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Health

Health Care Judge Vinson Reportedly Proposes Selling Insurance In Emergency Rooms

By Ian Millhiser on Dec 16, 2010 at 8:31 pm

Today, Judge Roger Vinson heard oral arguments in the multi-state lawsuit claiming that the provision of the Affordable Care Act requiring most Americans to either carry insurance or pay slightly more income taxes is unconstitutional. After the hearing, Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum (R) co-hosted a press conference in which he expressed optimism that the landmark law would be strike down. As part of this conference, however, McCollum attributed an unfortunate view to Judge Vinson:

One of the things he kept saying…was there are other options, aren’t there, besides this approach, besides requiring you to buy health insurance. There are other ways to skin the cat, so to speak. And he said that several times today…like when you go into, I think he said an emergency room, for example, you know, maybe you could, at that point, be required to buy insurance.

Watch it:

Given his role in challenging the Affordable Care Act, McCollum obviously isn’t the most reliable witness. Nevertheless, it would be quite unfortunate if Vinson did actually suggest this alternative mechanism, since it is guaranteed to fail.

The reason why the Act requires people to carry insurance is because the Act also prevents insurance companies from denying coverage to people just because they are already sick. Patients with preexisting conditions cannot be protected unless the law also prevents them from entering the insurance market at the last minute — an act known as “adverse selection“:

This happened because of a phenomenon known as “adverse selection.” Adverse selection occurs when consumers delay purchasing health insurance until they become ill or injured — thus forcing the insurance plan to pay them substantially more in benefits than they previously paid in premiums. When one consumer engages in such a delay, everyone else’s premiums must rise to cover that consumer’s costs. When many consumers engage in this delay, the results can shut down an entire insurance market.

Seven states attempted to ban preexisting conditions discrimination without also requiring everyone to carry a minimum level of coverage, and all of them saw their premiums skyrocket. Several states that tried doing one without the other saw their entire individual insurance market collapse. (Massachusetts, by contrast, enacted a law that was very similar to the Affordable Care Act and its premiums declined by 40 percent in the individual insurance market.)

Yet, if McCollum is to be believed, Judge Vinson floated the idea that the solution to this adverse selection problem is, well, adverse selection.

LGBT

Reid Files Cloture On Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell And DREAM, Schedules Cloture Votes For Saturday

By Igor Volsky on Dec 16, 2010 at 8:16 pm

Moments ago, citing a shortage of votes, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) unexpectedly pulled the omnibus bill off the floor and instead filed cloture on the stand-alone Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal passed by the House yesterday and the DREAM Act. Reid announced that he will hold a cloture vote on both measures on Saturday:

REID: I’m going to file cloture tonight on the DREAM Act, we’re going to have a vote on that Saturday morning fairly early. We’re going to have a cloture vote tonight on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell– oh, not a cloture vote, I’m going to file cloture on it tonight. Those will be sequenced for Saturday, whenever we get to them. Following that, I was told by a number of Republican Senators that they need 6 or 7 days to offer amendment on the START treaty.

Watch it:

Reid appears to be following the advise of Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), who earlier today suggested that the Senate vote on DADT before moving back START. “I believe instead of going back to the START treaty, we should go to the independent stand-alone repeal of don’t ask don’t tell Saturday night,” Lieberman said. “We can get it done by Monday, maybe Tuesday at the latest, and then go back to the START treaty.”

The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent argued that this is the best case scenario for repealing the policy since “[i]f Reid waits until New START is done before holding the vote on DADT, Senators could start going home once the treaty is resolved, dooming DADT repeal.” “By contrast, if the DADT repeal vote is done first, no Senator will leave Washington before START is resolved. So doing DADT repeal first doesn’t imperil START.”

