Archive for Health Care
Trans-Vaginal Carolina
Posted by: | CommentsNot a new state tech school, but a North Carolina bill like Virginia’s that, I admit, went right by me. Just heard about this one this morning.
WRAL, February 27:
North Carolina’s ultrasound law, passed last year over the governor’s veto, didn’t provoke the same level of controversy. It doesn’t include the words “trans-vaginal probe,” either. But it effectively requires the procedure for many, if not most, abortions.
The new law requires an ultrasound before any abortion procedure. The woman has to be shown the image of the fetus, have the image described to her, and be offered the opportunity to hear the fetal heartbeat.
Mother Jones, March 12:
North Carolina: This law passed in 2011 was pretty much exactly like Virginia’s, but as the local press pointed out, it didn’t get nearly as much attention because people weren’t talking about the “transvaginal” aspect. A federal judge ruled last October that doctors don’t have to show women the ultrasound image, at least.
You Hooligans need to keep me on my toes.
Affordable Care Act.
Posted by: | CommentsThis is mainly an open thread with a theme. I’d like to hear what the hooligans out there have to say in support of or criticizing Obama Care and the looming Supreme Court main event next week, when 26 states get to have their arguments brought before the court in a scheduled six hours of testimony over the course of three days.
As for myself, I think it sucks. This is one time when I truly hope the Conservative Court rules in favor of the States, and it very well could happen.
My problem with the entire insurance racket is that it is a financial commodity that would have priced itself out of existence long ago, were it not for the legislative actions of government and the collusion of an employer-based health care system that is itself an outdated model of how such things should be run. Were a truly free market allowed to evolve naturally in this instance it would not take long for it to become extinct. Insurance is unnecessary and extraneous to health care. They are not the same thing, nor are they mutually dependent. Yet it is insurance, not health care that is about to be enshrined in the golden cash register of American law.
Arizona’s barefoot and pregnant law
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The future of birth control, from God's Own Party
On cue, the Arizona state legislature seems to have decided it doesn’t want women in the workplace unless they kowtow to their employers’ theocratic codes. From Huffington Post :
Arizona legislators have advanced an unprecedented bill that would require women who wish to have their contraception covered by their health insurance plans to prove to their employers that they are taking it to treat medical conditions. The bill also makes it easier for Arizona employers to fire a woman for using birth control to prevent pregnancy despite the employer’s moral objection.
Government should not be telling employers to do something against their moral beliefs, explained the bill’s sponsor, Majority Whip Debbie Lesko (R-Glendale). “We don’t live in the Soviet Union.”
The Left: What Needs to Change
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Among the things that need changing in American politics is for liberals to start playing offense instead of letting the right wing set the terms and conditions of debate in this country. Meanwhile, lacking sane candidates and sane policies to run with in 2012, the right wing is throwing every social issue in its arsenal against the wall to see what, if anything, might stick. Well, of course they insist that President Obama’s contraception policy is a liberal assault on religious freedom! If the debate is about contraception (or your personal right to privacy), they lose. If it is about shrinking government small enough to fit in a woman’s vagina, they lose even bigger. Ask Virginia Republican lawmaker Dave Albo, who told Statehouse colleagues how their bill mandating transvaginal ultrasounds for women seeking abortions kept him from getting laid.
Rick Perlstein of Rolling Stone dives into that topic in “Why Obama Needs to Change to Win.” While Andrew Sullivan and others thought the administration had “‘punked’ the GOP on contraception,” Perlstein believes that by being accommodating Obama legitimized his critics’ views when he should have repudiated them. He should have set boundaries, as I noted last week, and again failed to do so. House and Senate Republicans followed up by doubling down on efforts to further restrict access to contraception.
The Incredible Shrinking Government
Posted by: | CommentsSmall-government conservatives have principles … and holding them firmly once in office makes all the blood rush to their heads. Commenting on a proposed law in Virginia, the crew at the Stephanie Miller radio show observes how principled conservatives now want to shrink government down to the size that it will fit inside a woman’s vagina.
The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart had some thoughts on that, too.
Polling Supports Narrative: Economic Sabotage By GOP
Posted by: | CommentsFrom TPM: Polls Show Voters Believe GOP Intentionally Stalling Economic Recovery. Polls by Suffolk University, Washington Post/ABC News and PPP (commissioned by Daily Kos) show an economic sabotage narrative taking hold.
The new data suggests that about half the country, including a majority of self-identified independents, believe that congressional Republicans are using their political power to thwart Obama’s efforts to reduce unemployment, presenting Democrats an opportunity to make this argument more explicitly as the 2012 campaign moves forward — to undercut Republicans’ claims that Obama and the Dems bear full responsibility for the economy, and to make their pattern of obstruction a real liability for them.
Suffolk University polled registered voters in Florida and found that nearly half of voters, including large minorities of conservatives and Republicans, believed “Republicans are intentionally stalling efforts to jump-start the economy to insure that Barack Obama is not re-elected?”
