eedition Register-Star January 14 2020 by Columbia-Greene Media

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A4 Tuesday, January 14, 2020

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OUR VIEW

A ban on Styrofoam will be welcome Greene County Legislator William B. Lawrence, R-Cairo, is calling for a countywide ban on polystyrene, the ubiquitous, near-indestructible plastic foam used in drinking cups, food trays and many, many other things. At the same time, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is proposing a statewide ban on the landfill-proof material we all commonly refer to as Styrofoam. Polystyrene can’t be recycled and resold. It’s nearly impossible to remove from the waste stream and there’s no market for it. It’s light but bulky, and cheap to produce. It is the dominant occupant of landfills and it takes an eternity to decompose. It has nothing going for it except its seeming ability to survive a nuclear holocaust. So good for Lawrence and Cuomo on their decisions. We don’t agree with all of Lawrence’s positions on Greene County issues or Cuomo’s ideas on what’s best for New York, but in this case, as Lawrence

pointed out last week, banning Styrofoam would be good for our health and our local business community. As trash on streets and in rivers, lakes and seas, Styrofoam is more trouble than it’s worth, according to the Green Dining Alliance. All of the polystyrene that clogs up the environment is useless. More disturbing, when Styrofoam gets into the water, it doesn’t break down and it floats forever. Plastics are the scourge of the world’s oceans. They swirl in mammoth, winddriven ocean currents and form plastic conglomerates unbelievably deadly to marine life. Big chunks and tiny particles contaminate the food chain and leave remote beaches looking like garbage dumps. Styrofoam is among the leading contaminants slowly destroying our sensitive ecology. Lawrence and Cuomo have wisely decided not to add to the calamity.

ANOTHER VIEW

Washington seemed to be working, for once. Last month, key members of the House and Senate - House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone Jr., D-N.J., Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., Senate Health Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. - had negotiated legislation that would end socalled surprise medical billing. Example: when you have emergency surgery, then get slammed unexpectedly with a huge bill from an out-of-network anesthesiologist you didn’t choose. The legislation was set to be included last month in a must-pass funding bill. Then the leaders of the House Ways and Means Committee introduced at the last minute a competing bill, and the resulting legislative turf war stalled the momentum. Now, no solution may pass anytime soon. Neither the first bill nor the second, introduced by Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., and Ranking Republican Kevin Brady of Texas, is perfect. But they would help, and in similar ways. A deal should have been struck weeks ago. The issue revolves around ancillary providers - that is, doctors and other specialists who contract with, but are not employees of, medical facilities such as hospitals. Even if their hospitals accept standard health insurance, causing patients to believe all their services will be covered, these ancillary providers might not be included. Instead, they charge sometimes exorbitant out-ofnetwork rates directly to patients who had expected their health plans to pick up the tab. The two groups of legislators agree that when patients go to in-network The Register-Star welcomes letters to the editor. All letters must contain a full name, full address and a daytime telephone number. Names will be published, but phone numbers will not be divulged. Letters of less than 400 words are more likely to be published quickly. The newspaper reserves the right to edit letters for length, clarity and content. Letters should be exclusive to this publication, not duplicates of those sent to other persons, agencies

medical facilities, they should pay no more than in-network prices to anesthesiologists and other ancillary providers, letting their insurance companies sort out the rest. But they disagree on how to determine the amount insurance companies would end up paying ancillary providers for their services. The Pallone-Walden-Alexander-Murray bill would use regional averages to set rates, which would end the practice of charging unusually high prices for ancillary medical services. The NealBrady bill would create an arbitration process that would settle payment rates when there are disputes between insurers and doctors, basing its rulings on “payments made to similar providers for similar services in similar areas.” If it works well, arbitration would presumably result in mostly similar outcomes to direct rate-setting. If it does not, it could give doctors an opportunity to game the process. In truth, neither option is ideal. The best way to end surprise billing is simply to require that all ancillary providers working at in-network facilities are themselves also in-network. That would avoid any controversy about government rate-setting, encouraging insurance companies and providers to instead negotiate down prices. But the Pallone-Walden-AlexanderMurray bill was a decent second-best plan - one that is pretty close to what Neal and Brady themselves proposed. Since they lost the chance to pass surprise billing legislation last year, lawmakers must settle their differences as soon as possible. The gap between them is bridgeable.

