Grinch's burden: Health Department debt a symptom of pressing national issues

Our apologies go out to Mr. Joe Daughtery, the Wayne County commissioner depicted as "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas" on the front of today's paper.

The image was done in the light-hearted spirit of the season to match the joke he made at his own expense after hearing of the tens of thousands of dollars in bad debt accrued by the Wayne County Health Department over the course of 2017.

The more than $30,000 in bad debt the commissioners had to approve as a write-off for the health department is largely a result of health care afforded to those in the county who came to the U.S. illegally and who could not afford health insurance or the price of a hospital visit. Many of the services provided had to do with prenatal care, or pregnancy issues, among the non-legal residents. When Daughtery questioned Health Department director Davin Madden about this issue, he was correctly informed that due to the acceptance of federal dollars by the county to cover health care costs, the county in turn cannot refuse services to anyone who cannot afford to pay for them.

We certainly agree that doesn't seem right. We as taxpayers have to shoulder that burden.

So, as the GOP in Washington celebrates its success at reform the nation's tax code, we remind our readers that those same distinguished officials must now turn their attention to immigration and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy which runs out in March. A plan must be put in place to keep the more than 800,000 eligible workers here in the country, employed in their jobs rendering services and goods and paying taxes toward our improving economy. Some might say the heck with that, send 'em packing. But wait a tick, the numbers at play do matter.

Set aside the fact that deporting them all -- moral implications aside -- would cost trillions of dollars. The tax breaks just levied by the Republicans in office depend on steady job growth over the next decade to offset the $1.5 trillion the tax cuts will add to the deficit.

An already daunting feat that has Democrats and some so-called non-partisan analysts up in arms, matching the growth estimates required to offset that deficit means the American corporations which fled the country's once astronomical corporate tax rates now brought into balance by the tax cuts have to come home. They then have to increase the number of people they employ and the wages they pay those employees to rectify the price increases and loss of health care benefits for an estimated 13 billion people that will also arise from the tax cuts. Only then will consumer purchase power rise to the level that home and auto loans can be issued and paid on time, that goods and services at higher prices can be purchased, that health care not provided by employers and no longer mandated under threat of tax penalties can be obtained at affordable rates.

And all of that must happen along with keeping the Dreamers -- those DACA kids -- in the country and in their jobs to balance the tax cuts and deficit by 2025.

That is not us being anti-conservative or anti-Trump or even green like the Grinch. That is us looking at the figures and saying we'd rather the nation be in the black then fall that deeply into the red, and this is the only way visible at this juncture to ensure that happens.

Published in Editorials on December 20, 2017 9:54 PM