Hospital administrators are well aware their institutions are subject to a whole host of workplace-related federal statutes: Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the Health Insurance Portability
Reported by Mondaq 22 hours ago.
United States: Welcome To The Neighborhood: Hospitals Need To Get To Know Title IX - Fisher Phillips LLP
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How the New "Age Tax" Would Affect Older Americans
Seniors between the ages of 50 and 64 may see a steep rise in their health insurance premiums.
Reported by Motley Fool 21 hours ago.
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Podcast: Maryland Insurance Commissioner on health care uncertainty
Uncertainty in any industry is a bad thing. But Al Redmer Jr. said the health insurance industry is one of the most uncertain areas to be in right now. Between Republicans' American Health Care Act, insurers pulling out of Obamacare insurance marketplaces and rising premiums, it's Redmer's job as the insurance commissioner from Maryland to sort it all out. In this week's episode of the BaltBizCast, Redmer talks about the challenges he's currently facing in his position, and how the Maryland health…
Reported by bizjournals 20 hours ago.
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‘Just own it’: Chris Cuomo hammers GOP lawmaker for denying Trumpcare will hurt sick people
CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Monday grilled Rep. Tom Reed (R-NY) over his vote in favor of the American Health Care Act, which is projected to take away health insurance from an estimated 24 million Americans. Like his other Congressional Republican colleagues, Reed denied that the AHCA would make it ...
Reported by Raw Story 17 hours ago.
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Health Insurance Innovations' (HIIQ) CEO Gavin Southwell on Q1 2017 Results - Earnings Call Transcript
Reported by SeekingAlpha 17 hours ago.
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Trump-Don’t-Care
Republicans in the House last week passed the Trump-Don’t-Care bill.
The legislation they called the American Health Care Act is not about improving health care at all. It would, in fact, strip coverage from 24 million Americans.
The name of the bill shouldn’t even include the word “care,” since it threatens to deny health insurance to millions with pre-existing conditions and those suffering expensive ailments.
No, there’s no caring in this legislation. It’s all about politics. Republicans promised for seven years to repeal the Affordable Care Act. And now that they control the House, Senate, White House and Supreme Court, they’re intent on doing just that, no matter who they hurt, no matter how many Americans they injure. Thus the “Don’t Care” designation for Trump’s legislation.Just how much don’t they care? Let’s count some ways.
Under Trump-Don’t-Care, older people get battered. Insurers can charge them five times the rate for younger people, instead of three times under the Affordable Care Act, also known as ObamaCare because former President Obama actually cared enough to make sure his legislation would increase the number of Americans covered by 20 million and provide affordable insurance for people with pre-existing conditions.
Here’s what Trump-Don’t-Care will mean in dollars and cents to older people according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office: A 64-year-old with an annual income of $26,500 pays $1,700 a year in Obamacare premiums now. And that’s a lot on a $26,500 income. But under Trump-Don’t-Care, the cost will skyrocket to $14,600, more than half of the old person’s income.
ObamaCare broadened Medicaid eligibility, but Republicans would cut $880 billion from the program, making it much tougher for the nation’s poor, disabled, elderly and marginalized to get the insurance. The GOP would, for example, allow states to require recipients to work. The upshot is that 14 million would lose their coverage.
Trump-Don’t-Care eliminates ObamaCare’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions, like diabetes, multiple sclerosis, cancer, and asthma. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that 27 percent of adults under the age of 65 have one of these ailments, about 52 million people.
The foundation lists about 30 of these diseases in a report on its website. Those are only the most common, however. U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, listed 90 in alphabetical order in a series of tweets on Thursday, including: acid reflux, acne, ADD, addiction, Alzheimer’s/dementia, anemia, aneurysm, angioplasty, anorexia, anxiety, arrhythmia, arthritis, atrial fibrillation, autism, bariatric surgery, basal cell carcinoma, cerebral palsy, cerebral thrombosis, cervical cancer, colon cancer, colon polyps, congestive heart failure, COPD, Crohn’s disease, migraines, seizures, sickle cell disease, skin cancer, sleep apnea, stent, stroke, thyroid issues, tooth disease, tuberculosis and ulcers.
Trump-Don’t-Care would mean that if a person with one of these illnesses is without health insurance for a time because of job loss or some other problem, when they try to get covered again, the insurer may charge them unaffordable rates. The GOP put an extra $8 billion in the bill at the last minute to fund high-risk pools for these people, but that sum is grossly inadequate, by about $200 billion.
Also under Trump-Don’t-Care, states would be able to waive the requirement that insurers cover what the Affordable Care Act defined as 10 essential services. These include hospitalization, maternity care, mental health and opioid treatment, chronic disease management, prescription drugs, and ambulance transport. That might make insurance cheaper, but it would be insurance worth less to the so-called beneficiary as well.
If even one state cuts essential services, millions could be affected nationwide as large employers would be able to exploit the changes to degrade the coverage it provides workers in other states. That means many workers could once again be faced with annual and lifetime limits on coverage and the loss of caps on the amount that must be paid out of pocket annually.
Also, Trump-Don’t-Care whether workers have insurance. The Affordable Care Act requires employers with more than 50 workers to provide it. But the Republicans eliminated that mandate.
On the other hand, the GOP retained one aspect of the Affordable Care Act that workers have protested from the outset, the tax on comprehensive, but expensive, plans. That affects workers whose employers do the right thing and provide good health insurance. It pressures those companies to scale back coverage to avoid the tax.
Republicans retained that tax on workers, but eliminated levies on the nation’s wealthiest, the top 4.4 percent. Trump-Don’t-Care erases $275 billion in taxes on those fat cats that pay for Affordable Care Act benefits.
That means the GOP would transfer hundreds of billions from poor, no-longer-insured people to those who don’t need the extra cash – the wealthy. The Kardashian crew doesn’t need any more diamond rings. Kanye West doesn’t need any more cars. And Donald Trump doesn’t need any more gilt. But the single mother working at McDonald’s and the widower supporting two kids on day laborer’s wages sure as hell need that Medicaid expansion.
As soon as they passed the Trump-Don’t-Care bill in the House last week, GOP lawmakers ran to the Rose Garden to party – then took off for an 11-day vacation. They celebrated slashing insurance benefits for 24 million. They drank champagne to destroying any sense of security for people suffering pre-existing conditions. And since the average net worth of House Republicans is $7.6 million, they rejoiced at having voted to give themselves a big fat tax break.
Democrats mocked them for reveling over passage of a bill that would hurt so many Americans. Just after the vote, the Democrats sang “Na na na na, hey, hey, hey, good bye,” from the Steam song, suggesting that Republicans had shot themselves in the foot by passing Trump-Don’t-Care because constituents would make them pay in the 2018 elections.
But what the GOP really did was shoot Americans in the foot. Then slap each other on the back in the Rose Garden. They just don’t care.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 18 hours ago.
The legislation they called the American Health Care Act is not about improving health care at all. It would, in fact, strip coverage from 24 million Americans.
The name of the bill shouldn’t even include the word “care,” since it threatens to deny health insurance to millions with pre-existing conditions and those suffering expensive ailments.
No, there’s no caring in this legislation. It’s all about politics. Republicans promised for seven years to repeal the Affordable Care Act. And now that they control the House, Senate, White House and Supreme Court, they’re intent on doing just that, no matter who they hurt, no matter how many Americans they injure. Thus the “Don’t Care” designation for Trump’s legislation.Just how much don’t they care? Let’s count some ways.