Congress should be insulted but not surprised WASHINGTON — There are 99 better, or at least less abject, senators. However, Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., is inadvertently useful by incessantly demonstrating the depths to which senators sink when they jettison institutional responsibilities to facilitate subservience to presidents of their party. Consider the contrast between Graham and Mike Lee, R-Utah, concerning Congress’ responsibilities regarding war. Last Wednesday, administration officials, in what they evidently considered an optional concession to inferiors, gave a short (75 minutes), closed-door congressional briefing on military action against supposedly imminent threats from Iran. Presidential freedom to unilaterally commit acts of war unrelated to imminent threats would amount to an uncircumscribed power to undertake not just limited preemptive actions but to wage preventive war whenever a president unilaterally decides this might enhance national security. Lee is famously mildmannered but wasn’t after what he called an “insulting and demeaning” briefing in which executive branch officials instructed Congress concerning what it can debate: The briefers, who included Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark Esper, warned that making military action subject to congressional authorization might encourage Iranian aggression. Sen. Chris Coons, DDel., asked whether, if the administration decided to take the extreme action of assassinating Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, it would at least notify Congress. The briefers would not say so. Congress last declared war on June 5, 1942, against Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, with a war already raging. This was 78 years and many wars ago. A power neglected, like a muscle never exercised, atrophies. Now Graham explicitly says that even debating, not a declaration of war but merely the wisdom of past

WASHINGTON POST

GEORGE F.

WILL military actions and necessary authorization for future ones, means “empowering the enemy.” Last April, Pompeo was asked in a Senate hearing: Is the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force against al-Qaida and other nonstate actors responsible for 9/11 sufficient authorization for the president to wage war 18 years later against Iran? Pompeo laconically said he would prefer to “leave that to lawyers” — presumably those he employs. With a few exemplary exceptions, notably Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, congressional Democrats, too, have been situational ethicists about their responsibilities regarding war. The Obama administration’s shambolic intervention in Libya’s civil war, the costs of which are still mounting, proceeded unaccompanied by congressional authorization but swaddled in executive branch sophistries. Barack Obama’s Justice Department vigorously defended what no one denied — that presidents may initiate military action without congressional approval. The issue, however, was that the administration, which had said the intervention would last “days, not weeks,” then said that thousands of air strikes, which caused numerous casualties over seven months and had the intended result of regime change, did not constitute “hostilities.” Last Wednesday’s briefing caused Lee to endorse Kaine’s proposal to direct the president to stop engaging in hostilities against Iran or any portion of its government or military unless continuation is explicitly authorized by a congressional declaration of war or other authorization of force.

Senate passage of this would take Democratic unanimity and two more Republicans joining Lee and Kentucky’s Rand Paul in supporting it. The House presumably would concur. Although Senate Republicans would subsequently sustain a presidential veto, virtues are habits, and this exercise might be the beginning of congressional involvement in decisions about war and peace becoming habitual. Presidential discretion is presumptively greatest regarding foreign relations. And many aspects of the modern age — weapons of mass destruction; the swift, perhaps surreptitious and potentially intercontinental delivery of such weapons; the multiplication of violent nonstate actors — have radically altered the context in which the Framers’ spare language in the Constitution’s pertinent provisions must be construed: The Congress has the power “to declare war” (also to “raise and support armies” and “maintain a navy”); the president is commander in chief of the armed forces. Concerning limits on presidential discretion, there is a large gray area. However, the activity of unilaterally preventive wars is not in it. Coons asked the briefers this: Suppose that in coming months the administration concludes that Iran, having shed the nuclear agreement’s constraints, is about to acquire a nuclear weapon. Would you need authorization from Congress prior to strikes meant to prevent this? The briefers would not agree even to consultation with Congress, although Coons several times restated and narrowed the question. Congress should not be surprised when the executive branch takes Congress’ responsibilities regarding war no more seriously than Congress does. George Will’s email address is georgewill@washpost.com. (c) 2020, Washington Post Writers Group

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