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Sen. Boxer Introduces Legislation To Extend COBRA Coverage To Domestic Partners

By Igor Volsky on Apr 5, 2010 at 5:00 pm

barbboxerMost Americans who lose their jobs and the health insurance coverage that comes with it have the option of maintaining their insurance at the community-rated premium through the COBRA program. COBRA provides coverage to “certain former employees, retirees, spouses, former spouses, and dependent children” at fairly steep rates (enrollees have to pay the full cost of insurance plus an administrative fee), but it can insulate a family from medical debt and financial ruin.

But not all Americans can access this health care security. The federal government requires companies to offer COBRA coverage to married spouses, but does not mandate companies to extend the same option to the domestic partners of departing employees. As Liz Weiss and Josh Rosenthal point out in this column, some in Congress are seeking to change that:

A new bill introduced last month in Congress would rectify this longstanding inequity in the COBRA system by expanding federal COBRA health care continuation guarantees beyond only opposite-sex, married couples. The Equal Access to COBRA Act of 2010, introduced by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), would guarantee same-sex spouses, domestic partners, and other beneficiaries such as parents, grandparents, or siblings the opportunity to maintain their employer-provided health insurance plan through COBRA. The bill would not require employers to offer health insurance to families or any relatives. It would merely offer all covered family members the same opportunity to maintain health care coverage.

“Nontraditional families, including domestic partnerships, same-sex marriages, and multigenerational families are increasingly common” and Boxer’s legislation “would allow equal access to COBRA coverage for all individuals who are covered by an employer’s health plan.” The legislation could benefit some “6.6 million opposite-sex unmarried partners, nearly 800,000 same-sex couples, and 16 percent of Americans living in a multigenerational household, according to new research from the Pew Research Center.”

The bill is currently in the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) and has not attracted any co-sponsors.

Yglesias

Breast-Feeding and the Affordable Care Act

By Matthew Yglesias on Apr 5, 2010 at 4:44 pm

(cc photo by Risager)

(cc photo by Risager)

Apparently we could do a lot of good if there was more breast-feeding happening:

The lives of nearly 900 babies would be saved each year, along with billions of dollars, if 90 percent of U.S. women fed their babies breast milk only for the first six months of life, a cost analysis says.

Those startling results, published online Monday in the journal Pediatrics, are only an estimate. But several experts who reviewed the analysis said the methods and conclusions seem sound.

Monica Potts observes that breast-feeding is largely a class phenomenon and that the Affordable Care Act (conveniently!) has provisions that may help make it more widely accessible:

The study found that only about 12 percent of American women exclusively breast feed their children for the first six months of life, as recommended. College graduates are the most likely to breast feed; their rates are at 45 percent. The least likely are poor women and teenage mothers. There are reasons for this that go beyond education, of course. Non-college grads are more likely to have jobs where they’re unable to stay on maternity leave for a long time, and then more likely to go back to work in places where it is difficult to pump breast milk. So that makes this not just a public health issue, but a social justice one.

The health-care bill includes requirements for employers to start accommodating women who are breast feeding. The next step is to encourage doctors to encourage mothers to do it.

More robust family leave policies are going to have to be a key objective for the next wave of progressive social policy activism.

Update

It seems Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon is responsible for this provision.

Politics

Daniels: Climate Science Is ‘Dubious,’ ‘Extreme Measures’ Advocated By ‘Zealots’ Won’t Address Global Warming

By Ben Armbruster on Apr 5, 2010 at 4:40 pm

Last year, Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-IN) attacked the House’s climate change bill saying that “it looks like imperialism” because of the cap-and-trade provisions in the bill. However, Daniels refrained from addressing climate change science, saying that it is “being addressed by others.”

But yesterday on C-Span, Daniels weighed in on the science and it appears that he comes down on the side of the global warming deniers:

DANIELS: In terms of climate change, I think that everyone would be well advised to take a substantial time out. There’s been nothing but dubious news about the science of all this now for about a year, including apparent scientific wrongdoing. Meanwhile, we’re left with a situation where even if the zealots had their way, and the most extreme measures were taken, by their own computer models, we don’t move the world thermometer at all.

Watch it:

In referring to “apparent scientific wrongdoing,” Daniels is presumably referring the the so-called “Climate-Gate” scandal in which scientists at the University of East Angila’s Climatic Research Unit in the UK were accused by conspiracy theorists of tampering with data in order to exaggerate the threat of global warming.

