Recent Missouri editorials

The Jefferson City News-Tribune, March 15

Last year, we urged Gov. Mike Parson to veto a bill that would have allowed motorcyclists to ride without helmets, effectively erasing the state’s helmet law.

Last year, we urged Gov. Mike Parson to veto a bill that would have allowed motorcyclists to ride without helmets, effectively erasing the state’s helmet law.

He vetoed the bill, but only because he found something else in the bill distasteful.

This year, supporters are again pushing the perennial issue, which they describe as freedom of choice. So again, we renew our opposition to the measure.

The helmet exemption only would apply to riders ages 18 and older, and riders must have insurance.

Those are both important stipulations, but they’re not enough to gain our support on the measure.

Why? Because we firmly believe that if this bill passes, two things will happen:

Riders will gain more freedom.

More lives will be lost.

In many cases, we support increased freedom and less government intrusion. In this case, the statistics are clear: Motorcycle helmets save lives.

Every day we are free to make decisions that could affect our lives, for better or worse. But this doesn’t just affect the lives of motorcyclists. When a rider without a helmet gets a head injury in a wreck, his insurance will pick up the bill. But they’ll also spread that increased cost among the rest of us through vehicle insurance premiums. Plus, our tax money will sometimes pick up the tab through Medicaid.

If a helmet-less rider gets a head injury and doesn’t have insurance, hospitals may get stuck with the tab. They, too, will factor such expenses into their bills for the rest of us paying health care consumers.

We again urge lawmakers to spike this ill-conceived bill. We also hope Parson considers what he will do if they don’t spike the bill. Lives are at stake.

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The Joplin Globe, March 11

A bill that would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity has once again stalled in the Missouri House.

The Missouri Nondiscrimination Act, which would protect LGBTQ Missourians from discrimination, has been filed for the 22nd consecutive year by state Rep. Greg Razer, a Democrat from Kansas City, who has sponsored the legislation for at least the past four years.

The bill would add sexual orientation and gender identity to Missouri’s human rights statute, which already prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, sex and disability. More than 160,000 LGBTQ adults in Missouri would benefit from an expanded state nondiscrimination law, according to PROMO, a statewide advocacy group.

“Missouri will enter the year 2020 with laws still in place allowing for the legal discrimination of its LGBTQ citizens,” Razer said in a statement through PROMO when he prefiled the legislation at the start of the session. “It is beyond time for our state to finally step up and protect all Missourians. With growing support from both sides of the aisle, it’s time for leadership in Jefferson City to care enough to act.”

Razer told St. Louis Public Radio last week that he’s frustrated by the bill’s lack of progress. It has yet to be assigned to a committee for a hearing.

Proposals to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity have fallen flat in the Missouri Legislature in the past. Opponents say they aren’t in favor of discrimination, but that they believe businesses should be able to create their own policies.

But policies that could create an environment in which someone could be fired because he or she is gay, for example, have no place in our state. Our LGBTQ friends and neighbors aren’t asking for any special treatment with this bill - they’re simply requesting the same protections that the rest of us have when it comes to employment, housing or public accommodations.

Missouri - and indeed the U.S. government - is behind the curve on this. More than 70 other countries, including the majority of countries in Europe, have adopted similar anti-discrimination protections.

And in our state, there is now judicial precedent for this law. The Missouri Supreme Court last year affirmed that state law prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of a worker’s failure to conform to sex-based stereotypes.

Twenty-two years is a long time to fight for equal rights under the protection of the law, and it is beyond time for Missouri to step up and pass this nondiscrimination act.

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The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 15

Missouri has been lax in arranging for the in-home care that many children with complex medical conditions are entitled to under Medicaid, forcing them to remain in institutional settings when care at home is better for them and more cost-effective. That’s according to a lawsuit that alleges the state is failing some of its most vulnerable citizens. Gov. Mike Parson shouldn’t wait for the lawsuit’s outcome to provide the public with answers.

Medicaid is the joint federal-state program that provides medical services to low-income families. This includes funding for kids with severe disabilities who require intensive care and monitoring but which can be done in the home rather than in facilities.

It’s the state’s responsibility to make arrangements for such care - and the state of Missouri is failing “at a systemic level” to do it, according to the lawsuit by the families of nine children and teens, ages 1 through 18, against the Missouri Department of Social Services. As the Post-Dispatch’s Michele Munz reports, this unexplained failure is plaguing the lives of young people who have already endured more hardships than anyone should have to.

They include an 18-year-old Ferguson woman, the victim of a brain infection that has left her unable to walk, eat or even breathe on her own. After five years in a facility, she was finally approved for home care last year. The care failed to materialize for months because the state initially didn’t arrange for it.

Another patient, 16, paralyzed from the neck down in a car accident, had to wait two months in a hospital before the state got around to arranging her home care, the lawsuit alleges. Yet another patient’s family alleges that state caseworkers have merely provided lists of home care agencies, leaving it to the family to line up care.

“Plaintiffs have had to take extraordinary measures to try to locate Medicaid providers, such as making repeated calls to home health agencies, contacting nursing schools, and making their children’s circumstances public through social media forums such as Facebook,” the lawsuit states.

In addition to the human cost of leaving these patients in facilities longer than medically necessary, there’s a much bigger monetary cost to taxpayers. In-home care for a disabled child runs $535 for the maximum authorized 16 hours of care per day. Rehabilitation facilities and hospitals run between $2,200 and $4,000 per day.

What’s going on here? That’s unclear, because the Department of Social Services says it cannot comment on pending litigation.

That’s not good enough. A system is in place to help these young patients - a system designed to give them the care and family support they need in a cost-effective way - and the state is failing to make that system works or ensure the most efficient use of taxpayer dollars. The public deserves answers.