Two superheroes stand up to China
When it comes to American foreign relations, who knew it would take Pete Mitchell and Peter Parker to stand up for our country?
Movie fans know these two guys as Maverick and Spider-Man, and a column on The Washington Post website gives them, and the people who make decisions about their most recent films, credit for being among the few in Hollywood willing to ignore the Chinese government.
Columnist Sonny Bunch wrote, “The resounding success of “Top Gun: Maverick” could represent a tipping point in Hollywood’s relationship to China. ... It’s about time American studios recalibrated their priorities to be less reliant on Chinese censors and Chinese moviegoers.”
Tom Cruise’s sequel to the 1986 movie that cemented his box-office appeal has opened to good reviews and a great bottom line. Bunch wrote that the $300 million opening week for “Maverick” puts the film 75% of the way toward profitability — and it is going to make a lot of money without being shown in the world’s biggest market.
A backstory to the movie is that a Chinese company originally was supposed to put up some of the money to make the film. Bunch wrote that some sharp-eyed movie fans noticed that the advance trailer for “Maverick” had altered the fighter pilot’s jacket to remove mentions of Japan and Taiwan. This clearly was a decision made to avoid Chinese sensibilities about two countries its government dislikes.
But when the film landed in movie theaters two weeks ago, the credits at the start of the movie did not include the Chinese company, Tencent Productions. And Japan and Taiwan were back on Maverick’s flight jacket.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the Chinese firm backed out of the movie out of fear that the communist government in Beijing would be unhappy with an investment in a movie that celebrates the American military.
Bunch added, “Having lost Chinese funding and being uncertain of receiving a Chinese release, someone somewhere decided the juice was no longer worth the squeeze and undid the vandalism to Mav’s jacket. In addition to simply making aesthetic sense, the move also earned the picture some good will with American audiences who have grown tired of having their blockbusters defaced by Chinese censors.”
Amen to that! American companies do not help our bedrock ideal of free expression when they cave to financial pressure, the way many firms do when it comes to business in China.
Bunch also credits another recent movie, “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” for giving up its access to the Chinese market by refusing the government’s request for a major change in the film.
China reportedly wanted Sony Pictures to remove a sequence that included the Statue of Liberty — which is where the end of the movie took place. Sony (a Japanese company, if anyone noticed) and its film partner Disney refused. And the movie about what happens after Peter Parker is revealed as Spider-Man was the first post-covid theater hit, bringing in $889 million in the United States among its world total of $1.89 billion.
Other big movies are still bending their stories to suit the Chinese communists. But now there is a growing body of evidence that says Hollywood can get along fine without the threat of Chinese censorship — while striking a blow for American values. There are a lot of other American companies doing business in China, and perhaps they too will start asking whether the communist government’s demands and requirements are worth the trouble.
That’s the economic power the United States has over China, and the experiences of Maverick and Spider-Man should be kept in mind when the Chinese cast an eye at Taiwan and whine about criticism of their repression in Hong Kong.
Jack Ryan, Enterprise-Journal
Rural hospitals are in peril
The struggles that Greenwood Leflore Hospital has faced in recent years are replicated across the rural landscape of America, especially in the South.
Rural hospitals have a lower percentage of private-pay patients than urban ones, making rural hospitals especially vulnerable to Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates that don’t cover the cost of care. They have a harder time keeping an adequate medical staff of local hires, forcing them to hire travel nurses and other medical specialists whose contracts carry a hefty premium. They are in areas where the population has been in decades-long declines. Their patients tend to be more expensive to treat because of their age and multiple health problems. And they have a disproportionately large share of patients who don’t have insurance and can’t afford to pay their bill.
That last problem — high numbers of uninsured patients — is compounded in the South because of the obstinate refusal of state leaders to take the federal government up on its longstanding offer to pay for most of the cost of insuring the working poor.
Consider this correlation.
In Mississippi and four other Southern states — Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee — more than 30% of their rural hospitals were deemed vulnerable to closure, the news outlet USA Today recently reported, citing a study by the Chartis Center for Rural Health. All five of these states are in the group of 12 nationwide that have refused to expand Medicaid.
“We’ve seen that really catapult the South into kind of a descending spiral with hospital closures,” said Michael Topchik, director of Chartis.
Medicaid is not the only thing that rural hospitals need to cure their ills, but it is a significant part of the remedy, even with reimbursement rates that are on the low side. It is distressing that the Republican leadership in Mississippi, most notably Gov. Tate Reeves and House Speaker Philip Gunn, absolutely refuse to see it. Do some hospitals in the most medically vulnerable parts of this state have to close in order to open their eyes?
There are so many good arguments for expanding Medicaid, and so few good arguments for not doing so.
Expansion wouldn’t just help hospitals. It would lift up the entire economy of this state with an estimated extra billion dollars a year in federal funding. It would provide more than 200,000 of currently uninsured adults with the peace of mind of having coverage. It would give them the incentive to seek care for medical problems before they reach a crisis point and send them to the emergency room.
Opponents of Medicaid expansion have erroneously claimed that the state can’t afford the cost.
The federal government, under the law that created Medicare expansion, is obligated to indefinitely cover at least 90% of the cost. That match was sweetened even more last year by Congress to try to persuade Mississippi and the other recalcitrant states to get on board. The economists who have crunched the numbers for the state government have said that Medicaid expansion will pay for itself in increased economic activity.
That math doesn’t even take into account the severe financial fallout that would be felt in rural areas should they lose their hospital.
In most rural communities like ours, the hospital is one of their largest employers. The hospital not only employs people directly but indirectly fuels other jobs by contributing to the quality of life that companies and their employees want.
A community without a hospital is a community that’s going to have a hard time retaining the economy it has, much less growing it.
It’s not just rural hospitals in this state that are in danger. Rural Mississippi itself is. Those in state government better understand that.
Tim Kalich
Editor and Publisher
Greenwood Commonwealth