From the people whose idea of a “jobs bill” is another tax cut for millionaires. Time for another Culture War distraction, I guess. David Atkins at Hullabaloo reminds readers: “Republicans are poised to take a stand this year against contraception, Medicare, and middle class tax cuts.”
I didn’t see “War Horse.” It wasn’t about Republican strategery, was it?
Having It Both Ways
Posted by: | CommentsRepublicans want to fall in line, the saying goes, and Ann Coulter is falling in line now that Gov. Mitt Romney is back as Republican front runner. She even likes his healthcare plan: Three cheers for Romneycare — “a massive triumph for conservative free-market principles.” After paragraphs gushing about the individual mandate’s conservative roots in the Heritage Foundation, Coulter goes “tenther” calling the 2,000-page Affordable Care Act, not bad policy, exactly, just an illegal one: “If Obamacare were a one-page bill that did nothing but mandate that every American buy health insurance, it would still be unconstitutional…”
Of course, Heritage didn’t think so when in response to the Clinton health proposal, prominent Republicans in the congress included many of its ideas in a couple of health care bills, including the “Health Equity and Access Reform Today Act of 1993” (18 Republican cosponsors and a breezy 579-page read) and the “Consumer Choice Health Security Act of 1993” with multiple sponsors in the House. Or when Mitt Romney used the Heritage model in Massachusetts. Only when the Obama White House adopted Romney’s template did Heritage and Republicans balk, as Think Progress reminded them:
– Heritage On Romney’s Individual Mandate: “Not an unreasonable position, and one that is clearly consistent with conservative values.” [Heritage, 1/28/06]
– Heritage On President Obama’s Individual Mandate: “Both unprecedented and unconstitutional.” [Heritage, 12/9/09]
– Heritage On Romney’s Insurance Exchange: An “innovative mechanism to promote real consumer choice.” [Heritage, 4/20/06]
– Heritage On President Obama’s Insurance Exchange: Creates a “de facto public option” by “grow[ing]” government control over healthcare.” [Heritage, 3/30/10]
– Heritage On Romney’s Medicaid Expansion: Reduced “the total cost to taxpayers” by taking people out of the “uncompensated care pool.” [Heritage, 1/28/06]
– Heritage On President Obama’s Medicaid Expansion: Expands a “broken entitlement program,” providing a “low-quality, poorly functioning program.” [Heritage, 3/30/10]
With Coulter singing his praises, once again it’s springtime for Mitt.
Crucial Conversation Full House
Posted by: | CommentsRob Schofield and Chris Fitzsimon came to Asheville this past week to provide a briefing on how policies out of Raleigh are affecting us all. The duo write for NC Policy Watch, a project of the NC Justice Center, who held last week’s budget symposium at AB Tech. There were over 80 attendees at this Crucial Conversation.
The two explained that their organizations provide a counterpoint to the conservative perspectives coming from Civitas, the John Locke Foundation, and Americans for Prosperity.
Recent NC polling results from Public Policy Polling were displayed early in the meeting:
On the Backs of Children and the Poor
Posted by: | CommentsYou saw the poverty facts that came out last week. Behind the rising percentages are real people struggling to meet their basic needs. Without a stable platform from which to operate, there is no time and there are no resources to utilize for purposes of escaping the poverty trap.
In light of these facts and the lives of hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians, the Republicans in Raleigh have decided to balance the budget on the backs of children and the poor. Rather than expanding revenues, they’ve targeted services for children and the impoverished.
The following statistics come from a report issued by the NC Justice Center and the United Way of North Carolina. I can’t find it online, but I’ll post the link when I can.
Medical Loss Ratio Bites Insurers
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On December 2, the Department of Health and Human Services released its rule on how health insurers comply with the Affordable Care Act’s medical loss ratio (MLR) provision. The rule is effective on January 1, 2012. Before you flip over to YouTube to watch the latest in cat cuteness, consider this headline from a contributor at Forbes : “The Bomb Buried In Obamacare Explodes Today-Hallelujah!”
The MLR was one of those hotly debated provisions during the health reform fight two years ago that by now the public has forgotten, but insurers never did. The MLR requires health insurance companies to spend 80% of consumer premiums (85% for large group insurers) on actual health care for its customers. Insurers that fail to meet the standard each year will have to rebate their customers the amount by which they underspent on providing medical care. Plus, Bloomberg reports, “Consumers won’t have to pay taxes on rebates they get from health insurance plans that violate spending rules in President Barack Obama’s 2010 overhaul.” Forbes contributor Rick Ungar argues that the MLR ruling will kill off large parts of the for-profit health insurance business:
Why? Because there is absolutely no way for-profit health insurers are going to be able to learn how to get by and still make a profit while being forced to spend at least 80 percent of their receipts providing their customers with the coverage for which they paid. If they could, we likely would never have seen the extraordinary efforts made by these companies to avoid paying benefits to their customers at the very moment they need it the most.
