Health insurers and supporters of the Obama administration’s healthcare reform law are currently in the midst of developing possible contingency plans just in case the U.S. Supreme Court overturns the Affordable Care Act’s (known derisively as Obamacare) individual mandate.
The insurance industry argues that premiums are likely to skyrocket without the individual mandate in place to facilitate the registration of millions of new enrollees into the marketplace as healthy people will be less likely to purchase insurance, while insurers will still be required to sell policies to all applicants. In fact, “A repeal of the individual mandate would increase insurance rates by 25 percent” according to a recent study released by none other than that venerable institution, the Robert Wood Johnson foundation. From the insurance industry itself came this observation offered up by Justine Handelman, vice-president of legislative and regulatory policy for the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association trade group, ”The insurance reforms would have to change if the mandate were struck.”
Health insurance industry leaders say that if the individual mandate is repealed, then their first priority would be to begin the process of persuading Congress to repeal two other measures of the law; the requirement to cover everyone regardless of their medical history or pre-existing conditions, and limits on how much insurers can adjust premiums driven by age. Following that effort, the industry would then develop a rewards system for those people who purchase health insurance voluntarily and of course, sanction those who do not.
A cursive review of healthcare industry newsletters reveal other strategies the industry intends to deploy such as penalizing those who enroll outside of short annual windows, which in essence would deny treatment for specific conditions, especially immediately after a policy is purchased.
Rewarding certain insurance buyers by offering much lower premiums for younger and healthier people is another marketing strategy being considered as well as creating an expansion of the employers’ role in automatically enrolling employees for health insurance. The most dastardly policy under consideration by the industry however would be to urge credit rating firms to use health insurance status as a factor in determining an individual’s credit ratings.
The most visceral and loudest opposition to President Obama’s healthcare law comes from the political right, mostly under the banner of the Republican Party. What confuses me almost more than anything is that this law has a strong resemblance to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan as it builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican opposition to attempts on the part of the Clinton administration to reform healthcare In America.
The more liberal approach to healthcare reform, one which I championed, was the single-payer approach or expressed in words that causes Republicans to faint, a National Healthcare system. This option was dealt off the table at the beginning as the White House sincerely desired to have all parties play a role in shaping what would ultimately become law.
As we all are keenly aware today however, the Republicans were simply not willing to do much in the way of compromise and honest negotiating. What they were willing to do instead, was to develop a cornucopia of sophisticated lies regarding a healthcare reform plan beginning as far back as the 2008 presidential election (remember the death panels). At least, in this effort, they truly excelled.
The logic of a universal provision for health insurance purchase is beyond reproach from anyone that understands how insurance works. Only by having individuals pay premiums while they are healthy is money available when needed to cover costs when they or others cannot. Without universal participation, the costs of health insurance rises rapidly, if it is even available for persons with less than excellent health or for those that suffer from pre-existing conditions. On its face the opposition to the universal provision is economic insanity as demonstrated by existing out of control healthcare cost increases and swelling state and county expenses for the medical care of their respective uninsured citizens.
Although the mandate has been maligned by the political right in this country, it has been upheld in two separate appeals courts, but struck down in a third. The Supreme Court hearings just ended yesterday and an official ruling is expected to be delivered in June of this year.
From the right, Glen Beck said, “What we don’t have a right to is healthcare, housing, or handouts. We don’t have those rights.”
From the left, John Kerry stated, “Great physicians and nurses, skilled, caring and unparalleled in their training, intervened in my life and probably saved it. I was lucky but other Americans are not. It is time to speak again and stand again for the ideal that in the richest nation ever on this planet, it is wrong for 41 million Americans, most of them in working families, to worry at night and wake up in the morning without the basic protection of health insurance.”
Let’s hope that the Supreme Court makes the correct decision.
