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Health

Sen. Ben Nelson Isn’t Abandoning Individual Mandate

By Igor Volsky on Mar 25, 2011 at 7:23 pm

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) — who will likely face a tough re-election bid in 2012 — isn’t ready to endorse a specific alternative to the politically unpopular individual mandate, despite asking the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to study alternatives to the provision. In a press release commenting on the release of that analysis, Nelson said the report “identifies options to consider” but cautioned that the mandate is “necessary to maintain the ban on pre‑existing conditions” and keep costs down:

“The GAO report makes it clear that if the individual mandate is struck down by the Supreme Court, insured Americans will again have to pay both their costs and also pay the costs for the uninsured, which totaled $57 billion in 2008,” said Senator Nelson. “Nebraska families and businesses can’t afford to pay to insure their families and pay the costs of the uninsured, too.

“Without the individual mandate or a successful alternative, the number of uninsured is certain to grow and Nebraskans, as well as all Americans, will pay a hidden tax for their health care of $57 billion each year,” said Nelson. “Washington can consider the GAO’s findings to ensure that everyone pay their fair share, to ban pre-existing conditions and to increase coverage.

“Washington needs to explore the GAO report’s alternatives and others to see if there is a successful way to improve health reform.”

The report itself offers nine alternatives to the mandate without estimating how many people would likely be covered under each option:

- Modify open enrollment periods and impose late enrollment penalties.

- Expand employers’ roles in auto-enrolling and facilitating employees’ health insurance enrollment.

- Conduct a public education and outreach campaign.

- Provide broad access to personalized assistance for health coverage enrollment.

- Impose a tax to pay for uncompensated care.

- Allow greater variation in premium rates based on enrollee age.

- Condition the receipt of certain government services upon proof of health insurance coverage.

- Use health insurance agents and brokers differently.

- Require or encourage credit rating agencies to use health insurance status as a factor in determining credit ratings.

The mandate is designed to encourage individuals who wouldn’t normally purchase insurance coverage to enroll and expand the size of the health care risk pool, thus spreading the costs and risks of insurance across a larger population (and helping bringing down health care costs) This kind of policy has almost eliminated uninsurance in Massachusetts where, 98 percent of residents now have health insurance and is expected to insure 32 million Americans by 2019 as part of the Affordable Care Act.

But limited real-world experience with the alternatives offered above (some of which, like the public campaign, can work in conjunction with the mandate) has made it difficult to estimate how many people would be covered under a different proposal. Last month, MIT’s Jonathan Gruber — who was interviewed for the GAO report — published a paper modeling the auto enrollment and the late enrollment penalties and found that both would fall short of the ACA’s goals. He found that auto enrollment would reach 24 million uninsured — since “only about one-third of the uninsured are actually offered employer-sponsored insurance in which they can be auto-enrolled” — while the late enrollment penalty option would fare even worse, enrolling just 21 million Americans. The GAO details the complexities of each option.

Vulnerable Democrats are understandably interested in seeking viable alternatives, but in doing so they should be mindful of the fact that alternative solutions could reverse the progress made in current law. In talking about these policies they also risk buying into the GOP’s premise that there is something inherently wrong or terribly coercive about asking able individuals to take personal responsibility for their health care expenses. Instead of playing defense, they should be reminding the public of the long history of Republican support for the idea.

Politics

Justice-For-Sale Lobbyists Raising ‘Unlimited and Undisclosed’ Donations To Buy Supreme Court Seat

By Ian Millhiser on Mar 25, 2011 at 6:31 pm

Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser

Last year, Wisconsin Supreme Court justice and Gov. Scott Walker ally David Prosser cast the key vote in favor of a “justice-for-sale” ethics rule written by two corporate lobbying groups. Thanks to Justice Prosser, his colleagues are not required to recuse themselves from cases involving one of their major campaign donors. Now, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce (WMC), one of the lobbying groups that wrote the rule Prosser made into law, is rewarding him by raising “unlimited and undisclosed” funds to keep Prosser on the state supreme court:

Dear Wisconsin Business Leader,

The government worker unions are openly attempting to overturn the November elections, buying an activist majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and grinding our democracy to a halt because Governor Scott Walker has refused to raise taxes to balance the budget. [...]

