Editor’s Note: Happy Thanksgiving from the Media Consortium! This week, we aren’t stopping The Audit, The Pulse, The Diaspora, or The Mulch, but we are taking a bit of a break. Expect shorter blog posts, and The Diaspora and The Mulch will be posted on Wednesday afternoon, instead of their usual Thursday and Friday postings. We’ll return to our normal schedule next week.
by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Wednesday is the heaviest travel day of the year in the United States, as millions of Americans head home to celebrate Thanksgiving. Some of you are probably reading this dispatch on PDAs as you wait in an interminable line at airport security. Here’s some food for thought.
At Grist, food writer Michael Pollan officially declares himself a Rules Guy. Don’t worry, that doesn’t mean he won’t accept a Friday dinner invitation offered after noon on Wednesday. Pollan thinks that our healthy eating skills are passed down to us as part of food culture. In this era of drive-through windows and meal replacement bars, a lot of the old wisdom is falling by the wayside and Americans are finding themselves adrift in a sea of calories. On the eve of Thanksgiving, Pollan provides some helpful guidelines for avoiding the food coma:
[M]any ethnic traditions have their own memorable expressions for what amounts to the same recommendation. Many cultures, for examples, have grappled with the problem of food abundance and come up with different ways of proposing we stop eating before we’re completely full: the Japanese say “hara hachi bu” (“Eat until you are 4/5 full”); Germans advise eaters to “tie off the sack before it’s full.” And the prophet Mohammed recommended that a full belly should contain one-third food, one-third drink, and one-third air. My own Russian-Jewish grandfather used to say at the end of every meal, “I always like to leave the table a little bit hungry.”
But wait, there’s more!
Unions representing airline pilots and flight attendants are advising their members to avoid the the TSA’s new backscatter x-ray scans because of concerns about the long-term health effects of x-ray radiation. Crew members who refused scans have been subjected to new “enhanced” pat-down searches. This week, the TSA granted an exception to pilots, but not to flight attendants. As I reported for Working In These Times, all crew members go through the same FBI background check and fingerprinting process. “Don’t touch my junk!” has become a rallying cry for passengers, particularly white men, who are not accustomed to being asked to give up any part of their body’s autonomy for the greater good. Is it a coincidence that 95% of pilots are men and three-quarters of flight attendants are women? [Update: The TSA has relented. The agency announced Tuesday that flight attendants will now get the same exemption as pilots.
Adam Serwer argues in The American Prospect that it’s easy to demand tough security measures when the presumed targets are faceless Muslims in a distant country. When air travelers are asked to compromise their own privacy in the name of security, the tradeoff suddenly seems very different.
Employee health insurance deductibles are skyrocketing at Whole Foods and CEO John Mackey is trying to blame the increase on health care reform. “This is very important for everyone to understand: 100% of the increases in deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums in 2011 compared to 2010 are due to new federal mandates and regulations,” Mackey wrote in a corporate memo. In fact, as Josh Harkinson reports in Mother Jones, Mackey’s memo is pure, organic BS. The provisions in the Affordable Care Act that might increase costs won’t go into effect until 2014, so it’s hard to figure out how federal policies could be responsible. Health insurance costs were rising by about 5% per year, year after year, before the Affordable Care Act passed. The truth is that health insurance is getting more expensive because health care is getting more expensive. As Harkinson points out, one of the reasons that health care is getting more expensive is because corporations like Whole Foods are pushing more of their employees into part-time work to avoid covering them. Of course, when those workers get sick, someone has to pick up the cost of their care. So those who have insurance, including some of Whole Foods’ own employees, have to pay more to make up the difference.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Republicans don’t have the votes to repeal health care reform, but they are determined to use their newly-won control of the House to fight it every step of the way. Marilyn Werber Serafini gives Truthout readers a sneak-peek at the GOP playbook to attack healthcare reform in 2011.
Who are some of the top contenders in this coming battle? Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) is a leading candidate to chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Barton is vowing, if elected chairman, to use the oversight powers of the committee to hold a flurry of hearings on alleged misconduct in the crafting of the Affordable Care Act. Barton plans to show that budget experts “covered up” the true projected costs of health care reform. In Barton’s world, the fact that there’s no evidence to support this allegation is all the more reason to investigate.
Other key players include James Gelfand, the director of health policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who has already compiled a wishlist of 31 investigations that he wants the newly Republican-controlled House to undertake. The Chamber spent millions to elect Republicans this cycle. Barton’s hearings will have to compete for political oxygen with those of Rep. Darrel Issa (R-CA), the chair apparent of the Investigations Committee, who is promising to gum up the works of government with at least to seven hearings a week for 40 weeks, a projected rate nearly triple that of his predecessor Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Ca).
