This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

It would be appropriate to call an experience I had this week stunning, disappointing, stupid, shocking.

Find another negative word.  It would fit.

Here’s what happened.

In late May, I was scheduled for an annual, “routine” visit with my cardiologist, something I have done for about 20 years since my “episode,” which was a heart attack in 2004.

So, for me, this visit was another important step on the way to preventing a future, emergency event.

In advance of the appointment, I had my blood drawn to provide information for the doctor to review.

All fine, so far.

Then, guess what?

Medicare, in its infinite wisdom, turned down reimbursement for the blood draw, using these words to decline:  “Medicare has denied payment stating that these are non-covered services because this is routine exam or screening procedure done in conjunction with a routine exam.”

Those words, quoting Medicare, came from a company called Labcorp, which wanted payment for the blood draw. 

In response to the bill – as well as other “stupid bills” — my wife and I spent about an hour on the phone with our supplemental insurer, MODA, where we learned that, when Medicare makes a decision such as the one in our case, MODA simply goes along with the federal decision.  So denial.

Say what?

If that “go-along” simply exists, then why do we have a supplemental insurer here in Oregon?

All of this defies rational explanation.

The service from my cardiologist was not “routine.”  To be sure, it was an annual procedure, but it was designed to avoid a future emergency.

So, why was it not covered?

I have no idea.

I suppose my wife and I could argue with Medicare, but we would have to do so in Washington, D.C. and no doubt would make little progress.

The fact is that this may come down to another health insurance word – “coding.”

If the blood draw I got was coded as “routine or preventive,” then I guess it would not be covered.  [Though, I add quickly, that, under our previous Medicare Advantage insurer, Providence, we never got a bill for a blood draw.  So, at the earliest opportunity, we’ll likely go back to Providence, which fits in the sense that, as a lobbyist, I represented Providence for about 25 years.]

The key:  Code the procedure differently in an effort to gain insurance coverage.

In this episode, the bottom line is this:  Our current health system in America – is it really a “system” in the normal sense of that word – is screwed up.

It does not reward solid behavior for persons who are committed to “prevention.” 

The incentive ought to lie with preventing future emergencies which, if left unchecked, would cost much more than “routine” procedures.

This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

This department, one of four I run as the manager (dictator), is now open.

The others, by the way, are the Department of Pet Peeves, the Department of Good Quotes Worth Remembering, and the Department of “Just Saying.”  No doubt I am a jack of all trades.

Inquiring minds want to know: 

Item #1:  Why do golfers call the 3-metal they hit a 3-wood?

The old name, of course, hearkens back to the day when all clubs except irons were made out of wood.  Now, with metal clubs, most golfers are not able to change their terminology.  Especially in regard to a 3-wood, er, 3- metal.

I just thought I’d point out the discrepancy.  I often am guilty of the mistake.

Item #2:  Misusing the word “handicap” in golf.

If you play or follow golf – and I do both – then one of the least understood words in the sport is this:  Handicap.  It means several things.

Mostly, it refers to the level of your golf.  So, a higher handicap player can play against a lower handicap player and have a chance to hold his or her own.  The player with the higher handicap “gets strokes” from the lower player, allowing them to play, at least in theory, “even.”

Oregon Golf Association writers the other day dealt with the word “handicap” in a different way.

Why, they asked, “is hole #3 on my course designated as the hardest hole? My friends and I think it should be hole #7.”

Golf holes also have a handicap number assigned to them, so golfers, based on their own handicap, know where they “get a stroke and where they don’t.”

“Just for giggles,” the OGA writers said, “we googled ‘What’s a handicap hole on a golf course?’  The top searches all quoted spin-offs of the following:  ‘Handicap holes are ranked in order of difficulty, with No.1 being the hardest to 18 as the easiest.’

“’Let’s bust that myth to smithereens.  It was never supposed to be the ‘hardest hole’ that gets the No. 1 spot.

“The No. 1 handicap hole should be the hole where the higher handicap player is most likely to need a stroke as an equalizer, since the idea is to provide an equal playing field for golfers of different handicap levels.

“If a low-handicap golfer is just as likely to make bogey as a high-handicapper on a particular hole, then it clearly wouldn’t rank No. 1.”

So, there you have it.  Clear now?

This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

I work up this morning to mostly clear skies, then remembered it was July 4^th, American Independence Day.

How do I feel on this day?  Well, the sky was still clear and the sun was still up.

How you feel is a good question these days as America faces a variety of national and international challenges, the toughest of which are often the national ones where Americans appear to hate each other more often than like each other.