Under Trump-Don’t-Care, older people get battered. Insurers can charge them five times the rate for younger people, instead of three times under the Affordable Care Act, also known as ObamaCare because former President Obama actually cared enough to make sure his legislation would increase the number of Americans covered by 20 million and provide affordable insurance for people with pre-existing conditions.
Here’s what Trump-Don’t-Care will mean in dollars and cents to older people according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office: A 64-year-old with an annual income of $26,500 pays $1,700 a year in Obamacare premiums now. And that’s a lot on a $26,500 income. But under Trump-Don’t-Care, the cost will skyrocket to $14,600, more than half of the old person’s income.
ObamaCare broadened Medicaid eligibility, but Republicans would cut $880 billion from the program, making it much tougher for the nation’s poor, disabled, elderly and marginalized to get the insurance. The GOP would, for example, allow states to require recipients to work. The upshot is that 14 million would lose their coverage.
Trump-Don’t-Care eliminates ObamaCare’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions, like diabetes, multiple sclerosis, cancer, and asthma. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that 27 percent of adults under the age of 65 have one of these ailments, about 52 million people.
The foundation lists about 30 of these diseases in a report on its website. Those are only the most common, however. U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, listed 90 in alphabetical order in a series of tweets on Thursday, including: acid reflux, acne, ADD, addiction, Alzheimer’s/dementia, anemia, aneurysm, angioplasty, anorexia, anxiety, arrhythmia, arthritis, atrial fibrillation, autism, bariatric surgery, basal cell carcinoma, cerebral palsy, cerebral thrombosis, cervical cancer, colon cancer, colon polyps, congestive heart failure, COPD, Crohn’s disease, migraines, seizures, sickle cell disease, skin cancer, sleep apnea, stent, stroke, thyroid issues, tooth disease, tuberculosis and ulcers.
Trump-Don’t-Care would mean that if a person with one of these illnesses is without health insurance for a time because of job loss or some other problem, when they try to get covered again, the insurer may charge them unaffordable rates. The GOP put an extra $8 billion in the bill at the last minute to fund high-risk pools for these people, but that sum is grossly inadequate, by about $200 billion.
Also under Trump-Don’t-Care, states would be able to waive the requirement that insurers cover what the Affordable Care Act defined as 10 essential services. These include hospitalization, maternity care, mental health and opioid treatment, chronic disease management, prescription drugs, and ambulance transport. That might make insurance cheaper, but it would be insurance worth less to the so-called beneficiary as well.
If even one state cuts essential services, millions could be affected nationwide as large employers would be able to exploit the changes to degrade the coverage it provides workers in other states. That means many workers could once again be faced with annual and lifetime limits on coverage and the loss of caps on the amount that must be paid out of pocket annually.
Also, Trump-Don’t-Care whether workers have insurance. The Affordable Care Act requires employers with more than 50 workers to provide it. But the Republicans eliminated that mandate.
On the other hand, the GOP retained one aspect of the Affordable Care Act that workers have protested from the outset, the tax on comprehensive, but expensive, plans. That affects workers whose employers do the right thing and provide good health insurance. It pressures those companies to scale back coverage to avoid the tax.
Republicans retained that tax on workers, but eliminated levies on the nation’s wealthiest, the top 4.4 percent. Trump-Don’t-Care erases $275 billion in taxes on those fat cats that pay for Affordable Care Act benefits.
That means the GOP would transfer hundreds of billions from poor, no-longer-insured people to those who don’t need the extra cash – the wealthy. The Kardashian crew doesn’t need any more diamond rings. Kanye West doesn’t need any more cars. And Donald Trump doesn’t need any more gilt. But the single mother working at McDonald’s and the widower supporting two kids on day laborer’s wages sure as hell need that Medicaid expansion.
As soon as they passed the Trump-Don’t-Care bill in the House last week, GOP lawmakers ran to the Rose Garden to party – then took off for an 11-day vacation. They celebrated slashing insurance benefits for 24 million. They drank champagne to destroying any sense of security for people suffering pre-existing conditions. And since the average net worth of House Republicans is $7.6 million, they rejoiced at having voted to give themselves a big fat tax break.
Democrats mocked them for reveling over passage of a bill that would hurt so many Americans. Just after the vote, the Democrats sang “Na na na na, hey, hey, hey, good bye,” from the Steam song, suggesting that Republicans had shot themselves in the foot by passing Trump-Don’t-Care because constituents would make them pay in the 2018 elections.
But what the GOP really did was shoot Americans in the foot. Then slap each other on the back in the Rose Garden. They just don’t care.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 18 hours ago.
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Under Trumpcare, Pregnancy Could Be 425% More Expensive
Much of the criticism levied against the GOP health bill that narrowly passed the House last week is that it will strip away protections for people with pre-existing conditions, putting affordable health insurance out of their reach.
And one of those conditions? Pregnancy, which would be up to *425 percent *more expensive under the new plan, according to estimates from liberal think tank the Center for American Progress.
Premiums for women with uncomplicated pregnancies could jump by more than $17,000, CAP estimates.
That’s because under Trumpcare, states would be able to apply for a waiver from the so-called community rating rule—an element of President Obama’s signature health care legislation that required insurers to charge people the same price, regardless of their health status. Under the GOP bill, there would be nothing stopping insurers from charging more if a person has a history of cancer, depression or even a C-section...or if that individual is pregnant.
In media appearances to drum up support for the bill (which faces an uphill battle in the Senate), House Speaker Paul Ryan insisted that people with pre-existing conditions should have “peace of mind” about the new plan, in part because people who have continuous health insurance coverage cannot be charged more. But anyone who has had a lapse in coverage for more than 63 days could be charged higher premiums.
That means, for example, that if a woman who has been without insurance for a few months finds out she’s pregnant and goes shopping for a new plan, she could find herself paying up to 425 percent more than she would have under Obamacare. And again, that’s just for a relatively healthy, uncomplicated pregnancy.
Let’s not forget, too, that it’s already expensive to have a child in the United States. According to a 2013 New York Times analysis, the average price charged for a vaginal delivery is $30,000 and a C-section is $50,000, with commercial insurers paying out roughly $18,000 and $28,000 respectively. Then it just costs an estimated $233,610 to raise them—not including college.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 16 hours ago.
And one of those conditions? Pregnancy, which would be up to *425 percent *more expensive under the new plan, according to estimates from liberal think tank the Center for American Progress.
Premiums for women with uncomplicated pregnancies could jump by more than $17,000, CAP estimates.
That’s because under Trumpcare, states would be able to apply for a waiver from the so-called community rating rule—an element of President Obama’s signature health care legislation that required insurers to charge people the same price, regardless of their health status. Under the GOP bill, there would be nothing stopping insurers from charging more if a person has a history of cancer, depression or even a C-section...or if that individual is pregnant.
In media appearances to drum up support for the bill (which faces an uphill battle in the Senate), House Speaker Paul Ryan insisted that people with pre-existing conditions should have “peace of mind” about the new plan, in part because people who have continuous health insurance coverage cannot be charged more. But anyone who has had a lapse in coverage for more than 63 days could be charged higher premiums.
That means, for example, that if a woman who has been without insurance for a few months finds out she’s pregnant and goes shopping for a new plan, she could find herself paying up to 425 percent more than she would have under Obamacare. And again, that’s just for a relatively healthy, uncomplicated pregnancy.
Let’s not forget, too, that it’s already expensive to have a child in the United States. According to a 2013 New York Times analysis, the average price charged for a vaginal delivery is $30,000 and a C-section is $50,000, with commercial insurers paying out roughly $18,000 and $28,000 respectively. Then it just costs an estimated $233,610 to raise them—not including college.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 16 hours ago.