Health care freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose
If they can’t undo health reform in the corridors of Washington, conservatives are looking to the states and the federal courts. In The Nation, Nicholas Kusnetz reports on how a coalition of hard right groups are organizing against health care reform at the state level.
A group known as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is at the forefront of the drive to pass so-called “health care freedom acts” in the states to preemptively outlaw federal health reform before it can be implemented. ALEC claims to have filed or pre-filed bills in 38 states and passed 6 so far. Few expect these laws to stand up in court, if challenged, but they are part of ALEC’s long term strategy to fight health reform itself in the federal courts. A Virginia judge recently ruled that an ALEC-sponsored “freedom” law gave the state standing to challenge federal reform.
Kusnetz shows the close ties between ALEC officials and Americans for Prosperity, the Cato Institute, and other Koch-Industries-funded conservative activist groups that are campaigning against health care reform in various capacities.
What about Medicare?
At the Washington Monthly, Steve Benen notes that many Republicans, including Senator-Elect Rand Paul (R-KY) successfully campaigned on a platform of repealing health care reform to save Medicare. Benen explains that repealing the Affordable Care Act would actually put Medicare in worse financial straights than staying the course. The Republican rhetoric of defending Medicare and railing against socialized medicine is a flagrant self-contradiction. It’s not hard to see which of these two projects they are more committed to.
As Brie Cadman points out at Change.org, the self-proclaimed “Young Guns” of the Republican Party are keen to privatize Medicare all together.
Government cheese: Corporate welfare edition
The USDA is scheming to make you eat more cheese. Tom Philpott of Grist explains how it works. Big Dairy produces more milk than Americans care to drink. Plus, consumers are increasingly demanding reduced-fat milk. That leaves a lot of milk left over to make cheese, but Americans aren’t eating enough cheese to make a dent in the national milk fat surplus.
Unsold milk fat could become a toxic asset on the books of Big Dairy. So, the USDA created a non-profit corporation called Dairy Management (DM) to convince fast food companies to spike their products with millions of tons more cheese every year. With the help of DM, Domino’s Pizza created a line of “Legend” pizzas with 40% more cheese. Who can forget the epic 2002 “Summer of Cheese” when DM teamed up with Pizza Hut to boost cheese consumption by an astonishing 102 million pounds? The average American now eats 33 pounds of cheese per year, three times as much as in 1970.
Officially, the USDA is supposed to help Americans eat better and support the agriculture industry. Cheese can be part of a healthy diet, but not in ever-increasing quantities. In practice, supporting the profits of Big Agra should not take precedence over preventing obesity or reducing the incidence of heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes.
CPCs: Incubators for anti-choice violence
In Ms. Magazine, Kathryn Joyce explores the shadowy world of “crisis pregnancy centers,” anti-choice ministries that pose as full-service reproductive health clinics, but offer no real health services. CPCs have a business model built on deceit. They seek to prevent abortions by tricking women seeking comprehensive reproductive health care, which might include abortion.
Activism rooted in such deceit and contempt for women’s autonomy can flare into violence. Joyce reveals that CPCs also serve as incubators for radical anti-choice activism. Radical groups like Operation Rescue encourage their supporters to volunteer. Scott Roeder, the assassin of Dr. George Tiller, got his start accosting women on the street outside abortion clinics as a volunteer “sidewalk counselor” for a crisis pregnancy center.
Just the presence of a CPC near an abortion clinic is correlated with increased violence against the clinic, as Joyce reports:
A recent survey by the Feminist Majority Foundation of women’s reproductive-health clinics nationwide found 32.7 percent of clinics located near a CPC experienced one or more incidents of severe violence, compared to only 11.3 percent of clinics not near a CPC. (Severe violence includes clinic blockades and invasions, bombings, arson, bombing and arson threats, death threats, chemical attacks, stalking, physical violence and gunfire.)
Doctors on the front line see the overlap between CPCs and more virulent forms of anti-choice activism every day. “[CPCs and violent anti-choice activists] have two different spheres,” OB-GYN Dr. LeRoy Carhart, one of the nation’s last remaining specialists in late-term abortions, told Joyce. “The underlying theory of both is never let the truth stand in the way of getting your point across. If you distort facts to women, there is no difference.”
Flip Benham’s slap on the wrist
One of the activists Joyce interviews in her piece is Rev. “Flip” Benham, director of Operation Save America/Operation Rescue. Robin Marty of RH Reality Check reports that Benham was found guilty of stalking an abortion provider and posting “Wanted” posters with the doctor’s picture on them, accusing him of being a baby killer. Benham was sentenced to 24 months probation.
