More to the point, the gunman didn’t come from El Paso, or from the other side of the border. He came all the way from Allen, Texas, 659.2 miles to the east-northeast via interstate, according to Google Maps.

What happened in El Paso is as unlike El Paso as what happened inside a church at Sutherland Springs, Texas - 26 people shot dead - was unlike that church congregation, and what happened at a school in Santa Fe, Texas, 10 people killed, was unlike that group of students and faculty.

The killers in those other two shootings had a direct connection to their targets. The El Paso killer has no known connection to El Paso - proving Margo’s point that this is not who El Paso is. It’s somebody else. Somebody full of hate - hate that was encouraged. Hate that has no place in El Paso.

El Paso is a safe city and an example of how relations between two countries should be. El Paso steps up to protect immigrant children.

Now, El Paso is in shock. El Paso has lost mothers and fathers, tios y tias, abuelos y abuelas, people who mattered. But, according to Margo, this tragic, avoidable loss will not define El Paso. It’s not who El Paso is.

Who are we? As Texans, we’re a people who have endured three horrific mass killings in less than two years. In defining who we are, we must ask and answer for ourselves:

- What could we have done differently?

- What are we willing to do now to stop this madness?

- What will our leaders do and what will we demand of them?

- We can start by asking Gov. Greg Abbott who he is, who he’d like to be and how he’d like to be remembered. He has been governor during all of these shootings. Is that how he wants to be remembered?

Abbott, to his credit, steps up during crises, going to disaster scenes sometimes when they still aren’t safe. He shows compassion, but struggles to acknowledge gun violence is hurting our state.

Abbott is the governor who went to a shooting range to sign a bill lowering the fee for concealed carry permits. During this stunt, he shot a few rounds and said he’d save the bullet-riddled target as a message to news reporters. What will Abbott do, in the aftermath of El Paso, to make us forget he is that guy?

Will he blame mental illness - the increasingly popular scapegoat of cowards who don’t want to admit there are too many guns and too much hate, and are unwilling to do something about it?

Who’s Gov. Greg Abbott? A religious man. He said he and his wife are praying for El Paso and he asked the rest of us to do the same. We have no reason to doubt that he has been praying and believes in the power of prayer. But we’ve heard this all before, and the result seems to be one more mass shooting after another.

Why not on President Donald Trump, who spreads hate, which is the cause of these mass shootings? Or Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who targeted Black Lives Matter after the Dallas police shootings and is blaming video games for the El Paso shooting? Asked and answered. Abbott gives us reasons to have higher expectations.

It still doesn’t answer the question: Who are we? Who do we want to be?

We all should want to be more like El Paso, as fine an example of peace and harmony as there is - a peace and harmony that it took an outsider to disrupt. And we must find effective solutions that will prevent similar tragedies. That’s who we need to be.

___

Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Aug. 6, 2019.

After yet another mass shooting, the predictable proposals begin, ideas that either wouldn’t have prevented the attack (universal background checks for gun purchases) or that address one small thing that might not even be a factor (violent video games).

Instead, we must call the attack in El Paso what it is - white nationalist terrorism - and react with alarm and speed. That way, we can apply a framework that will actually address the problem.

We’ve done it before, when we were brutally attacked by Islamic extremists in 2001. And though there were missteps along the way, the U.S. has largely been kept safe from repeated spectacular attacks by such terrorists.

There are no quick solutions. The mass shooting problem, and the racism that fuels so much hate, aren’t going away soon. And tackling white supremacist violence won’t cover every shooter.

But by naming the biggest threat, marshaling resources and building national unity around tackling it, we can make real progress and ultimately save lives. Here’s what a serious, sustained effort to defeat the anti-Hispanic, conspiracy-driven hate that allegedly drove a young North Texas man to slaughter 22 innocent people in West Texas might look like:

- MORE LAW ENFORCEMENT ATTENTION

After the Sept. 11 attacks, FBI leaders re-oriented the agency around preventing future attacks. Now, law enforcement at all levels need to make the white supremacist terrorist threat a priority.

It’s a challenge - there isn’t a central organization to pursue, as there was with al-Qaeda. Tracking and stopping individual haters is a tall order.

But almost without exception, there are signs that shooters could become violent. The Dayton, Ohio, killer apparently had a high school hit list that many of his fellow students knew about. Police need to take these threats seriously and follow up.

It’s not just a federal job. Gov. Greg Abbott and other state leaders have pushed state law enforcement agencies to supplement federal border security efforts. They need to make white supremacy a priority, too.

- LEADERSHIP FROM THE TOP

President Donald Trump said all the right things Monday about America being no place for hate.

The problem is everything he said before that.

For four years, as an attention-grabbing candidate and as president, he’s framed immigrants in ugly terms, portraying a false picture of an invasion force at the border.

Trump did not directly cause the shooting. But his words and ideas offer refuge for the worst kind of conspiracy theorist and those who would turn to violence in response to the idea that white Americans are losing their edge in life or even being “replaced.”

It’s not that hard to be tough on illegal immigration without turning to race-baiting. The president has a lot to do to build any credibility on this issue. And if he can’t or won’t, the voters must hold him accountable next year.

