Pool Fools: Republicans Denounce Republican Health Care Plan
As pointed out by Jonathan Chait in his recent article in The New Republic on January 12, 2011, “When you combine the GOP’s intense opposition to Obama with its very weak commitment to any alternative policy architecture, you get this kind of wild, opportunistic flip-flopping”. Reference the following enlightening article by Timothy Noah:
Of all the arguments Republicans have been waging against Obamacare as the House of Representatives prepares to vote for its repeal, none is harder to take than their criticism of the federally subsidized high-risk pools the law created to provide immediate relief to the uninsured. In May, the House Republican Conference complained that these high-risk pools would be unfair to people currently enrolled in existing state-run risk pools because the latter group was paying higher premiums. In July, the House Republican Conference complained that implementation of this unfair federal program was being delayed. By January, the House Republican leadership was grousing (in a report titled Obamacare: A Budget-Busting, Job-Killing Health Care Law) that costs for this unfair-but-wrongly-delayed program were higher than expected even as participation in this unfair-but-wrongly-delayed-but-too-costly program was lower than it should be.
Republican health care policies, I noted not quite one year ago (“Pool Party“), typically segregate the healthy majority from the unhealthy minority in order to lower insurance premiums for the healthy. Never mind that that raises insurance premiums sky-high for the unhealthy. High-risk pools are the most efficient way to achieve such segregation and about the least efficient way to pay medical bills here on planet Earth. A health insurance pool consisting entirely of people too sick to qualify for private insurance is like a fire-insurance pool consisting entirely of pyromaniacs. The best that can be said for such groupings is that the hospitalizations (or the fires) probably won’t all happen in the same month. Health insurance high-risk-pool premiums are typically 125 percent to 200 percent above normal premiums, but even so, a government subsidy is typically required to cover costs.
Conservatives claim the problem is not the inherent contradiction in insurance pools consisting entirely of people who need lots and lots of health care, but rather in poor management by the Obama administration. The American Enterprise Institute’s Thomas P. Miller and the Ethics and Public Policy Center’s James Capretta have argued that the administration ought to narrow eligibility; increase the subsidy; and introduce “more effective incentives and tools for both patients and providers to make higher-value health care decisions,” i.e., pressure doctors and hospitals to lower costs and eliminate unnecessary procedures. But the first solution is preposterous in light of weak enrollment (in fairness, Miller and Capretta wrote before that became apparent); the second solution is perhaps necessary but expensive; and the third is a laudable goal that’s much more difficult to achieve with a sick population than with a healthy one. Taken together, these three solutions betray an extreme myopia about the inherent limitations on high-risk pools to begin with.
The poor performance of Obamacare’s high-risk pools aren’t an argument against Obamacare. They’re an argument in favor of it. High-risk pools are a Band-Aid to stanch a hemorrhage. Democrats don’t kid themselves that the Band-Aid will do much to stop the bleeding, which is why they don’t embrace it as a long-term solution. Republicans ought to stop pretending it can be one.
Original Article By: Timothy Noah-Slate, January 11, 2011
Health Reform at Work Today and Tomorrow: Improvements That Began Last Year Will Continue
President Barack Obama is applauded as he signs the health care reform bill, on March 23, 2010, in the East Room of the White House in Washington. The bill includes many benefits for Americans who have health insurance today and those who have struggled to find and maintain health coverage.
2010 was a momentous year for the American health care system. In March, Congress passed—and President Barack Obama signed—landmark legislation that reforms the health insurance market, provides all Americans with affordable access to health coverage, and reduces the growth of health care costs.
The Department of Health and Human Services and other parts of the executive branch have begun to implement the new law in the subsequent 10 months. The Affordable Care Act, or ACA, includes many benefits for Americans who have health insurance today and those who have struggled to find and maintain health coverage. Many of these benefits came on-line in 2010.