In his defense, Benham claimed that this was a harmless gesture that never killed anyone. In fact, “wanted” posters for abortion doctors are a time-honored intimidation tactic that has been used repeatedly before the murders of abortion providers. Benham is deliberately cultivating a climate of fear and rage is conducive to violence.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
The woman gunning for Sen. Harry Reid’s (D-NV) job doesn’t believe that autism exists.
Yes, you heard right. Sharron Angle believes that the neurodevelopmental disorder know to medical science as “autism” is actually a government-backed hoax to redistribute wealth from hardworking health insurers to pesky kids and their greedy parents.
Angle was caught on tape promising to abolish mandatory insurance coverage for autism. “Everything that they want to throw at us is covered under ‘autism’,” Angle told the American Association of Underwriters this summer, tracing scare quotes with her fingers as she said “autism.”
Care2’s Kristina Chew, the mother of a 13-year-old boy with autism, responds to Angle’s airy dismissal:
…By saying that you don’t think there should be health care for autism, I take it that you don’t think that children, and individuals, with disabilities are in need of such things-living with their families and in their communities, healthy and safe, being loved and cared for? Being treated as we would all like to be?
The fact that Angle opposes mandated coverage for private insurers should concern voters, especially since she wants to privatize all government health care programs. In other words, Angle wants to turn health care over to the private sector and stamp out public competition. And yet, Angle’s campaign admits that the candidate and her husband receive both government health care and a Civil Service pension, according to Eric Kleefeld of TPM. If Angle is so morally opposed to government health care, she should set an example by declining the coverage.
Andy Kroll of Mother Jones has more on Angle’s record: She once told impregnated rape victims to buck up and make “lemons out of lemonade” by bearing their attacker’s child. Angle also denounced people on unemployment insurance as “spoiled.”
Food vs. health care
It may soon get even harder for poor families to make ends meet. The Senate is poised to slash the extra food stamp benefits in the stimulus before they expire. The Senate already raided $6.7 billion from the the so-called “food stamp cookie jar” to bail out Medicaid and save teachers’ jobs at the state level. Now they want to take even more money to fund the child nutrition bill.
The cuts would fund a marginal improvement in school lunches, notes Monica Potts of TAPPED. That’s all well and good, but why provide slightly better weekday lunches if the poorest children get less at every other meal?
Annie Lowery of the Washington Independent interviews anti-hunger activist Joel Berg about the cuts. Berg says that if the cuts go through, families will have to make do with considerably less than the current $4.50 per person per day. He notes that Congress wants to cut food stamp benefits in the face of rising food prices.
When families make do with less, healthy foods like fruits and vegetables will be the first casualty. Berg argues that it is economically short-sighted to prematurely terminate one of the most efficient economic stimuli in the entire stimulus package:
And we know that we aren’t only feeding people. We come at this from a moral position, a nutritional position, and an economic recovery position. This cut is so insane from an economic position as well – we know food stamps are the most effect form of stimulus. The jury is still out on parts of the stimulus – but the jury isn’t out on food stamps. It was a 1,000 percent, beyond home run grand slam success, if you’ll excuse me mixing metaphors. The money went to people who needed it, rapidly, and without a lot of bureaucracy.
In the Progressive, Ruth Conniff has a personal take on the politics of improving school lunches. Her kids’ school got a USDA Fresh Fruits and Vegetables grant to introduce more local produce into school meals.
“Bridalplasty”
The laws of Reality TV: 1) The most important thing in life is to be very beautiful so that a man will want to marry you; 2) You have until your wedding day to make yourself look like someone else.
The E! network is launching a new reality show in which brides-to-be receive free cosmetic surgery to make them look acceptable for their Special Day, as Stephanie Hallett reports at Ms. blog. Hallett notes that armchair psychiatrists are already diagnosing the contestants with Body Dysmorphic Disorder, a condition that causes sufferers to become obsessed with imagined physical imperfections.
Hallett also argues that competitive plastic surgery shows like Bridalplasty and The Swan are dramatic exaggerations. Labeling the contestants as “sick” or “crazy” implies that they are limited-edition freaks, not individuals on the extreme end of a continuum of self-loathing that affects most women.
Ectopic pregnancy
Anti-choicers have already attacked hormonal birth control as crypto-abortion. Their next target may be lifesaving surgery for a deadly complication of pregnancy. At RH Reality Check, Lon Newman writes about a young woman that survived a life threatening ectopic pregnancy.