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Trayvon Martin: Another Senseless Victim of Racist Violence in America
As we are inundated with reports, commentaries and social media commentary regarding the senseless tragedy in Sanford, Florida where Trayvon Martin, a high school student from Miami, was gunned down by a white neighborhood crime watch member, my heart is burdened heavy with the realization that in some way, we are all responsible for this horror. Once again, I am forced to ask myself the self-damning question of why it had to come to this horrific tragedy for there to be outrage at a society that has failed to educate our young people so that they can successfully compete on the academic world stage while simultaneously being responsible for an environment in which the life of a young person of color is not as valued as a white person; a system with its roots in the three-fifths compromise that has allowed systemic racism and a culture of violence on both sides of the track to fester in our national psyche while creating a maelstrom of devastation across America.
God help us, but the story of Trayvon Martin is not a new story. The conditions that made it possible for Trayvon to be murdered have been in place throughout the history of our country with its murderous consequences eliminating Native Americans, gaining steam during the days of slavery and being energized in the basement of an Alabama Baptist church where the lives of four little black girls were violently snuffed out. Not long after that, two young white men who had the audacity to work with a young black man as they registered black citizens to register to vote in Mississippi were taken to a quarry, shot and buried there as if they were so much garbage.
The list is almost endless and now, in twenty-first century America, in addition to being home to the killing of Trayvon Martin, Florida has taken steps that threatens our democracy, fragile as it is, by legislating away the rights of Floridians who because of incarceration are now prohibited from earning a living, housing and voting. Florida has indeed shown compunction for denying African-Americans and other minorities who are already disproportionately shut out of the mainstream, to be additionally subjected to a kind of rabid racism reminiscent of the Jim Crow era. But, as one racially charged nightmare after another explodes across the national landscape, where is America’s unified outcry? Where are the sustained outpourings of justified anger towards those who would snuff out the life of another simply because of the color of their skin?
President Obama ran on a platform of change. How much has changed however when it is only acts of terror and tragedy visited upon our community such as the shooting of Trayvon Martin before we are willing to leave our television sets for a minute so that we can mobilize against the daily injustices and insults all people of color are forced to deal with. Celebrities like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson rush to the scene of the crime, galvanize us and then after they return home, we go back to business as usual, soon forgetting the cold, lifeless body lying on a sidewalk in a Florida city—or anywhere USA—until the next time when the cycle of righteous anger begins once again.
It is impossible for any fair-minded or thinking person to not wonder that if the racial roles were reversed in this horrific event, would law enforcement have allowed an African-American shooter to walk away from the scene of the crime after killing an unarmed white boy who, like Trayvon, was armed with nothing more than a can of iced tea and a bag of Skittles? Sadly and embarrassedly, racism in twenty-first century America still exists on a level that makes a role reversal of this shooting impossible to have the same outcome.
The real issue however, is that the time of categorizing incidents like this as simply “white versus black” must come to an end. We have an opportunity, both angered and emboldened by this senseless tragedy, to turn the discussion to what is right versus what is wrong. All of us, Americans of every color, heritage, faith, orientation, or even political persuasion, must come together with the realization that if we fail to unite ourselves in a righteous struggle against injustice, then we will continue to be a society that makes it possible for child killers and violent hate mongers to roam the streets of our communities—rural and urban—rendering the American dream an impossible dream.
We must not only remember Trayvon Martin the person, we must honor his memory. We have all seen enough tragedy to last a generation. The time to stop the violence is now. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote, “It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.”
God help us, but the story of Trayvon Martin is not a new story. The conditions that made it possible for Trayvon to be murdered have been in place throughout the history of our country with its murderous consequences eliminating Native Americans, gaining steam during the days of slavery and being energized in the basement of an Alabama Baptist church where the lives of four little black girls were violently snuffed out. Not long after that, two young white men who had the audacity to work with a young black man as they registered black citizens to register to vote in Mississippi were taken to a quarry, shot and buried there as if they were so much garbage.
The list is almost endless and now, in twenty-first century America, in addition to being home to the killing of Trayvon Martin, Florida has taken steps that threatens our democracy, fragile as it is, by legislating away the rights of Floridians who because of incarceration are now prohibited from earning a living, housing and voting. Florida has indeed shown compunction for denying African-Americans and other minorities who are already disproportionately shut out of the mainstream, to be additionally subjected to a kind of rabid racism reminiscent of the Jim Crow era. But, as one racially charged nightmare after another explodes across the national landscape, where is America’s unified outcry? Where are the sustained outpourings of justified anger towards those who would snuff out the life of another simply because of the color of their skin?