For me, there little doubt but that the angst is fomented by one Donald Trump who capitalizes on fear and loathing to continue his march to what he hopes will be a second term as president of these United States.

Still, despite his apparent aspiration, he acts like he mostly hates the country he wants to lead.

Perish the thought that he would be in the Oval Office again practicing his craft as more showman, than political leader.

But, this morning, rather than focus on Trump, I prefer to do what I do every morning, which is to read the Washington Post.  There, I encountered two columns worth noting – one an editorial and a second a column by Megan McArdle.

Both are worth contemplating on this Independence Day, so I reprint them in whole.  For me, I prefer not to pessimistic about this country and these two articles help me achieve that objective today.

**********

BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Error! Filename not specified.

The United States finds itself in a funk as it celebrates its 247th birthday. Fewer than 4 in 10 U.S. adults describe themselves as “extremely proud” to be American, according to fresh Gallup polling, essentially unchanged from last year’s record low and down from about 7 in 10 two decades ago.

This is understandable given the unremitting pace of alarming headlines. There is a tide of worry about a lack of civic cohesion, intense partisanship and, to some, a sense of hopelessness. July 4^th , however, is a day to celebrate, among other national virtues, the United States’ proven capacity for renewal and self-improvement. The staying power of our system comes from its ability to correct and recalibrate. Free elections and open markets create dynamism that increases political and economic freedom.

The genius of America is that it’s built for give and take, accommodation and compromise, checks and balances, reform, and reaction. People in China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Cuba aspire to freedom. But their systems don’t tolerate constructive dissent.

Yes, we hear people who should know better say things have never been this bad. That’s as historically myopic as it is objectively wrong. Measured by almost every metric, the United States is better off than 200 — or even 20 — years ago. Start with economic well-being:  The U.S.-led global order has brought millions out of poverty. America remains the capital of medical, technological, and artistic invention.

The framers designed a self-healing system that also allows for moral growth. We carry the scars of the Civil War, the Jim Crow era, the Great Depression, McCarthyism, Watergate, and Vietnam but came out of them a better people. The country that initially counted enslaved people as three-fifths of a person twice elected a Black president. The newest member of the Supreme Court is not only the descendant of enslaved people; she’s married to the descendant of enslavers in a marriage that could have been illegal until 1967.

So why are many Americans no longer as proud of their country?

Corrosive partisanship is no small part of the answer. Until 2018, Donald Trump’s second year as president, majorities consistently expressed extreme pride in America when Gallup ran its annual pre-July Fourth poll. But many Democrats lost faith in their country after the 2017 white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville and failed to reclaim it after their party won control of the White House and both chambers of Congress. Today, only 29 per cent of Democrats say they’re extremely proud to be American, compared with 60 per cent of Republicans.

Alarmingly, across party lines, just 18 per cent of 18-to-34-year-olds say they’re extremely proud of this country. This generation grew up amid the dislocation of the Great Recession, seemingly endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, school shootings and active-shooter drills.

More recently came the disillusionment that accompanied pandemic isolation; George Floyd’s murder; the casual cruelty of Trumpism; the January 6, 2021, insurrection; the opioid and fentanyl crises; and warning signs that the effects of climate change are real and growing. With these frames of reference, fear and hopelessness are unsurprising.

A decline in national pride ought not be viewed in isolation from daily events, but these events also provide evidence of this nation’s resiliency. While Trump remains the dominant force inside the GOP, democracy held in 2020 despite his efforts to overturn the election and voters rejected the most egregious election deniers in 2022. January 6, 2021, was one of the darkest days in U.S. history, but a House select committee conducted a thorough investigation and the Justice Department has charged more than 1,000 people with participating in the Capitol attack. All of this reflects a triumph for democratic institutions and the rule of law.

Even the chaos at the U.S.-Mexico border — a flash point for the left and the right — is a reminder that this country remains a beacon of opportunity so powerful that people around the world are willing to take enormous risks to move into what they understand to be a promised land. They still want a shot at the American Dream.

Then there is the indispensable supporting role that the United States is playing in Ukraine. American leadership in the world remains as essential as ever.

Between baseball and barbecue, let’s all take a deep breath before the presidential election season kicks into high gear. Despite the corrosiveness of self-doubt and political tribalism, there is much to celebrate. American values have matured and endured, and while our union is still far from perfect, we continue to believe it’s an experiment worth pursuing.

This Editorial Board often highlights ways in which America falls short of her ideals. A newspaper’s role is to hold leaders accountable and to measure America against her promises and potential. The unfettered freedom to do so is one of many reasons we’re extremely proud to be citizens of this country.

