Democrats Don’t Fail Us Now

From WhiteHouse.gov

• 8 — The number of people every minute who are denied coverage, charged a higher rate, or otherwise discriminated against because of a pre-existing condition. [Source: HealthReform.gov]
• 8 — The number of lobbyists hired by special interests to influence health reform for every member of Congress in 2009. [Source: Center for Public Integrity]

cost of health employer-paid health insurance

• $1,115 – that’s the average premium for employer-sponsored family coverage per month in 2009.  Annually, that amounts to $13,375 – or roughly the yearly income of someone working a minimum wage job. (Source)
• And if nothing is done to reform our broken health care system, a recent survey found that over the next ten years, out-of-pocket expenses for Americans with health insurance could increase 35 percent in every state in the country. (Source)

Toxic Insurance Company Stress Syndrome (TCIS)

This morning I spent a few hours with my sister while she was getting her fourth chemo treatment for ovarian cancer, and, naturally, the subject of health insurance came up. She is insured, but even so several of the run-ins with her insurance company have resulted in tears and what journalist Janet W. Battaile calls Toxic Insurance Company Stress Syndrome, or TICS.

For anyone out there who believes that private insurance companies do a good job of managing our health care, read her story: http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/02/25/tom-k-working-insurance-nightmare-why-we-need-a-better-system/?icid=main|aim|dl6|link1|http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/02/25/tom-k-working-insurance-nightmare-why-we-need-a-better-system/.

The Power of Story in Politics…

…or how conservatives hoodwink poor and middle-class Americans into voting against themselves.

Growing up I was told by someone I very much respected (and still do) that to succeed you need to think and act like you’ve already succeeded. So, for instance, go to an interview dressed like you’ve already got the job. Or think socially/economically like you’ve already “arrived.” After all, in America, if you can think it or dream it, you can be it.

But, in reality things aren’t that simple. And the fact is that if you are the average poor or middle-class American and the rules of the game are stacked against you, then it is difficult to achieve your dreams.  And the reality was that I was the lower middle-class daughter of a high-earning father who died without a pension even after working for the same company for over 20 years and whose mother had to go back to work as a teacher to support the family and the person I was talking to had very much “arrived” because he inherited the company his own father worked his whole life to build.

Obviously my life would have been different had my father not died of massive cardiac arrest in a hospital without a crash cart. And my life would have been different if the company he worked for saw fit to vest workers in a pension system much earlier in their careers.

But the fact is the hospital didn’t have the equipment needed to save his life (and even if it did, there’s no guaranteeing he would have lived) and the company did not care enough about its workers–even its management–to help them create a secure future for their families. As for the hospital, well, healthcare is expensive and equipment is expensive and in small towns and rural areas across our nation, the highest quality care is simply unavailable. As for the company’s attitude towards its workers, times have changed. Most major corporations allow employees to vest in their pension plans much earlier. Of course, they often rob the pension fund to pay for other things–such as health care premiums–and then are left with underfunded pension plans upon which they default and expect the government’s pension insurance to bail out.

So, what am I rambling on about? My point is that I am just an average “Jane” from a small town in Middle America who had a rough break in her early life that fundamentally reshaped the rest of her life. The lack of adequate health care and the absence of a pension cushion for my family utterly changed the trajectory of my life, my sibling’s lives and, especially, my mother’s life who, as a widow had to figure out how to provide for four kids. For those reasons, among many more, I believe in the principles of the Democratic party.

I believe in the idea that quality health care should be accessible to all Americans–no matter where you live–and it should be affordable. I believe that employers wouldn’t be employers without employees and that companies should treat their workers as if they’re on the same side instead of on opposing teams. I believe that people who dig ditches or build highways or drive ambulances or teach kindergarten or change bedpans in ICU’s, etc. work just as hard as executives who make exponentially higher salaries and are rewarded handsomely even when they drive their companies into debt or our nation’s economy over a cliff. I believe that an accident of birth and zip code should not mean you do not deserve the best education this nation can provide.  And I believe, above all, that a government founded by the people for the people should work on behalf of the all the people and not just those with the money to buy influence in the halls of power.

Further, I believe that most Americans who grew up just like me agree with those same principles. So, if I’m right, why do so many poor and lower-middle class Americans go to the polls and vote against all those things?