An ectopic pregnancy occurs when a fertilized egg takes root outside the uterus, nearly always in a fallopian tube. Tubal pregnancies are among the deadliest gynecological emergencies because the woman can rapidly bleed to death if the tube ruptures. Obviously, once a fertilized egg takes root outside the uterus, there is no chance that it will survive. However, some anti-choice extremists still maintain that treating ectopic pregnancies is a kind of abortion.
One of the ectopic pregnancy survivor’s friends actually told her that she should have respected “God’s will” and refused lifesaving surgery. “I have had friends who said that I should have ‘gone with God’s will,’ imposing their beliefs on my will to live,” the woman said.
Some friend.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Weekly Pulse: Uncovered Abortions, Toxic Mani-Pedis, and Kagan’s a Go
by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Last week, the Obama administration preemptively caved to the anti-choice lobby by declaring that new high-risk insurance pools, a byproduct of recent health care legislation, will not cover abortions, even if states or patients pay for that coverage with their own money. Under health care reform, states must create high-risk insurance pools for people with preexisting conditions. These pools will be phased out in 2014 when the new insurance exchange comes online.
Last week, the Obama administration preemptively caved to the anti-choice lobby by declaring that new high-risk insurance pools, a byproduct of recent health care legislation, will not cover abortions, even if states or patients pay for that coverage with their own money. Under health care reform, states must create high-risk insurance pools for people with preexisting conditions. These pools will be phased out in 2014 when the new insurance exchange comes online.
As you may recall, the Nelson amendment to the health care reform bill says that the federal government can’t pay for abortion coverage in the exchanges, but it doesn’t mention the high-risk pools. There is no overarching ban that would preclude federal funds for abortion coverage in the high-risk pools. The Obama administration’s ruling is purely a lack of political courage. In fact, as Jessica Arons explains at RH Reality Check, the pool rules are even stricter than Nelson’s rules for the exchange.
Hey, you! Outta the high-risk pool!
The Nelson amendment was hailed as a compromise because it gave women the option of buying their own abortion coverage. Now, the Obama administration has taken that option away from women in high-risk pools. This is especially troubling because high-risk pools are supposed to help people with chronic medical conditions-who might be more likely to need an abortion. That means that more women with diabetes and cancer will have to pay out of pocket for abortions to preserve their health.
Michelle Chen of ColorLines accuses the Obama administration of selling out women of color to avoid the wrath of the anti-choice lobby. She predicts that women of color will be disproportionately affected by these restrictions because they are more likely to end up in the high-risk pools in the first place.
Nail in the Coffin
In the latest of a series of videos on occupational health and safety, Brave New Films shines a spotlight on toxic chemicals in the nail salon industry. Currently, there are almost no federal regulations on what manufacturers can put in professional beauty products. The nail care industry is booming. There over a hundred thousand manicurists in California alone, most are female, and a large percentage are Vietnamese immigrants. Salon workers breathe a toxic soup of chemicals, many of which have never been tested on humans. Brave New Films is circulating a petition calling on Congress to protect workers by supporting safe cosmetics legislation. youtube]
Kagan gets the nod
The Senate Judiciary Committee approved Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court by a vote of 13-6. The outcome of Tuesday’s vote was never in doubt. Many were mildly surprised to see that Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) voted in Kagan’s favor. Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly predicts that the vote will ensure that Graham will get a conservative primary challenger. But Benen also doesn’t see what all the fuss is about.
[…] I still find the right’s outrage over Graham to be pretty silly. He’s voting for a qualified Supreme Court nominee? The horror! Ruth Bader Ginsburg was confirmed on a 96 to 3 vote when her nomination was sent to the floor. How many of those Republicans were threatened with primary challenges because of it?
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
And we are back. Yesterday I took a look at some of the Republican ideas for Health Care Reform, and while some of them aren’t bad, some of the ideas I have learned are already essentially being done, and others are pretty much pure bullshit. But surely the ideas that President Obama has presented are all wonderful right? Right? Uh, well, not exactly.
The man who admitted to gunning down Dr. George Tiller in church last May went on trial in Kansas on Friday. Tiller was one of a small number of doctors performing late term abortions in the U.S.
Scott Roeder admitted to shooting the Tiller, but he is pleading not guilty to murder, as Robin Marty reports in RH Reality Check. Yesterday, Judge Warren Wilbert shocked observers by allowing Roeder’s lawyers to argue that their client is guilty of voluntary manslaughter, not premeditated murder.