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This website wants to help you mail your ashes to Republican congressmen
Now that the American Health Care Act has cleared the House of Representatives, taking an estimated 24 million people a step closer to losing health insurance, a new website is stepping in to help. Namely, by ensuring that the ashes of those who could die as a result end up on Republican doorsteps.
Zoey Jordan Salsbury, a college student at American University, debuted Mail Me to the GOP on Thursday after 217 Republicans voted to pass the AHCA on to the Senate. The site lets people "send" their "ashes" to the GOP congressperson of their choice via an online web form.
SEE ALSO: How congressmen embarrassed themselves when asked if they’d read the health care bill Read more...
More about Watercooler and Watercooler Reported by Mashable 12 hours ago.
Zoey Jordan Salsbury, a college student at American University, debuted Mail Me to the GOP on Thursday after 217 Republicans voted to pass the AHCA on to the Senate. The site lets people "send" their "ashes" to the GOP congressperson of their choice via an online web form.
SEE ALSO: How congressmen embarrassed themselves when asked if they’d read the health care bill Read more...
More about Watercooler and Watercooler Reported by Mashable 12 hours ago.
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Sorry, Zombie Trumpcare, But That's Not Freedom
Freedom. It’s what the Freedom Caucus is all about, their name suggests. And the Freedom Caucus is the group that made its voice heard, the group of Congress members that forced changes to the Trumpcare bill that would, in their minds, enhance our freedoms as Americans. But they’ve got a funny definition of freedom. Funny as in the kind of gut-busting joke that, well, actually would tear your stomach apart.
Trumpcare 2.0 centers on the destruction of one of the core elements of the Affordable Care Act—the guarantee that, no matter what pre-existing health conditions you’ve got, you won’t be denied coverage and you won’t face price discrimination either. If Trump and his fellow Republicans get their way, you’ll be “free” from the peace of mind that comes with those protections.
Those stricken with cancer or other expensive illnesses—which not infrequently led to bankruptcy in the pre-Obamacare days—will now be able to bask in the glow of their new freedoms. Please note that personal bankruptcies have been cut in half since 2010, with the ACA playing “a major role” according to a wide array of health care experts interviewed by the independent watchdog Consumer Reports. And since anyone of us could be struck by such a devastating disease at any time, this means we will all benefit from Trumpcare’s new freedoms on pre-existing conditions.
Here’s exactly what the measures that won over the Freedom Caucus would change:
States could apply for a waiver to opt out of Obamacare’s rule that prohibits health insurers from charging sick people more than healthy people. So insurance for people with preexisting conditions might technically still be on the market, but premiums could be so high that many of those people couldn’t afford it. That’s the big problem for many moderates (and therefore House leaders).
[Speaker Paul] Ryan’s release says states would have to argue the change would, for example, lower premiums in order to get the waiver approved. The bill itself, though, makes approval effectively automatic unless the federal government stops it.
States would also be required to set up a high-risk pool, where sick people could buy coverage, in exchange for a waiver. But the historic problem for high-risk pools has been that they didn’t have enough money to cover sick people, and Larry Levitt at the Kaiser Family Foundation told me the AHCA has the same problem. The money included in the bill is also less than what conservatives have projected is necessary for high-risk pools to work.
People could also not be discriminated against if they maintained health coverage, another defense deployed by the bill’s defenders. But if you do let your insurance slip, you’re out of luck. So that still isn’t the same level of protection that Obamacare offers.
Additionally, those Americans with lady parts will enjoy an extra dose of freedom with Trumpcare. Sarah Spellings explained that postpartum depression and Caesarian sections (only women get those last time I checked) along with surviving rape and domestic violence (women predominate there as well) all fall under the category of pre-existing conditions. Insurance companies will also have the freedom to choose not to pay for mammograms and gynecological care. As our own Laura Clawson put it, “Trumpcare will again make being a woman a pre-existing condition.”
On a related note, remember when two different Republican members of Congress, one male and one female, both questioned why men should have to pay for maternity care they’d never need? With Trumpcare, they may not have to anymore, as health insurance companies will now be freed from the previous requirement that all plans cover certain essential benefits, one of which is maternity care. Do you recognize a pattern in terms of who would be gaining more freedom under Trumpcare?
Going beyond maternity care, here’s the loathsome Joe Walsh, a former Republican member of Congress, in response to Jimmy Kimmel’s impassioned argument regarding the need to maintain the protections for those with pre-existing conditions: “your sad story doesn’t obligate me or anybody else to pay for somebody else’s health care.”
Walsh’s Twitter handle is “Walsh Freedom.” He too associates himself with that word, i.e., the freedom from having to pay for someone else’s health care. It’s also worth noting that he sought the freedom from having to pay child support—that means for his own kids, not “somebody else’s.” More seriously, Democrats understand that one of the most important freedoms is freedom from fear, in this case the fear of not being able to afford life-saving medical care. Obamacare’s guarantees have had a lasting, positive impact on that front.
Walsh typifies Republicans who, as he claimed, are all about “logic and reason” when it comes to health care. In reality, Obamacare’s rules represent the height of logic—it makes perfect sense for everyone to share the risk of a financially disastrous injury or illness, but doing so only works if the federal government mandates and regulates how that sharing will work. This is the same principle behind Social Security, which protects against poverty in old age.
More broadly, this conservative push to destroy the guarantees for people with pre-existing conditions—all in the name of freedom—exemplifies the difference between Republicans and Democrats. For all their flaws, Democrats sit down and ask themselves: what’s the best way to solve a given problem?
On this issue, they saw that insurance companies were denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, so they banned that practice. In return, so that the insurance companies wouldn’t have a huge added expense with no benefit, Democrats created the individual mandate and other measures to bring healthier people into the insurance market and create a substantial cost for those who would otherwise try to ride free by not getting coverage—which they were guaranteed if they could make it until the next enrollment period—until they needed it. It was a common sense solution to an important problem that worked within the context of a broader bill that, if imperfect, has significantly improved health coverage and thus access to care for millions of Americans.
Republicans, or at least the overwhelming majority of them, approach just about any issue from the same series of ideological premises: federal government = bad, regulation = bad. Then they ask: how can we reduce those things as much as possible, irrespective of whether doing so would actually solve the problem at hand—or make it worse.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 12 hours ago.
Trumpcare 2.0 centers on the destruction of one of the core elements of the Affordable Care Act—the guarantee that, no matter what pre-existing health conditions you’ve got, you won’t be denied coverage and you won’t face price discrimination either. If Trump and his fellow Republicans get their way, you’ll be “free” from the peace of mind that comes with those protections.
Those stricken with cancer or other expensive illnesses—which not infrequently led to bankruptcy in the pre-Obamacare days—will now be able to bask in the glow of their new freedoms. Please note that personal bankruptcies have been cut in half since 2010, with the ACA playing “a major role” according to a wide array of health care experts interviewed by the independent watchdog Consumer Reports. And since anyone of us could be struck by such a devastating disease at any time, this means we will all benefit from Trumpcare’s new freedoms on pre-existing conditions.
Here’s exactly what the measures that won over the Freedom Caucus would change:
States could apply for a waiver to opt out of Obamacare’s rule that prohibits health insurers from charging sick people more than healthy people. So insurance for people with preexisting conditions might technically still be on the market, but premiums could be so high that many of those people couldn’t afford it. That’s the big problem for many moderates (and therefore House leaders).
[Speaker Paul] Ryan’s release says states would have to argue the change would, for example, lower premiums in order to get the waiver approved. The bill itself, though, makes approval effectively automatic unless the federal government stops it.