By siding with the Republicans against health care reform, they are siding with corporations whose only reason for being is to make a profit rather than with their own doctors (polling shows the majority of doctors in America support serious reform) or their own families who need quality affordable health care. They are saying they’d rather have sky high salaries for health care executives than affordable premiums for their own families. By siding with the Republicans against forcing large banks to pay a small transaction fee to help repay the taxpayers who bailed them out, they are essentially saying, “Go ahead, rob me blind just because I don’t like idea of big government interfering with big business.” But what’s unAmerican about making sure taxpayers get paid back? For that matter, what’s unAmerican about paying taxes? Without taxes, we’d have (among many other things) no public schools to educate our children, no public roads on which to travel, no Medicare to support our seniors, and no military to defend our democracy. (To those teaparty folks who want Washington to keep it’s hands off their Medicare, I’d say…well, I can’t really print what I’d say….) In short, without taxes, we’d have no America.

So why are so many Americans against themselves? Why do they throw their voices and their votes behind those who’ve already made it at the expense of others–like themselves–who have not reached the pinnacles of power and wealth? In a short article on BBC News, two scholars say it is because American’s 1) don’t want to be schooled by “elites” and 2) they’d rather listen to a good story than learn the details of a policy and how it might affect them.

Stories not facts

In his book The Political Brain, psychologist Drew Westen, an exasperated Democrat, tried to show why the Right often wins the argument even when the Left is confident that it has the facts on its side.

He uses the following exchange from the first presidential debate between Al Gore and George Bush in 2000 to illustrate the perils of trying to explain to voters what will make them better off:

Gore: “Under the governor’s plan, if you kept the same fee for service that you have now under Medicare, your premiums would go up by between 18% and 47%, and that is the study of the Congressional plan that he’s modelled his proposal on by the Medicare actuaries.”

Bush: “Look, this is a man who has great numbers. He talks about numbers. I’m beginning to think not only did he invent the internet, but he invented the calculator. It’s fuzzy math. It’s trying to scare people in the voting booth.”

Mr Gore was talking sense and Mr Bush nonsense – but Mr Bush won the debate. With statistics, the voters just hear a patronising policy wonk, and switch off.

For Mr Westen, stories always trump statistics, which means the politician with the best stories is going to win: “One of the fallacies that politicians often have on the Left is that things are obvious, when they are not obvious.

“Obama’s administration made a tremendous mistake by not immediately branding the economic collapse that we had just had as the Republicans’ Depression, caused by the Bush administration’s ideology of unregulated greed. The result is that now people blame him.”

The idea that a well-told, simple and engaging story can pull the wool over our eyes is fascinating and explains a lot in human history. Coupled with the emerging science that shows how humans seek patterns in data, it could explain a lot of the political silliness going on today.

For instance, perhaps that’s one reason many people who deep down find it disturbing to have a black man as president but who are uncomfortable with thinking of themselves as racist have latched onto the “birther” argument–i.e. that Obama is not a citizen.  People say, “of course I’m not a racist, but how else can you explain how this man came to be president? It has to be a plot! A nefarious plot by Muslim extremists intent on installing the Antichrist as president…”

As ridiculous as that sounds, it is no more ridiculous that someone who is poor or underemployed being against health care reform because it is “socialist.”  The article goes on:

Thomas Frank, the author of the best-selling book What’s The Matter with Kansas, is an even more exasperated Democrat and he goes further than Mr Westen.

He believes that the voters’ preference for emotional engagement over reasonable argument has allowed the Republican Party to blind them to their own real interests.

The Republicans have learnt how to stoke up resentment against the patronising liberal elite, all those do-gooders who assume they know what poor people ought to be thinking.

Right-wing politics has become a vehicle for channelling this popular anger against intellectual snobs. The result is that many of America’s poorest citizens have a deep emotional attachment to a party that serves the interests of its richest.

Thomas Frank says that whatever disadvantaged Americans think they are voting for, they get something quite different:

“You vote to strike a blow against elitism and you receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in our life times, workers have been stripped of power, and CEOs are rewarded in a manner that is beyond imagining.

“It’s like a French Revolution in reverse in which the workers come pouring down the street screaming more power to the aristocracy.”

Ultimately, what happens is that the workers manning the barricades alá French revolution are, in reality, manning the barricades against themselves. When the battle is over, the bodies left in the street will be theirs, and all the while, the aristocracy will be sitting in their corporate palaces eating cake.

