Excerpts from recent editorials in newspapers in the United States and abroad:
Kansas City Star on Kathleen Sebelius helping create a fairer health system:
By agreeing to serve as President Barack Obama’s health and human services secretary five years ago, Kathleen Sebelius assumed a front-and-center role in a historical effort.
Presidents since Harry S. Truman have tried to end the moral injustice that left millions of Americans without access to affordable health care. Obama and the Democrats in Congress, who at the time controlled both chambers, had a mission and an opportunity to change the system.
Sebelius left the Kansas governor’s office to become a part of it. Her role in getting the Affordable Care Act up and running was never easy, and it would become excruciating. But Sebelius, who resigned her post on Friday, contributed a great deal toward creating a fairer and better health care system for America.
Obama tapped Sebelius because she’d been insurance commissioner in Kansas and she’d succeeded as a Democratic governor in a state as Republican as they come.
But Sebelius had the good fortune in Kansas to work with a Legislature populated at least in part by moderate Republicans who were willing to work with her for the good of the state.
Washington was different. For five years, the top priority of Republicans in Congress and in many state legislatures has been to sabotage the president’s health care law.
States refused to create their own insurance exchanges, leaving the Health and Human Services Department with a bigger job than had been envisioned. Congressional Republicans refused to release money to properly promote the marketplaces.
None of that excuses the epic website debacle that nearly derailed the entire health care law. The online insurance marketplace that was a centerpiece of the Affordable Care Act barely worked for a full two months.
As Kansas governor, Sebelius was a wonkish, detail-oriented executive. But she lost control of the development of HealthCare.gov, the insurance marketplace. The wrong people were in charge, lines of authority were unclear and too much was required in too short a time.
Sebelius either didn’t realize the extent of the problems or she downplayed them to Obama. Both scenarios are equally bad.
The turnaround of HealthCare.gov has been as dramatic as its crash. By the March 31 deadline, enrollment in the insurance exchanges exceeded expectations. …
After catching blame for the failure, Sebelius received little credit for the success. The White House staff that engineered the turnaround had little use for Sebelius and her team.
It was time for the secretary to leave. Obama’s choice of Office of Management and Budget Director Sylvia Mathews Burwell to replace Sebelius indicates his desire to have a proven manager in charge as health care reform progresses. She is a good choice, and Congress should speedily confirm her.
As for Sebelius, history will treat her efforts more kindly than the headlines that are accompanying her departure. Recollections of the blank screens and error messages that marred the roll-out of HealthCare.gov will fade in time, and Americans will focus on what matters.
Thanks in part to her work, millions of Americans can see a doctor and deal with serious medical problems without fear of financial ruin. Insurance policies can’t be canceled when a consumer becomes seriously ill or reaches a lifetime limit on treatment. Hospitals are reducing errors and controlling costs.
Getting kids insured has always been a priority for Sebelius. So it’s fitting that her resignation should come at the same time as a report showing the uninsured rate for children dropped 2.2 percentage points while she was in office, to 7.5 percent. That piece of good news makes for a very satisfying sendoff.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on U.S.
military activities in Africa:
The Defense Department’s Africa Command, created in 2008, continues to expand U.S. military activities in Africa, now in at least 18 countries.
The operations are taking place in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Djibouti (which hosts a major U.S. base), Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Libya, Mali, Niger, Senegal, the Seychelles, Somalia, South Sudan, Togo, Tunisia and Uganda. The United States has operated drones out of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Niger and the Seychelles. A U.S.-trained officer led a coup d’etat in Mali in 2012.
Last month, a U.S. Special Operations force commandeered a tanker in international waters that Libyan rebels were attempting to use to export Libyan oil for their own profit. The armed intervention was carried out at the request of the shaky Libyan government and responded to the desires of American oil companies operating in Libya. A parallel use of U.S. military forces to protect the assets of American oil companies is the guard function they carry out on a pipeline in Colombia, South America.
In March, President Barack Obama authorized the insertion of U.S. forces into Central Africa to aid the Ugandan military in what have been unsuccessful efforts to track down the Lord’s Resistance Army of Joseph Kony. This action was taken in spite of previous failures to trap the LRA and public criticism of the Ugandan government of President Yoweri Museveni for a law that its legislature has passed and he has signed that is sharply discriminatory against homosexuals.
It is difficult to argue that America has important strategic interests in any of these countries. Absent the agreement of any African nation to the establishment of a U.S. Africa Command headquarters on its soil, it remains based in Stuttgart, Germany.
It is hard to fathom why U.S. military activity is on the rise in Africa, but it may be driven to a degree by Pentagon fears that its budget will be cut in the post-Iraq and post-Afghanistan era.
, now that Americans are tired of distant wars. The problem is the activity is expensive ”“ planned expansion of the Djibouti base alone is estimated to cost $750 million ”“ and it risks involving the United States in unnecessary military adventures. Someone needs to “red pencil” the expansion before it proceeds further.
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