Update

Kerry Eleveld on the votes:

Here’s the breakdown: of the 58 Democratic senators, 56 are likely to vote for passage (excluding Sen. Joe Manchin, who joined the last GOP filibuster of the defense authorization bill, and Sen. Ron Wyden, who was recently diagnosed with cancer and is undergoing surgery Monday); but the support of GOP senators Susan Collins, Scott Brown, and Lisa Murkowski brings the count to 59, and most believe Sen. Olympia Snowe will also come along since she has signaled support for repeal though not specifically the stand-alone bill itself. A few other GOP senators, such as Richard Lugar and George Voinovich, are also potential gets.


Update

,Lieberman sends in this statement:

“I want to thank Senator Reid for his leadership in bringing the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act of 2010’ to the Senate floor for a vote. I am confident that we have more than 60 votes to end this law that discriminates against military service members based solely on their sexual orientation. Repealing ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ will affirm the Senate’s commitment to the civil rights of all Americans and also make our military even stronger.”


Update

[/update]

Politics

Hatch Falsely Claims Jobless Benefits Last ‘Well Over 100 Weeks’ And Keep People Unemployed Longer

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Dec 16, 2010 at 8:15 pm

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) went on Fox News last night with host Greta Van Susteren to discuss the White House tax deal, which passed in the Senate yesterday afternoon. Hatch was largely supportive of the measure, which included an unpaid-for extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, but he was upset that the bill included an extension of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits because they were also not paid for. But in attacking the benefits extension, Hatch falsely claimed that UI currently lasts “well over 100 weeks,” and that jobless benefits encourage the unemployed not to look for work:

HATCH: I would prefer the insurance to be paid for, naturally. They weren’t going to pay for it. Let’s be honest about it — the Democrats have always won on unemployment insurance. It is well over 100 weeks now. There is no question people are suffering. I don’t want them to suffer.

On the other hand, we also know there are people who could be working who won’t work because they’ve got unemployment insurance and they keep — don’t go out and start looking, especially jobs that might not be as good as what they had before. So these are all things that had to be worked out.

Watch it:

It’s curious that Hatch has such a strong opinion on unemployment benefits, since he clearly doesn’t understand the program well. The length that UI benefits last differs between states, but nowhere in the country do benefits last “well over 100 weeks.” The maximum length of UI anywhere is 99 weeks, hence the so-called 99ers, people who have exhausted their benefits and have still been unable to find work. Fellow Republicans like Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) have also railed against the extension of UI benefits in the tax bill while demonstrating they lack an elementary understanding of the program.

Meanwhile, Hatch’s claim that “there are people who could be working who won’t work because they’ve got unemployment insurance” is both false and offensive to people who are out of work. Research by the San Francisco Federal Reserve has found that workers who qualify for UI benefits stay unemployed for just 1.6 weeks longer than those who do not qualify for such benefits. Moreover, there is currently only one job opening for every five job seekers, meaning “even if every job opening were instantly filled with an unemployed worker, four out of five unemployed workers would still be looking for a job,” as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found.

And like many of his GOP colleagues, Hatch is upset that the UI benefits are not paid for, but has no problem exploding the deficit to lavish tax cuts on the wealthiest two percent of Americans, suggesting where his true priorities lie.

Health

New Dem Report Argues Health Repeal Is ‘Dangerous To America’s Health’

By Igor Volsky on Dec 16, 2010 at 7:47 pm

Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA)

As Republicans and their Tea Party allies lay out the roadmap for repealing the health care law in January — the current plan would have them voting on full repeal in the first days of Congress, followed by separate votes to repeal individual provisions like the individual mandate and the 1099 requirement — House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee Chairman Pete Stark (D-CA) is out with this report explaining why the GOP’s plan to dismantle health reform is “dangerous to America’s health.”

I’ve been arguing that health reform advocates have a real opportunity to use the upcoming repeal hearings and votes as a way to reinforce — unspin, if you will — all of the lies told about reform. Seventy percent of voters who recalled seeing a health reform ad during the midterm elections said it was in opposition to the Obama plan. If the Democrats hope to shore-up support for the measure, they will have to clearly spell out what the law does and how GOP repeal will take all of that away. Stark’s report does just that:

- If Republicans repeal health reform, they will eliminate these new tax credits and the cost-sharing assistance, leaving tens of millions of people unable to afford coverage.