Kansas law allows the accused to plead “imperfect self-defense” if he had an “honest but unreasonable belief” that deadly force was necessary to protect innocent third parties. Roeder says he killed to protect the unborn. Pro-choice activists are alarmed that the judge allowed Roeder to use this defense. If he beats the murder rap, Roder could face just five years in prison. In the unlikely event that his legal gambit is successful, the precedent could be tantamount to declaring open season on abortion providers.
No doubt Nidal Hussein sincerely believed that he was protecting innocent lives when he murdered 12 soldiers at Fort Hood last November. Somehow, I doubt the Army will be as deferential to Hasan’s crazy religious ideas as Judge Warren Wilbert has been to Roeder’s.
In other health care news, Robert Reich of TAPPED asks whether the rich or the middle class will pay for health reform:
There’s only one big remaining issue on health care reform: How to pay for it. The House wants a 5.4 percent surtax on couples earning at least $1 million in annual income. The Senate wants a 40 percent excise tax on employer-provided “Cadillac plans.” The Senate will win on this unless the public discovers that a large portion of the so-called Cadillacs are really middle-class Chevys-expensive not because they deliver more benefits but because they have higher costs.
Reich cites a shocking statistic: Less than 4% of the variation in the cost of insurance coverage is based on differences in benefits provided. Most of the difference in price is based on the perceived riskiness of the beneficiaries. So, if you’re in a high risk pool comprised of, say, retired autoworkers, you’re going to pay a lot more for the same benefits than someone in a younger, healthier risk pool. When you look at it that way, it seems unfair to pay for reform on the backs of people who are already paying more for the same thing due to circumstances beyond their control.
President Barack Obama and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius are meeting with top labor leaders on the “Cadillac tax,” as Brian Beutler of Talking Points Memo reports. Obama and Sebelius are trying to hash out a compromise that would be acceptable to the unions, who so far, have been implacably opposed to taxing expensive health care plans. The unions are reluctant to give any ground on this issue because so many of their members have accepted expanded health care benefits in lieu of wage increases over the years. Taxing those benefits now would effectively erase some hard-won gains by workers. Obama and the unions are reportedly discussing some kind of grandfather clause proposal that would exempt existing plans and only tax new plans.
Elsewhere in our high-deductible democracy, it turns out that health insurers secretly steered more than $20 million to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to oppose health reform while publicly professing to support the effort, according to Josh Harkinson of Mother Jones. The bagman was America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP). While AHIP was soliciting donations to run attack ads, AHIP’s top lobbyist, Karen Ignagni penned an op/ed in the Washington Post assuring the public that AHIP supported reform.
Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly hopes that the scandal will give ammunition to Democrats in the last big push to pass health care reform: “Policymakers struggling to resolve differences on the final reform bill may want to keep a simple adage in mind: Don’t let AHIP’s duplicitous campaign win.”
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
That is what makes this current compromise surrender to special interests so doubly tragic. Like any exercise in legislative sausage making, near infinite deals and trade offs went into crafting the piece of Health Care Reform legislation that lies in front of us today. From day one Liberals went along with many of them only as a way to preserve a viable public option within the overall Health Care Reform package, since you have to give up something to get something blah blah. For one thing, sundry formulas that directly impact private industry’s bottom line were negotiated and agreed upon early in the process on terms Liberals might not have ordinarily agreed upon, with the understanding that there would be a real public alternative preserved as a result of those concessions, one that would offer real competition to private industry, forcing it to think long and hard about continuing to price gouge their policy holders.
What resulted was a classic shell game. All of the liberal concessions went right to the bank and got cashed, while liberals held onto their legislative I.O.U. Now the shuffling has stopped and the shells have been lifted and there is no Public Option under any of them, let alone a robust one. There is no medicare buy in either. Instead we find restrictive language on abortions.
Forbes Magazine, which has never been called a liberal rag by the Right, recently published a 2009 national survey by the United Health Foundation entitled: “The Healthiest And Unhealthiest States”. The funder for this foundation is none other than insurer UnitedHealth Group. In their most recent quarterly earnings report (October 2009) UnitedHealth Group cited revenues of $21.7 Billion, an 8% Year-Over-Year increase, and healthy profits. So no one can rationally accuse this health survey of being a hit job on the insurance industry. In truth it is chock full of interesting and useful health data, and worthy of close study, but what jumped out for me immediately are some bold political implications that it also documents. They are far from friendly to opponents of health care legislation currently before Congress.
Put yourself in Ian Pearl’s position. You were diagnosed with muscular dystrophy shortly after your birth and have been confined to a wheelchair since you were six years old. Even though you were physically disabled, your brain is fully functional and you are striving to be the best you can be.
But then it happens. At 19 years old, you have a life-threatening complication that leaves you with one option: If you are to live, you must breathe with the help of a ventilator.