Signature achievements include:
- Establishing pre-existing condition insurance plans in every state so that individuals with health problems who cannot find coverage in the regular market have a reliable source of coverage
- Requiring employer-sponsored health plans to offer coverage to the young-adult children of policyholders
- Helping employers with unpredictable health care spending for retired workers
- Providing more than 1 million rebate checks to Medicare enrollees who incurred high out-of-pocket prescription drug spending in 2010
- Prohibiting health insurance plans from denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions
- Protecting individuals with high health care costs from the financial risk of absurdly low annual and lifetime limits on their benefits
- Prohibiting health insurance plans from rescinding coverage when a policyholder gets sick
These changes bring a new degree of stability and security to millions of Americans’ health coverage. And even more improvements are around the corner. Beginning this month, seniors will enjoy meaningful new benefits and significant improvements in their prescription drug coverage, while individuals and businesses will receive premium rebates from their insurance company when the insurers incur excessive administrative costs.
Specific improvements in 2011 include:
- Closing the Medicare prescription drug coverage gap. Seniors and people with disabilities who obtain prescription drug coverage through Medicare Part D will enjoy a new discount on brand-name and generic prescription drugs when they hit the so-called “doughnut hole” in their Part D benefits. Since the beginning of the program, enrollees have hit a gap in coverage when their total drug spending—including out-of-pocket costs and expenses covered by their Medicare Part D plan—exceeds a preset limit (currently $2,830). Patients then pay the total cost of their prescription drugs, without help from their drug plan, until their total drug expenses hit an upper limit and coverage kicks in again. With the new discount, people with drug spending high enough to hit the coverage gap will save almost $500 on average this year, while people with very high drug costs will save more than $1,500.
- Launching new prevention benefits for Medicare enrollees. Good coverage of preventive services helps seniors and other Medicare enrollees better manage their health. New benefits include coverage without cost-sharing for recommended preventive services (those that receive an “A” or “B” rating from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force) and new coverage for a personal prevention plan.
- Increasing access to primary care. Medicare will pay primary care providers a 10 percent bonus payment, which offers a new incentive for physicians, nurses, and others to provide primary care services.
- Requiring insurers to provide high value for premium dollars. Beginning in 2011, insurers will pay rebates to policyholders—individuals and employers—when plan spending on clinical services falls below 80 percent of premium revenue in the individual and small group market, and 85 percent of premium revenue in the large group market.
Looking ahead, ACA provisions that will touch real people every day will continue coming on-line through 2011. These include providing more consumer information on healthy food choices by requiring chain restaurants and vending machines to provide nutritional data no later than March, and improving long-term care by sending enhanced federal Medicaid payments to support new state investments in community-based long-term care services starting in October. Tangible improvements will continue beyond this year, such as fully closing the coverage gap in Medicare Part D and improving Medicaid coverage for preventive care.
The Affordable Care Act’s most striking impact will come in 2014 when new health insurance exchanges launch, premium subsidies become available, and Medicaid coverage expands to include all low-income individuals regardless of family composition, age, or disability status.
These headline-grabbing changes in our health care system may be a few years down the road. But millions of Americans are already benefiting from the Affordable Care Act—and millions more will receive better care in the near future thanks to the changes in the new law.
By Karen Davenport | January 13, 2011-Center For American Progress. Photo: AP/Charles Dharapak
The Right Wing Can’t Survive Without Stoking Anger
What’s going to be fascinating to watch in the weeks and months ahead is how the Right adjusts to the new “kinder, gentler” rhetorical environment everyone – but them – is demanding.
If you have been a student of the new Right you understand that the gains they’ve made in American politics have come in direct proportion to a rising level of anger. Some of that anger was there just waiting for affirmation, but much more of it has been ginned up by rightwing talkers like Limbaugh, Beck and FOX News.
The anti-government mantra now hammered home 24/7/365 by these demagogic forces provided both cover and opportunity for rightwing politicians in Congress. It did so by rounding up the lower-common denominator types at the grassroots level by affirming their unease and distrust of a changing nation and world they simply cannot understand, much less accept.
Money and votes followed; money from corporate sources that always fund efforts to neuter government regulations and regulators, and votes from a class of voters only Barnum and Bailey could appreciate.
But, what if now the voices stoking all this rightwing blind fury are forced to clean up their acts? And, gasp, forced to stick to provable facts rather than the ones they manufacture to fuel more anger? What then?
Of course no one gives up a “good thing” if they can avoid it, and initially the Right will try blunt any trajectory towards tolerance and moderation.
Then there are the genuinely loony members of Congress who rode the Right’s Anger Express to elected office. You know – like this one.