States would also be required to set up a high-risk pool, where sick people could buy coverage, in exchange for a waiver. But the historic problem for high-risk pools has been that they didn’t have enough money to cover sick people, and Larry Levitt at the Kaiser Family Foundation told me the AHCA has the same problem. The money included in the bill is also less than what conservatives have projected is necessary for high-risk pools to work.
People could also not be discriminated against if they maintained health coverage, another defense deployed by the bill’s defenders. But if you do let your insurance slip, you’re out of luck. So that still isn’t the same level of protection that Obamacare offers.
Additionally, those Americans with lady parts will enjoy an extra dose of freedom with Trumpcare. Sarah Spellings explained that postpartum depression and Caesarian sections (only women get those last time I checked) along with surviving rape and domestic violence (women predominate there as well) all fall under the category of pre-existing conditions. Insurance companies will also have the freedom to choose not to pay for mammograms and gynecological care. As our own Laura Clawson put it, “Trumpcare will again make being a woman a pre-existing condition.”
On a related note, remember when two different Republican members of Congress, one male and one female, both questioned why men should have to pay for maternity care they’d never need? With Trumpcare, they may not have to anymore, as health insurance companies will now be freed from the previous requirement that all plans cover certain essential benefits, one of which is maternity care. Do you recognize a pattern in terms of who would be gaining more freedom under Trumpcare?
Going beyond maternity care, here’s the loathsome Joe Walsh, a former Republican member of Congress, in response to Jimmy Kimmel’s impassioned argument regarding the need to maintain the protections for those with pre-existing conditions: “your sad story doesn’t obligate me or anybody else to pay for somebody else’s health care.”
Walsh’s Twitter handle is “Walsh Freedom.” He too associates himself with that word, i.e., the freedom from having to pay for someone else’s health care. It’s also worth noting that he sought the freedom from having to pay child support—that means for his own kids, not “somebody else’s.” More seriously, Democrats understand that one of the most important freedoms is freedom from fear, in this case the fear of not being able to afford life-saving medical care. Obamacare’s guarantees have had a lasting, positive impact on that front.
Walsh typifies Republicans who, as he claimed, are all about “logic and reason” when it comes to health care. In reality, Obamacare’s rules represent the height of logic—it makes perfect sense for everyone to share the risk of a financially disastrous injury or illness, but doing so only works if the federal government mandates and regulates how that sharing will work. This is the same principle behind Social Security, which protects against poverty in old age.
More broadly, this conservative push to destroy the guarantees for people with pre-existing conditions—all in the name of freedom—exemplifies the difference between Republicans and Democrats. For all their flaws, Democrats sit down and ask themselves: what’s the best way to solve a given problem?
On this issue, they saw that insurance companies were denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, so they banned that practice. In return, so that the insurance companies wouldn’t have a huge added expense with no benefit, Democrats created the individual mandate and other measures to bring healthier people into the insurance market and create a substantial cost for those who would otherwise try to ride free by not getting coverage—which they were guaranteed if they could make it until the next enrollment period—until they needed it. It was a common sense solution to an important problem that worked within the context of a broader bill that, if imperfect, has significantly improved health coverage and thus access to care for millions of Americans.
Republicans, or at least the overwhelming majority of them, approach just about any issue from the same series of ideological premises: federal government = bad, regulation = bad. Then they ask: how can we reduce those things as much as possible, irrespective of whether doing so would actually solve the problem at hand—or make it worse.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 12 hours ago.
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Brookfield tech firm faces Nasdaq delisting
Health insurance information systems firm Connecture Inc. of Brookfield, which has seen its stock trading at less than $1 since April 17, faces delisting by the Nasdaq Stock Market. Connecture (Nasdaq: CNXR) received a deficiency notice from Nasdaq May 4 stating that for the preceding 30 business days, the company did not meet the Nasdaq Global Market’s $15 million minimum market value for publicly held shares, Connecture said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The…
Reported by bizjournals 13 hours ago.
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GOP Health Bill Leaves Many 'Pre-Existing Condition' Protections Up To States
Before the Affordable Care Act, people with pre-existing conditions often couldn't get health insurance — or paid sky-high premiums. The bill passed by the House last week would let states decide.
Reported by NPR 12 hours ago.
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Yes, People Die When They Don't Have Access To Health Care
WASHINGTON ― Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) told his constituents on Friday that “nobody dies because they don’t have access to health care,” in what may have been one of the least true political statements of all time.
Georgeanne Koehler has devoted dozens of hours to telling anyone who would listen about how her brother died. Billy Koehler’s death, from cardiac arrest after his implanted defibrillator ran out of batteries, is a testament to how someone can perish from lack of access to health care.
Over the past several years Koehler repeatedly traveled to Washington to tell lawmakers about her brother. She even testified before the House Education and Workforce Committee in 2012, explaining that he had arrhythmia and lost his health insurance when he got laid off in 2003.
“He called every health insurance company in Pittsburgh in hopes of buying a private plan, but the answer was always the same: ‘denied due to his pre-existing condition,’” Koehler said in her written testimony.
Billy Koehler eventually got a job delivering pizzas, but the position didn’t offer health insurance. When his implanted defibrillator’s battery ran low, Koehler couldn’t afford the thousands of dollars a replacement would cost. He died on his way home from work in March 2009.
“He drove two blocks, came to a stop sign, put his car in park, and slumped into his steering wheel,” Georgeanne Koehler testified.
One study in the American Journal of Public Health estimated in 2009 that as many as 45,000 people died every year for want of health insurance.
When Labrador and other Republicans in the House of Representatives voted last week to repeal the Affordable Care Act, a law designed to make the insurance market more humane, Billy Koehler was there ― in portrait form. An artist named Theresa “Pussi Artist” GoldBrown painted Billy Koehler as part of a project documenting the lives of people who’ve struggled with the vagaries of the health care system.
“I just think that people’s stories illustrate what’s really happening, as opposed to the rhetoric that we hear on these Sunday morning talk shows,” GoldBrown said in an interview.
Labrador, for his part, said Saturday that he didn’t mean what he said. (You can see the full exchange here.)
“I was responding to a false notion that the Republican health care plan will cause people to die in the streets, which I completely reject,” Labrador said in a statement to the Washington Post. “In a lengthy exchange with a constituent, I explained to her that Obamacare has failed the vast majority of Americans. In the five-second clip that the media is focusing on, I was trying to explain that all hospitals are required by law to treat patients in need to emergency care regardless of their ability to pay and that the Republican plan does not change that.”
Koehler, 70, is retired and lives in Pittsburgh. She’s glad people remember her brother but wishes the health care debate could end.
“I don’t want to have to tell [the story] anymore,” she said. “I just want the stories to stop.”
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 9 hours ago.
Georgeanne Koehler has devoted dozens of hours to telling anyone who would listen about how her brother died. Billy Koehler’s death, from cardiac arrest after his implanted defibrillator ran out of batteries, is a testament to how someone can perish from lack of access to health care.
Over the past several years Koehler repeatedly traveled to Washington to tell lawmakers about her brother. She even testified before the House Education and Workforce Committee in 2012, explaining that he had arrhythmia and lost his health insurance when he got laid off in 2003.
“He called every health insurance company in Pittsburgh in hopes of buying a private plan, but the answer was always the same: ‘denied due to his pre-existing condition,’” Koehler said in her written testimony.
Billy Koehler eventually got a job delivering pizzas, but the position didn’t offer health insurance. When his implanted defibrillator’s battery ran low, Koehler couldn’t afford the thousands of dollars a replacement would cost. He died on his way home from work in March 2009.
“He drove two blocks, came to a stop sign, put his car in park, and slumped into his steering wheel,” Georgeanne Koehler testified.
