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(Link and blockquote added by me. - promoted by Dean Barker)
In her column this morning, Shira S. at the Concord Monitor asks a thought-provoking question: Is the excise tax for health care plans - the so-called "Cadillac" plans tax - unfair to women? It would seem the answer is yes.
"(W)omen cost much more to insure than men because of reproductive health issues and a higher rate of certain chronic diseases. Women in split families are more likely to have custody of children and require higher-value family plans.
'For women it's a double whammy,' said Rhonda Wesolowski, president of NEA New Hampshire.
A former teacher and single mother, Wesolowski said the excise tax would unfairly penalize female workers who give up wages to get better health benefits. 'Over the years, we often didn't take raises to keep our health insurance,' she said."
Carol Shea-Porter, to no one's surprise, gets it. And I have to say that at times like this, I'm pretty happy that we have Jeanne Shaheen in the Senate because I'm sure she gets it, too.
Radical Republican proposal would slash Healthy Kids Silver program, bill would make health care less affordable, accessible to low income NH families
New Hampshire House Republicans have introduced legislation (HB 1283) to dramatically curtail access to the state's Healthy Kids Silver program. The proposal would cut more than 1500 children from a health care plan that provides low income families with access to affordable health insurance.
"The radical House Republican proposal would be devastating for New Hampshire families," said Derek Richer, press secretary for the New Hampshire Democratic Party. "People are struggling and reducing access to affordable health care for children from low income families is completely irresponsible."
"Kicking 1500 children off of their health insurance would be a disaster," continued Richer. "House Republicans should stop trying to rewrite the budget with reckless cuts that target the state's most vulnerable citizens."
"Governor Lynch and legislative Democrats worked hard to balance the budget while protecting essential services like these. Republicans should come to the table and work with Democrats on real solutions that both address the economic challenges we face and protect working families," Richer added.
House Republicans have introduced a series of measures that slash access to medical care in New Hampshire. In addition to HB 1283 that rolls back the Healthy Kids Silver program, House Republicans have also introduced legislation to slash Medicaid. This proposal (HB 1587) would eliminate access to a wide range of essential services for poor seniors, the mentally disabled, and handicapped individuals including funding for prescription drug coverage, wheelchair vans and mental health care, among other services.
The legislation (HB1587) would also eliminate the state's home-and-community-based care program, forcing seniors out of their homes into more expensive nursing homes. And it would eliminate funding for home-based programs for people with developmental disabilities and acquired brain injuries, forcing them into more expensive care.
"The drastic health care cuts proposed by House Republicans just goes to show how truly out of touch they are with the people of New Hampshire," continued Richer. "While legislative Democrats are working hard to improve the lives of everyone in the New Hampshire, Republicans want to return the state to the Dark Ages."
(Posted by Derek Richer, Press Secretary of the New Hampshire Democratic Party)
(It took me a while to figure it out, but I think I finally get it: this final session for Gregg is one long audition for a future FOX News permanent gig. - promoted by Dean Barker)
Or something like that.
In one of the more ridiculous holiday-themed statements I've seen, Sen. Judd Gregg equivocated voting to open debate on how to fix the nation's health care crisis with putting pilgrims "on a leaky ship back to Europe."
"As we near the celebration of the Pilgrims who crossed the Atlantic for a new life in the Americas, tonight, the Senate Democrats have ironically put our country on a backward course towards a European-style, government-run health care system. Regardless of opinion polls, the will of their constituents, or just plain common sense, my Democratic colleagues are fully committed to the government controlling your health care and charging your children and your grandchildren trillions for it. This is not the reform Americans want, and it puts our country's future prosperity on a leaky ship back to Europe.
I didn't realize that the pilgrims were fleeing comprehensive health care coverage when they boarded the Mayflower. For some strange historical reason, I thought they were seeking more religious freedom and choice ... I could, however, see a comparison between resisting a monopoly on religion and resisting a monopoly of a private insurance industry that routinely and discriminately dictates who will get coverage and at what cost, to the detriment of families everywhere.