**********

BY COLUMNIST MEGAN McARDLE

Her words appeared under this headline:  Why there’s reason to believe American democracy has a bright future

Error! Filename not specified.

As July Fourth approaches, I’ve been thinking about a question that was put to the table at a recent lunch I attended: What big things are you optimistic about? I think my answer won the prize for most surprising: I am bullish about American democracy.

I’ve no doubt that many readers will find this answer a bit counterintuitive. To conservatives who are concerned about “woke capital,” the “deep state” and the ideological capture of the expert institutions that inform government policy, it might even sound crazy. And no less so to liberals who worry about a conservative Supreme Court rolling back decades of progress, as well as Donald Trump.

So in honor of 247 years of American independence, let me lay out why I am still optimistic about our country’s future.

To people on the right, I would note that capital appears to be undergoing a Great Unwokening, and the hated deep state is the same bureaucracy that validated the Hunter Biden laptop suspicions and spent years investigating him. As for expert capture, yes, it is real. But over the long run, I’m more worried that political showboating will discredit experts who have true and important information to share, as happened with public health officials during the pandemic, than I am that some PhD will bullyrag parents into letting their kids identify as cats.

To the left, I would point out that the republic has survived many sudden reversals of Supreme Court precedent, as well as the discovery of all sorts of new rights, under the Warren and Burger courts. Disliking the results of judicial fiats is not the same as proving they are incompatible with a functioning democracy.

As for Trump, yes, he would, if he could, bulldoze every American institution that stands in his way — but note how conspicuously he has failed to do so. When he was president, American institutions were tested, but while they creaked a bit here and there, they ultimately held strong.

Will they continue to do so? Many on the left see Trump’s failings as the natural outgrowth of various troubling currents on the right and therefore fear he is a harbinger of even worse to come.

Perhaps, but I think this worry ignores how unique Trump’s successes have been, how dependent on things such as his celebrity, his wicked genius for dominating a screen, and a too-crowded primary field where that talent mattered enormously. It is, of course, a depressing sign that even after Jan. 6, 2021, he still dominates the coming GOP primary. But it’s also heartening that his pale imitators aren’t having anything like his success. There is no Trumpism; there is only Trump. And Trump will eventually leave the stage.

U.S. democracy has rebuilt itself from centuries of chattel slavery and another hundred years of Jim Crow; from the Trail of Tears and the Japanese internment; from the Palmer Raids and the Comstock Act and the Red Scare. It recovered from anarchist bombs and urban crime waves and any number of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s wilder schemes, including his plan to pack the Supreme Court. No matter how bad you think things look right now, you can find worse in American history — emphasis on “history.” Americans got through it. We can again.

Sure, maybe this time is different and America has finally broken itself. Maybe the antidemocratic talk has gone too far; maybe left and right hate each other too much to come together as a nation ever again. But let me close with the story I told the lunch table to explain why I don’t find all the dialed-up-to-11 online rhetoric so worrisome.

In the early 1930s, a sociologist named Richard LaPiere spent two years traveling across the United States with a Chinese couple — a fraught activity, given then-pervasive bigotry against Asians. Fortunately, they were refused service at only one of 66 hotels and none of the 184 restaurants they entered. Afterward, however, La Piere followed up with a questionnaire to those establishments, asking whether they would accept “members of the Chinese race.”

Of those who responded, more than 90 per cent said they would not.

We all know that people sometimes pretend to be better than they are — for example, by saying they care about racial equality while choosing segregated neighborhoods and schools. But this can also work the other way: Sometimes, people will confess an abstract hatred they’d never act on with an actual human being in front of them. So when I wonder whether Americans really hate each other too much to live as one nation, I look not at what people are saying online but how they behave in person.

Watch Americans dealing with one another day-to-day and you will mostly see them going out of their way to be nice. There are far more random acts of kindness in this country than there are drive-by shootings, and far more people acting with honesty and integrity, even when no one’s looking, than there are con men and thieves. We focus on the latter precisely because they are rare.

Which is why, for all the bad, America is better than it thinks itself. And I dare to believe that, in the future, it will be better still.

This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

President Joe Biden is known these days for his advanced age, for the gaffes he continues to produce, and for the criminal trials of his son.

But, for those who are paying attention, there are solid economic results all around.  And, some of them are due to Biden and his Administration.

I wish Americans – me included – would know more about the good news of what has come to be called “Bidenomics,” the current record of solid economic news.

Is “Bidenomics” all good news and a magic answer?  Of course not.  Plus, some critics of the Biden Administration point to what Biden has done as just more liberal spending, thus raising the federal deficit.