President Obama ran on a platform of change. How much has changed however when it is only acts of terror and tragedy visited upon our community such as the shooting of Trayvon Martin before we are willing to leave our television sets for a minute so that we can mobilize against the daily injustices and insults all people of color are forced to deal with. Celebrities like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson rush to the scene of the crime, galvanize us and then after they return home, we go back to business as usual, soon forgetting the cold, lifeless body lying on a sidewalk in a Florida city—or anywhere USA—until the next time when the cycle of righteous anger begins once again.
It is impossible for any fair-minded or thinking person to not wonder that if the racial roles were reversed in this horrific event, would law enforcement have allowed an African-American shooter to walk away from the scene of the crime after killing an unarmed white boy who, like Trayvon, was armed with nothing more than a can of iced tea and a bag of Skittles? Sadly and embarrassedly, racism in twenty-first century America still exists on a level that makes a role reversal of this shooting impossible to have the same outcome.
The real issue however, is that the time of categorizing incidents like this as simply “white versus black” must come to an end. We have an opportunity, both angered and emboldened by this senseless tragedy, to turn the discussion to what is right versus what is wrong. All of us, Americans of every color, heritage, faith, orientation, or even political persuasion, must come together with the realization that if we fail to unite ourselves in a righteous struggle against injustice, then we will continue to be a society that makes it possible for child killers and violent hate mongers to roam the streets of our communities—rural and urban—rendering the American dream an impossible dream.
We must not only remember Trayvon Martin the person, we must honor his memory. We have all seen enough tragedy to last a generation. The time to stop the violence is now. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote, “It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.”
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Is Anybody Paying Attention?
“Facts are stubborn things”, said founding father John Adams. During the Republican National Convention in 1988, Ronald Reagan made the error of misquoting Mr. Adams when he said, “Facts are stupid things.” To his credit, he did correct himself.
Nonetheless, a large number of American financial and political leaders apparently embrace President Reagan’s misquote as closer to reality than Adams’ original observation. Despite new regulations that require that American financial institutions accurately report the facts and figures of their business, executives of the majority of these firms simply ignore those requirements. The even more dastardly non-action on this issue however, lies squarely at the feet of congressional leadership who seem to be perfectly content to allow our country to slide yet again into another financial meltdown.
The Wall Street Journal no less, reported on March 5th that as the Federal Reserve prepares to release the results of the latest round of congressionally mandated stress tests, designed to evaluate how any bank would respond to another severe financial crisis, “Bankers are pressing the Fed to limit its release of information—as expected as early as next week—to what was published after the first test of big banks in 2009.”
The Journal article went on to say that “Three years ago, as the financial crisis was abating, the Fed published potential loan losses and how much capital each institution would need to raise to absorb them. This time around, the Fed has pledged to release a wider variety of information, including annual revenue and net income under a so-called stress scenario in which the economy would contract and unemployment would rise sharply.”
Since my last day on a job I have held for five years ends next Friday as I have been laid off with 15 of my co-workers that last part about unemployment rising sharply strikes home for me significantly. While I and my co-workers face real-life concerns about loss of assets such as our homes, cars, and other things we had come to take for granted, banks cite competitive concerns about their requirement to provide full disclosure of their capacity to withstand a market shock or economic setback. Factor in the banks inherent fear of further government interference—recognizing that we are not talking bailout here—and continued resistance to the new rules imposed by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the Federal Reserve has attempted to mollify these financial institutions who think they can ignore an Act of Congress signed into law by the President of the United States. Furthermore, the Fed is going out of its way to assure America’s financial sector that they will not release data “that rivals could mine for future acquisitions or other moves,” such as quarterly breakouts of projected losses.