- Simply stated, by repealing health reform, Republicans would cause the deficit to skyrocket.

- To prevent working families from facing crippling medical costs, the health reform law limits what insurers can force enrollees to pay in out-of-pocket expenses and limits their ability to exclude coverage for pre-existing conditions. Republicans would repeal these protections, putting millions of consumers back at risk for bankruptcy if someone gets sick.

- Republicans have promised to repeal the health reform law and thereby eliminate this key coverage improvement – forcing senior citizens and people with disabilities to again pay too much for their life-saving medications.

- Republicans would repeal these small business tax credits – raising taxes on these small businesses which would likely result in them dropping health coverage for their workers.

Look:

Democrats adopted this line of debate immediately after they passed the law and they will need to return to it in the new Congress. The good news is that the American public has always been highly supportive of the individual provisions in the law and health reform advocates need to ensure that everyone understands that that’s what Republicans want to repeal.

Politics

Ron Paul Catches Shutdown Fever: ‘I Don’t Think It Would Hurt One Bit’

By Scott Keyes on Dec 16, 2010 at 6:21 pm

Earlier today, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) appeared on Fox News with 9/11-truther Andrew Napolitano. With funding for the federal government set to run out this weekend, Napolitano asked Paul if it was worth continuing to provide funding or if we should just “go on without the federal government for a little while?” Paul agreed, arguing that he didn’t think a government shutdown would hurt “one bit”:

NAPOLITANO: Would it be good fiscally and philosophically if the government did shut down for a few weeks and the American people could see life would go on without the federal government for a little while?

PAUL: I don’t think it would hurt one bit. If an individual can’t pay their rent on time, they might ask their landholder to say “look, I’ll be there next week.” They adjust. The owner and the renter adjust. This is the way the government should adjust. If they can’t pay their bills, wait. But they are afraid the world would panic and the world would come to an end. But it would be an admission that we’re in big trouble. But we are in big trouble. But to deny it and to continue to spend and continue to inflate and waiting for the bond bubble to burst, that doesn’t make sense to me.

Watch it:

Rather than simply speculate whether Paul is correct or not, we have a recent historical occurrence to look to for guidance: the federal government shutdown of 1995. During the nearly four-week shutdown, Social Security checks were not mailed, nor were Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements sent out. All non-essential government employees were sent home without pay. And according to a Center for American Progress report entitled “The Big Freeze”, the entire ordeal “cost the American taxpayer over $800 million and rattled the confidence of international investors in U.S. government bonds.”

The architect of that debacle, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, remains unperturbed about the damage caused during the shutdown. Appearing on Fox News this morning, Gingrich declared that the shutdown was “absolutely” worth the risks to the country because it helped Republicans win reelection:

HOST: Taking a look back and seeing what happened back in 1995, would say that it was worth it? It was worth the risk, not only to the country—

GINGRICH: Absolutely!

HOST: Absolutely? Why is that?

GINGRICH: Absolutely. For two reasons. First of all, as Republicans, no Republican majority in the House had been reelected since 1928, but when we stood firm against liberals and we said were prepared to really fight, all of our base said, you know, these folks are different, they’re not just normal politicians, they don’t just go to Washington to sell out. And we became the first House majority to be reelected since 1928.

Watch it:

These comments from Paul and Gingrich echo the demands being pushed by the Shutdown Caucus – a group of seven (and growing) GOPers pushing to shut down the federal government next year.

Economy

Wall Street Journal Bemoans $150 Million, 600 Employee ‘Small Business’ Facing The Estate Tax

By Guest Blogger on Dec 16, 2010 at 6:20 pm

Our guest blogger is Seth Hanlon, Director of Fiscal Reform for the Center for American Progress Action Fund’s Doing What Works project.