There may be at least some truth in that rendering, but, for now, I think Washington Post writer Jennifer Rubin has performed a service with her most recent column that appeared under this headline:  Bidenomics is transformative. Biden needs to ensure voters know it.

Here is how Rubin started her column:

Error! Filename not specified.

“Some presidents don’t have a strong story to tell about their record, so they deflect, distract, and demonize their opponents.  Other presidents’ records almost speak for themselves. President Biden, however, finds himself in an unusual spot:  An economic record that has been working far better than most people anticipated but that the electorate doesn’t yet recognize.”

Rubin’s list of accomplishments for the Biden Administration:

“The economy has created 13 million jobs, inflation has been more than cut in half, huge investments are being made in infrastructure and green energy, wage growth has begun to outpace inflation, the first drug price controls are going into effect and the biggest corporations will finally be forced to pay something in federal taxes.

“Yet, polls show voters incorrectly think we are in a recession and remain negative about the economy.”

The White House is aware of the problem, so it is making a focused push to narrow the gap between performance and perception.

On Monday, senior Biden advisers Mike Donilon and Anita Dunn released a four-page memorandum explaining the president’s vision, which they call “Bidenomics.”

Dunn and Donilon wrote:

“Bidenomics is rooted in the simple idea that we need to grow the economy from the middle out and the bottom up — not the top down. Implementing that economic vision and plan — and decisively turning the page on the era of trickle-down economics — has been the defining project of the Biden presidency.”

Then, they ticked off the list of accomplishments:  An economic recovery five years earlier than expected; 13 million jobs since the president took office — including nearly 800,000 manufacturing jobs; a higher job-participation rate for working-age Americans than at any time in the past 20 years; and others.

In a speech in Chicago, Rubin says Biden launched a renewed focus on the two most significant bi-partisan legislative accomplishments of his term, the infrastructure bill and the CHIPS and Science Act.

He hopes these measures will help brand him as the cross-aisle deal maker he sold to voters in 2020, appeal to political moderates who formed a core of his winning electoral coalition, and impress upon tuned-out voters what he has done in office.

Seasoned New York time columnist David Brooks entered this fray the other day, writing under the headline:  Why Biden Isn’t Getting the Credit He Deserves.

“The misery index is a crude but effective way to measure the health of the economy.  You add up the inflation rate and the unemployment rate.  If you’re a president running for re-election, you want that number to be as low as possible.

“When Ronald Reagan won re-election, it was about 11.4, when George W. Bush did so it was 9, for Barack Obama it was 9.5, and today, as Biden runs for re-election, it’s only 7.7.

“Biden should be cruising to an easy re-election victory.  And that misery index number doesn’t even begin to capture the strength of the American economy at the moment. The economy has created 13 million jobs since Biden’s Inauguration Day.  According to the Conference Board, a business research firm, Americans’ job satisfaction is at its highest level in 36 years. Household net worth is surging.

Why, then, Brooks asks, does Biden suffer from low poll results.  Then, answers his own question this way:

“…the main problem is national psychology.  Americans’ satisfaction with their personal lives is nearly four times as high as their satisfaction with the state of the nation.  That’s likely because, during the Trump era, we have suffered a collective moral injury, a collective loss of confidence, a loss of faith in ourselves as a nation.”

The national malaise, despite good economic news, revolves around Donald Trump.  As nothing more than showman, he has capitalized on the national fear, the loss of confidence, and even encouraged it.  He says he wants to lead government, yet, every day, he runs squarely against it.

So much so that he has persuaded usually smart Americans to support him, no matter what he has done to anyone – and especially to women in this country, treating them as nothing more than objects.

Also this:  Remember, it was a number of Republicans who helped pass the major economic bills that have contributed to “Bidenomics.”

So, in theory at least, it will be difficult for them to continue going after Biden.

The way Rubin puts it:

“While GOP presidential candidates and the Republican National Committee continue to paint Biden’s economic stewardship as a rolling disaster, Republican senators who helped shape the legislation say they anticipated that those accomplishments would accrue to Biden’s political advantage — as well as to their own.”

Still, just wait for the partisan criticism.  It will be there.  In all of politics these days, it’s never the middle.  Never credit for good work.  Never consensus to solve national problems.

Always personal criticism.

I say, if you look at politics, try to focus on facts, not dissension.  There is too much of the latter and not enough of the former.

**********

Closing Note:  I have said in the past that I don’t intend to write any more about Donald Trump.  But, I guess, I have lied.  I cannot help myself but to mention his stupidity as I have done again in what appears above.