Kelly Ayotte's idea for health care "reform" is copied wholesale from DC GOP talking points, i.e., to make the murder-by-spreadsheeters more efficient (or something) by stripping out statewide consumer protections, such as, in NH, requiring coverage for OBY/GYN visits and mammographies.
Meanwhile out-of-touch elites like Evan Bayh and Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu, who enjoy Rolls Royce health care at your expense, have forced a senate health care bill to contain an immediate "opt-out" clause for a public plan that won't go into effect until 2014. The CBO estimates, perhaps conservatively, that fully one third of the nation will be opted out by their statewide "public servants". Thus, fewer will be able buy into the plan, and their premiums might even be higher than the murder-by-spreadsheeters. And even that weak tea still might not get a cloture vote.
How many American children will lose their hearing despite an available medical fix, and after the biggest, most important health insurance reform gets signed into law?
Don't ask the TeeVee cable news networks. They're busy with the Governor of Facebook.
Tonight I headed out to join other health care advocates in "welcoming" curiously tanned U.S. House Minority Leader John Boehner to a NH GOP fundraiser in downtown Concord.
Papa Sununu, in hopes of picking up seats that New Hampshire voters have firmly signaled should NOT be under Republican control, thought bringing in one of the henchmen trying to kill real health care reform would somehow be a shot in the arm for his party.
It won't work, of course. The party elite might like the message he's peddling, but conservatives are ultimately going to lose the battle over health care reform for one simple reason: they just don't get it.
Of course, we still have our work to do. But what I'm saying is - they sure are making it easier these days. Republican leaders are projecting absolute cluelessness about why people want health care reform, and need it now, a point made excellently in this op-ed.
Case in point: take this line from tonight by former Ron Paul staffer and Free Stater Andy Demers, who was bothered by the large pro-health care crowds rallying outside as he entered the fundraiser - "Ah, come on. On a Friday night, really?!"
Well, yes, Andy - really.
Because when you don't have health care coverage or your family budget is drained by high health care costs - those are things that continue to worry you over the weekend. Even on a Friday night.
So, yes - we came out to remind people like Boehner that when he's busy applying fake tanning lotion (or whatever it is), other people are fighting for their lives. It's not fun, and it's not what we want to be doing on a Friday night, but it's the fight we will continue until the Republican Party finally understands that families want and need health care reform, now.
I subscribe to Don McCanne's Quote-of-the-Day, on PNHP.org, so I get pro-single-payer info on a daily basis. It's informed my opinions re health insurance for quite some time.
I don't usually feel the need to post links to other articles or comments, but with Veterans' Day tomorrow, the posting today from Dr. McCanne was especially heartbreaking. So here's the link.
http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/...
There is so much we need to do to really fix health care in this USofA. And the military should be front and center in our hearts and in our action.
There has been a great wailing and gnashing of teeth over the past day or so as those who follow the healthcare debate react to the Stupak/Some Creepy Republican Guy Amendment.
The Amendment, which is apparently intended to respond to conservative Democrats' concerns that too many women were voting for the Party in recent elections, was attached to the House's version of healthcare reform legislation that was voted out of the House this weekend.
The goal is to limit women's access to reproductive medicine services, particularly abortions; this based on the concept that citizens of good conscience shouldn't have their tax dollars used to fund activities they find morally repugnant.
At first blush, I was on the mild end of the wailing and gnashing spectrum myself...but having taken a day to mull the thing over, I'm starting to think that maybe we should take a look at the thinking behind this...and I'm also starting to think that, properly applied, Stupak's logic deserves a more important place in our own vision of how a progressive government might work.
It's Political Judo Day today, Gentle Reader, and by the time we're done here it's entirely possible that you'll see Stupak's logic in a whole new light.
A few weeks ago, I went to a pig roast in New Hampshire organized for bloggers to get to know Rep. Paul Hodes who is running for U.S. Senate in New Hampshire. As part of the gathering, Rep. Hodes gave a variation of his stump speech, citing examples of people who have not been treated fairly and his efforts to intercede on their behalf. At the end of each example, he would bring home the point by talking about how the system is upside down. I wrote a little bit about this in my blog post Representative and Participatory Democracy.