Click here to make a generous corporate contribution to counter their efforts. Donations are unlimited and undisclosed. [...]

WMC IMC will mount a statewide TV ad campaign to educate the public about Justice Prosser’s common sense approach. And, we will educate the public about Kloppenburg’s radical agenda, and how the union bosses want her to stand in the way of reform.

Please, give today. Our business climate is at stake.

WMC, whose board of directors includes a high ranking executive with a Koch Industries company, has a record of spending exorbitant sums of money to ensure that the state supreme court is friendly to powerful corporate interest groups. In 2008, WMC spent $1.2 million to replace former Justice Louis Butler with an obscure conservative judge after Butler sided against wealthy interest groups in three court decisions. Butler is now an Obama nominee for a federal trial judgeship.

Moreover, WMC’s efforts to buy up seat after seat on the state supreme court would have been illegal just a few years ago. Wisconsin banned corporations from buying state elections in 1905, but that law effectively ceased to exist when the Supreme Court opened the floodgates of corporate campaign funds in its infamous Citizens United decision.

Related Posts

LGBT

Barbour Would Reinstate DADT To Prevent ‘Amorous Mindsets’ From Interfering With Combat Duty

By Igor Volsky on Mar 25, 2011 at 6:30 pm

Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS) has joined fellow potential Republican presidential contenders Tim Pawlenty (R-MN) and Mike Huckabee (R-AR) in supporting the reinstatement of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, telling America Family Foundation’s Brian Fischer that he supports rolling back repeal out of fear that “amorous mindsets” would interfere with “saving people’s lives and killing bad guys”:

BARBOUR: Let’s look at the best evidence that we have. They did research to see what military people thought about this idea. The closest to the ground, the soldier on the ground, was the most opposed to this. And it’s not necessarily over homosexuality. Its over the fact that when you’re under fire and people are living and dying of split-second decisions you don’t need any kind of amorous mindset that can effect saving people’s lives and killing bad guys. You look at the data and it is the foot-soldier that is the person who is out there, boots on the ground, who was most against this. And it’s because they live or die with this and that’s who we ought to be listening to, that’s who we ought to be caring about and that’s why I am against it. I think it ought to be rolled back. I just don’t see how you can take any other position if the person you are trying to protect is the soldier who is actually in combat.

Watch it:

Despite Barbour’s rather insulting concerns about “amorous mindsets” in the ranks, a majority of servicemembers who participated in the Pentagon’s survey of the policy — upwards of 70% — didn’t believe that gay troops would undermine unit morale or cohesion. According to the report, combat units expressed more negative views about open service (40–60% in the Marine Corps and in various combat arms specialties) because of inexperience with gay servicemembers — opposition that would likely deteriorate with proper leadership and training.

Of the three Republicans who have publicly called for reinstating the ban, only Pawlenty has called for recalling the funds necessary for implementing repeal. None of the presidential hopefuls explained how bringing back the policy would actually play out operationally, however. (H/T: Right Wing Watch)

Climate Progress

Gingrich’s Great Global Warming Flip-Flop: From Cap-And-Trade To Drill-Baby-Drill

By Brad Johnson on Mar 25, 2011 at 6:24 pm

Newt Gingrich really doesn’t like it when Barack Obama takes his advice. It’s not just true of intervention with Libya — it’s also the case with fighting global warming pollution. In short, Newt was for carbon cap and trade, until Obama became president:

February 15, 2007: “I think if you have mandatory carbon caps combined with a trading system, much like we did with sulfur, and if you have a tax-incentive program for investing in the solutions, that there’s a package there that’s very, very good. And frankly, it’s something I would strongly support.” [Frontline, 2/15/07]

April 4, 2009: “And now, in 2009, instead of making energy cheaper—which would help create jobs and save Americans money—President Obama wants to impose a cap-and-trade regime. Such a plan would have the effect of an across-the-board energy tax on every American. That will make our artificial energy crisis even worse—and raising taxes during a deep economic recession will only accelerate American job losses.” [Newsweek, 4/4/09]

Gingrich’s full record on global warming is actually a series of epic flip-flops over more than two decades, with his positions mostly coinciding with whether the party holding the presidency is a Republican or a Democrat. Since 1989, when Gingrich supported aggressive climate action against “wasteful fossil fuel use,” until today, as he proposes abolishing the Environmental Protection Agency, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen from 353 ppm to 391 ppm (from 26 percent above pre-industrial levels to 40 percent above), and the five-year global mean temperature anomaly has nearly doubled from 0.3°C to 0.56°C.