However, just last week, the House of Commons’ Science and Technology Committee cleared the scientists of any “wrongdoing,” concluding that “the scientific reputation of [the scientists] and CRU remains intact.” The committee said that there is no evidence that data presented by the CRU challenges the scientific consensus that “global warming is happening and that it is induced by human activity.”

Moreover, it’s unclear whose “computer models” Daniels is referring to when he claims “extreme measures” won’t reduce global warming. The Met Office Hadley Centre, the UK’s “foremost climate change research centre,” found that taking “rapid” action to reduce greenhouse gases in 2010 could prevent average world temperatures from increasing by up to 4.3 degrees Celsius.

The International Panel on Climate Change has concluded that global warming and climate change are real and that it is man made. In fact, a panel of eminent U.S. and European scientists recently “confirmed the widespread scientific consensus that the Earth’s climate is warming due to human activities.”

Climate Progress

Cuccinelli’s Climate Denier Lawsuits Could Junk Auto Industry’s Recovery

By Brad Johnson on Apr 5, 2010 at 4:00 pm

Ken CuccinelliVirginia’s radical attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli (R-VA), is threatening the recovery of the American auto industry with new climate denial lawsuits. To the applause of automakers, Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Transportation finalized landmark new fuel economy standards last week, completing President Obama’s campaign promise. Cuccinelli has already filed a lawsuit challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger the public, claiming that hacked “Climategate” emails prove a conspiracy by scientists involved with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to replace real science with “political science.” In response to the new fuel economy standards — the first rules to take into account greenhouse pollution — Cuccinelli is filing yet another lawsuit, according to spokesman Brian Gottstein:

In that motion, the attorney general’s office asked the EPA to reopen its proceedings in light of the recent evidence that the reports the EPA was relying on for its decision contained erroneous and/or unverifiable global temperature and other data. We will file a notice of appeal with respect to today’s ruling.

Cuccinelli’s suit against the science of global warming is baseless, as numerous Virginia climatologists have told the Wonk Room. Furthermore, the auto industry stands fully behind this new program,” as Dave McCurdy, President and CEO of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers has written.

Killing the endangerment finding — as numerous state legislatures, attorneys general, and lawmakers in Congress are trying to do — would destroy the stakeholders’ fuel economy agreement. The United Auto Workers describe that “California and other states have agreed to forgo state-level regulation of tailpipe emissions and abide by the new national standard that will be created by these NHTSA and EPA rules.” If the denier Dirty Air Act efforts go through, UAW explains the “critically important progress” will be “overturned”:

However, the critically important progress that was achieved with this historic agreement will be undermined if EPA’s endangerment finding is overturned. Without this finding, EPA will not be able to proceed with its current rulemaking on light duty vehicles. If the joint rulemaking process collapses, NHTSA has indicated that it will not be able to meet the statutory timetable for implementing any fuel economy increases for the 2012 model year. And in the absence of the EPA standard, California and other states would certainly move forward with their standards, thereby subjecting auto manufacturers to all of the burdens that the one national standard was designed to avoid.

The fears of UAW that multi-state standards would be catastrophic are a self-fulfilling prophecy. Even though the American auto industry can certainly handle multi-state standards, a return to the Bush era of recrimination and lawsuit instead of a focus on competitiveness and innovation would be crippling. Cuccinelli is not only wasting taxpayer money trying to overturn EPA’s scientific finding, he’s trying to dismantle the historic agreement that all stakeholders agree will create American jobs and increase national competitiveness.

Yglesias

Corporate Gigantism

By Matthew Yglesias on Apr 5, 2010 at 3:58 pm

(cc photo by ginnerobot)

(cc photo by ginnerobot)

Here’s a little slice of corporate life courtesy of Yves Smith:

Brief synopsis: Kraft acquires the 200 year old British confection-maker Cadbury after a heated battle. The chairwoman and CEO Irene Rosenfeld (already not a good sign, best practice is to separate the two roles) was awarded a 41% pay increase, bringing the total to $26 million for 2009 for her “exceptional role” in the Cadbury transaction, as well as her “commitment to fiscal discipline.

Huh? Doing deals is part of a modern CEO’s job. Unless her role was SO exceptional that it saved Kraft several million in deal fees, this just looks like a trumped up excuse. It is far too early to tell if the Cadbury acquistion was a good deal or not, thus special bennies look mighty unwaranted.

