Highlights from Sunday’s editorial pages from the newspapers along the I-4 Corridor, with h/t to Rob Pickering:
Lakeland Ledger – Public Plan Needed For Health Care: “In a country that pays far more for health insurance than other, less wealthy nations – and gets less for its money – there must be a way.”
Daytona Beach News-Journal – Single Payer Silence: “If Medicare is good enough for the 65-and-older set, why wouldn’t it, or a similar system — paid for, like Medicare through direct taxes — be good enough for everyone else? Not a single doctor or hospital would be out of business, patient choice would be expanded, not narrowed, considering the endless strictures on privately insured patients today, paperwork would be vastly reduced, efficiency increased and costs controlled merely through economies of scale. People who these days are forced to decide between going to the doctor or the ER or buying food and clothes would no longer be faced with such grim choices.”
Orlando Sentinel – Stimulus Won’t Fix Lynx: “Without a dedicated funding source, Lynx [the bus service which services Orange, Osceola, and Seminole counties, including Orlando] had to depend on the kindness of its local funding partners. In the recession, facing their own budget hardships, some of those partners acted more like strangers.”
St. Petersburg Times – The Miracle On U.S. 19: “Five years of heavy construction will try the patience of U.S. 19 motorists in north Pinellas County, but the payoff will be a 12-mile stretch of road without any aggravating stoplights. And that seems miraculous to those who remember the nightmarish U.S. 19 traffic jams of the 1980s and 1990s, when motorists plastered their cars with bumper stickers that read ‘Pray for Me — I drive U.S. 19.’”
Tampa Tribune – Buses Must Lead Transit Upgrade: “Building a more useful bus system in selected areas is a prerequisite to winning public support for a likely 2010 referendum on transit improvements, including the county’s first rail line. A big part of any sales tax increase will be invested in additional bus service. More buses are essential both for getting riders to the trains and for winning support in areas not served by rail.”