FLIP

1989: Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-GA) co-sponsors the ambitious Global Warming Prevention Act (H.R. 1078), which finds that “the Earth’s atmosphere is being changed at an unprecedented rate by pollutants resulting from human activities, inefficient and wasteful fossil fuel use, and the effects of rapid population growth in many regions,” that “global warming imperils human health and well-being” and calls for policies “to reduce world emissions of carbon dioxide by at least 20 percent from 1988 levels by 2000.” The legislation recognizes that global warming is a “major threat to political stability, international security, and economic prosperity.” [H.R. 1078, 2/22/1989]

FLOP

1992: Gingrich calls the environmental proposals in Al Gore’s book Earth in Balance “devastatingly threatening to most American pocketbooks and jobs.” [National Journal, 9/5/92]

1995: Gingrich’s budget shuts down climate action, killing the U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment, NASA’s Mission to Planet Earth program, and NOAA global warming research. Carl Sagan asks, “Is it wise to close our eyes to a possibly serious danger to the planetary environment so as not to offend such companies and those members of Congress whose reelection campaigns they support?” [Los Angeles Times, 7/16/95]

1996: At a speech for the Detroit Economic Club, Gingrich mocks “Al Gore’s global warming,” citing “the largest snowstorm in New York City’s history”: “We were in the middle of budget negotiations; the football games were coming up and we noticed on the weather channel that an early symptom of Al Gore’s global warming was coming to the East Coast. And it does make you wonder sometimes, doesn’t it, how theoretical statisticians in the middle of the largest snowstorm in New York City’s history could stand there and say, ‘I don’t care what it’s doing. It’s going to get very hot soon.’” [FDCH Political Transcripts, 1/16/96]


FLIP

1997: As Speaker of the House, Gingrich co-sponsors H. Con. Res. 151, which notes carbon dioxide is a “major greenhouse gas” that comes from “products whose manufacture consumes fossil fuels” and calls on the United States to “manage its public domain national forests to maximize the reduction of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.” [H. Con. Res. 151, 9/10/1997]

2007: Gingrich calls for a cap-and-trade system with tax incentives for clean energy. “I think if you have mandatory carbon caps combined with a trading system, much like we did with sulfur, and if you have a tax-incentive program for investing in the solutions, that there’s a package there that’s very, very good. And frankly, it’s something I would strongly support.” [Frontline, 2/15/07]

In a debate on climate policy with Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), Gingrich says “the evidence is sufficient that we should move towards the most effective possible steps to reduce carbon-loading of the atmosphere,” and that we should “do it urgently.” [ThinkProgress, 4/10/07]

2008: In an advertisement made for Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection, Gingrich sat with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and said that “we do agree our country must take action to address climate change.” [We Campaign, 4/18/08]

FLOP

2008: Defending himself to his conservative base, Gingrich then rejects climate science: “I don’t think that we have conclusive proof of global warming. And I don’t think we have conclusive proof that humans are at the center of it.” [Newt.org, 4/22/08]

In a Washington Post chat, Gingrich rejects a cap-and-trade system, saying it “would lead to corruption, political favoritism, and would have a huge impact on the economy.” He says he supports “tax credits for dramatically reducing carbon emissions.” [Washington Post, 4/17/08]

In a later post, Gingrich says, “I do not know if the climate is warming or not.” He also rejects Warner-Lieberman, a cap-and-trade system with tax incentives for clean energy, as “leftwing”: “I disagree with leftwing solutions like Warner-Lieberman, which ignore the economic and national security implications of their attempts to protect the environment.” [Newt.org, 5/5/08]

“Last week, liberals in Congress voted for the equivalent of a $150 billion tax increase,” Gingrich wrote, of a decision to block oil shale development in Colorado. “The answer to high energy prices,” he said, is “so simple it could fit on a bumper sticker: Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less.” [Human Events, 5/20/08]

