Fight the drug crisis now, how 10/7 unified Israel and other commentary

From the right: Fight the Drug Crisis Now

“More than 100,000 Americans died of a drug overdose last year, the second year in a row in which the death toll reached six figures,” reports City Journal’s Charles Fain Lehman; ODs are the leading cause of death “outright among Americans under 50,” yet “policymakers have taken only timid steps to respond.” “Deterring casual drug use and more frequent consumption” via “controlling the flow of deadly drugs” and “communicating that the drug supply is poisoned” are of “paramount importance.” Also, Congress should help primary-care providers “link patients with substance-use disorders to treatment beds” and have experts articulate “the best practices in humane, effective compulsory treatment.” Policymakers “must take decisive action, and do it now—before tens of thousands more Americans lose their lives.”

Libertarian: Science’s Sinking Reputation

The institution of science has gotten “political and cult-y,” full of “thin-skinned narcissists with government jobs” who “cast out as heretics well-informed critics who interpreted evidence differently. In the process, they lost the trust of a public which saw insights replaced by bossy ideologues,” warns Reason’s J. D. Tuccille. A recent Pew study found that the percentage of Americans who say science has had a mostly positive effect on society is down 16 points since the pandemic began. That “plunge” is “no coincidence; that’s when some scientists, especially those in official positions, began wielding ‘science’ as a shield against debate and a tool for control.”

Foreign desk: How 10/7 Unified Israel

“On October 7, it was as though Israel’s awesome military power had disappeared,” yet “into the breach stepped ordinary Israelis,” marvel Dan Senor & Saul Singer at The Free Press: Tech CEOs, ultra-Orthodox Jews who don’t generally serve in the army, even Israeli Arab drivers — all pitched in to rescue civilians, join the army or otherwise help. For 10 months, the country had been “torn apart” by a “cold civil war” over proposed changes to its Supreme Court’s power, but “in the wake of unimaginable trauma, the people of Israel revealed greater unity and resilience than anyone — not least themselves — could have anticipated. In this hidden societal strength lie not only the seeds of Israel’s revival, but a blueprint for the revival of the West.”

Conservative: War for the Soul of the West

In the global “populist revolution against self-perpetuating progressive elites,” grumbles The Wall Street Journal’s Gerard Baker, “the establishment appears to have won” in Britain as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak “brought back into government David Cameron” as foreign secretary. “If you wanted a caricature of the English establishment there’s none better.” Ex-PM Cameron “isn’t just the man who insisted the British people endorse membership in the European Union on pain of economic punishment”; “he also boasted of having inaugurated a ‘Golden Age’ ” of UK-China relations and has “reportedly spent the years since he left office engaged in lucrative promotional exercises on behalf of Beijing.” This follows “Sunak’s dismissal of [Home Secretary] Suella Braverman,” who “has emerged as the most outspoken advocate of a tough approach to immigration, crime and the woke mind virus in the public sector.” But “popular anger about immigration, crime, national sovereignty and the takeover of cultural institutions by the neo-Marxist left won’t go away.”

Eye on Albany: NY Hospitals’ Money Wail

“Hospital lobbyists are pushing what could be the costliest budget request ever floated in Albany,” notes the Empire Center’s Bill Hammond. The Greater New York Hospital Association and health-care union 1199 SEIU claim “Medicaid underpays providers by an average of” 30%, and “want lawmakers to close that gap.” They neither “cite a source” for that figure nor “estimate how much the proposed rate hikes would cost.” Beware! The “hospital lobby has used exaggerated statistics in the past.” And by “one commonly used benchmark, Medicare, New York’s Medicaid rates for hospitals appear relatively generous.” Shifting less-needy enrollees to private plans could save money to let the state overhaul “its rate schedule without busting the budget.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board