- YES, THIS NEW GUN LAW WOULD HELP

Expanding background checks is the preferred immediate policy of most gun control advocates. But many mass shooters have passed such checks to buy their guns. That appears to be the case in the El Paso and Dayton shootings.

A better first step would be the creation of gun violence restraining orders, also known as “red-flag” laws. This popular idea would allow police, with a judge’s supervision and approval, to remove weapons from someone found to be an imminent threat.

We trust judges to allow law-enforcement incursions upon other liberties, such as the right against search and seizure, every day. Good judges balance public safety and individual rights, and they can do so here. Abbott, a former judge and state attorney general, has hinted as supporting this, and he should demand that the Legislature to enact it.

Law enforcement at all levels must ensure that information about potentially dangerous people is input into the right databases. This sounds stunningly obvious, but we learned after the Parkland and Sutherland Springs shootings that it doesn’t always happen. And we should consider whether in many cases, law enforcement needs more time to conduct a deeper background search.

Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn led an effort last year to improve the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, a good start. This is the nitty-gritty work of making bureaucracy function better and fill gaps that allow violent racists to slip through. It’s not dramatic, but it must continue.

- HELP YOUNG MEN WITH ANGER AND FEAR

Trump talked at length Monday about the impact of the internet. But there’s a bigger issue - young men who don’t know how to deal with anger, rejection or fear.

Boys are falling behind in education. The culture doesn’t often provide the best male role models. And yes, finding fellows online with tidy theories about who’s to blame can lead a vulnerable mind down a dark road.

Preventing radicalization is one of the biggest challenges of dealing with any terrorist movement. It’s a matter of education, opportunity and persuasion. To prevent mass shootings, we need an extended conversation about how to help young men do better - and be better.

These steps require a national commitment. There will be debates about how to proceed and difficult choices to make. But if we approach this problem with the same spirit as we did the Sept. 11 attacks, we can reduce violence and curtail hate. The victims of El Paso deserve nothing less to honor their memories.

___

Houston Chronicle. Aug. 6, 2019.

It sounded like a big victory for Texas patients: a new state law protects them from sticker shock if they receive an unexpected medical bill from a doctor who wasn’t in their insurance provider network.

But the victory wasn’t as big as it seemed.

The law signed last month by Gov. Greg Abbott applies only to Texans who buy insurance policies regulated by the Texas Department of Insurance. Left out is the 40% of the Texas insurance market, including employee benefits programs self-funded by large companies, regulated by the federal government through the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA).

Texas’ new law takes effect in September. It was authored by state Sen. Kelly Hancock, R-North Richland Hills, who has been trying to protect patients from surprise medical bills for 10 years. It was Hancock’s 2009 bill that created a mediation process to settle billing disputes between medical providers and patients whose insurance companies wouldn’t cover out-of-network charges.

Mediation since 2015 has saved Texans more than $42 million in health care costs not paid by their insurers, including $8 million last year alone, according to the insurance department. But despite outreach efforts, many patients never knew they were eligible for mediation. They instead scraped up the cash to pay any balance owed after their insurance company kicked in its obligated share.

That shouldn’t happen as often under the new law, which takes consumers out of the equation by replacing mediation between the patient and insurer with what Hancock calls “baseball arbitration,” where an intermediary with medical billing expertise settles the dispute.

“It forces both parties to be more realistic in setting actual charges and payments,” Hancock told the editorial board. “The settlement is based on whoever comes closest to what the arbitrator believes is the fair market price. Whoever is farther away from that number is going to lose.”

A companion bill that would have made arbitration available to self-funded insurance plans was abandoned during the last legislative session. Hancock explained that participation would have been voluntary since those plans follow ERISA rules instead of TDI regulations. “Hopefully, we will see Congress address the issue,” he said.

That may not happen. Hospitals are opposing a bill in the U.S. Senate they say amounts to price-setting. The legislation would require insurance companies to pay out-of-network doctors at a rate tied to in-network fees for a specific treatment or procedure. Doctors, hospitals, and other medical facilities would be banned from “balance billing” patients an amount above what they are paid by the insurer.

“In short, the federal government would bind doctors and hospitals to the terms of contracts they haven’t signed,” said Heritage Foundation fellow Doug Badger in a commentary for the Daily Signal. Badger said physicians have a right to set fees for their services. He said the better solution is to make sure patients know beforehand that they are seeing someone out-of-network.

That may sound reasonable, but not when the patient is in an emergency room or similar situation and has little option but to receive treatment then and there.

The success of Hancock’s legislation despite initial opposition by the Texas Medical Association is reason to believe Congress can find a similar solution for patients with federally regulated insurance policies. In fact, TMA President David Fleeger said the physicians group would help write the rules TDI will use for arbitration under the new statute.

It’s good to see Texas join the 25 states that already have laws protecting patients from unexpected medical bills. Now it’s time for Congress to extend that protection to more Americans. Even President Trump says he wants that to happen. He agrees that people shouldn’t open their mail to find a doctor’s bill jarring enough to make them sick.