2009: In his appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Gingrich attacks President Obama’s cap-and-trade proposal, claiming the president “mentioned in passing, using code words, so nobody would recognize it, he is for an energy tax.” [C-SPAN, 2/27/09]

In a Newsweek column, Gingrich calls Obama’s cap-and-trade proposal “an across-the-board energy tax on every American.” [Newsweek, 4/4/09]

Gingrich’s 527 organization, American Solutions for Winning the Future (ASWF), launches an anti-cap-and-trade campaign. “I hereby petition Congress to reject any and all legislation (or regulatory action by the EPA) that would enact new energy taxes and/or establish a national cap and trade system for carbon dioxide that would, as President Obama has said, cause electricity and other energy prices to ‘necessarily skyrocket.’” [ASWF, 5/28/09]

2011: Gingrich proposes abolishing the Environmental Protection Agency because of its “attempts to regulate greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, and thereby the entire American economy.” [ThinkProgress, 1/25/11]


Security

At Least Five Babies Have Died Since Nebraska Denied Undocumented Mothers Prenatal Care

By Andrea Nill Sanchez on Mar 25, 2011 at 5:30 pm

Yesterday, I wrote about Gov. Scott Walker’s (R-WI) proposal to deny pregnant undocumented women access to prenatal care assistance. I argued that Walker’s position runs counter to his vehemently “pro-life” crusade. In the post, I also mentioned that when the state of Nebraska debated a similar proposal, anti-choice groups strongly opposed denying undocumented women prenatal care because it put “borders ahead of babies.”

It turns out that many of their worst fears have come true. The Lincoln Journal Star reports that preventing undocumented women from accessing prenatal care assistance has had “dramatic effects”:

The elimination one year ago of Medicaid funding for prenatal care for about 1,600 low-income women has had dramatic effects, doctors and health clinic administrators reported Wednesday. At least five babies have died. Women are traveling 155 miles to get prenatal care. Babies have been delivered at clinics, in ambulances and hospital emergency rooms. [...]

Andrea Skolkin, chief executive officer of One World Community Health Centers in Omaha, said that in the past year, only about half of uninsured women are receiving any prenatal care. The health center has more premature births to uninsured women, compared to insured women. Uninsured mothers were twice as likely to deliver through cesarean section, which is more expensive. [...] Four infants died in utero at the Columbus health center, she said. In the previous seven years, the clinic had never had an in utero death.

Nebraska state Sen. Kathy Campbell (R) has introduced a bill that would reinstate the prenatal care. “We need to be pro-life from cradle to grave, to err on the side of compassion and stay grounded in family values,” stated the Rev. Howard Dotson of Omaha’s Westminster Presbyterian Church who testified in support of the bill.

However, opposition to Campbell’s bill is largely ideological. “Our position is that we shouldn’t be spending any money for people who are here illegally,” stated Vivianne Chaumont, director of the state’s Medicaid division who testified in opposition to the bill. Dr. Caron Gray, from Creighton University Medical Center and clinics called Chaumont out, stating, “We can sit here and talk about costs as much as we would like, but I think we really need to be honest about what this is truly about … political beliefs and standing on what to do with immigration.”

Meanwhile, while Nebraska is forcing some women to watch their babies die due to lack of prenatal care assistance, another woman also had to experience the same “torture” because the state would not allow her to terminate her pregnancy even after doctors told her that her child would not live.

Yglesias

Rhode Island Politics

By Matthew Yglesias on Mar 25, 2011 at 5:29 pm

Karl Kurtz quotes Gregory Kroger on perhaps the greatest state level filibuster of all time:

In January 1923, the Democratic minority in the Rhode Island Senate began a low-intensity filibuster against all major legislation in an effort to force the Republican majority to call for a new constitutional convention. They were aided by a Democratic Lieutenant Governor presiding over the Senate, Felix Toupin, who refused to recognize any Republicans seeking to make motions, except a motion to call for a convention. This conflict reached a peak in June, 1924 when the Rhode Island Senate stayed in continuous session for 22 hours until the Republican majority simply got up and left. Three days later they returned for a 42-hour day-and-night session which began with a mass fistfight over control of the gavel and ended when Republican operatives placed a poison-soaked rag behind Toupin to gas him out of the presiding officer’s chair. No one was permanently harmed, but the Republican majority relocated to Rutland, Massachusetts for six months until Republican victories in the 1924 elections put an end to the struggle.

