Two worries about a Governor Polis
Published in the Boulder Daily Camera, 10/15/18
Odds are good that Coloradans will pick a Boulderite as our governor. With only a few weeks to go, polls show Jared Polis with a double-digit lead. While I'll be glad to give anyone who thinks that lead is insurmountable Hillary Clinton's phone number, a guy with an unlimited campaign budget and big lead a few days before ballots are mailed out is looking pretty good.
Polis has done a great job of representing Boulder's interests in Congress over the past 10 years. He's unique in having a solid record as a corporate leader who has put those skills to work in serving the public's interests. Even those of us who don't agree with his political positions should admire his political skills, tenacity and commitment to his beliefs. He's even shown himself willing to work with Republicans on occasion.
There are two issues, however, that should raise our eyebrows about a Gov. Polis. One issue will affect everyone directly while the other issue has shown its profound importance in recent national debates.
The first issue is Polis's commitment to single-payer health care in Colorado. While he now refers mostly to the ill-defined phrase "universal health care," his commitment to a single-payer health care system played prominently during primary season before he had to sell it to all Coloradans, not just Democrats.
Single-payer health care systems are, by definition, those in which the government or a publicly owned and regulated agency pays all medical costs from a single fund. If implemented, the state of Colorado would collect taxes from us that it would use to pay our health care providers for medical services we receive.
While the idea of a single-payer system has lately become a Nirvana-moment for liberals, it comes with problems.
For starters, government institutions, try as they may, will never be motivated to provide the same level of customer service as does private enterprise that has to worry about satisfying you or losing you as a customer. When we're waiting in line to get license plates, it's annoying. However, when we're sitting in an emergency room with a detached retina, the service we do or don't receive is the difference between a future with one eye or two.
The struggle of single-payer systems to provide quality health care services is borne out by decades of experience in other countries. For example, Great Britain — a rich country — started the first single-payer system in the world in 1948. For decades, their National Health Service has been struggling to provide non-urgent surgery, such as knee operations, within 18 weeks. Last year, they abandoned that goal as unrealistic.
Are Coloradans willing to sacrifice our access to timely and high quality health care so we can deal with government agencies instead of insurance companies? Just two years ago, Colorado rejected a ballot proposal for single-payer health care 79-21 percent, so the answer seems to be no. Yet, if a Governor Polis is joined with a solidly Democratic Colorado legislature, we could find ourselves under a single-payer system in a year. That is worrisome.
A second worry about a Gov. Polis is his stated willingness to sacrifice the rights of men in the interest of prosecuting sexual assault. If we've learned anything in the past few weeks, we should now appreciate the inherent divisiveness of the proposition that "we should only trust women's accounts of sexual assault and assume that men are lying." Putting half of the population on notice that they are assumed to have no honor in matters of sexual relationships is an unlikely path to resolving societal issues around sexual assault.
Polis was, it appears, ahead of his time on this issue when, during a September 2015 Congressional Subcommittee hearing on higher education, he stated, "If there are 10 people who have been accused (of sexual assault), and under a reasonable likelihood standard maybe one or two did it, it seems better to get rid of all 10 people." Since virtually all people accused of sexual assault are men, what Polis was really saying was that, if catching just one sexual predator requires that 8 or 9 innocent college men are unjustly found guilty of sexual assault, get kicked out of school, and have a big scarlet letter forever on their chests, it's worth it.
I addressed this issue in a column and Polis contacted me and assured me that he misspoke on this matter. However, I have listened to his words at the Congressional hearing ( available on YouTube) many times and it's clear that his meaning was as described above.
In 2015, the proposition that men accused of sexual assault were never to be believed was radical. Based on the events of the past month, it's now being presented as sound public policy by many. If the governor of our state shares that perspective, I would find it worrisome, indeed.
Odds are good that Coloradans will pick a Boulderite as our governor. With only a few weeks to go, polls show Jared Polis with a double-digit lead. While I'll be glad to give anyone who thinks that lead is insurmountable Hillary Clinton's phone number, a guy with an unlimited campaign budget and big lead a few days before ballots are mailed out is looking pretty good.
Polis has done a great job of representing Boulder's interests in Congress over the past 10 years. He's unique in having a solid record as a corporate leader who has put those skills to work in serving the public's interests. Even those of us who don't agree with his political positions should admire his political skills, tenacity and commitment to his beliefs. He's even shown himself willing to work with Republicans on occasion.
There are two issues, however, that should raise our eyebrows about a Gov. Polis. One issue will affect everyone directly while the other issue has shown its profound importance in recent national debates.
The first issue is Polis's commitment to single-payer health care in Colorado. While he now refers mostly to the ill-defined phrase "universal health care," his commitment to a single-payer health care system played prominently during primary season before he had to sell it to all Coloradans, not just Democrats.
Single-payer health care systems are, by definition, those in which the government or a publicly owned and regulated agency pays all medical costs from a single fund. If implemented, the state of Colorado would collect taxes from us that it would use to pay our health care providers for medical services we receive.
While the idea of a single-payer system has lately become a Nirvana-moment for liberals, it comes with problems.
For starters, government institutions, try as they may, will never be motivated to provide the same level of customer service as does private enterprise that has to worry about satisfying you or losing you as a customer. When we're waiting in line to get license plates, it's annoying. However, when we're sitting in an emergency room with a detached retina, the service we do or don't receive is the difference between a future with one eye or two.
The struggle of single-payer systems to provide quality health care services is borne out by decades of experience in other countries. For example, Great Britain — a rich country — started the first single-payer system in the world in 1948. For decades, their National Health Service has been struggling to provide non-urgent surgery, such as knee operations, within 18 weeks. Last year, they abandoned that goal as unrealistic.
Are Coloradans willing to sacrifice our access to timely and high quality health care so we can deal with government agencies instead of insurance companies? Just two years ago, Colorado rejected a ballot proposal for single-payer health care 79-21 percent, so the answer seems to be no. Yet, if a Governor Polis is joined with a solidly Democratic Colorado legislature, we could find ourselves under a single-payer system in a year. That is worrisome.
A second worry about a Gov. Polis is his stated willingness to sacrifice the rights of men in the interest of prosecuting sexual assault. If we've learned anything in the past few weeks, we should now appreciate the inherent divisiveness of the proposition that "we should only trust women's accounts of sexual assault and assume that men are lying." Putting half of the population on notice that they are assumed to have no honor in matters of sexual relationships is an unlikely path to resolving societal issues around sexual assault.
Polis was, it appears, ahead of his time on this issue when, during a September 2015 Congressional Subcommittee hearing on higher education, he stated, "If there are 10 people who have been accused (of sexual assault), and under a reasonable likelihood standard maybe one or two did it, it seems better to get rid of all 10 people." Since virtually all people accused of sexual assault are men, what Polis was really saying was that, if catching just one sexual predator requires that 8 or 9 innocent college men are unjustly found guilty of sexual assault, get kicked out of school, and have a big scarlet letter forever on their chests, it's worth it.
I addressed this issue in a column and Polis contacted me and assured me that he misspoke on this matter. However, I have listened to his words at the Congressional hearing ( available on YouTube) many times and it's clear that his meaning was as described above.
In 2015, the proposition that men accused of sexual assault were never to be believed was radical. Based on the events of the past month, it's now being presented as sound public policy by many. If the governor of our state shares that perspective, I would find it worrisome, indeed.