And through it all, through the life-threatening complications you had to endure along the way and through everything you have been through since you were born, who would have thought that it was a health insurance company that could be the thing that kills you.
Ian’s story is better told by him, but here’s the summary: Guardian decided that they were sick of covering Ian. At first, they pulled the health care plan that covered everyone in his dad’s company in New York. That could be seen as a general move not targeted at Ian, but with some digging, Ian found that it was because of him and others with serious medical issues that Guardian made this decision. According to Ian’s account on Huffington Post, Guardian created a “hit list” of their insured customers who were costing them the most to cover. These members were referred to by Guardian’s top officials as “dogs” and “trainwrecks” because of their health conditions and their cost to insure. Ian was one of many targeted by Guardian, a process that included certain members like Ian having private investigators look for anything to cancel the plan so Guardian could save money.
It’s not like Guardian couldn’t afford to cover Ian and others in similar situations (from Ian’s post):
While all this was going on, Guardian reported $7.5 billion revenue, net income of $437 million, and available capital of $4.3 billion in 2008. Unlike small businesses, Guardian’s financial strength remained unscathed by the economic downturn.
What Guardian did was remove a plan they offered from an entire state all because of a select few of their insured who were seen as too costly.
Enter Senator Eric Schneiderman, who introduced S6263 or “Ian’s Law” in the New York State Senate. The bill “provides enhanced consumer protections in the event of an insurer’s discontinuance of coverage, including requiring approval of the superintendent and notice to policyholders.” Specifically, it would prohibit insurance companies from doing what Guardian did: Canceling a whole class of a policy they were offering. With Ian’s Law, the insurance company could not cancel this plan unless they received approval from the state Insurance Department.
How is this law different from current law? Currently, it is illegal to cancel someone’s insurance because they have chronic health problems like muscular dystrophy. Thus, it would have been (or perhaps IS) illegal for Guardian to cancel Ian’s policy. But nothing prevents them from pulling a whole class of insurance. Of course, if they did so because of those who they insure that have chronic health conditions, that IS illegal and should be dealt with and the individuals responsible should not just be held liable via civil action, they should also face criminal charges. Because in the case of Ian Pearl, this is life and death. And when insurance companies are playing games with people’s lives, they should face serious punishment.
For more on this story, watch the video below from yesterday’s press conference introducing Ian’s Law. The full text of the bill is below the fold.
This bill would prevent health insurance companies from doing what Guardian did: Pulling coverage in the name of profit. That was the motive in the case of Ian and others. They were seen as “dogs” and “trainwrecks” because they were actually in need of their insurance and thus costing Guardian. Not that Guardian was hurting for the money. They still have their billions. But they wanted more. So they put Ian in a situation where he is now fighting for his life.
Ian’s Law is important and while it would only apply to New York, it should be a law that every state introduces and passes and should become a federal law so that we can prevent insurance companies from deciding who they want to cover and who will be the cheapest to cover.
In the middle of heated policy debates, projections of cost to industry and government fly thick and fast. If costs to citizens are mentioned, it’s usually in their capacity as taxpayers, as though they weren’t otherwise part of the economy. A couple examples from the global warming policy arena put this into sharp relief in a way that emphasizes the urgency of providing affordable health coverage to every American.
First, there’s David Roberts’ explanation (… with puppies!) of how the Congressional Budget Office undercounts the benefits of lower energy costs from efficiency. Their method counts the promotion of energy efficiency as a cost to the taxpayer, but not a savings to the ratepayer, as though you can make an absolute separation between people who pay taxes and people who pay utility bills.
That may make sense from the CBO’s perspective, but not from the perspective of electricity-using members of the public trying to figure out whether new energy legislation benefits them.
Chuck Schumer is Wall Street’s favorite politician, having taken over the position previously held by Rahm Emanuel. Which is just a simple way of saying that Schumer is the bag man for the Democratic Party for Wall Street. He collects the money paid by Wall Street to the Democrats as a kick-back for the Democrats letting Wall Street continue to loot our country, and refusing to prosecute these criminals.
Harry Reid is the man who isn’t there. He was put into position by the Democrats as a mild-mannered guy designed to deflect Republican attacks that the Democrats are left-wing anarchists. But Harry has no power inside the Democratic Party.
The people who run the Democratic Party are the people who raise the most money in bribes. People like Bill Clinton who still directs much of the money given to the Democrats, and still controls much of what goes on inside the Democratic Party. Schumer, as mentioned. Rahm Emanuel. Diane Feinstein, that pro-war disgrace, demanding more war, more war. And of course the major corporations pool their funds to buy the ultimate control of the Democrats.