Part of the background here is that in these pre Baker v Carr days, the Rhode Island state legislature was horribly mis-apportioned, which gave the GOP a stranglehold on the legislature notwithstanding massive Democratic support from Catholic voters in growing cities. Eventually the Great Depression brought on such a Democratic wave that Theodore Francis Green got in as governor and perpetrated a quasi-legal “bloodless revolution” that changed the state constitution.

Security

ThinkProgress Confronts Gingrich In Iowa Over Libya Flip-Flop; Newt Digs In: ‘I Didn’t Flip-Flop’

By Scott Keyes on Mar 25, 2011 at 4:47 pm

ThinkProgress filed this report from West Des Moines, IA.

On Wednesday, ThinkProgress broke the story of presidential aspirant Newt Gingrich’s brazen flip-flop concerning the American response to the crisis in Libya. After our article was published, Gingrich’s campaign offered one incoherent and contradictory response after another, even committing another flip-flop last night on Fox News in the process. The flap earned Gingrich a “full flop” from the non-partisan PolitiFact’s Truth-o-Meter.

ThinkProgress confronted the former House Speaker over his evolving position on Libya at an event in Iowa today. Gingrich stuck to his guns, declaring that it was “inaccurate” of PolitiFact to say he had flip-flopped on Libya. When asked to respond to his own 2004 declaration that “you can’t flip-flop and be commander-in-chief,” Gingrich brushed off his own standard, maintaining that if people “look at what I actually said[,] they’ll find I didn’t flip-flop”:

KEYES: Is it possible to get your thoughts real quick on the Libya situation? I know that PolitiFact said that it was a total, a “full flip-flop.” What’s your response to that?

GINGRICH: It’s inaccurate. I have responded since the middle of February to this situation as it changed. And obviously as the facts change the analysis changes. I’ve consistently worked through exactly where we were at any given moment.

KEYES: I know in 2004 you were quoted as saying that “you can’t flip-flop and be commander-in-chief.” What would you say to critics who would point to that?

GINGRICH: I would say that they should look at what I actually said and they’ll find I didn’t flip-flop.

Watch it:

If you take a look at “what he actually said,” you’ll find that Newt has flip-flopped not once, but twice. Watch them both:

Education

GOP Rep. Shrugs Off Head Start Cuts: ‘It Was Just One Of Those Things’

By Pat Garofalo on Mar 25, 2011 at 4:30 pm

Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI)

The spending cuts that House Republicans proposed for the remainder of the fiscal 2011 year would gut important federal investments in special education, K-12 education for low-income students, federal job training, environmental protection, community health centers, nuclear security, infrastructure, programs that aid both pregnant women and newborns, housing assistance for veterans and rental assistance for people with long-term disabilities. And one of the primary targets on the long list of programs that Republicans have slated for reductions is Head Start.

Head Start, as Alex Seitz-Wald noted, is “a valuable early education program, which has helped millions of low-income children and their families through comprehensive education, health, nutrition, and parent involvement services since it was started in 1965.” Protests have been staged across the country against these particular cuts, with many taking place at the offices of various lawmakers. However, when Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI) is asked about why Republicans proposed cutting Head Start, he just shrugs:

U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Tipton, said when groups ask him why their budgets were picked to be cut, he asks them, “What would you cut?” [...]

[Walberg] added that the cut to Head Start was just one piece of the Republicans’ proposal, and the program was not singled out for a separate vote. “It was just one of those things,” he said.

Walberg doesn’t seem interested, but study after study has found that Head Start provides substantial long-term benefits to disadvantaged children. Head Start students are more likely to be reading and writing at the appropriate level in their early school years, have better health outcomes, earn more money, and commit fewer crimes. Parents with students in Head Start are also more likely to be involved in their child’s education and cost states less in Medicaid outlays.

One long-term study in California found that “our society receives nearly $9 in benefits for every $1 invested in Head Start children.” There are certainly ways to reform the program to make it even more responsive to the needs of children and their parents, but Republicans are simply throwing it under the budget knife, without even having bothered thinking up a reason.

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