Indeed, the board looks like is was snookered (as in how would they know how “exceptional” her role was? Those reports would only come from her or staff and advisors loyal to her; the board most certainly not involved enough in transaction details to have an informed view.

The punchline is that Kraft actually screwed up. Part of their plan for Cadbury involved closing off the company’s pension plan but there’s “an obscure clause in Cadbury’s pension trust deed that makes it almost impossible to close the scheme.” As a way ’round this obscure clause, they’ve issued an ultimatum to employees, threatening them with a pay freeze unless they “voluntarily” agree to opt out of the pension plan. Point being that no matter how obscure the clause may or may not have been, this is supposed to be part of your due diligence before you buy a company, to say nothing of “exceptional” performance.

At any rate, there seems to be a serious incentives mismatch whereby bigger companies pay their executives more, creating strong pressure to do mergers and takeovers even in the absence of genuine economies of scale.

Alyssa

Sorrow and Anger

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Apr 5, 2010 at 3:45 pm

So, I don’t have super-strong feelings about the Amanda Palmer backlash brewing in the feminist blogosphere.  I like “The Jeep Song” just fine.  But I generally believe that abled-bodied people pretending to be disabled is uncool (to be clear, I don’t across the board believe that able-bodied should not be allowed to play disabled people in fictional roles: my issue is with people either pretending they have a disability, as a number of celebrities have copped to doing recently, or creating disabled alter-egos and appropriating an experience they haven’t actually had), that joking about giving money to the Klan is tacky and insensitive, and that being a huge drama queen for the attention is just generally annoying.  But one thing that’s bothered me about the debate is this: one of the things folks have criticized Palmer for is a skit at an anti-Proposition 8 rally where she pretends to rape a Katy Perry impersonator as a kind of revenge for “I Kissed a Girl.”  I think it’s possible to agree both that “I Kissed a Girl” is stupid and dopey and semi-offensive, and that fake rape is vile and unfunny and profoundly not politically effective.  I watched the video, which I’ve put under the jump, because it could definitely be a trigger.

So I have no problem with folks giving Palmer a hard time for this stupid, ugly, unhelpful stunt.  But if they’re going to criticize her, Margaret Cho, her partner in bad agitprop, had better be in for some heat, too.  I was really, profoundly disappointed to see Cho involved in something this bad, and more importantly, this dumb.  Cho has a history of being, I think, usefully offensive.  But this is not one of her better moments.  Hopefully it’s just a temporary lapse in judgement.


Politics

Did Jindal Bribe Louisiana’s Attorney General To Force Him To Join Frivolous Health Care Lawsuit? (UPDATED)

By Amanda Terkel on Apr 5, 2010 at 3:40 pm

UPDATED: Jindal’s Press Secretary Kyle Plotkin contacted ThinkProgress and said that the Eunice News story on the deal with Caldwell is “completely false.” “There’s no truth to it,” he said. “The attorney general joined a lawsuit, and we supported it.” Caldwell also said today that “no deal of any kind or description whatsoever was made between the Governor and myself, or our respective offices regarding my budget and the health care lawsuit.”

Jindal, Caldwell, and Landrieu Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell is the only Democrat in the lawsuit challenging the federal government over the constitutionality of health care reform. On March 26, he explained why he joined the suit, which is being led by Florida:

As Attorney General, I am duty bound by my oath of office to pursue a request by the Governor of the state of Louisiana for legal assistance, so long as it has substantial legal merit.

To save Louisiana the potential expense of filing a separate suit regarding the health-care legislation, it was my decision to sign-on to Florida’s well-drafted action at minimal cost to Louisiana and accomplish the same legal purpose.

It’s questionable whether the suit actually has “substantial legal merit.” At least eight other attorneys general have refused to go along, saying that doing so would be a frivolous waste of taxpayer resources to make a partisan point. The Wonk Room’s Igor Volsky has also pointed out the political motivations driving the attorneys general who suing the federal government, noting that they are overwhelmingly running for running for higher office or up for re-election.

The Eunice News in Louisiana, however, is reporting that Jindal may have essentially bribed Caldwell to join the suit, promising no more cuts to his budget if he did so:

In a subsequent address to employees of his office, the Attorney General said the decision was made more out of the necessity of saving jobs in his agency than any real hope—or desire—of overturning the health care law.