One of the enduring myths of American politics is that the estate tax falls hardest on small businesses and family farms, forcing them to sell their farms and businesses to pay the tax. It’s not true, and has never been true. Nonetheless, newspaper reporters have scoured the land for many years, searching in vain for families forced to sell small businesses or family farms due to the estate tax.

Now that Congress seems poised to eviscerate the estate tax, the task of finding these mythical estate tax victims is going to be even harder. The tax cut compromise moving through Congress would exempt all estates with assets valued at under $5 million and $10 million for couples. With the exemption raised to these levels, only the largest 3,600 estates in the country will pay any estate tax; the other 99.86 percent of estates will be entirely exempt.

Yet it appears that no matter how much Congress slashes the estate tax, the Wall Street Journal will continue to send its reporters in search of the “small businesses” that are going to be devastated by the tax. A Journal story today carries the headline, “For Family-Run Small Businesses, Estate-Tax Uncertainty Adds Cost.”

Has the Journal actually found a small business that will suffer under the weight of the estate tax? Not quite. The story profiles a wealthy Arkansas man who owns a lumber business, forest land, and five mills that are currently valued “between $30 million and $50 million apiece.” This is the Journal’s only example of the “small businesses” faced with uncertainty under the new estate tax regime.

Does a business with 600 employees that is worth more than $150 million fit within the definition of “small business”? Only if you’re the Wall Street Journal publishing a story about who pays the estate tax, and you need a sympathy-inducing headline.

Estimates by the Tax Policy Center show that only fifty small farm and business owners in the entire country will pay any estate tax next year under the new framework, and they would pay an average rate of just 7.4 percent. If they actually exist, these fifty farms and businesses can probably avoid the tax altogether with only a little bit of estate planning — and so can many estates well in excess of $5 million.

According to the Journal, the $5 million exemption “won’t apply” to the lumber mill owner “because the value of the mills is so high.” Actually, the $5 million or $10 million exemption applies to all estates, and only the value above that level will be taxed.

With the tax legislation nearing passage in Congress, the estate tax is all but dead. It appears, however, that on the pages of the Wall Street Journal the small business myth is as alive as ever.

Media

New Washington Post Blogger Shared Stage With Far-Right Anti-Islam Activist Geert Wilders

By Matt Duss on Dec 16, 2010 at 5:40 pm

On Wednesday, the Washington Post announced a new blog written by conservative religious activist Jordan Sekulow (son of Jay Sekulow, who heads the conservative outfit American Center for Law and Justice).

In addition to peddling the historically revisionist claim that “the United States is a Christian nation” — Sekulow believes “America has a special relationship with God” — he’s also part of the “creeping sharia” crowd, writing of Oklahoma’s ban on sharia law, “The threat of Sharia law is real and the people of Oklahoma are ahead of the curve.”

On September 11, 2010, Sekulow spoke at a Manhattan rally protesting the Park 51 Islamic Cultural Center (which, like event organizer Pamela Geller, he refers to as a “shrine to terror“) alongside far-right Dutch anti-Islam activist Geert Wilders. Watch it:

In an article on conservatives’ embrace of Islamophobia, journalist Michelle Goldberg wrote, “A new type of religious bigotry has entered American politics, one more blatant than anything we’ve seen since the Twin Towers fell.” By giving Sekulow a platform, the Washington Post is legitimizing that bigotry.

Yglesias

Bundestag Debate on Eurozone

By Matthew Yglesias on Dec 16, 2010 at 5:31 pm

Quentin Peel has an excellent report in the FT on a recent Bundestag debate that shows the shifting sands inside the German political elite:

German unwillingness to bolster the size of the 440bn eurozone stabilisation fund, or contemplate the issue of jointly-guaranteed eurozone bonds, was in danger of turning the European Central Bank into a “bad bank”, said Frank-Walter Steinmeier, parliamentary leader of the Social Democratic party, and former vice-chancellor.