Not surprisingly, banks are also being dragged into compliance with a requirement that came out of last November’s G-20 meeting. Representatives of 19 of the biggest industrial and emerging nations, plus the European Union, determined that the world’s largest banks—including eight from America—must create “living wills,” strategies that define what they would do in the event of another economic crisis, including how banks could be stabilized or even shut down.
This is a requirement that makes absolute perfect sense and drafts of the banks’ scenarios are due by June 2012 and must be completed by the end of this year. The Financial Times has already reported that “Independent Research showed only one bank out of 20 globally considered itself to have finished a draft recovery and resolution plan, according to a survey by Ernst & Young…”
The Financial Times added that “Living wills form a critical part of global efforts to avoid a recurrence of the 2008 financial crisis, when governments in the U.S., U.K. and elsewhere were forced to shell out billions of dollars in taxpayer funds to rescue troubled financial institutions. Some bankers also hope that regulators will reward institutions that write credible plans that allow an easier wind up with lower capital requirements,”
I look at that and think, hmmm, getting paid for doing your job. I did that and got laid off.
Meanwhile, that noted and savvy MIT and former IMF economist, Simon Johnson, has declared that if the GOP takes over both the House and the Senate, they may attempt to force the heretofore non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which evaluates the impact of the federal legislature’s fiscal proposals, to switch to a scoring system “that would attach magical growth implications to tax cutting.” Scary how familiar that sounds.
At the Baseline Scenario website, Johnson wrote, “If you cut taxes, revenues will fall and deficits will increase. If you change the CBO’s scoring process to hide this fact — as is under consideration by leading Republicans on the House Budget Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee — you are engaging in exactly the same sort of deception that brought down Greece.”
So, in the final analysis, whether bankers or politicians, it’s those guys at the top—and not the facts—that are being stubborn and maybe that other thing that Ronald Reagan said facts were, too.
Nonetheless, a large number of American financial and political leaders apparently embrace President Reagan’s misquote as closer to reality than Adams’ original observation. Despite new regulations that require that American financial institutions accurately report the facts and figures of their business, executives of the majority of these firms simply ignore those requirements. The even more dastardly non-action on this issue however, lies squarely at the feet of congressional leadership who seem to be perfectly content to allow our country to slide yet again into another financial meltdown.
The Wall Street Journal no less, reported on March 5th that as the Federal Reserve prepares to release the results of the latest round of congressionally mandated stress tests, designed to evaluate how any bank would respond to another severe financial crisis, “Bankers are pressing the Fed to limit its release of information—as expected as early as next week—to what was published after the first test of big banks in 2009.”
The Journal article went on to say that “Three years ago, as the financial crisis was abating, the Fed published potential loan losses and how much capital each institution would need to raise to absorb them. This time around, the Fed has pledged to release a wider variety of information, including annual revenue and net income under a so-called stress scenario in which the economy would contract and unemployment would rise sharply.”
Since my last day on a job I have held for five years ends next Friday as I have been laid off with 15 of my co-workers that last part about unemployment rising sharply strikes home for me significantly. While I and my co-workers face real-life concerns about loss of assets such as our homes, cars, and other things we had come to take for granted, banks cite competitive concerns about their requirement to provide full disclosure of their capacity to withstand a market shock or economic setback. Factor in the banks inherent fear of further government interference—recognizing that we are not talking bailout here—and continued resistance to the new rules imposed by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the Federal Reserve has attempted to mollify these financial institutions who think they can ignore an Act of Congress signed into law by the President of the United States. Furthermore, the Fed is going out of its way to assure America’s financial sector that they will not release data “that rivals could mine for future acquisitions or other moves,” such as quarterly breakouts of projected losses.
Not surprisingly, banks are also being dragged into compliance with a requirement that came out of last November’s G-20 meeting. Representatives of 19 of the biggest industrial and emerging nations, plus the European Union, determined that the world’s largest banks—including eight from America—must create “living wills,” strategies that define what they would do in the event of another economic crisis, including how banks could be stabilized or even shut down.