What I expect to see and hear in the days and weeks just ahead is a new — and frankly jarring — argument from the Right; civility in politics is a liberal plot. A plot against who? Well against the Right, of course. There’s nothing a zealot likes more than to claim the cloak of persecution. It’s always the last refuge of scoundrels, be it demagogic politicians or Christians, Jews, Muslims or Scientologists. Call them on their nonsense and they scream “persecution.”
In this case the Right is going to be forced to take a position that unmasks them once and for all. Without their patented violent, hate-inciting rhetoric, the Right has nothing to offer America. Nothing.
Which explains why they’re going to fight — not for civility — bit for more incivility.
Imagine that.
By: Stephen Pizzo-Guest Columnist; The BuzzFlash Blog, January 13, 2011
The Conservative Constitution of the United States
TeaParty Sacred Text?
Article I
Congress shall have only the powers literally, specifically and expressly granted herein, and no others. That means definitely, without question, absolutely, no regulation of the Health Insurance or Financial Services industries. The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected not directly by the People, but by other people whom the People have elected to better represent the People.
Any law enacted by Congress and signed by the President may be overturned by the vote of three or more States if they find it burdensome, offensive, annoying or in any way touching on Health Insurance, Property Rights or Guns.
Congress shall have no power to raise Taxes except on February 29, and then only if all the People of the United States approve such a measure unanimously, in writing and in English.
Congress shall balance the Federal Budget, preferably by eliminating the Departments of Labor, Energy, Education and State.
The preceding provision shall not apply to spending for the Department of Defense, appropriations for which shall increase three times as quickly as the growth in gross domestic product and upon the approval of House leadership in conference with Boeing, Halliburton, the Ashcroft Group and Kissinger Associates.
Arizona shall have the power to regulate Immigration.
Article II
No person except a natural-born Citizen who can produce video, photographic or eyewitness evidence of birth in a non-island American State shall be eligible to the Office of President.
The President shall faithfully execute the laws, except when, as Commander in Chief, he decides he’d really rather not.
The President shall not negotiate any Treaty without first receiving a signed and notarized note granting him permission, personally executed by every member of the Senate and the House, all 50 Governors and the editorial board of the Weekly Standard. Suspected Terrorists shall be taken to Guantanamo and drawn and quartered in a public ceremony. Trials are optional, but if they occur, must be conducted in a Military Tribunal in which coerced statements are admissible so long as they support a Guilty verdict.
1. Congress shall make no law abridging the Freedom of Speech, except where citizens desecrate the Flag of the United States; respecting an establishment of Religion, except to support Christian schools, religious apparitions in food products and the display of crosses and creches in public places; or abridging the free exercise of Religion, except to block the construction of mosques in sensitive areas as determined by Florida Pastors or the Fox News Channel.
2. The right to bear Semi-Automatic Weapons, AK-47s or Bazookas shall not be infringed by background checks, safety locks, age limits or common sense.
3. The right of Corporations, Hedge Funds, Business Leaders and Lobbyists to spend endless cash on campaigns and influence-purchasing shall not be infringed. The so-called right of Unions to associate shall be denied as fundamentally un-American and contrary to the agenda of the Chamber of Commerce.
4. Marriage and the benefits thereof shall be restricted to the Union of a Man and a Woman, consecrated in a Christian house of worship, with vows to expose any and all progeny to daily viewings of Bill O’Reilly.
5. All persons born or naturalized in the United States are Citizens of the United States of Real America only if their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents were Citizens, and only if they pledge opposition to Health Insurance Reform or New Taxation. Any Citizen convicted of providing material support to Terrorist organizations, wearing clothing bearing images created by Shepard Fairey, or displaying Nancy Pelosi bumper stickers shall be stripped of Citizenship.
6. Aliens, of this world or another, shall have none of the rights guaranteed herein to Citizens.
7. Corporations shall have all of the rights guaranteed herein to Citizens, and then some.
8. No White Male shall be denied equal protection of the law through Affirmative Action or otherwise. In keeping with the intent of the Framers, as discerned by the Honorable Justice Antonin Scalia, distinctions on the basis of sex shall not be deemed to deny equal protection.
9. The right to be uninsured and make other people pay the costs of one’s Health Care shall not be infringed under any circumstances.
10. Congress shall make no law limiting Americans’ right to warm the Planet by using all the energy they darn well please.
