Readers scoff at rosy economic perceptions, ponder University of Minnesota hospital's future

"I'm not sure what world you are living in," the caller said.

"You can write whatever you want but that doesn't make it true," she added.

That was one of the nicer things said by readers who called or wrote to complain that my column on Aug. 15 took an overly rosy view of the nation's economy.

I suspected that declaring that "the economy is humming" would upset some readers. Most of those who reached out to me — or offered criticism in the online comment section — pointed out how much more they are paying for gas or groceries these days.

To them, I want to say that I do recognize inflation has taken a toll on all of us for more than two years. And, as I wrote in the column, once prices have gone up, they're not likely to go down.

While higher prices are not the sole measure of economic health, I wish I had written that credit card balances have soared this year. That's important because eventually consumer spending will slow as people start to attack their debt.

But the bigger picture remains surprising. Inflation has slowed markedly without the jump in unemployment that many people feared — and that the nation experienced in the 1980s.

Something different is happening now. As I wrote, I think demographic changes are an under-recognized influence, but there may be other things. Let's keep trying to understand them.

On the day in July after Sanford Health dropped its latest attempt to buy Fairview Health, ending the fears of some over the future of the University of Minnesota's health system, I wrote that state officials and university officials should keep pushing hard to develop a strategy for the U's hospitals.

In the column, I asked rhetorically whether the U's system should run the best and most important health system in the state? One reader e-mailed to hammer the point that Mayo Clinic in Rochester "is by far and away the best of the health care systems in the state. Not even close."

That's part of why the dilemma over the U system is challenging. In other states, including Wisconsin and Iowa, the university systems are unquestionably where you go when you're facing the biggest and most difficult health problems.

Mayo peels away a fraction of patients with difficult cases from all states and their health systems. But that fraction is bigger in Minnesota, particularly because of Mayo's hospital network through several other cities and towns in the southern part of the state.

Health care isn't a purely competitive market, and I'm not arguing it should be. But as officials work on a direction for the U's health system this fall, I think Minnesotans would benefit from seeing Mayo face more competitive pressure than it does.

Policymakers must decide whether that will come from the U. If they decide yes, Minnesotans will have to recognize there will be a cost. The state's investment in Rochester's Destination Medical Center, begun nearly a decade ago, amounts to about $30 million annually over 20 years, or around $600 million.

U officials made clear early this year they would need $950 million in state funds to repurchase its hospitals and other teaching facilities from Fairview. And that would just be the start.

The most strident criticism I got from readers this summer came after I wrote on July 2 that I thought it was weird that Minnesota lawmakers legalized pot before they allowed the sale of consumer-grade aerial fireworks.

My position in that column turned out to not look very good two days later, when teenagers in Minneapolis stayed out all night shooting fireworks and even injuring police. A few readers wrote me after that incident to ask whether I stood by what I wrote.

Yes. As bad as I felt for the police, I still think it's strange for marijuana to be legalized and not fireworks. In deciding to legalize either one, lawmakers make an economic choice: diminish the risks or harms of the product to bring its market out into the sunshine.

Speaking of sunshine, after my Aug. 2 column about research at the U on an organic method to get rid of so-called Japanese beetles and their lawn-destroying grubs, John Arthur of Hopkins alerted me to the existence of a tiny fly that eats the beetles.

The winsome fly, or Istocheta aldrichi, lays eggs on the beetle's thorax and a larva will enter the beetle and start to eat it from the inside. Arthur took a picture a couple of years ago of a Japanese beetle in his backyard that had a collection of the tiny fly's eggs on its thorax.

The U's entomologists, in an update last month of their online white paper about Japanese beetles, noted that the fly "has become more noticeable in the past four years in Minnesota."

Just a reminder that nature's battlefield is more intense than the economic marketplace.