This is a requirement that makes absolute perfect sense and drafts of the banks’ scenarios are due by June 2012 and must be completed by the end of this year. The Financial Times has already reported that “Independent Research showed only one bank out of 20 globally considered itself to have finished a draft recovery and resolution plan, according to a survey by Ernst & Young…”
The Financial Times added that “Living wills form a critical part of global efforts to avoid a recurrence of the 2008 financial crisis, when governments in the U.S., U.K. and elsewhere were forced to shell out billions of dollars in taxpayer funds to rescue troubled financial institutions. Some bankers also hope that regulators will reward institutions that write credible plans that allow an easier wind up with lower capital requirements,”
I look at that and think, hmmm, getting paid for doing your job. I did that and got laid off.
Meanwhile, that noted and savvy MIT and former IMF economist, Simon Johnson, has declared that if the GOP takes over both the House and the Senate, they may attempt to force the heretofore non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which evaluates the impact of the federal legislature’s fiscal proposals, to switch to a scoring system “that would attach magical growth implications to tax cutting.” Scary how familiar that sounds.
At the Baseline Scenario website, Johnson wrote, “If you cut taxes, revenues will fall and deficits will increase. If you change the CBO’s scoring process to hide this fact — as is under consideration by leading Republicans on the House Budget Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee — you are engaging in exactly the same sort of deception that brought down Greece.”
So, in the final analysis, whether bankers or politicians, it’s those guys at the top—and not the facts—that are being stubborn and maybe that other thing that Ronald Reagan said facts were, too.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Impoeachment is too good for this imbecile...
Richard Cebull, chief judge for the U.S. District Court of Montana, took the nation to a new low road last week by forwarding a set of remarks regarding our President to six of his “buddies.” The judge gleefully sent a racially offensive email that made jokes referring to President Obama’s mother as a woman who had engaged in sex with dogs. The email features a scenario where Barack Obama asks his mother why he is half-White and half-Black. The story ends with her sharing with her son that “from all she can remember from that party,” he should be glad that he doesn’t bark.
So, here we are in Montana, the state that really does not want to be a state, with a judge who has made decisions that impact the lives of countless people of color who had no difficulty nor felt there was something basically wrong about sending out an email implying that the President of the United States of America is of mixed race because his mother was a drunken, sexually wanton and promiscuous woman who enjoyed sex with dogs.
What really frightens me about this however is that I know there are millions of Americans who hate our President primarily because of his race and that the sentiments expressed in this horrific email are in sync with their hatred of him. Moreover, those same Americans are confused as to why this email is considered a sad and revealing conception of much of White America’s long-held perceptions of Black people. African-Americans since the founding of this country have had to deal with their being compared to monkeys, their being recognized as somehow less than human (the 3/5 compromise) and given extraordinarily long and disproportionate prison sentences when compared to their White counterparts. It is judges like Richard Cebull, driven by their own deeply rooted racism, who have contributed to the almost inhumane challenges that families of color face still today in their effort to simply survive.
Deeply embedded in the psyche of White America is the historical reality of slavery, an institution that lasted for 400 years primarily because the defenders of slavery believed deeply that Black people are sub-human and consequently do not deserve being treated with a sense of basic dignity to say nothing of “inalienable” human rights.
Since the exposing of this infamous email, Judge Cebull has attempted to apologize and characterize this whole sordid event as a harmless error in judgment—something that Black people hear over and over again—however the fact remains that this issue has far deeper ramifications than even the most vicious racist would readily admit. And that is that there simply is no way, with any sense of reality or acceptance, that the American people should be expected to maintain their faith in a justice system that makes it possible for the standard bearers of common decency and political leadership to make jokes about Black people having sex with animals. The sickness and the ignorance that facilitates this kind of environment is beyond understanding.
The Code of Conduct for United States Judges, published by the U.S. Judicial Conference, calls for judges to “act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.”
Needless to say, this judge’s actions do not inspire confidence in his integrity or his impartiality. Cebull’s colleagues on the bench should be among the first to demand that he immediately step down. This should be a non-negotiable and immediate demand since his actions reflect miserably on the entire judiciary, not just himself. In addition, his fellow Republicans must realize that disregarding this kind of behavior only serves to hamper their attempts at recruiting minorities to their party’s tent.
