Rep. Gingrey (R-GA) sneers

Huffington Post headlines it as Georgia's Phil Gingrey laughing at 14,000 Americans losing their health insurance every day. That's stretching it a little bit.

What he does, however, is not pretty. Speaking in the House of Representatives, he sneers laughingly at the Democrats' use of the fact that 14,000 people lose their insurance every day as a reason we have to pass effective reform.

What Doctor Gingrey (one of GA's three doctors in Congress) says: "They don't lose their health insurance because it's too expensive. They lose it because . . they've . . lost . . their . . jobs!" (snicker, snicker -- as though he had stumped the chumps).

And that explains exactly what, Dr. Gingrey?

In fact, it's exactly why we must pass reform, so that people don't lose their insurance when they lose their jobs. It's called portability.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/17/phil-gingrey-laughs-off-1_n_290814.html

Ralph

Beyond the pale

Just a few happenings today that aroused my outrage to a new level:

1. The latest GOP ploy vis a vis the Joe Wilson outburst against Obama is to claim that "Obama started it" when he said in his speech that even some elected officials had been spreading misinformation and lies about his plan. So, they're justifying Wilson's shout-out "You lie" on the childish "he started it." The facts are: they did lie; Obama did not.

2. Orly Taitz -- the attorney who filed the case claiming that soldiers do not have to obey deployment orders because commander in chief Obama is not a citizen and therefore is not a legitimate president -- seems to me to be certifiably insane. I base this not only on seeing her on an interview show but in her response to the judge who threw the case out of court as frivolous and threatened to sanction her.

Here's what she said:

"somebody should consider trying [the judge] for treason and aiding and abetting this massive fraud known as Barack Hussein Obama. . . . This is so outrageous what this judge did -- it goes in the face of law and order. . . . Not every judge is as corrupt as Judge Land. Some judges believe in the Constitution. And some judges believe in the rule of law. . . . Judge Land is a typical puppet of the regime -- just like in the Soviet Union."

U. S. District Court judge Clay Land was appointed by President George W. Bush. Orly Taitz is a self-proclaimed leader of the birther movement, and she is exploiting service men and women in her cause. She has used forged "birth certificates" from Africa to try to make her point. She has filed numerous lawsuits across the country, none of which has been successful. In the TV appearance I saw, Orly Taitz was unable to carry on a sensible dialogue with the interviewer but wandered wildly and loudly, such that the interviewer finally terminated the interview shaking his head in disbelief.

3. The South Carolina Supreme Court has awarded a $10 million dollar settlement against an insurance company that rescinded the medical insurance policy of a teenager diagnosed as HIV positive when he tried to donate blood -- after his policy became effective. Internal memos showed that the insurance company based its decision on a memo in his record from a nurse who said the diagnosis "might" have been known prior to the policy date, which was false.

Another case (out of thousands) was cited in which a woman's surgery for breast cancer was delayed by the insurance company for five months because there was a record of a doctor having years earlier suggested that a lesion on her face "might be" pre-cancerous. It later turned out to be acne. But even if it had been skin cancer, that would not be a pre-existing condition for beast cancer. In the five months it took to get approval for surgery, her breast mass had doubled in size and greatly reduced her chances for cure. Like thousands of others, this was the result of employees being given bonuses for finding reasons to cancel policies.

This is outrageous.

Ralph

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/17/insurance-company-must-pa_n_289841.html

Dump Baucus' plan

Maybe the three Republican members of Senator Baucus' "Gang of Six" have done us a favor by not going along with a health care bill. Because it would have been even worse than this one that seems to be pleasing nobody --- except . . . those who we shouldn't be trying to please: drug companies and insurance companies.

I'm not bothering to read the fine print on any of these bills, because they're going to change. But just going by the headlines, Baucus' bill is not the answer.

A couple of days ago, there was a headline on Huffington Post quoting a former insurance company spokesman saying that the Baucus bill was a complete give-away to the insurance companies.

Today, the headline from the New York Times is: "Baucus Plan Pleases Drug Makers, But Few Others.

So why have we been waiting for the Senate Finance Committee to write the bill, when the Senate Health Committee turned in a creditable bill months ago, and the House combined three committees' plans and passed a bill months ago?

Who anointed Baucus? Besides the health care industry itself, of course, with their generous campaign contributions.

Ralph

Baucus blows it

We've been waiting around for months while the Senate Finance Committee dithered under Chairman Max Baucus' attempts to draw up a health care reform bill that would have bipartisan support. And he's had this "Gang of Six," three Dems and three Repubs -- all from very small states that in total represent a tiny fraction of the population -- who were going to reach an agreement. Which they haven't, because two of the Republicans have said 'no way,' and the other one is still holding out for more.

And now they're about to come out with something that doesn't satisfy anybody, it seems.