This point came home to me yesterday afternoon. Friday, I received emails from many different organizations urging me to call my congresswoman, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, and urge her to support the health care reform bill. I felt very confident on how she would vote. I had heard her speak at various events promising a good health care reform bill, but I had also heard she was getting a lot of calls against the bill, and I wanted to make sure she knew that she was strongly supported in her stance. I tried calling her Washington number repeatedly, but could not get through.
Then, Saturday morning, my wife Kim and I were racking off our Oktoberfest Cider. We had brought some of our previous batches of cider to the pig roast in New Hampshire and it was well received. We were in the middle of making a new batch. The cell phone rang and my daughter Fiona ran to get it. It was a New Hampshire area code, but not my brother-in-law. Fiona didn't get the phone in time. Kim called back and we found it was Rep. Hodes. He was calling to thank us for driving up to New Hampshire for the pig roast. I told him that I really liked his message and we chatted briefly about the importance of social media.
The U.S. House of Representatives will vote on a historic health care reform bill - H.R. 3962 -
a bill that includes a strong public option and numerous other provisions that will lower costs and improve care. This vote will be a moment that we have been working toward for months.
For anyone who has carried a sign, signed a petition, petitioned a stranger, found Frank Guinta not knowing how many people in New Hampshire are uninsured strange, insured yourself on the private market and then covered costs out of pocket because you were denied a claim, fought back against the claims of teabaggers, or enjoyed a cup of tea during a health care house party or a visit to a Congressional office to advocate for health care reform ... you need to be in Concord tomorrow at 2 PM.
Change that Works and Organizing for America (OFA) are hosting a public gathering in support of health insurance reform at the State House tomorrow, Saturday, November 7th at 2:00 PM.
Sen. Hassan and Peggo Hodes will be there, along with other notable New Hampshire leaders.
But, more importantly, I'm hoping you will all be there, too. We've stood on picket lines and sat in phonebanks together; let's celebrate and support this historic vote side-by-side too.
Today the New Hampshire House did the right thing. Today the New Hampshire Senate failed to. As a result, untold numbers of patients who choose the only avenue that allows them relief from pain and nausea are still criminals.
After a brief debate, the House, by a 240-115 vote, overrode the Governor's veto of HB 648, the medical marijuana bill. The pro arguments were, as usual, bipartisan, reasoned, moving and passionate. The anti arguments were, as usual, largely nonsensical partisan chaff.
One feature of NH legislative debate is that after any member has spoken to a bill, any other member may request that he or she yield to a question. This is done to request clarification, to disagree, to concur, to make additional points, to correct errors of fact, and for many other reasons.
After the debate is over, the Speaker allows two additional speakers, one for the pending motion and one against, in order to make clear exactly what pushing the green button (voting Yes) means. The speakers will almost always make one last brief argument for their side while doing so. (For example, "If you believe, as I believe, that American cheese is a disgusting and degraded substance, adequate perhaps to caulking drafty windows in an emergency, but utterly unworthy of inclusion in the cheese family, and that under no circumstances whatsoever should it be declared the state cheese of New Hampshire, will you please vote Yes by pushing the green button to approve the motion of inexpedient to legislate.") However, as these speakers are technically only making Parliamentary Inquiries, they are not subject to questions.
It was a long hot August for those who would like to see health care reform, as rabid "Town Hall" protesters proffered visions of public options that would lead to death panels and socialism and government tax collectors with special alien mind control powers that would use sex education and child indoctrination and black helicopters as the means for gay people to impose their dangerous agenda on the innocent, God-fearing citizens of someplace in Mississippi that I'm not likely to ever visit.
Part of the reason that opposition was so rabid was because health care interests were spending millions upon millions of dollars doing...well, doing whatever the opposite of giving a distemper shot to the angry mob might be, anyway.