Every week seems to have another national headline about some under-or-over-the-radar Republican getting caught forwarding a racist-joke email or making a nationally publicized comment such as from the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck.
Each of the Republican candidates for office around the country, up to and including the ones running for President should have come out immediately with a statement that repudiated Cebull and distanced themselves from this kind of visceral racially motivated attack. Also, where is the press on this? I have not seen one story on mainstream TV and/or radio news nor have I read about it in my local newspaper. If not for a colleague relating the story to me and then the internet to do the research, I might never have known about it.
The time has come for all of us to begin the process of learning how to judge a man not by his race, but as Dr. Martin Luther King stated, “…by the content of his character.” America is a nation that despite the outrageous and offensive behavior of idiots like Cebull and other right wing hate mongers, is attempting to move forward through the greatest economic crisis this country has faced in almost a century and none of us is made better or whole when we compare Black people to dogs.
So, here we are in Montana, the state that really does not want to be a state, with a judge who has made decisions that impact the lives of countless people of color who had no difficulty nor felt there was something basically wrong about sending out an email implying that the President of the United States of America is of mixed race because his mother was a drunken, sexually wanton and promiscuous woman who enjoyed sex with dogs.
What really frightens me about this however is that I know there are millions of Americans who hate our President primarily because of his race and that the sentiments expressed in this horrific email are in sync with their hatred of him. Moreover, those same Americans are confused as to why this email is considered a sad and revealing conception of much of White America’s long-held perceptions of Black people. African-Americans since the founding of this country have had to deal with their being compared to monkeys, their being recognized as somehow less than human (the 3/5 compromise) and given extraordinarily long and disproportionate prison sentences when compared to their White counterparts. It is judges like Richard Cebull, driven by their own deeply rooted racism, who have contributed to the almost inhumane challenges that families of color face still today in their effort to simply survive.
Deeply embedded in the psyche of White America is the historical reality of slavery, an institution that lasted for 400 years primarily because the defenders of slavery believed deeply that Black people are sub-human and consequently do not deserve being treated with a sense of basic dignity to say nothing of “inalienable” human rights.
Since the exposing of this infamous email, Judge Cebull has attempted to apologize and characterize this whole sordid event as a harmless error in judgment—something that Black people hear over and over again—however the fact remains that this issue has far deeper ramifications than even the most vicious racist would readily admit. And that is that there simply is no way, with any sense of reality or acceptance, that the American people should be expected to maintain their faith in a justice system that makes it possible for the standard bearers of common decency and political leadership to make jokes about Black people having sex with animals. The sickness and the ignorance that facilitates this kind of environment is beyond understanding.
The Code of Conduct for United States Judges, published by the U.S. Judicial Conference, calls for judges to “act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.”
Needless to say, this judge’s actions do not inspire confidence in his integrity or his impartiality. Cebull’s colleagues on the bench should be among the first to demand that he immediately step down. This should be a non-negotiable and immediate demand since his actions reflect miserably on the entire judiciary, not just himself. In addition, his fellow Republicans must realize that disregarding this kind of behavior only serves to hamper their attempts at recruiting minorities to their party’s tent.
Every week seems to have another national headline about some under-or-over-the-radar Republican getting caught forwarding a racist-joke email or making a nationally publicized comment such as from the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck.
Each of the Republican candidates for office around the country, up to and including the ones running for President should have come out immediately with a statement that repudiated Cebull and distanced themselves from this kind of visceral racially motivated attack. Also, where is the press on this? I have not seen one story on mainstream TV and/or radio news nor have I read about it in my local newspaper. If not for a colleague relating the story to me and then the internet to do the research, I might never have known about it.
The time has come for all of us to begin the process of learning how to judge a man not by his race, but as Dr. Martin Luther King stated, “…by the content of his character.” America is a nation that despite the outrageous and offensive behavior of idiots like Cebull and other right wing hate mongers, is attempting to move forward through the greatest economic crisis this country has faced in almost a century and none of us is made better or whole when we compare Black people to dogs.
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