Jürgen Trittin, co-leader of the Green party in the German Bundestag, said the chancellor was regarded throughout the eurozone as a “Teutonic savings-monster” whose actions had aggravated the crisis. He accused her of “disorientation”, and being driven by fear of the popular press. [...]

[Steinmeier] spelt out his three-point programme, outlined in an opinion article for the Financial Times on Wednesday, calling for a debt-restructuring for Greece, Ireland and Portugal, combined with a debt guarantee for the rest of the eurozone, and increased funds for the EFSF. He also backed the idea of issuing eurozone bonds in the medium term, combined with much closer political and fiscal co-ordination amongst the member states.

The price of integrating Europe in an unbalanced way that ran so far ahead of public consciousness has been criminally high. But I do think we see here that the basic calculation that forging ahead with a single currency would drive deeper integration is happening. Leaving aside the policy ideas here, what you’re seeing is a European policy debate. It’s not Germany versus some other country. And it’s not a simplistic “Europhiles versus Europhobes” debate either. It’s a real disagreement about the best way for Europe to proceed, like how Democrats and Republicans argue in Ohio about national policy.

Security

Christian Leaders Slam DeMint And Kyl For Using Christmas As An Excuse To Kill DREAM Act Vote

By Andrea Nill Sanchez on Dec 16, 2010 at 5:30 pm

In their attempt to block any action during the lame duck session of Congress, Sens. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Jim DeMint (R-SC) have callously resorted to questioning Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) faith for potentially keeping Congress in session through the start of the new Congress next year. Kyl has accused Reid of “disrespecting” Christians, while DeMint said it’s “sacrilegious.”

Several notable leaders of the Christian faith community have already slammed the two senators for using Christmas as an excuse to halt efforts to pass the New START Treaty. Today, several other faith leaders chimed in to condemn the senators’ remarks, noting that delaying a vote on the DREAM Act would also be antithetical to the teachings of Christ and the spirit of Christmas.

Pastor Troy Jackson of the University Christian Church of Ohio told me that he “didn’t realize our elected officials had Christmas break like elementary and high school kids do”:

The DREAM Act would be a great way to honor or celebrate Jesus for Christians. I’m shocked that anyone would think that leaving town or leaving that great bill on the table would somehow be ‘honoring’ of Jesus or would even say that voting it would be sacrilegious.

Today, Conservatives for Comprehensive Immigration Reform hosted a call featuring conservative leaders from diverse Evangelical denominations. I got the chance to ask the speakers on the call to respond to Kyl and DeMint’s remarks. Rev. Jerry Dykstra, Executive Director of the Christian Reformed Church in North America stated:

Jesus, who was a high respecter of the Sabbath — which was not simply a national or religious holiday, but was their day of complete rest in his own culture — said that on the Sabbath we need to do what is right. If doing what is right means that we have to work through a Christmas holiday, then by all means we work through a Christmas holiday. [...] I think that’s a manuevering that’s really in appropriate.

Dr. Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel and Dean if Liberty University School of Law dismissed the senators’ comments entirely:

I’m not sure that I would think that that kind of a comment actually deserves a legitimate answer. The fact of the matter is no one is asking somebody to work on Christmas Day. But if you’re asked to work a couple of additional days — they are servants of the public. I just don’t think such a comment has much merit.

Listen:

Reid has also fired back at Kyl and DeMint, saying, “I don’t need to hear the sanctimonious lectures of Senators Kyl and DeMint to remind me of what Christmas means.”

Update

Bishop Minerva Carcaño of the Desert Southwest Conference of The United Methodist Church left me the following message:

I believe that nothing would honor the Christ Child more than for Christians, among them Congressional leaders, to work for justice throughout the Christmas season and every day. If anything we should work even harder for God’s justice in the season when we remember that the Prince of Peace has been born among us. I know that I and thousands of religious leaders all across this country will be at work on Christmas Eve, why not our Congressional leaders?

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