11. The Unborn shall have the rights to life, to vote, to bear arms, to practice Religion except in a mosque in Lower Manhattan (see First Amendment) and to make campaign contributions, but once the child is born, it shall have no rights if it is an Alien (see Sixth Amendment).
12. No one may be required to do anything He or She does not want to do. Ever.
Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the Members present the Sixth Day of January in the Year of our Lord Two Thousand and Eleven. In witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our names, [REDACTED]
By: David Cole who teaches Constitutional Law at Georgetown University and is the legal affairs correspondent for the Nation : Published, Washington Post-January 6, 2011
Guns Don’t Kill People: Cowards and Lobbyists Do
Like many people who have come forward to speak or write about the Tucson massacre, I know and adore Gabby Giffords. It is virtually impossible not to adore her. She has a presence and graciousness that light up a room.
That she survived a shot from a semi-automatic at close range is remarkable. Yet the trauma she has endured — psychologically and neurologically — is not one that ever leaves a person untouched. The only question at this point is how much of that radiant light anyone who knows her has seen in her eyes and her smile will return. And for that, we can only hope, pray, and wait for her brain to heal itself.
We know little about the events that led to her shooting, to the deaths of at least six people, and to the massacre that left 14 others injured on the ground. But we do know three things.
The first is that the man witnesses have identified as the shooter, who did everything he could to destroy the brains of his victims, was likely himself the victim of a damaged brain. Even before reporters started to interview his professors and college classmates who were frightened by his erratic behavior in class last fall, the three YouTube videos he left as testimony to his mental state left no doubt that he is delusional and probably in the midst of a psychotic episode (a fancy way of saying that his brain is no longer functioning so that he can tell reality from unreality — even by Tea Party standards).
We know a great deal more about illnesses such as schizophrenia than we knew when our laws on “insanity” evolved. Perhaps most importantly, we now know that the kind of conceptual and linguistic incoherence in Jared Loughner’s YouTube videos is the result of a broken brain — more “madness” than “badness,” although we do not yet know enough about him to know how clear the line between them is, in his case.
Allowing someone who is clearly paranoid, delusional and incoherent — in the midst of a psychotic episode — to have a semi-automatic weapon in his hands is like putting a car in the hands of someone in the midst of an epileptic seizure during rush-hour traffic. Should Loughner turn out to be psychotic and brain-diseased, as appears to be the case, he will be no more genuinely culpable for the acts he has committed, regardless of what the law says, than a person who had his first seizure while driving through a crowded Tucson intersection. Less can be said for our political leaders — a point to which we shall shortly return.
Second, the fact that the shooter is mentally ill does not mean that his mind and brain exist in a vacuum. When Bill O’Reilly and his ilk on Fox began their attacks on “Tiller the Killer” — George Tiller, the physician who provided legal abortions until he was gunned down in his church in the name of Jesus — they fired the first shots in the uncivil war that has just claimed six more lives. To make the claim that the constant propagandizing against Tiller by a television network — including the publicizing of his whereabouts — played no role in the events that led an assassin to choose him as his target would be as psychotic as Loughner’s YouTube diatribes. Surely a deranged killer could have found someone else to target among the over 300 million people who call this country home.
But the fact that the causal link between Fox’s jihad against an American citizen and his ultimate assassination at the hands of a religiously motivated terrorist never became a topic of widespread discussion except on a couple of evening shows on MSNBC, that it prompted no change in the way the right-wing propaganda machine has vilified American citizens, and that it prompted little more than one or two brief written statements from our top elected officials, is a profound indictment of both our media and our political system.
And now we have seen the same thing play out again.
The quasi-delusional rantings of media personalities such as Glenn Beck and the cognitively impaired candidates and elected officials we have come to accept as part of the American political landscape in the 21st century, like the hate-mongering of Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona, are part of the political and psychological air a psychotic shooter like Jared Loughner breathes.
Did prominent personalities like Brewer (or Sarah Palin, who literally put Gabby Giffords in her “crosshairs”) cause this attack? No, any more than Bill O’Reilly and Rupert Murdoch caused the jihadist attack on a physician who had violated a terrorist’s religious sensibilities — or, for that matter, any more than jihadist Web sites that publicize the “blasphemies” perpetrated by the United States cause alienated young men to become suicide bombers against us or our allies.