Quoting from George Stephanopolis from ABC online:

Following up on his This Week appearance where he promised to fight on for the public option, Sen. Jay Rockefeller blasted the draft bill produced by Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus: “there is no way in its present form that I vote for it unless it changes in the amendment process by vast amounts.”

He’s not alone. Fellow Finance Committee member Ron Wyden is livid too. Expect a rocky mark-up next week. As one top Democrat told me, the fundamental problem is that

Democrats “are being asked to support a bipartisan bill that doesn’t have bipartisan support.”

He goes on to say that Maine's Senator Olympia Snowe, the Republican thought most likely to vote for the bill, has said she's not ready to sign on; and it will be presented to the full committee tomorrow without her endorsement.

So -- let's don't go down this road again, as we did with the stimulus bill, where Obama and the Democrats watered down the bill to get Republican support, and then they didn't vote for it anyway.

No more bipartisan bills that don't get bipartisan support. Why do that? It's crazy. That's giving away the family farm. Don't do it.

Ralph

MDs support public plan

A recent poll by the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation found that by a large majority, the nation's physicians support public health care plans.

27% supported a private only insurance system.

63% support a system with both private insurance and a public plan

10% support an entirely public health care system

In summary: a whopping 73% of physicians support some sort of public plan for health care.

That should carry some kind of weight -- but it probably doesn't. At least among those who have the votes in Congress.

It's interesting: of Georgia's 13 members of the House of Representatives, three of them are physicians, all Republicans and all opposed to the Democratic proposed reforms, including the public plan.

I guess what that means is that doctors who run for Congress are, by and large, of a different mind set than those who don't. But at least it should be known that they do not speak for the medical profession.

Ralph

Census report: bad news for Bush

The Atlantic reports that the annual U. S. Census Report on income, poverty, and access to health care, released last Thursday, contains bad news for the Bush legacy.

On every major measurement, the Census Bureau report shows that the country lost ground during Bush's two terms. While Bush was in office, the median household income declined, poverty increased, childhood poverty increased even more, and the number of Americans without health insurance spiked. By contrast, the country's condition improved on each of those measures during Bill Clinton's two terms, often substantially.

This is also bad news for Republicans who are still chanting their tax-cut mantra like a perseverating deranged person who can't help himself -- or doesn't know anything else to do. This report seems to settle that once and for all: tax cuts for the wealthy do not benefit the average citizen. The "trickle down" theory is a lie.

So the summary page on the economic experience of average Americans under the past two presidents would look like this:

Under Clinton, the median income increased 14 per cent. Under Bush it declined 4.2 per cent.

Under Clinton the total number of Americans in poverty declined 16.9 per cent; under Bush it increased 26.1 per cent.

Under Clinton the number of children in poverty declined 24.2 percent; under Bush it increased by 21.4 percent.

Under Clinton, the number of Americans without health insurance, remained essentially even (down six-tenths of one per cent); under Bush it increased by 20.6 per cent.

Nor was this the result of economic collapse in 2008, which didn't really kick in until the last few months of Bush's term. All of these measures were already essentially the same before that.

The article concludes:

But at the least, the wretched two-term record compiled by the younger Bush on income, poverty and access to health care should compel Republicans to answer a straightforward question: if tax cuts are truly the best means to stimulate broadly shared prosperity, why did the Bush years yield such disastrous results for American families on these core measures of economic well being?

Ralph

Does anit-Obamaism = racism?

Maureen Dowd, whom I don't hold in the highest regard as a columnist because of her snide and too-cutesy metaphors, wrote a more serious piece in yesterday's New York Times about Joe Wilson's disrespect during President Obama's speech to Congress.

She said had formerly disagreed that racism is at the bottom of the anti-Obama sentiments because other reform-minded presidents have always had their shrill detractors: FDR had Father Coughlin, Truman had McCarthy, and JFK the John Birchers.

But Dowd said that Joe Wilson's shocking disrespect for the office of the president convinced her that "Some people just can't believe a black man is president and will never accept it." She quoted African-American Congressman Jim Clyburn (D-SC) as saying that these outbursts have to do with delegitimizing Obama as president.

You can imagine this angry white Southerner sitting there being lectured to by a black man standing before Congress in his rightful role as president of the United States, and it was just more than he could take. In his shouted "You lie," there is an implied extra word: "You lie, boy."

Dowd made a cogent observation: "For two centuries, the South has feared a takeover by blacks or the feds. In Obama, they have both."

Worth pondering, but that's not the complete answer. The anti-Obama cult is not just in the South. I think it's a more generic fear among those who feel their way of life is being threatened, and it focuses on different things. For some it's the illegal immigrants; for others, it's their guns or jobs. Others it's a more abstract and paranoid "government control" or fear of the Other or whatever hot button issue their preachers have fulminated against: abortion, gays, taxes, Muslims.

Fear and ignorance are dangerous motivators. Combine fear and ignorance with power -- and guns -- and we have a serious problem.

Ralph