The case for health care reform.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2010/1001w.benen.html

Today’s RANT

Can Democrats be any more incompetent? In the year when we’re so close to healthcare reform, we lose Teddy Kennedy’s seat to a Republican who ran on the pledge to kill reform. What is wrong with this country that fixing the healthcare system is so scary? Why don’t we care about the health of our neighbors? Why don’t we put money into schools? Why is it that TAXES are such a dirty word?

And why do people like David Brooks think that we have the right to tell Haitians how to do anything? Sure their economy is seriously f**ked up. But it was American bankers and good ‘ol American capitalism that almost sunk the entire global economy.

Sure their educational system stinks. But our inner city and rural schools are hardly turning out Rhodes Scholars by the dozens.

Sure their health care system is dependent upon foreign aid/charity, but we’ve got millions of people without any insurance and millions more who ration care because they can’t pay their deductible or they don’t want to risk losing their coverage because they get sick.

Sure their “voodoo religion” shapes their society, but religion–and fights over religion–shapes our society too.

So what’s my point? I don’t know. I’m sad, disappointed, and mad…all at once. We are wasting a once in a lifetime opportunity to make a positive impact on our health care, our environment, our infrastructure and all our elected representatives can do is lob the same old crazy tired accusations at each other. The Democrats have a majority in both houses and yet they’ve got their panties twisted up so tight they can’t do a damn thing with it .  The Republicans don’t have a single positive proposal about anything and instead of working for this country spend all their time spreading absolutely ridiculous rumors about death panels and Antichrists and voting in a bloc against anything the Dems propose. The folks on Capitol Hill–on both sides of the aisle–are fiddling while Rome burns. And Americans are hell bent on shutting off the fire hose.

What kind of a people are we?

I know we’re not going to get healthcare reform like I want, namely single payer insurance. But what I can’t for the life of me figure out why we can’t get some basic, common sense changes such as:

1. NO PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS. Everyone needs protection from the high costs of health care so that means everyone needs insurance.
2. Subsidize insurance for individuals and small businesses owners who want to provide employee coverage and require that EVERYONE have basic coverage.
3. Prohibit insurance companies from dropping or denying coverage to a policy holder when that person gets sick.
4. Prohibit insurance companies from charging high premiums for crappy coverage for people who are self-employed or whose employers don’t provide insurance coverage.

What kind of responsible person would deny coverage to another American? What kind of responsible person would think it is a good idea for an insurance company to deny/limit coverage just because someone was born with a genetic condition/disease? What kind of person thinks that just because “my coverage” is okay, our system doesn’t need help? What kind of nation are we, what kind of people are we, that we do not care for the least among us–the children, the sick, or the poor? It is a disgrace that we have so many Americans under-insured or without insurance. It is a disgrace that the leading cause for bankruptcy in America is the inability to pay medical/health costs. And it is a disgrace that any Democrat or Republican stand in the way of just these basic common sense reforms.

What kind of a people are we?

Insurance Industry Buys a Study

So, what’s an industry to do when it’s back is to the wall? Ask for a bailout? Only if you’re too big to fail. But, if you’re just too greedy to pay — see baby too fat for coverage until their dastardly policy goes public — then the logical thing to do is to bluster and blow and threaten to wreak hell on the system unless you get your way. Kinda a like a spoiled 2 year old with impulse control issues.

Or you could pay someone to come up with a “study” that shows that making health care more affordable and accessible for all Americans would raise the rates of those already with coverage by a gazillion dollars a year. Okay, not a gazillion, but it might as well be. The “study” says the Senate reform bill would result in increased premiums of an average of $4,000 per family per year. It won’t increase my premiums by that much because I would have to drop my coverage. As independent business owners, we pay out of pocket for our insurance and we already pay dearly for coverage that includes (precludes?) preexisting conditions and goes up and up and up each year.

But, hey, maybe by running around screaming about how the sky will fall if reform is passed and basically THREATENING us all with dire consequences if we force them to do what we pay them to do (i.e. insure us), insurance companies will finally be seen for what they are: PROFIT making machines with more collusion than competition. I don’t have anything against anyone making a decent profit, but I do have a problem with highway robbery. By threatening us instead of working with us to make the system better (hey, everything can be improved), they are showing their cards–and they’ve got a full house of jokers. Only the joke’s on us–if we don’t reform the system.

Only in American can the folks who promise to take care of us try to extort us. Some health care system. Just thinking about it has made me sick.

Know Anyone Getting Medicare Benefits? McCain Wants to Cut Medicare/Medicaid To Pay For His Health Plan

John McCain, with his millionaire wife and Senate-provided health insurance, obviously doesn’t rely on Medicare. But, lots of seniors, including my mom (hi, Mom!) do.

