Denver Post Editorial Sunday: The Good, The Good, and The Far-Fetched

I can only imagine very few readers of Sunday’s Denver Post opinion page shrugged their shoulders with a ho-hum. All stacked together on good old page 3D of the Perspective section, the collection of pieces had to evoke some wholehearted assent, some serious disagreement, or both.

Let’s go with the bad news first, the lead fantasy-ridden editorial “Public option is critical to reform”:

Opponents also say the public option is a ruse meant to facilitate a government takeover of health care. On the contrary, we think it will give the insurance industry every incentive to innovate and find efficiencies, best treatment practices and ways to make their rates more attractive to businesses and policy holders.

Based on what, the wishful thinking of the Post‘s editors? My jaw almost hit the floor as I read this editorial. Whether or not they like the cheese shop sketch analogy, here’s one good place (or here, for that matter — written by a fellow journalist) they could start to dunk their heads in a dose of reality. If the Post wants to promote real “game-changing reform” of health care, here are some much more promising ideas friends of liberty need to be talking up.

But the timely, thoughtful observations in the two by-lined pieces almost make up for the health care delusion. Dan Haley concludes with a zinger:

Amendment 23 was well-intentioned, but it’s now just a fuzzy math formula that no longer adds up.

You don’t hear Colorado treasurer Cary Kennedy touting her school funding constitutional mandate much these days. It sure has been a promising line of attack for her potential Republican challengers Walker Stapleton and J.J. Ament. What once was a third rail of Colorado politics is fair game.

Then you have Vince Carroll’s seemingly vain plea toward PERA, the state’s government pension fund [cue sound of head banging against wall]:

How about being “very realistic” for a change about a system that is only 52 percent funded? Would that be too much to ask?

If you need more specifics, you have to read the definitive case for PERA reform: an Independence Institute Issue Paper (PDF) written earlier this year by economist Dr. Barry Poulson.

But what jarring schizophrenia from the Post‘s editorial board. I’m not sure why they can be such astute judges of some of the leading problems in Colorado’s budget crunch but at the same time have such far-fetched views on the single biggest national policy debate of our time. At least on Sunday….