So wouldn't it be great if all the CEOs of all those health care interests were to gather at one time and place so you could, shall we say, gently express your own thoughts regarding the issues of reform and public options?
By an amazing coincidence, that's exactly what's going to happen Thursday in Washington, DC, as the Patient Centered Primary Care Cooperative (PCPCC) holds its Annual Summit.
Follow along, and I'll tell you everything you need to know.
So we are now finding out the answers to some of our questions about which members of Congress actually represent We, the People...and which ones represent, Them, the Corporate Masters.
We have seen a Democratic Senator propose a policy that would put people in jail for not buying health insurance and a Democratic President who has taken numerous public beatings from those on the left side of the fence for his inability to ram something through a group of people...and yes, folks, the entendre was intentional.
But most of all, we've been asking ourselves: "why would Democratic Members of Congress who will eventually want us to vote for them vote against something that nearly all voting Democrats are inclined to vote for?"
Today's conversation attempts to answer that question by looking at exactly how money and influence flow through a key politician, Montana's Senator Max Baucus-and in doing so, we examine some ugly political realities that have to be resolved before we can hope to convince certain Members of Congress to vote for what their constituents actually want when it really counts.
Earlier this week, a high school friend suffered a brain aneurysm. He has been through multiple brain surgeries, all successful, and we have every reason to hope for a full recovery. Thank God.
Unfortunately, Jesse didn't have health insurance. Jesse is 22, not in school, and therefore not covered by his Parent's insurance. Jesse is 22, and while he is working on recovering from massive bleeding in his brain and multiple intense brain surgeries, he has to worry about millions in health care debt.
It's nice to see that at least some schools are teaching kids about health care reform. Here, students from the Ron Clark Academy are telling adults what they should already know:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
And also one of the next related videos to this one shows another good song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Personally, I'm glad that we're engaging young people in politics in the schools. There's enough right wing propaganda out there on Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, etc. I really think we need more of this in schools because too often parents don't educate their kids about progressive politics, and it's really important for them to understand how wrong the Right is.
I posted a similar diary over at dKos yesterday, but it was late and I was tired, and I think I don't need to ramble so much to get to the key point I had. Republicans have an easy way to influence the health care legislation as it passes through Congress and deny Democrats the opportunity to take all the credit for it.
Those among us who are familiar with the Bible will recall that Jesus Christ himself was an active member of the health care community as he travelled about the Holy Land.
It is reported that he practiced within multiple medical specialties, and his works as both an ophthalmologist and a neurologist are recounted within the verses of the Gospels.
But what if Jesus had been practicing medicine in the therapeutic environment we're familiar with today?
In today's conversation we'll be tagging along with Jesus as he takes a few calls at his HMO's Customer Care Center-and by the time we get done you should be able to bring a whole new take to those discussions you've been having about why reform matters.
With a resounding thud, Senator Max Baucus (D-United Health Group) shared with us the results of months and months of toil in the bipartisan vineyards. And what did he come up with for his troubles? A plan that evidently no one - including so-called GOP "moderates" - can support. So what does this plan that only Sen. Baucus, his loved ones, and staff will support actually accomplish? "Cost savings" that are, in effect, a federal subsidy to private insurers while he foists more costs on the states through expanded Medicaid.
I have repeatedly seen Republican people carrying signs saying "We want Congress's health care plan." I don't understand how that's protesting against health care reform, nor getting government out of things, but whatever.
If that's what it takes to make them happy, I'm in. Let's put Congress on Medicare. I sort of wonder why they aren't already.
Click here for a livestream of the speech (I decided it would be easier on the liveblogging not to embed it within this thread.
So, have at it, folks. This is a big one.
Also, and of interest: Zandra has coordinated some watch parties tonight for the speech that may be contributing tonight. Note that "Portsmouth Watch Party" and "Berlin Watch Party" may represent not just one person but anyone who is logged on from those events. And to those of you who are coming to Blue Hampshire tonight from there, welcome! (and consider joining our community in the future)
