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Monday, March 18, 2024
March 18, 2024

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Camden: Inslee conjures bloody image of Washington’s budget

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Before we know it, the legislative session will be on us, and with it the kind of rhetoric that can make one pause.

Legislators rarely are constrained by grammar or logic as they argue for or against things. It was likely in this spirit that Gov. Jay Inslee, in announcing his budget proposal Thursday, wandered into references to human physiology without brushing up on his Gray’s Anatomy.

Note: “Grey’s Anatomy” is a TV soap opera set in a Seattle hospital where you would never seek treatment because the staff expends most of their attention and energy lusting after each other. Gray’s Anatomy is a standard textbook that describes the various body parts, where they are, how they work, and how they fit together.

In answering a question about how badly state services have been cut in recent years, Inslee first offered some numbers. But realizing that reporters are notoriously bad at math, decided to go all metaphor on us and conjure up an image. “We have already slashed mental health way past the bone; we’re into the artery. We’re in the carotid artery,” he said. “This recession has put us billions of dollars in the hole, we have slashed to the bone, and now we’re looking into the cartilage.”

While the image of gushing blood is a strong one for denoting severe budget cuts, it should be noted one can cut through a good many arteries, even the main carotid, before touching a bone. Cartilage is a bit more diverse. Some of it hangs out in joints, such as the knee. When one gets to be a certain age, with some of those years spent in physical activity, that cartilage tends to be much on one’s mind. But it’s also in places like the ear, which even some people with low pain thresholds manage to pierce regularly.

Perhaps the image the governor sought was cutting through the bone into the marrow. Or past the bone and into the organs.

Reporters will be desperate for good imagery during the intense budget session, but will also have their cliché alerts up. We hope they repel certain phrases that have become way too common. Among those coming readily to mind: “going forward,” used to denote a passage of time, which almost never goes backward; “at the end of the day,” which usually has nothing to do with that day, or any particular day; and my personal least-favorite, “kick the can down the road,” which never refers to a particular can or a specific road.

Generally one finds that when going forward by kicking the can down the road, one gets to the end of the day … and it’s night.

Medical school expansion

Around the Capitol, the debate over physician education in Spokane is sometimes called the Apple Cup for medical schools.

Although some take sides as they do for the annual football game between the University of Washington and Washington State University, many state politicians — from Inslee down — are wary of picking a favorite in the controversy over competing medical school plans for Spokane.

If both universities expand medical education in Spokane, the community would be turning out 240 medical school graduates a year by the middle of the next decade, or 120 from each university program. But that’s many years — and many budget decisions for future Legislatures — down the road. The 2015 debate will be about foundations.

It’s not strictly the money, although that sometimes is cited for a delay in supporting one or both. A total of $10.5 million is sought for the next two years: The University of Washington wants $8 million to expand its small medical school program to 40 students per year by 2016, and Washington State University wants $2.5 million to seek accreditation for a new medical school that would start with 40 per year in 2017.

Inslee and legislators say the state needs more doctors, particularly in rural areas, where a shortage is becoming acute, and in family practice. But they have yet to be convinced that one plan or the other is the way to meet that need, and some question whether a second medical school is the best solution.

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