Why do I say it’s obvious McCain doesn’t rely on Medicare? Because, otherwise, if he did rely on it, then he wouldn’t be planning on massive cuts in the Medicare program so he can pay for his proposed health care program which, I pointed out in an earlier post, won’t work for families because the $5,000 he wants to give families to pay for their own coverage won’t cover the cost of the average $11,000 – 12,000 premiums. I know this from first-hand experience because we pay for our own health insurance and our premiums are $959.61 per month–with high deductibles and exclusions for my kids preexisting hearing condition.

According to the Wall Street Journal (October 6: McCain Plans Federal Health Cuts – Medicare, Medicaid Spending Would Be Reduced to Offset Proposed Tax Credit), McCain plans to cut as much as $1.3 trillion from Medicare/Medicaid. The Obama campaign says that works out to as much as $882 billion (this is a correction…I had typed million earlier) from Medicare alone.

Talk about robbing Peter to pay Paul…only this case Peter is your Mom and Dad or your Grandparents and Paul is the insurance companies.

Well, finally the Obama campaign is highlighting this overlooked aspect of McCain’s policy in a new ad out today. Make sure any seniors you know who depend on Medicare know about McCain’s plans.

McCain’s $5,000 Health Care Tax Credit–One More Reason To Say No Way, No How, No McCain!

For those of you who work for a company that provides your health care, let me give you a heads up…health care in America is expensive. Those of us who run our own businesses and have to buy private health insurance pay big bucks. McCain’s paltry $5,000 tax credit won’t do much to help anyone buy insurance on the open market.

We are a family of 4 and we pay just shy of $12,000 a year for health insurance. Plus, our deductibles are so high that we end up paying out of pocket for most of our doctor’s visits, kids shots, etc. We have a $20 fee for office visits, but then all the tests, shots, and routine stuff kids have to have done are basically full price. Cholesterol checks and miscellaneous stuff like that just don’t get done because it costs additional money. Plus, we don’t have dental insurance so we pay out of pocket for every cleaning, for fillings, for wisdom teeth removal, and of course for orthodontia. We have no coverage for glasses and, although both of our kids are mildly/moderately hard of hearing and, in an ideal world, should be wearing hearing aids, our private insurance required signing off on a waiver saying that anything that had to do with our kids hearing was a preexisting condition and would not covered. (Welcome to the world of private insurance and preexisting conditions!) So, not only are hearing aids not covered (most insurance plans don’t cover hearing aids which can cost between $1500 – $3000 per ear), no audiograms or visits to their doctors to follow any potential deterioration in their hearing is covered.

Bottom line: we pay $12,000 a year for the privilege of knowing that if something terrible happens we’ve got coverage…but other than that we pay $12,000 a year and then pay for everything else on top of that…

$5,000 isn’t going to cut it for a family. Plus, McCain wants to eliminate the tax break for employer-provided insurance…so how many small businesses will even be able to continue to provide health insurance without the tax break?

And, on top of that, McCain wants to deregulate the health insurance industry so that prices will, supposedly, go down due to increased competition in the marketplace (uh, I think we’ve heard that before…anyone for a little California electricity deregulation?). Although, with a deregulated market, you can “betcha” that many insurance companies will deny coverage for anyone with so much as an ingrown toenail!

McCain May or May Not Need Viagra, but Millions of Women Need Access to Affordable Birth Control

From NARAL: John McCain—ironically enough, aboard the “Straight Talk Express”—was unable to answer when confronted with a simple question: Shouldn’t insurance companies be required to cover birth control if they cover Viagra?

…There’s a reason John McCain “certainly do[es] not want to discuss that issue,” as he stammers in the clip: Because his record shows that he’s dangerously out of touch with a nation where 98 percent of women use birth control at some point in their lives. As recently as 2005, McCain voted specifically against requiring insurance companies to cover prescription birth control.

It sure looks like Sen. McCain is living up to the slogan so many of you voted for in our bumper sticker contest: 15th Century Solutions for the 21st Century.
Maybe Sen. McCain has done his homework and can now give a real answer at the debate. Or maybe he’s not stumped. Maybe he doesn’t want to answer because he knows his record will alienate the women voters that will decide this election.

It’s time to find out.

Why should men get insurance coverage for Viagra while some women pay the full cost out-of-pocket for prescription birth control?