Notice that since they took control of the national government, none of the Democrats have said a word about the need for campaign finance reform. The only “Change” they wanted was to have the bribes go to them instead of being paid to the Republicans.
For example, despite the circus and the nonsense, the only thing the Democrats have to do to provide the citizens with a national healthcare program is to vote for a program where everyone belongs to Medicare, if they choose, tax people to offset their reduction in their own expenses, tax employers for the same, and tax the scumbucket criminals on Wall Street to pay for the rest of it. If they really object to the $100 million bonuses, why not pass a law taxing the bonuses at 99%. That would pay for it.
Yesterday we heard Schumer and Reid “threaten” to take control of all health insurance companies in this country at the national level, to take away the anti-trust exemption. Be very careful. Do not support this. They’re pretending it’s a “threat,” but I think it’s something the insurance companies want.
Here’s what’s really going on. Blue Cross, for example, can do anything they want in some state like Mississippi where the citizens have no rights and the government just takes corporate bribes and does nothing for the people. But in California, for example, a big state and big market, Blue Cross has to follow the laws of the State of California which give consumers a whole lot more rights in this field. If Blue Cross threatens to just stop writing insurance in the state, California would say go suck an egg, because it’s such a big market nobody wants to walk away from it.
If the federal government takes over regulating the health insurance industry, they will “preempt” state laws. That means states will have no ability to regulate health insurance companies. It also means the Democrats can demand more and more bribes from the health insurance industry in exchange for allowing them to raise premiums even more than they already have, provide less coverage, make it affordable for even fewer people to have healthcare.
Don’t trust Schumer, Reid, or anyone in the Democratic party when they propose more federal regulation in this or any other field. So far, they have only used their power in D.C. to enrich themselves. We’re better off leaving control at the state level, because then we at least have a chance.
Albuquerque, a fairly Democratic town, just elected a Republican mayor because of low Democratic voter turnout. Democrats are in danger in both of the big gubernatorial races coming up in New Jersey and Virginia. The generic congressional polling numbers are in a statistical dead heat, and Democratic base voter enthusiasm is trending down.
There is no reason for Democrats to panic, as demographics are still trending in our favor and the Republican brand is still in tatters, but the warning signs for my party are out there and should not be ignored. What Democrats need to be extremely well focused on is short term deliverables for real people. On health care, on jobs, on banking legislation, on immigration reform, on climate legislation – on all of these major initiatives and more, they of course should be thinking about what’s best in the long term, but better damn well be focused on delivering real and tangible benefits to voters before the next election, or Democrats will suffer a bruising defeat in November 2010.
Let’s start with health care. When you are working to re-structure 17% of the American economy – and probably the most byzantinely-structured 17% there is – there are a lot of complications, and it is obviously going to take some time. Some of the features of the plan will need time to phase in, which is understandable. But some of the benefits need to be apparent to Americans right away too. If we spend a year and a trillion dollars passing health care reform, and no one sees any benefits to them by November 2010, we Democrats have a really big problem in the next election.
Another key point on this issue: if a public option doesn’t go into effect for a while, say until 2013, insurance companies better not be free to raise their rates at will until they finally have competition, when the public option enters the scene. There is nothing that will guarantee voters turning away quickly from health reform, and the politicians who voted for it, more than letting insurance companies hike up their insurance costs over the next four years, and we know they would have because they already promised to do it.
Health care reform needs to have immediate benefits – no pre-existing conditions, no lifetime caps, all of those insurance regulations we’ve been hearing about need to kick in immediately. But even more importantly, if a public option gets delayed, there has to be a short term way to keep insurance company greed and power in check. To leave the public utterly at the mercy of the arrogant insurers who have already promised they would raise their rates after this is passed – like consumers were left at the mercy of credit card companies for many months after the consumer protection bill passed – is not only unfair to people but is truly terrible politics. If you think these insurers won’t jack rates through the roof, and then blame the rate increases on reform, you are truly naïve. Don’t make voters feel like it was a bad idea to pass health reform because they are seeing only the downside in the short term.
On the economy, the macro-economists in the administration like Larry Summers love to say that, “jobs are a lagging indicator”, that eventually in the long run, that jobs will start getting created. Even if they are right (and I tend to be skeptical when economists tell me that in the long run, things will eventually trickle down to working people), neither the economy nor the Democratic Party can afford for there to be another year where no jobs are being produced. To have that many people in trouble exacerbates the foreclosure crisis, weakens the housing market, forces more cuts in the state and local budgets, and a higher federal deficit: and it is a complete political disaster for Democrats. Jobs need to be created ASAP, lots of jobs, not a few here and there, and should not be seen as the lagging indicator that will take care of itself someday. In the long run, as John Maynard Keynes liked to say, we are all dead, but the Democrats will be dead in the short term unless we start producing lots of jobs quickly. The stimulus is certainly helping, and Obama deserves credit for that, but it is not enough. Democrats need to think bigger on creating jobs.