Did Beck, Brewer and crew contribute to the conditions that created the latest assassinations, irrespective of the prayers and pieties they and Republican politicians like John Boehner are now lavishing on the people they have encouraged their fellow citizens to hate (those with their “job-killing” and “baby-killing” agendas — which they apparently pursue when they aren’t setting up “death panels”)? Try reading alleged shooter Loughner’s rants about government, the terrorists who have seized control over it, and what they are doing to our Constitution and argue that he was not breathing in Foxified fumes and Brewer’s bigotry.
Third, although the political context was different, we have seen this movie before in yet another sense. Columbine, Virginia Tech, countless shootings in schools and churches — what do they share in common? Deafening silence from those who call themselves our leaders.
Since the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy in that terrible summer of 1968, over a million Americans have died at the wrong end of a firearm.
This was not the first time Gabby Giffords — or countless other lawmakers, candidates and elected officials, including President Obama — was confronted at a campaign rally or town-hall meeting by gun-toting bullies, whose primary goal — at least until this time — was intimidation. That bringing a weapon (in Arizona, concealed) within that proximity to an elected official could be legal in the world’s longest-lasting democracy is both surreal and shameful — and now it threatens that democracy.
Whether they are owned and operated by the NRA, too cowardly to take on the NRA for fear of being defeated in the next election, or misled into believing that the average American is as psychotic as the man who opened fire in Tucson (i.e., that most Americans can’t tell the difference between hunting deer and hunting people, or between a hunting rifle and a semi-automatic), our leaders have either faithfully served the interest of Smith and Wesson and the gun lobby or failed to oppose them. The result is that the country has shifted to the right on gun safety, which is what naturally happens when the right is vocal and the left is frightened and silent.
But even today, if you simply speak to ordinary Americans in plain English, they do not believe in the NRA’s interpretation of the Second Amendment. Americans are, if nothing else, strong believers in common sense, and the same people who willingly walk through metal detectors at airports and other settings understand the importance of metal detectors for protecting their elected officials — just as they support them for protecting their kids if there’s any chance they could be harmed at school.
Consider a message colleagues and I tested with two large national samples of registered voters, which beat a tough conservative anti-regulation message on guns by 20 points with both the general electorate and swing voters:
Every law-abiding citizen has the right to bear arms to hunt and protect his family. But that right doesn’t extend to criminals, terrorists, and the dangerously mentally ill… We need to use some common sense in deciding what kind of weapons we want on the streets. I don’t know any hunters who keep stockpiles of munitions in their basements, and I don’t think the Founding Fathers had AK-47s in mind when they wrote the Second Amendment.
Another message beat the conservative message by 40 points with Independent voters, by beginning with a simple statement of principle with which voters across the political spectrum agree if they simply hear it enunciated:
My view on guns reflects one simple principle: that our gun laws should guarantee the rights and freedoms of all law-abiding Americans. That’s why I stand with the majority who believe in the right of law-abiding citizens to own guns to hunt and protect their families. And that’s why I also stand with the majority who believe they have the right to send their kids to school in the morning and have them come home safely.
Or consider yet another message, which began as follows:
“Every law-abiding American has the right to own a gun to hunt and protect his family… But you don’t need an assault weapon to hunt deer, and if you do, you shouldn’t be anywhere near a gun.”
Americans get it, if you just speak to them like adults.
None of these messages is a “hard left” message on guns — a message that might better fit the sensibilities of (and be more appropriate for) New York City, Connecticut, Massachusetts, or much of the West Coast. But these are messages that win all over the heartland — and even win in some unlikely places, like the Deep South and the West — because they aren’t about taking away the rights of law-abiding gun owners. They are about protecting the rights of law-abiding citizens, whether they own a gun or not.
We used to be the arsenal of democracy. With the events of this weekend, our arsenal has been turned against our democracy.
If our elected officials are in the pockets of those who would allow the shooting of their colleagues with semi-automatic weapons with no legitimate civilian uses — while mouthing platitudes about their concern for their colleagues — it’s time to call their bluff.
Guns don’t kill people. Cowards and lobbyists do.
By: Drew Westen, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Emory University-AlterNet, January 10, 2011
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 
You must be logged in to post a comment.