One employee said Caldwell, in a candid admission, claimed that a deal was made with Jindal. Under terms of that agreement, the governor would not make additional cuts in the attorney general’s budget if Caldwell joined in the litigation. Caldwell agreed to be the “token Democrat,” he said, so that he might save additional job cuts by an administration whose state goal is to reduce the number of state employees by as much as 5,000 per year over three years.

Caldwell has been facing significant blowback for his decision to pursue Jindal’s right-wing case. Louisiana’s Black Caucus recently rallied against Caldwell, with state Rep. Regina Barrow (D) saying the services provided by the Affordable Care Act “could approximately save us $500 million. These savings could be used to cover a majority of the state budget crisis that we currently face, inclusive of higher ed.”

Related Posts

Yglesias

The East Coast Revisited

By Matthew Yglesias on Apr 5, 2010 at 3:14 pm

Several commenters suggested that it was unfair of me to imply that the Sarah Palin rep who slammed the “east coast” meant to include Atlanta and Miami in his condemnation. After all, despite those cities’ locations on the east coast of the United States, everyone knows that “the east coast” really means the large urban areas of the northeast.

US_Combined_Statistical_Areas 1

Fair enough. I think a good rigorous analogue to the intuitive concept of “the northeast” is provided by looking at the Census Bureau’s map (reproduced above) of US Combined Statistical Areas. In this view, the “east coast” is essentially the Boston/Worcester/Manchester CSA, plus the Hartford/West Hartford/Willimantic CSA, plus the New York/Newark/Bridgeport CSA, plus the Philadelphia/Camden/Vineland CSA, plus the Washington/Baltimore/Alexandria CSA.

That leaves us with three of the top five CSA, or four of the top ten and a population of approximately 46 million people. It’s hard to imagine a political figure with national aspirations wanting to publicly trash any comparably sized region of the United States for no real reason.

Economy

Price: Financial Regulatory Reform ‘Ought To Unleash The Wonder And The Beauty’ Of Wall Street

By Pat Garofalo on Apr 5, 2010 at 3:00 pm

With the White House signaling that it wants financial regulatory reform to be signed into law by the end of May (a timetable that even some Democrats find a tad optimistic), misleading rhetoric from the right is proliferating. Last week, for instance, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) falsely claimed that the bill passed by the Senate Banking Committee creates a “slush fund” for banks that are “too important to close.”

Today, it was Rep. Tom Price’s (R-GA) turn. He claimed on Fox News that the Senate bill “would continue the bailout mentality…and increases the regulatory oppression.” But Price gave some key insight into what the GOP would rather do, which is evidently “unleash the wonder and the beauty and the awe” of Wall Street by making regulation “more flexible and nimble”:

The bill that’s on the table, and the one that the President evidently supports, would continue the bailout mentality, does nothing to rein in Fannie and Freddie, which really were a lot of the problem in the housing market especially, and increases the regulatory oppression, as opposed to making it more flexible and nimble and allowing the economy to work. We believe that there ought to be appropriate reform, but we believe it ought to unleash the wonder and the beauty and the awe of the American economy.

Watch it:

It might be worth asking the residents of Jefferson County, Alabama — who are buried under a mountain of debt thanks to financial instruments peddled by Wall Street — just what all that wonder, beauty, and awe is good for. This comes back to Paul Volcker’s pronouncement that the greatest financial innovation of the last 25 years is the ATM, while the rest has just gone to boost bank profits without adding any societal benefit.

Predictably, Fox News Bill Hemmer didn’t push back on Price’s Frank Luntz-approved talking point about the Senate bill preserving bailouts. But as Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair pointed out in today’s Wall Street Journal, bailouts are not a part of the bill:

Both the already passed House bill, as well as the bill approved by the Senate Banking Committee, draw on the FDIC model to create a resolution authority that specifically applies to large, complex nonbank financial firms. Under both bills, bankruptcy would be the normal process. But under extraordinary procedures, the government would have the option to put the very largest firms into an FDIC-style liquidation process if necessary to avert a broader systemic collapse…Some have tried to label the FDIC model as a “bailout” because it is not bankruptcy. Yet the FDIC process is anything but a bailout, as any small bank can attest.

New data reveals that more than half of the assets in the financial system are held by just 16 banks, making the creation of a credible resolution authority for closing them down even more important. Since Price seems to be so enamored with the activities of the biggest banks, maybe he thinks it’s a bad thing that they’ll be closed down when they fail, but I doubt many others would agree.

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