On financial reform, as with health care, much of what needs to be reformed will take a long time to kick in, and in fact much of the goal will be to keep disaster from happening in the future – a harder thing to get credit for. (Which by the way, is the main thing the Obama White House is claiming about the economy – that we would have had a disaster if not for the US. It’s a hard thing to win votes on.) But a strong policy of consumer safety in financial products will be noticed by people who went through the outrages of being ripped off over the last few years, and there are other things that could be done that voters would notice and cheer. How about a tax on financial transactions, structure to cost the most for the biggest traders, where the proceeds would go to new job creation? Based on private polling I was shown recently, that would get about 85% support. How about anti-trust actions against the biggest banks? How about throwing some of the worst violators of the financial system in jail, and returning their ill-gotten gains to the people they ripped off? There are plenty of things to do in the financial sector that would get voter attention and would be seen as an immediate benefit.
On climate change, the first item of business should be dramatically expanding green jobs. On immigration, families ought to be reunited right away. On issue after issue, we need to get things done, and make sure that what we get done has immediate benefits to regular people.
George W. Bush was a disastrous President, rated by many historians as the worst President of all time, and he handed Democrats a terrible mess that we will be digging our way out of for years. But blaming the other guys for bad times doesn’t cut it in American politics, and it shouldn’t: we need to deliver real things to real people. Trying to convince voters that it would have been so much worse if it wasn’t for us, and that our policies will help them someday in the long run, is not a winning strategy. We need to deliver things that make a difference in voters’ lives now.
The insurance industry inadvertently gave health reformers the best argument we ever could have had to pass a public option and the strongest possible regulations on insurers. Declaring that rates will go up dramatically if reform passes, insurers launched a full-scale open assault on the idea of any reform at all yesterday, except I guess a reform plan especially tailored to them and their profitability. What they left out of their little study is that they are the ones who decide when rates go up because the biggest companies have very little competition in most of the markets they are in. There is no federal rate regulation, there is no anti-trust enforcement in insurance (they are specifically exempted from it in the McCarran-Ferguson Act), and unless there is a public option, there will be little competition. They will be the ones who decide if the rates go up, and they have just guaranteed they would raise those rates if we don’t stop them from doing it.
It’s sort of like the sheriff in Blazing Saddles holding the gun to his own head, and saying “back off or I’ll shoot.” The insurance industry is saying that if they don’t like what’s in the bill, they will just decide to arbitrarily raise the rates. But we can stop those rates from going up by checking the insurers’ power. That’s why a public option, real competition for an arrogant out-of-control, way-too-powerful industry, is so essential. Without it, we are left to their whims, and anytime, for my reason, they will just jack up their rates. If their stocks go down, if they just want more profits, if some regulation they don’t like is passed, they will just raise their rates. With a strong, robust, nationwide public option, we can force insurers to the table, and give them real competition.
Personally, I think we ought to repeal McCarran-Ferguson and impose tough rate regulation as well. That would really open up competition and guarantee lower prices. But at the very minimum, we have to have a strong national public option. The insurance industry has just reminded us as to why that is. Thanks for the help in making our case, friends.
By the way, it’s not just me who thinks this. Voters do not support being forced to buy health insurance unless there is a public option- at that point, as the polling clearly documents, voters are fine with an insurance mandate. As long as there is real competition with a public option, voters are fine with being asked to buy insurance. Sometimes I think regular voters are smarter than the politicians they elect to govern them.
Certain portions of the blogosphere are all atwitter over Alan Grayson’s powerful rhetoric on health care insurance reform — and don’t get me wrong, I’m all for effective rhetoric.* Grayson said:
44,789 Americans die every year according to the Harvard study. and you can see it by going to our website at grayson.house.gov. That is 10 times more than the number of Americans who have died in Iraq and who died in 9/11. but that was just once. this is every single year. That’s right. every single year.
Take a look at this. Read it and weep. And I mean that, read it and weep, because of all these Americans who are dying because they don’t have health insurance. Now, I think we should do something about that and the democratic health care plan does do something about that. It makes health care affordable for those who can’t afford insurance and it saves these peoples’ lives. … I apologize to the dead and their families that we haven’t voted sooner to end this holocaust in America
Grayson’s wrong** on one very obvious and important fact:
