At Last a GOP Alternative to Obamacare - Which Leaves Many Kicked to the Curb

For years we have heard members of the GOP whining and belly aching about the Affordable Health Care Act , a/k/a Obamacare, and seeking its repeal.  During the same period we never had any definitive alternative proposed by the GOP.  Now, the outline of a GOP proposal has been brought forth and (i) it keeps many of the Obamacare provisions and (ii) leaves many more uninsured.  Once again we see that in the eyes of the GOP many Americans are simply disposable trash.  This from the political party pretends to honor Christian values.   A column in the New York Times looks at the proposal and its negatives.  Here are some excerpts:

FROM the moment the ink dried on March 23, 2010, Republicans said they intended to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act. They have voted more than 40 times to wipe the law from the books. But Republicans have never gotten around to describing, in detail, the set of policies they believe should replace Obamacare. That is, until yesterday.

After nearly four years, we finally have a Republican counterproposal: the Patient Choice, Affordability, Responsibility and Empowerment (or Patient CARE) Act.

[W]hile it is lacking in important details, this plan contains some interesting ideas that might have enabled bipartisan compromises had they been offered in 2009, when I was a health care adviser to the Obama administration and the Affordable Care Act was being debated.

Despite all the heated rhetoric from Republicans about Obamacare laying ruin to America, the plan would actually keep some of the law’s key provisions. It would preserve some subsidies for lower-income people to buy private insurance, though it would change the way they are calculated. Those $700 billion worth of Medicare savings Mitt Romney denounced during the 2012 campaign?  Republicans would keep them. Allowing young adults to stay on their parents’ plan until age 26? Republicans would keep that, too. And the ban on lifetime insurance caps, so people with very expensive diseases don’t lose insurance? Republicans wouldn’t touch it.

But in other crucial ways, the Republican plan is different. First, Obamacare’s absolute ban on withholding coverage from people with pre-existing conditions would be rolled back. Those who remained continuously insured would stay protected, so they couldn’t be charged higher rates or be excluded entirely. But if their insurance lapsed, health insurance companies could charge more or refuse to cover them. 

Second, it would shrink the Medicaid expansion. Pregnant women, children and families below the poverty line would still be eligible, but childless adults would not. States would be given a fixed amount per person enrolled in Medicaid to reduce spending. 

And employees of large companies, even if those companies did not offer health insurance, would be exempt, regardless of income. 

The largest difference is in cost control. Currently, employer-sponsored health insurance is tax free; the Republican plan would make employees pay income tax on at least 35 percent of what their company pays for their plan. 

On a more individual level, this is what the Republican plan means: If you are one of the 150 million Americans who get their health insurance through an employer-sponsored plan, get ready for a big tax increase. For a family in the 28 percent tax bracket (earning around $150,000 per year), according to my calculations, it would add up to about $1,470 per year. 

People who don’t get insurance through their employer would also be likely to pay more. The Republican plan would provide the unemployed, people in the individual market and those working for small businesses that don’t provide health insurance a tax credit to buy private insurance. But the credit increases only by age, not by need — which means people with lower incomes would pay much more than they would under Obamacare. 

In addition, the proposed plan would take us back to the old days when insurance companies could charge women more than men for the same health plan. And older people would also be penalized.

The plan would bring back many insurance company shenanigans.  . . . . if you lose your job and therefore your employer-sponsored health insurance, you would not be excluded for a pre-existing condition if you immediately bought your own insurance. But if there were a gap in coverage, insurance companies could deny you coverage. 

What if the paperwork you filled out is “lost”? The history of insurance companies’ tricks for denying coverage to high-cost patients — like revoking the insurance of a cancer patient who failed to disclose that she had back problems — does not inspire confidence. 

Finally, there is the issue of prevention. The Affordable Care Act made preventive services free. To save money, Republicans want to reverse that . . .

There is more, but the bottom line is that the GOP plan would cost citizens more for less coverage. And some would be thrown on the trash heap. 

Mitch McConnell: Covering 30 Million Uninsured is "Not the Issue"

Yesterday Mitch McConnell pretty much exposed the lie that the GOP is the party of "family values."  The same goes for the GOP's supporters amongst the modern day Pharisee set generally labeled as "conservative Christians."   During an appearance on Fox News Sunday McConnell basically admitted that the GOP had no plan as to how to assure health care coverage to the 30 million who will gain coverage under the Affordable Healthcare Act.  Worse yet, he stated that covering such individual - which includes families and children - isn't an issue.  Sadly, McConnell and his party are more concerned about protecting pharmaceutical companies and the health care industry than needy Americans.  The later, in the GOP's eyes are disposable trash.  Here are highlights from a Washington Post column:

Mitch McConnell’s appearance today on Fox News Sunday was remarkably revealing — it showed as clearly as you could want that the Supreme Court decision is finally forcing Republicans to declare what, exactly, they would replace Obamacare with if they realize their goal of repealing it entirely.

Pressed by Chris Wallace to say what he would do to insure the 30 million people who will get insurance under Obamacare, McConnell at first dodged the question, instead launching into a litany of complaints about the law.  .  .  .  Asked the question again by Wallace, McConnell actually laughed, and said he’d “get to it in a minute,” before claiming the best thing we can do for the health system overall is to get rid of the law and all of its “cuts” to health providers. He labeled Obamacare a “monstrosity” and vowed that there would not be a “2,700 page” Republican reform bill.

Asked a third time how Republicans would insure those 30 million people, McConnell said: “That is not the issue. The question is how you can go step by step to improve the American health care system.”

[E]ven Wallace saw McConnell’s quote in far less charitable terms:

WALLACE: You don’t think the 30 million people who are uninsured is an issue?

MCCONNELL: Let me tell you what we’re not going to do. We’re not going to turn the American health care system into a western European system.

It’s worth pointing out that this is basically Mitt Romney’s position, too. The Romney campaign has acknowledged that he would not replace Obamacare with across-the-board protections for people with preexisting conditions. And the New York Times recently took a look at the alternatives Romney has proposed, and concluded that they would deemphasize the goal of “reducing the ranks of the uninsured.”

As the conversation turns to the specifics in the law, and to the fact that Republicans wouldn’t replace them with anything, Republicans’ best hope will be that the law’s generalized unpopularity will enable them to persuade the American people that the question of whose policies would actually cover the uninsured is “not the issue.”

The growing moral bankruptcy of the GOP will soon be challenging that of the Catholic Church hierarchy and the Vatican.

Economis Issues Are Driving Women from the GOP

The Republican Party has been rightly brutalized for trying to reopen aspects of the so called culture wars that many thought to have been resolved 35 to 40 years ago - the availability of contraception being but the most notable. And this Neanderthal Christianist approach has rightly alienated many women voters. But an article in Forbes argues that the GOP's stone cold heart and "let's take care of the rich" approach to economic issues is also fueling the wide gender gap in preferences for a presidential candidate. Here are some article highlights that ought to send a message to those in the GOP who seek to destroy the social safety net:

The blogosphere was abuzz last week after polling numbers from USA Today/Gallup came out showing Obama with a 18-point lead over Romney with women in swing states. Many leapt to the conclusion that the more than a month-long fracas over birth control – when and how it should be covered, as well as whether it is bad in the first place – has turned women off of the Republican platform.

But in a forum on women’s economic concerns on Friday, President Obama stated what has become a new campaign refrain of late: “Women are not some monolithic bloc. Women are not an interest group.” And as he put it even more simply a few weeks back: “I’m not somebody who believes women will be single-issue voters.” Indeed, he’s right. Women care deeply about accessing contraception (sorry, Nikki Haley), but that’s not the only issue they vote on – and it’s not necessarily the main driver of the widening gender gap between Republicans and Democrats.

It’s likely that the squabbling over contraception and reproductive rights has “really galvanized women,” Celinda Lake, president of polling firm Lake Research Partners, told me. Unmarried women and younger women weren’t even paying attention, yet their interest has jumped 20 points, she said. But now that the politicians on both sides have their attention, they don’t like what they see when it comes to economic issues. It’s “a question of priorities,” Lake said. “These women feel that it’s tough economic times out there, my family’s in trouble, this country’s in as big trouble as it’s been in generations, young people having a very hard time, Rome is burning, and you’re focused on my birth control?”

Interestingly enough, economics, not so-called “social issues” like reproductive rights, has historically played a large role in the gender gap. . . . Women overall tend to support what the authors call “compassion issues” like welfare, education, and healthcare, and are therefore more supportive of increased social spending in bad times. The gender gap increases when domestic spending becomes more liberal because “[a] policy change that might be seen as too liberal for the average man might seem like the correct amount of spending to the average woman,” the authors sate. Women are voting to increase economic support for those who most need it while men lose their appetite for spending in tough times.

When it comes to Obama’s policies, “Women tend to think he’s much more in touch with their families and the middle class,” she said. “They do think the government should be a partner… not just in the safety net but in getting the economy going.” Why would women be more supportive of spending on social programs? The authors of the study answer, “Men tend to be less economically vulnerable than women, and they are less pessimistic than women about the economy.” Women know what it is to struggle to make ends meet, even in good times.

This is not to ignore the economic side of contraception, either. Women support co-pay free birth control because it has such a huge impact on their bottom lines – and their ability to work at all. But to say that women are fleeing the Republican Party based solely on this issue is to ignore the role the economy at large will have in the upcoming election. Women aren’t single-issue voters, and if the GOP wants to woo some of them back, it’ll have to take a hard look at a lot of its policy priorities.

The GOP on Health Care - How Do You Say Hypocrites?

One has to wonder how Republican learn to talk out of both sides of their mouths with a straight face. The ongoing debate over government involvement in health care and health care insurance is a case in point. The GOP wants government to have a hands off approach - except for when they're inserting an ultrasound into a women's uterus or trying to block the availability of contraception. Note that Bob "Governor Ultrasound" McDonnell made the rouges gallery of hypocrites.

Why the Far Right is Making Birth Control An Election Issue

Some seem surprised that the use of birth control has become an election issue. However, if one has followed far right Christian organizations for any length of time, you'd know that among the U. S. Supreme Court decisions the Christianists cannot abide is Griswold v. Connecticut which first enunciated the "right to privacy" while striking down bans on the use of birth control by married couples and which in many ways set the course for the eventual holdings in Roe v. Wade and Lawrence v. Texas. Indeed, it can be said that the Christianists believe that individuals have no right to privacy and that consenting adults should be barred from engaging in any activity not in 100% conformity with the Christianists' religious beliefs.

Championing the Christianist anti-contraception mindset among the GOP presidential candidates is Rick Santorum who would, if he had his way, outlaw all forms of contraception and criminalize all sex outside of procreative sex between heterosexual married couples. Adding to the insanity has been the Roman Catholic Church that wants the media conversations to be about anything other than the Church's still exploding sex abuse scandal - my Google search agent delivers new Catholic Church sex abuse related stories virtually every day - and the Church's jihad against LGBT civil rights. The Washington Post looks at how birth control has returned to the main political stage. Unfortunately, the piece fails to consider the ultimate agenda of the Christianists fully. Here are some highlights:

Who says you can’t turn the clock back? Decades ago, near the end of the Age of Aquarius, a Republican congressman from Texas argued passionately that the federal government should pay for birth control for poor women. . . . said George H.W. Bush. “If family planning is anything, it is a public health matter.”

Title X, the law he sponsored that still funds family planning for the poor, passed the House by a vote of 298 to 32. It passed the Senate unanimously. A Republican president, Richard Nixon, enthusiastically signed it. That was 1970.

This is now: The issue of birth control has suddenly become an obsession of the 2012 presidential campaign. To many observers, it seems that the clock has indeed been turned back.

Using birth control to have sex without making a baby has been settled social behavior, not a taboo but an ordinary prescription that virtually all American women present at the drugstore counter at some point in their lives. For many, it seems the common-sense way to avoid the prospect of abortion, which has been the really divisive issue of sexual politics.

This might seem a bewildering turn of events, particularly when polls consistently show that (a) voters place jobs and the economy atop the list of their concerns and (b) large majorities of Americans of all faiths support the use of birth control, the most commonly prescribed drug for women between 18 and 44, and have done so for years. But elections have a way of becoming national conversations — often unwieldy ones.

This expansion of reproductive rights has thrilled liberals and dismayed conservatives, who see it as a violation of the separation of church and state enshrined in the Constitution. Catholic bishops have been most opposed to the policy directive, because doctrine holds that any birth control except natural family planning is a sin against God. And the bishops have gained allies among those eager to overturn the entire health-care act.

Layer on the public proclamations of one of those candidates, former senator Rick Santorum (Pa.), who has pulled ahead of the presumptive front-runner, Mitt Romney, in several national polls. He says that states should be free to ban birth control, that prenatal testing leads to abortion and that as president he would warn the nation about “the dangers of contraception.”

The long-settled right to contraception takes its place alongside all kinds of cultural struggles underway in America, over immigration, gay rights, lifestyle, government power and income inequality, at a time when people feel threatened and wary of giving away what they have. Any one of those can erupt and spread in fast frenzy, amplified through the bullhorn of social media.

[T]he chief reason birth control has emerged as a prominent issue is because the religious freedom argument can be a fresh line of attack against Obama’s signature domestic accomplishment, which is being challenged in the courts.

The Catholic Tea Party vs. Women's Rights

(via David Mixner's blog)

"Pro-Life" Republicans Kill Bill to Insure Low Income Children

One of the worse examples of the utter hypocrisy of so-called "pro-life" Republicans and their hate-filled self-congratulatory Christian base is the way in which they want no one to have an abortion, yet once the child leaves the womb, they don't give a damn about the health and welfare of the child. The hypocrisy - not to mention horrible callousness - of these people is truly stomach wrenching. It is certainly one reason I do not want to have the term "Christian" applied to me. If these people are what it means to be a Christian, then I'd much prefer to be a pagan or a member of some other faith tradition. The latest display of the foul and callousness towards children comes from Alaska where the GOP members of the legislature killed a bill that would have provided health care coverage to the truly poor and needy. You know, the exact sort of thing the Gospels report Jesus as endorsing. But not in today's GOP. Here are highlights from Think Progress (also the source of the photo):
*
[T]he Alaska Senate shot down a health bill that would expand a program that provides medical services to the low-income children and pregnant women. The 14-year-old program, Denali Kid Care, is specifically “designed to ensure that children and teens of both working and non-working families can have the health insurance they need.” The bill seeks to “restore the original income eligibility threshold established more than a decade ago, raising it from the current 175 percent to 200 percent of the federal poverty line” — a move that bill sponsor State Sen. Bettye Davis (D) said would cover nearly 1,300 more children and about 250 pregnant women. But the bill — which passed the Senate last year 15 to 4 — failed this year. The obstacle? A woman’s right to choose.
*
The Alaska Supreme Court holds that the state must fund medically necessary abortions if it funds medically necessary services for others with financial needs. The mere possibility that a woman could have even a “medically necessary” abortion under this health insurance program was enough for Republicans to stall the bill
*
According to Davis, the program expansion “might” fund 22 abortions. But that hypothetical number was enough for 9 Republicans and 1 Democrat to block coverage for over 1,000 Alaskan women and children. “Six Senators who voted for the measure last year voted against it today.” Only one Republican — state Sen. Lesil McGuire — supported the measure, stating “that the Senate cannot turn its back on pregnant women who need help.”
*
While Davis reserved the right to reconsider the bill later, Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell (R) — who vetoed the very same bill last year over abortion — said “he cannot envision a scenario in which he’d support an expansion.

GOP Budget Plan: Ridiculous and Cruel

As many long time readers will recall, there once was a time I was an active member of the GOP. That was in the days before (1) the GOP became a sectarian party controlled by far right Christianist extremists and (2) when fiscal conservatism meant more than smoke and mirrors and targeting the most needy in society for heartless financial brutalization. It was also back before the myth that tax cuts pay for themselves was a matter of sacred creed within the GOP. Paul Krugman has a column in the New York Times that calls out the GOP plan that will likely continue to be pressed after a week's reprieve of a government shutdown for what it really is. Of course the other aspect of the push for fiscal austerity is the fact that if the GOP gets the massive spending cuts it wants, it could kill the fragile and mediocre economic recovery - something that seems to be occurring in the UK. Here are highlights from Krugman's column:
*
[T]he G.O.P. plan turns out not to be serious at all. Instead, it’s simultaneously ridiculous and heartless. How ridiculous is it? Let me count the ways — or rather a few of the ways, because there are more howlers in the plan than I can cover in one column.
*
First, Republicans have once again gone all in for voodoo economics — the claim, refuted by experience, that tax cuts pay for themselves.
*
A more sober assessment from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office tells a different story. It finds that a large part of the supposed savings from spending cuts would go, not to reduce the deficit, but to pay for tax cuts. In fact, the budget office finds that over the next decade the plan would lead to bigger deficits and more debt than current law.
*
It turns out that Mr. Ryan and his colleagues are assuming drastic cuts in nonhealth spending without explaining how that is supposed to happen. How drastic? . . . . less than we currently spend on defense alone; it’s not much bigger than federal spending when Calvin Coolidge was president, and the United States, among other things, had only a tiny military establishment. How could such a drastic shrinking of government take place without crippling essential public functions? The plan doesn’t say.
*
And then there’s the much-ballyhooed proposal to abolish Medicare and replace it with vouchers that can be used to buy private health insurance. The point here is that privatizing Medicare does nothing, in itself, to limit health-care costs. In fact, it almost surely raises them by adding a layer of middlemen. Yet the House plan assumes that we can cut health-care spending as a percentage of G.D.P. despite an aging population and rising health care costs. . . . the plan would deprive many and probably most seniors of adequate health care.
*
And that neither should nor will happen. Mr. Ryan and his colleagues can write down whatever numbers they like, but seniors vote. And when they find that their health-care vouchers are grossly inadequate, they’ll demand and get bigger vouchers — wiping out the plan’s supposed savings.
*
In short, this plan isn’t remotely serious; on the contrary, it’s ludicrous. And it’s also cruel.
*
In the past, Mr. Ryan has talked a good game about taking care of those in need. But as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out, of the $4 trillion in spending cuts he proposes over the next decade, two-thirds involve cutting programs that mainly serve low-income Americans. And by repealing last year’s health reform, without any replacement, the plan would also deprive an estimated 34 million nonelderly Americans of health insurance.
*
The G.O.P. budget plan isn’t a good-faith effort to put America’s fiscal house in order; it’s voodoo economics, with an extra dose of fantasy, and a large helping of mean-spiritedness. 
*
As always the party of supposed family values and which claims to honor Christian values utterly disregards the Gospel message of caring for the poor and the unfortunate. Instead, it's a case of lavishing tax cuts on the wealthy and allowing the poor to go hungry and without health care. What would Jesus think of this? Nothing positive I suspect. GOP = hypocrisy.

Republican Appointed Federal Judge Strikes Down Portion of Health Care Reform

Actually, it's not a surprise that U.S. District Court Judge Henry E. Hudson (pictured at left), a Chimperator Bush appointee, found that Congress could not order individuals to buy health insurance. You see, Hudson owns a piece of a GOP consulting firm which - surprise, surprise - has been advocating against and working for Republicans who oppose the health care reforms. Here's a brief taste from Newser:
*
According to financial disclosure forms spotted first by the Huffington Post and then Gawker, Hudson has made between $32,000 and $108,000 in dividends since 2003 from shares of Campaign Solutions, a firm that’s worked for anti-Obamacare crusaders like Michele Bachmann, John Boehner, Sarah Palin, and John McCain.
*
It gets worse: Ken Cuccinelli, the Virginia attorney general who brought the suit Hudson ruled on today, paid Campaign Solutions $9,000 for services rendered this year. But Campaign Solutions maintains that that doesn't amount to a conflict of interest because Hudson was an investor long before George W. Bush appointed him to the bench, . . .
*
Corruption and conflict of interest in Virginia? Why am I not shocked! And, of course, Ken Kookinelli" Cuccinelli, Virginia's village idiot, is rejoicing since he knows the ruling will have the fundies singing his praises when they're not busy drinking laced Kool-Aid. The Washington Post has more details on Hudson's ruling which will allow the health care reform measures to stand pending an appeal. Personally, I have always favored a public option as opposed to the forced enrollment provision that is the subject of today's ruling. Here are details from the Post story:
*
A federal judge in Virginia ruled Monday that a key provision of the nation's sweeping health-care overhaul is unconstitutional, the most significant legal setback so far for President Obama's signature domestic initiative.
*
U.S. District Court Judge Henry E. Hudson found that Congress could not order individuals to buy health insurance. In a 42-page opinion, Hudson said the provision of the law that requires most individuals to get insurance or pay a fine by 2014 is an unprecedented expansion of federal power that cannot be supported by Congress's power to regulate interstate trade.
*
Hudson is the first judge to rule that the individual mandate is unconstitutional. He said, however, that portions of the law that do not rest on the requirement that individuals obtain insurance are legal and can proceed. Hudson indicated there was no need for him to enjoin the law and halt its implementation, since the mandate does not go into effect until 2014.
*
The ruling comes in a case filed by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R), who said he was defending a new state statute that made it illegal to require people to carry health insurance in Virginia.
*
The Virginia suit is one of 25 legal challenges to the federal law wending their way through the federal courts across the country. In two other lawsuits, judges sitting in Michigan and Lynchburg, Va., have found that the same provision of the law passed legal muster. A third judge in Florida is also weighing constitutionality of the individual mandate in a suit jointly filed by 20 states.
*
The statute's constitutionality will ultimately be determined by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Washington Post: Several D.C. Area Hospitals Do Not Have Nondiscrimination Policies for Gays

Yesterday I noted that at least one Virginia based health insurance provider, Optima Health, does not allow small business health plans to offer employees of adding their same sex partners to their health plan - even though the state of Virginia allows such coverage. In addition, the majority of hospitals - some in Virginia - continue to lack nondiscrimination policies for gays. Obviously, this is important information to know when one is selecting a hospital for elective medical care so that such hospitals can be avoided. It can become potentially a huge problem if one is transported on an emergency basis to one of these facilities. Frankly, I am fed up with being treated as a second class citizen or even less than fully human by discriminatory policies that are hostile to LGBT citizens. As I have argued before, the LGBT community needs to use its purchasing power and boycott organizations that do not offer 100% equality to LGBT patients and businesses that seek to provide health coverage to the partners of their employees. Here are highlights from the Washington Post story on this issue:
*
A study by a prominent gay rights organization found that nearly half of 17 Washington area hospitals do not explicitly include "sexual orientation" or "gender identity" in their patients' bills of rights or nondiscrimination policies.
*
Eight Washington area hospitals, the report says, do not include such language. They are Sibley Memorial, Howard University and Providence hospitals in the District; Shady Grove Adventist Hospital and Washington Adventist Hospital in Montgomery County; Reston Hospital Center and Virginia Hospital Center in Northern Virginia; and Doctors Community Hospital in Prince George's County.
*
There is evidence that gay men and lesbians delay seeking care because of a perception of discrimination, Sullivan said. "When [health-care facilities] are inclusive, people seek health care in a timely manner, and to us, that's just good health-care policy," he said.
*
The report released Monday came at the same time as an announcement by Kaiser Permanente -- one of the nation's largest not-for-profit health providers -- that it has updated its patients' bill of rights to fully protect gay and lesbian patients and their families from discrimination.
*
Those changes, which took effect in Kaiser Permanente's network of 36 hospitals in California, Oregon and Hawaii on Monday, make it the first large health network to have a fully inclusive nondiscrimination policy for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender patients, according to the HRC. A Kaiser spokeswoman said the organization hopes to implement the policy at its 431 medical office buildings across the country within the year.
*
In April, Obama directed the Department of Health and Human Services to make rules that require all hospitals that receive Medicare or Medicaid funding -- nearly every hospital in the United States -- to protect the visitation and decision-making rights of gay men and lesbians.
*
In January, the Joint Commission, which accredits and certifies health-care facilities, announced new patient standards that add language to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
*
The group also reviewed a representative sample of 200 of the largest hospitals in all 50 states and found that 93 percent do not have fully inclusive policies for lesbians, gay men, bisexual and transgender people.

Optima Health - A Health Insurer that Discriminates Against Same Sex Couples

It is only within the last couple of years that Virginia law has allowed employers to offer health insurance benefits to domestic partners of their employees. Sadly, even though the Virginia General Assembly has finally enacted legislation that allows employers - both large and small - to offer health care coverage to the domestic partners of their employees (it was the last state in the USA to do so), many health insurance providers continue to discriminate against same sex couples. A case in point is Optima Health - an affiliate of Sentara Health Care Systems which has a near monopoly in hospital care facilities in the Hampton Roads of Virginia. Yes, it's true that on the Virginia Peninsula Riverside Health Systems has dodged a Sentara take over so far, as has Chesapeake General Hospital and two Catholic owned hospitals in the region.

*

Obviously, the disingenousness of the Optima Health logo above is obvious if your business is a gay owned business or employs partnered gays as employees (i.e., like my business). In that case, one is SOL unless your company has over 100 employees. That's right, Optima does not offer coverage to partners of covered employees of businesses in small group plans. While individual policies for non-covered domestic partners may be available, they typically (1) cost considerably more and (2) have significantly inferior coverage. Personally, I find this situation outrageous.

*

I urge readers who believe that Optima's discriminatory practices need to go to contact Optima via one of the following avenues (locals also have the option of patronizing a non-Sentara controlled hospital until such time as Optima's anti-gay discrimination ends):
*
Optima Health
4417 Corporation Lane
Virginia Beach, VA 23462
Main number: (757) 552-7401
*
Carol Via Flynn
Corporate Director
Marketing & Communications
cavia@sentara.com

*
Emma Inman, APR
Director, Corporate Communications
eainman@sentara.com

*
Becky Lawson, APR
Corporate Communications Consultant
rrlawson@sentara.com

My Upcoming Appearance on WHRV 89.5 FM Public Radio

A week from tomorrow I will be a guest on Hearsay with Cathy Lewis on WHRV 89.5 FM Public Radio for Hampton Roads a part of a round table group to discuss LGBT issues in Hampton Roads, Virginia. "HearSay with Cathy Lewis" is the only locally produced, public affairs radio call-in program in Hampton Roads. Every Monday through Friday and reaches more than 52,000 listeners, from Richmond, Virginia to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The show's host, Cathy Lewis" won the Virginia Association of Broadcasters Award for Best Radio Documentary or Public Affairs Show and in July 2004 "Port Folio Weekly" named Cathy the Best Radio Personality in Hampton Roads.

*

The other panelists will include Shannon Bowman (one of my fellow co-founders of HRBOR), who was, along with her partner, denied ‘family’ membership status at the Mallory Country Club recently, and James Parker, President of Hampton Roads Pride and Jon Blair, CEO of Equality Virginia. Since I know all of the other members of the panel well it should make for a lively and informative discussion. The topics to be discussed will include legal and estate planning issues, including gay marriage, health care access issues, and elder care for members of the LGBT community.

*

Here's an explanation of why I was invited to participate in the panel:

*
We are hoping to include a legal professional in the conversation and, in looking for a local person to provide that perspective, I came across your blogs (both the legal and personal ones) and thought you would be a great choice given both your personal and professional ties to the LGBT community.

*

It should be an interesting experience and I am looking forward to it.

How Health Care Currently Works in the USA

Yes, it's only a cartoon, yet it is all too true in many circumstances. As I've also said before, why all the prescription drug ads on television? It cost millions and millions and none of us can get the stuff without a doctor's prescription, so why advertise? The savings from cutting the ads could - God forbid - be passed along to the public.

Health Care Realities

I continue to believe that significant health care reform is a necessity if the USA is to come up to the standards of other developed countries in terms of the accessibility of basic preventive care for all Americans as well as coverage for when a catastrophic illness strikes. Currently, those without health care coverage often either receive no care or resort to Emergency Room treatment - the most expensive way to get what would otherwise be routine treatment. In short, inexpensive preventive care is forgone and when otherwise preventable illness sets in then vastly more expensive treatment is needed. The process is not cost effective and drives up overall costs exponentially. Paul Krugman looks at the reality of the the current mess and also the false claims of the GOP and some Blue Dog Democrats who seek to obstruct reform. Here are some highlights:

*

The key thing you need to know about health care is that it depends crucially on insurance. You don’t know when or whether you’ll need treatment — but if you do, treatment can be extremely expensive, well beyond what most people can pay out of pocket. Triple coronary bypasses, not routine doctor’s visits, are where the real money is, so insurance is essential.

*

Yet private markets for health insurance, left to their own devices, work very badly: insurers deny as many claims as possible, and they also try to avoid covering people who are likely to need care. Horror stories are legion: the insurance company that refused to pay for urgently needed cancer surgery because of questions about the patient’s acne treatment; the healthy young woman denied coverage because she briefly saw a psychologist after breaking up with her boyfriend.

*

Which brings us to the current debate over reform. Right-wing opponents of reform would have you believe that President Obama is a wild-eyed socialist, attacking the free market. But unregulated markets don’t work for health care — never have, never will. To the extent we have a working health care system at all right now it’s only because the government covers the elderly, while a combination of regulation and tax subsidies makes it possible for many, but not all, nonelderly Americans to get decent private coverage.
*

Now Mr. Obama basically proposes using additional regulation and subsidies to make decent insurance available to all of us. That’s not radical; it’s as American as, well, Medicare.

Another Sign of a Broken Health Care System

We hear a lot about small businesses being the driving force for job creation. What we do not hear is than many of these small businesses do not provide health care coverage for their employees. Now, with the economy in a free fall many small employers will be pressured to cut health care benefits as they struggle to survive the down turn thereby swelling the number of Americans with no health care coverage. Thus, the national disgrace will be getting worse. The New York Times has a story that chronicles one small business being faced with this hard decision. Here are some highlights:

*

When the bottom fell out of the automotive market last year, Amberly Allen’s fast-growing direct-mail firm hit a wall in a hurry. As orders from car dealerships fell by half, Ms. Allen deferred plans to hire more sales representatives. She put off buying the building she now leases in this Houston suburb. And in November, both she and her husband, one of her four employees, stopped drawing salaries.

*

Still that may not be enough to keep the four-year-old company afloat. Determined not to lay off any of her tight-knit band of workers, Ms. Allen is now agonizing over an equally unappealing option: whether to terminate the health benefits she provides for her employees and herself.

*

Even before the recession, owners of the smallest businesses had struggled to absorb the inexorable annual rise in health premiums. The share of firms with fewer than 10 workers that offer health benefits has declined by 16 percent since 2001, to 49 percent, according to an annual survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust, while the rate in larger firms essentially stayed flat.

*

The economic downturn has only accelerated the pressure on small-business owners to pinch every penny, and many feel they have few options but to go after employee health coverage. Surveys suggest that rising premiums have prompted more than half of small businesses to reduce benefits, raise deductibles or require workers to shoulder a larger share of an ever more expensive pie.

*

Workers in firms with fewer than 25 workers are now twice as likely to be uninsured as those in larger firms, according to the Employee Benefits Research Institute. For those small-business employees who do have insurance, the share with high deductibles has more than doubled in the last two years.

*

“You can’t cut your rent unless you move, you can’t cut your Internet, you can’t cut your phone — so where do you cut?” Ms. Allen, 28, said. “When you’re not taking a dime out of the company, at some point you have to question whether you’re just working to pay everyone else’s bills.”

*

A number of states have started programs to lighten the health care burden on small businesses through tax credits, pooling mechanisms and insurance regulation. President Obama, in his campaign, called for federal tax credits to encourage small businesses to provide coverage but also threatened to tax “all but the smallest businesses” if they did not contribute to their employees’ health care. Mr. Obama has not yet formally proposed a health plan.

*

The aid cannot come fast enough for businessmen like Mr. Fritts, of the Illinois sporting goods business. He saw his company’s health costs rise 30 percent last year even as its sales plummeted by nearly 60 percent.

*

Republicans may deride "Old Europe," but at least in Old Europe and in Canada citizens are assured some level of health care protection. Here in the USA, unless one becomes destitute, Medicaid provides you with nothing. The state of health care access in this country is a disgrace.