One study in the American Journal of Public Health estimated in 2009 that as many as 45,000 people died every year for want of health insurance.
When Labrador and other Republicans in the House of Representatives voted last week to repeal the Affordable Care Act, a law designed to make the insurance market more humane, Billy Koehler was there ― in portrait form. An artist named Theresa “Pussi Artist” GoldBrown painted Billy Koehler as part of a project documenting the lives of people who’ve struggled with the vagaries of the health care system.
“I just think that people’s stories illustrate what’s really happening, as opposed to the rhetoric that we hear on these Sunday morning talk shows,” GoldBrown said in an interview.
Labrador, for his part, said Saturday that he didn’t mean what he said. (You can see the full exchange here.)
“I was responding to a false notion that the Republican health care plan will cause people to die in the streets, which I completely reject,” Labrador said in a statement to the Washington Post. “In a lengthy exchange with a constituent, I explained to her that Obamacare has failed the vast majority of Americans. In the five-second clip that the media is focusing on, I was trying to explain that all hospitals are required by law to treat patients in need to emergency care regardless of their ability to pay and that the Republican plan does not change that.”
Koehler, 70, is retired and lives in Pittsburgh. She’s glad people remember her brother but wishes the health care debate could end.
“I don’t want to have to tell [the story] anymore,” she said. “I just want the stories to stop.”
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 9 hours ago.
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Bill to repeal Colorado health-insurance exchange meets its end
Colorado’s health-insurance exchange will live for at least one more year. Sen. Jim Smallwood, R-Parker, killed his bill Monday that would have shut down Connect for Health Colorado at the end of 2018. The move was met by applause from Democrats on the Senate floor and groans from Republicans. Smallwood said afterward that he wanted to spend the summer working on the bill in ways that could bring meaningful change to the state-chartered exchange, which has struggled financially. That could mean…
Reported by bizjournals 11 hours ago.
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The Anatomy Of Courage
“It takes courage not to be discouraged.” That was Benjamin Ferencz, the last surviving Nazi war crimes prosecutor who, at the age of 27, prosecuted two dozen death camp supervisors and who, now age 97, was interviewed on 60 Minutes. He was responding to questions as to how and why his experience had not left him bitter.
But it is also a message for those of us watching a lifetime of effort ― to move our nation forward, to improve the lives of those left behind, to leave a healthier environment for our children, to control weapons of mass destruction, and many other standards of progress ― being swept away.
There are many reasons to be discouraged. Energy policy is being turned over to the energy industry. Environmental programs are being dismantled by climate change deniers and anti-science zealots. Public education is being privatized. Affordable health insurance now finances tax cuts for the wealthy. Federal judges are selected for ideological purity.
Most discouraging of all is the commercialization of the presidency. The extended first family blatantly sells White House (or Mar-a-Lago) access to powerful interests around the world. Heads of state are entertained at a private resort, not the White House. The president’s family promotes its hotels, casinos, and beauty products in foreign capitals. Foreign leaders are learning to trade access to their markets in exchange for the U.S. supporting their policy objectives.
It is too bad William Faulkner is not still living. His trilogy The Hamlet, The Town, and The Mansion chronicled the rise of the Snopes family in Southern politics. Corrupt and self-serving to the core. He would now have to add The White House. Looking back, it now seems almost inevitable that corruption on a monumental scale would eventually make it to the top.
A few of us disagree with the pundits who have settled on the last election as a class conflict. Certainly some Trump voters were angry at various elites, liberal and otherwise. But what about the Wall Street elites now running our economy and the corporate elites dismantling worker safety and environmental regulations and helping themselves to public lands. And the conservative dark money elites dismantling anything having Obama’s name on it. You will search in vain for any step taken so far or for the next three years that directly and immediately helps low income white people who are, instead, being taken to the cleaners by the Trump elites.
Since few young people today would call themselves idealists, it is left to aging idealists from the 1960s to keep that flickering and archaic torch alive. But Mr. Ferencz is right. It does take courage. Not battlefield courage. But the courage that comes from believing in an American ideal that is far better than what we see today. The courage that believes we are not witnessing a modern day version of the fall of the Roman Empire. The courage that insists when this grim un-American detour is over we will return to our ideal as a nation of principles, political morality, and Constitutional standards.
In the meantime, it takes courage. Courage to persevere. Courage to see farther down the road. Courage to believe a large majority of Americans, including many who voted for this administration and are now experiencing shock at what they got, will return to our traditional beliefs, the faith of our fathers. The courage to know that we will not only endure, we will prevail.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 11 hours ago.
But it is also a message for those of us watching a lifetime of effort ― to move our nation forward, to improve the lives of those left behind, to leave a healthier environment for our children, to control weapons of mass destruction, and many other standards of progress ― being swept away.
There are many reasons to be discouraged. Energy policy is being turned over to the energy industry. Environmental programs are being dismantled by climate change deniers and anti-science zealots. Public education is being privatized. Affordable health insurance now finances tax cuts for the wealthy. Federal judges are selected for ideological purity.
Most discouraging of all is the commercialization of the presidency. The extended first family blatantly sells White House (or Mar-a-Lago) access to powerful interests around the world. Heads of state are entertained at a private resort, not the White House. The president’s family promotes its hotels, casinos, and beauty products in foreign capitals. Foreign leaders are learning to trade access to their markets in exchange for the U.S. supporting their policy objectives.
It is too bad William Faulkner is not still living. His trilogy The Hamlet, The Town, and The Mansion chronicled the rise of the Snopes family in Southern politics. Corrupt and self-serving to the core. He would now have to add The White House. Looking back, it now seems almost inevitable that corruption on a monumental scale would eventually make it to the top.
A few of us disagree with the pundits who have settled on the last election as a class conflict. Certainly some Trump voters were angry at various elites, liberal and otherwise. But what about the Wall Street elites now running our economy and the corporate elites dismantling worker safety and environmental regulations and helping themselves to public lands. And the conservative dark money elites dismantling anything having Obama’s name on it. You will search in vain for any step taken so far or for the next three years that directly and immediately helps low income white people who are, instead, being taken to the cleaners by the Trump elites.
Since few young people today would call themselves idealists, it is left to aging idealists from the 1960s to keep that flickering and archaic torch alive. But Mr. Ferencz is right. It does take courage. Not battlefield courage. But the courage that comes from believing in an American ideal that is far better than what we see today. The courage that believes we are not witnessing a modern day version of the fall of the Roman Empire. The courage that insists when this grim un-American detour is over we will return to our ideal as a nation of principles, political morality, and Constitutional standards.
In the meantime, it takes courage. Courage to persevere. Courage to see farther down the road. Courage to believe a large majority of Americans, including many who voted for this administration and are now experiencing shock at what they got, will return to our traditional beliefs, the faith of our fathers. The courage to know that we will not only endure, we will prevail.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 11 hours ago.
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The Health Care Vote Further Exposed A GOP Empathy Gap
Thursday’s vote on the American Health Care Act (AHCA) that passed by a four-vote margin in the U.S. House of Representatives further exposed a growing empathy gap between the majority of House Republicans and the tangible realities of their constituents. The bill would strip at least 24 million people of their health insurance. The ACHA also “turns Medicaid into a block grant, enabling states to kick otherwise-eligible people off their coverage and cut benefits if I choose… and slashes Medicaid overall by $880 billion over 10 years,” according to the Washington Post’s Paul Waldman.
It would be useful for members of Congress to actually experience what it is like to need medical attention and not have access to health care services. It is unlikely that they would be so nonchalant about taking away health care coverage from millions of Americans if they had to go without it themselves. An empathy deficit is likely what led them to cast the vote that they did on Thursday.
This empathy gap was exemplified in the remarks of GOP House Member Raul Labrador of Idaho when he said on Friday that “nobody dies because they don’t have access to health care.” Labrador and other members of Congress should feel that sense of desperation that millions of uninsured families feel when they need medical services but are denied access.
It is unlikely that they would be so nonchalant about taking away health care coverage from millions of Americans if they had to go without it themselves.
Hopefully, the citizens who actually need health care will wake up and call their Senators in an effort to make sure that the AHCA does not pass the Senate. Pressure must be placed on Senators to realize what is at stake and ensure that they have health care coverage for their families. Even a significant number of those who get health insurance through their employers are just one layoff away from not having access to coverage.
It is difficult to continue to make sense of why people would continually support politicians who vote against their material self-interests. The elephant in the room that people seem to not want to address is that the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that they know little about because the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is attached to President Barack Obama.
The fact that the Affordable Care Act was nicknamed “Obamacare” is likely to be the determining factor as to whether or not people support the ACA. They may feel that erasing “Obamacare” will erase his Presidency as we know it. Many opponents of the ACA actually agree with many of the core principles of the bill but refuse to support it nonetheless.
Also troubling is the fact that the 13-member group of Republican Senators who will be drafting the Senate’s version of the plan is a committee made up exclusively of White males. It is striking that in addition to having no people of color, there are also no women. The proposed changes to the ACA will have a big impact on women’s health, but they are not represented at all in this group. The selection of this committee is a completely tone-deaf move that not only presents bad optics but is completely inappropriate.
At some point, one’s livelihood has to take priority over feelings of political gamesmanship. The Republican members of the Senate need to be reminded of how people feel when they need to get to a doctor but don’t have the healthcare coverage. If this empathy gap is not bridged soon, the consequences will be devastating. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren outlined the stakes well in a recent tweet when she wrote that “this isn’t football. It’s not about scoring points. ACHA will devastate Americans’ health care. Families will go bankrupt. People will die.”
Marcus Bright, Ph.D. is a Scholar and Activist
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 9 hours ago.
It would be useful for members of Congress to actually experience what it is like to need medical attention and not have access to health care services. It is unlikely that they would be so nonchalant about taking away health care coverage from millions of Americans if they had to go without it themselves. An empathy deficit is likely what led them to cast the vote that they did on Thursday.
This empathy gap was exemplified in the remarks of GOP House Member Raul Labrador of Idaho when he said on Friday that “nobody dies because they don’t have access to health care.” Labrador and other members of Congress should feel that sense of desperation that millions of uninsured families feel when they need medical services but are denied access.
It is unlikely that they would be so nonchalant about taking away health care coverage from millions of Americans if they had to go without it themselves.
Hopefully, the citizens who actually need health care will wake up and call their Senators in an effort to make sure that the AHCA does not pass the Senate. Pressure must be placed on Senators to realize what is at stake and ensure that they have health care coverage for their families. Even a significant number of those who get health insurance through their employers are just one layoff away from not having access to coverage.
It is difficult to continue to make sense of why people would continually support politicians who vote against their material self-interests. The elephant in the room that people seem to not want to address is that the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that they know little about because the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is attached to President Barack Obama.
The fact that the Affordable Care Act was nicknamed “Obamacare” is likely to be the determining factor as to whether or not people support the ACA. They may feel that erasing “Obamacare” will erase his Presidency as we know it. Many opponents of the ACA actually agree with many of the core principles of the bill but refuse to support it nonetheless.
Also troubling is the fact that the 13-member group of Republican Senators who will be drafting the Senate’s version of the plan is a committee made up exclusively of White males. It is striking that in addition to having no people of color, there are also no women. The proposed changes to the ACA will have a big impact on women’s health, but they are not represented at all in this group. The selection of this committee is a completely tone-deaf move that not only presents bad optics but is completely inappropriate.
At some point, one’s livelihood has to take priority over feelings of political gamesmanship. The Republican members of the Senate need to be reminded of how people feel when they need to get to a doctor but don’t have the healthcare coverage. If this empathy gap is not bridged soon, the consequences will be devastating. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren outlined the stakes well in a recent tweet when she wrote that “this isn’t football. It’s not about scoring points. ACHA will devastate Americans’ health care. Families will go bankrupt. People will die.”
Marcus Bright, Ph.D. is a Scholar and Activist
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 9 hours ago.
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Is Health Insurance A Right Or A Privilege?
Now more than ever, health insurance is a staple story in the 24-hour news cycle. Opinions vary widely on the issue, as do politician’s thoughts on the matter. Debates rage, tensions grow, and deeper divides are formed as our government wrestles with this colossal dispute. Nestled at the heart of it all though is a basic question:
Is health insurance a right or a privilege in the United States?
I’m alive today because my school district, where I’ve now taught for 20 years, offers the ‘Cadillac of insurance plans.’ On April 26, 2006, I checked into the hospital for a scheduled C-section. Due to scleroderma, I was a high-risk patient, but based on the uneventful delivery of my son 3 years before, doctors anticipated I would go home with my newborn daughter in 4 days.
I spent 218 days in the hospital.
Catastrophic postpartum complications led to eight major surgeries, over 100 days in the Intensive Care Unit, and an additional six months of intensive physical, occupational, respiratory, and speech therapy after I was released from the hospital. My tour of hospitals spanned four different facilities and cost millions of dollars. I’m not even including the maintenance drugs and medical supplies I will require for the rest of my life due to a permanent ostomy bag, neuropathy, and a myriad of other health obstacles I acquired during that seven month hospitalization.
Not only did I have superior health insurance from my employer, but I was also covered under my husband’s policy. Having secondary insurance is a luxury few can afford. My husband was 32 years-old with a dying wife, a newborn, and a 3-year-old. He had the weight of the world on his shoulders, but never once had to worry about the avalanche of medical bills that flooded our mailbox daily.
Every CT scan, surgery, TPN bag, port, drainage appliance, IV tube, tracheotomy supply, intubation, and rehabilitation therapy was covered. When my family made the life-saving decision to have me transferred to a hospital better equipped to handle my complicated case, they didn’t worry that it wouldn’t get approved by insurance. In short, my family moved heaven and earth to save my life and my health insurance paid for it all.
I was not just fortunate to have the ‘Golden Ticket’ of health insurance. In addition to being doubly covered, both my sister and her husband are physicians. They knew how to navigate the caverns of the health care system and advocated for me relentlessly. If a doctor didn’t want to order a test, but they thought I needed it, they fought tooth and nail to make it happen. My sister and brother-in-law weren’t just my advocates, they also served as medical translators for our friends and family.
With my traumatic crisis now 11 years in the rear view mirror, I marvel at my extreme good fortune during those dark months. What would have happened to me if I didn’t possess outstanding health insurance? How might my fate have been altered had I not had two doctors in my family? Would I have survived if I had been an uneducated individual who didn’t speak English? What if I hadn’t had an intricate tapestry of support from friends and family who cared for my children, visited me around the clock, and literally and figuratively carried me through the most terrifying year of my life? I can’t say with conclusive evidence that I would have died without all these factors playing in my favor, but I suspect that’s the case.
Is my life more important than someone who doesn’t have health insurance? Were my children more entitled to be raised by their mother because their aunt and uncle are doctors? Did my husband deserve to escape becoming a young widower because we had the resources to cover me under two insurance plans? I don’t know the answers to the big health care questions plaguing our nation. I do however, believe with all my heart that the answer to my three questions above, should be a definitive ‘no.’
A version of this article was originally published on the Scleroderma News Network
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 8 hours ago.
Is health insurance a right or a privilege in the United States?
I’m alive today because my school district, where I’ve now taught for 20 years, offers the ‘Cadillac of insurance plans.’ On April 26, 2006, I checked into the hospital for a scheduled C-section. Due to scleroderma, I was a high-risk patient, but based on the uneventful delivery of my son 3 years before, doctors anticipated I would go home with my newborn daughter in 4 days.
I spent 218 days in the hospital.
Catastrophic postpartum complications led to eight major surgeries, over 100 days in the Intensive Care Unit, and an additional six months of intensive physical, occupational, respiratory, and speech therapy after I was released from the hospital. My tour of hospitals spanned four different facilities and cost millions of dollars. I’m not even including the maintenance drugs and medical supplies I will require for the rest of my life due to a permanent ostomy bag, neuropathy, and a myriad of other health obstacles I acquired during that seven month hospitalization.
Not only did I have superior health insurance from my employer, but I was also covered under my husband’s policy. Having secondary insurance is a luxury few can afford. My husband was 32 years-old with a dying wife, a newborn, and a 3-year-old. He had the weight of the world on his shoulders, but never once had to worry about the avalanche of medical bills that flooded our mailbox daily.
Every CT scan, surgery, TPN bag, port, drainage appliance, IV tube, tracheotomy supply, intubation, and rehabilitation therapy was covered. When my family made the life-saving decision to have me transferred to a hospital better equipped to handle my complicated case, they didn’t worry that it wouldn’t get approved by insurance. In short, my family moved heaven and earth to save my life and my health insurance paid for it all.
I was not just fortunate to have the ‘Golden Ticket’ of health insurance. In addition to being doubly covered, both my sister and her husband are physicians. They knew how to navigate the caverns of the health care system and advocated for me relentlessly. If a doctor didn’t want to order a test, but they thought I needed it, they fought tooth and nail to make it happen. My sister and brother-in-law weren’t just my advocates, they also served as medical translators for our friends and family.
With my traumatic crisis now 11 years in the rear view mirror, I marvel at my extreme good fortune during those dark months. What would have happened to me if I didn’t possess outstanding health insurance? How might my fate have been altered had I not had two doctors in my family? Would I have survived if I had been an uneducated individual who didn’t speak English? What if I hadn’t had an intricate tapestry of support from friends and family who cared for my children, visited me around the clock, and literally and figuratively carried me through the most terrifying year of my life? I can’t say with conclusive evidence that I would have died without all these factors playing in my favor, but I suspect that’s the case.
Is my life more important than someone who doesn’t have health insurance? Were my children more entitled to be raised by their mother because their aunt and uncle are doctors? Did my husband deserve to escape becoming a young widower because we had the resources to cover me under two insurance plans? I don’t know the answers to the big health care questions plaguing our nation. I do however, believe with all my heart that the answer to my three questions above, should be a definitive ‘no.’
A version of this article was originally published on the Scleroderma News Network
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 8 hours ago.
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The Health-Care Insurance Quagmire As A Linguistic Problem – OpEd
The House of Representatives has just passed a statute it represents as “repealing and replacing Obamacare.” This legislation, now awaiting what promises to be major challenges in gaining the Senate’s approval, does amend certain aspects of the Obamacare setup, but all in all the changes are less than earth-shaking, and the previous system will continue in important regards even if the House version should gain approval in the Senate.
One critical aspect of the continuity is the requirement that, absent certain state-level options that might but need not be implemented, health-care insurers will still be forbidden to deny coverage to anyone because of a preexisting condition.
Under Obamacare, insurers had to charge people the same amount, regardless of their health status. The AHCA [American Health Care Act] would change that, allowing states to apply for waivers to charge sicker people more if those people had a gap in their insurance coverage. Those states would then get $138 billion over 10 years to help defray costs for sick people by creating high-risk pools, among other things.
The idea behind this provision is that it would make health insurance cheaper for people who are relatively healthy, while sick people would be in their own, subsidized risk pool. As they debated on the House floor Thursday, Republican members consistently assured their audience that their bill would still protect preexisting conditions. (source)
As many knowledgeable commentators have noted over the years, forbidding insurers to discriminate among people according to their health condition (e.g., according to what types of illnesses, injuries, and risk factors they have had in the past or have currently) flies in the face of the insurance principle. Insurance is a means of pooling risks. Subscribers of an insurance policy all pay a regular premium for coverage. In the event that a subscriber happens to fall victim to a covered contingency—for example, someone develops lung cancer—that person will be eligible to make a benefit claim against the insurance to pay for care of the cancer. Such coverage can be actuarially sound because even though any one person’s coming down with lung cancer is unpredictable, the probability of someone’s coming down with this disease in a large population can be determined with a high degree of accuracy, and premiums can be set so that for the group as a whole, the premiums will suffice to cover the plan’s promised pay-outs and leave enough for the insurer to cover its costs and earn a normal return on its investment in the insurance business.
If, however, people who had not been insured could, upon being diagnosed with a particular disease, then apply for insurance covering treatment of this condition, the insurance principle would be cast into the trash bin. This feature would be similar to letting people on their death bed purchase life insurance at the same rate as healthy people, or letting people whose houses had just caught fire purchase homeowner’s insurance at the same rate as people whose houses are in sound condition. In short, requiring insurers to cover preexisting conditions at the same premium paid by covered subscribers who do not have those conditions transforms insurance into an arrangement for making healthy people pay too much for coverage in order to subsidize people who pay too little—because the law forbids insurers to charge them according to the risk of the covered contingency they actually present.
Likewise, requiring insurers to cover a wide range of conditions against which some subscribers do not wish to insure—indeed, against certain contingencies that cannot apply to them in any event (e.g., costs associated with pregnancy for male subscribers)—turns the insurance system into a complex system of overcharges and cross-subsidies, that is, turns the system into a legally prescribed welfare system rather than an insurance system.
The federal government and the state governments have intervened haphazardly in the health-care insurance business so pervasively and for so long that by now the whole setup is nothing but a gigantic mess that flies in the face of the insurance principle and dictates a host of requirements that make no sense except as answers to the prayers of special-interest groups and rent seekers. Once a net benefit has been created, however, each beneficiary group will scream to the heavens if reforms should threaten to remove its privilege, and legislators will be reluctant to buck such organized political insistence on continued subsidies and privileges no matter how irrational these interventionist distortions are as components of an insurance system. This sort of “transitional-gains trap,” which Gordon Tullock analyzed astutely in an article published almost fifty years ago, produces an inertia in the political process that makes it practically impossible to make substantial changes even as the overall system sinks into financial ruin and drags down much of the related economy with it.
A helpful first step toward actually remedying the whole ungodly mess would be to change the language we use to talk about it and to propose reforms. People would be well advised to stop using the word “insurance” to talk about what amounts to prepaid care for one and all, and to stop regarding every special-interest subsidy and privilege as if, having once been blessed by legislators, it has become an eternal “right.” If people cannot forthrightly recognize gifts financed from the public trough as distinct from real insurance payouts, there is little chance that any reforms can ever make economic sense or bring about a viable system for financing health-care expenses.
This article was published by The Beacon. Reported by Eurasia Review 4 hours ago.
One critical aspect of the continuity is the requirement that, absent certain state-level options that might but need not be implemented, health-care insurers will still be forbidden to deny coverage to anyone because of a preexisting condition.
Under Obamacare, insurers had to charge people the same amount, regardless of their health status. The AHCA [American Health Care Act] would change that, allowing states to apply for waivers to charge sicker people more if those people had a gap in their insurance coverage. Those states would then get $138 billion over 10 years to help defray costs for sick people by creating high-risk pools, among other things.
The idea behind this provision is that it would make health insurance cheaper for people who are relatively healthy, while sick people would be in their own, subsidized risk pool. As they debated on the House floor Thursday, Republican members consistently assured their audience that their bill would still protect preexisting conditions. (source)
As many knowledgeable commentators have noted over the years, forbidding insurers to discriminate among people according to their health condition (e.g., according to what types of illnesses, injuries, and risk factors they have had in the past or have currently) flies in the face of the insurance principle. Insurance is a means of pooling risks. Subscribers of an insurance policy all pay a regular premium for coverage. In the event that a subscriber happens to fall victim to a covered contingency—for example, someone develops lung cancer—that person will be eligible to make a benefit claim against the insurance to pay for care of the cancer. Such coverage can be actuarially sound because even though any one person’s coming down with lung cancer is unpredictable, the probability of someone’s coming down with this disease in a large population can be determined with a high degree of accuracy, and premiums can be set so that for the group as a whole, the premiums will suffice to cover the plan’s promised pay-outs and leave enough for the insurer to cover its costs and earn a normal return on its investment in the insurance business.
If, however, people who had not been insured could, upon being diagnosed with a particular disease, then apply for insurance covering treatment of this condition, the insurance principle would be cast into the trash bin. This feature would be similar to letting people on their death bed purchase life insurance at the same rate as healthy people, or letting people whose houses had just caught fire purchase homeowner’s insurance at the same rate as people whose houses are in sound condition. In short, requiring insurers to cover preexisting conditions at the same premium paid by covered subscribers who do not have those conditions transforms insurance into an arrangement for making healthy people pay too much for coverage in order to subsidize people who pay too little—because the law forbids insurers to charge them according to the risk of the covered contingency they actually present.
Likewise, requiring insurers to cover a wide range of conditions against which some subscribers do not wish to insure—indeed, against certain contingencies that cannot apply to them in any event (e.g., costs associated with pregnancy for male subscribers)—turns the insurance system into a complex system of overcharges and cross-subsidies, that is, turns the system into a legally prescribed welfare system rather than an insurance system.
The federal government and the state governments have intervened haphazardly in the health-care insurance business so pervasively and for so long that by now the whole setup is nothing but a gigantic mess that flies in the face of the insurance principle and dictates a host of requirements that make no sense except as answers to the prayers of special-interest groups and rent seekers. Once a net benefit has been created, however, each beneficiary group will scream to the heavens if reforms should threaten to remove its privilege, and legislators will be reluctant to buck such organized political insistence on continued subsidies and privileges no matter how irrational these interventionist distortions are as components of an insurance system. This sort of “transitional-gains trap,” which Gordon Tullock analyzed astutely in an article published almost fifty years ago, produces an inertia in the political process that makes it practically impossible to make substantial changes even as the overall system sinks into financial ruin and drags down much of the related economy with it.
A helpful first step toward actually remedying the whole ungodly mess would be to change the language we use to talk about it and to propose reforms. People would be well advised to stop using the word “insurance” to talk about what amounts to prepaid care for one and all, and to stop regarding every special-interest subsidy and privilege as if, having once been blessed by legislators, it has become an eternal “right.” If people cannot forthrightly recognize gifts financed from the public trough as distinct from real insurance payouts, there is little chance that any reforms can ever make economic sense or bring about a viable system for financing health-care expenses.
This article was published by The Beacon. Reported by Eurasia Review 4 hours ago.
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Let's Gut Trumpcare, Not Health Coverage
On Thursday, May 4th, the U.S. House Republicans voted to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA), widely known as “Obamacare.” The American Health Care Act (AHCA), dubbed “Trumpcare,” squeaked through the House by a vote of 217 to 213 with all 193 Democrats voting “no” to the bill alongside 20 Republicans. The Republican-sponsored bill will now move on to the Senate for further review. Let’s hope that’s as far as it gets.
So far, Trumpcare has been described as “such a mess” and a “total disaster.” On average, only 30 percent of voters support the reform (vs. 47 percent against it). Furthermore, multiple Republicans who voted for Trumpcare did not even bother to read the bill in full. (In fairness, the failure to read legislation before voting on it is not a product of party affiliation. Many Democrats who voted for passage of the ACA admit to never having read it.) Suffice it to say, major health care reform warrants greater scrutiny.
Like the bulk of President Trump’s policies to-date, Trumpcare prioritizes the interests of wealthy conservatives over the basic rights of less affluent and privileged groups:
The bill weakens protections for people with pre-existing medical conditions. It rolls back the expansion of Medicaid and cuts taxes on the wealthy. It also significantly reduces federal assistance to lower-income Americans paying for health insurance, and it defunds Planned Parenthood.
Despite studies indicating that as many as 1 in 2 Americans have a pre-existing health condition, Trumpcare threatens the health coverage of this population. The AHCA seeks to narrow “Obamacare’s ban on letting insurers charge people with pre-existing health conditions more for their insurance plans than healthy people.” (Beginning in 2014, Obamacare protected people with pre-existing conditions by eliminating “pre-existing conditions” as a means for health insurers to deny coverage. Under Obamacare, no one could be denied coverage, charged more, or denied treatment based on health status.)
If enacted, Trumpcare is projected to result in tens of millions of Americans losing health insurance coverage. For instance, the AHCA erases the requirement that larger employers offer affordable health care to their employees as well as jeopardizes the health coverage of seniors and children by effectively capping these vulnerable groups’ federal spending per person. And while Republicans continue to counter that the health bill will save $337 billion over time, this remains a weak justification for stripping coverage from vulnerable groups.
Trumpcare would also be “devastating” for women. Although President Trump continues to insist that he “loves and respects” women, his policies tell a starkly different story. According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU):
The right to decide when and whether to have a family is fundamental to women’s equality in the workforce and society. Birth control and the right to abortion enable women to plan whether and when to have children, to pursue education and careers. This is how we are empowered to lead full and healthy lives. Yesterday’s executive order on religious exemptions signaled to employers that the government may say that if they object to birth control on religious grounds, they can deny contraceptive coverage as part of the health care plans for employees. This, coupled with the House’s repeal of part of the Affordable Care Act, could simultaneously limit women’s access to contraception and abortion, forcing many women into motherhood against their will.
Since the Republicans introduced their effort to demolish Obamacare, Democrats have been quick to highlight the flaws inherent in the plan to “make health care great again”:
[The Affordable Care Act] said to women of America ‘You can’t be charged more just because you’re a woman.’ Imagine becoming pregnant and having your insurer drop your coverage because you are no longer economic or you cost too much money. Imagine being a cancer survivor and having your coverage dropped because you survived cancer and you cost too much money. - *Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) *addressing the Senate floor on January 12, 2017.
Trumpcare is more than a political statement. It is a bill ripe with potential to deny coverage and basic reproductive services to those in real need of health care. The people whom Trumpcare would surely impact ― those with pre-existing conditions, women who need to exercise their fundamental right to choose, low-income Americans tackling serious illnesses ― do not have time. None of these people have time for Republicans to blindly vote “yes” on a bill, effectively exchanging health coverage for personal political gain.
Health care is a life-or-death issue, and must be treated as such.
As a Health and Societies major at the University of Pennsylvania, I was taught to dissect the U.S. health system from multiple perspectives. Yet, there is one common thread which rings true from every angle: there is a need for humanity in each and every aspect of health care. It is essential for all decision-makers to respect life - from the family physician, to the surgeon preparing to cut, to the nurse on the late-night ER shift, to the administrative manager overseeing departmental operations, to the politician voting on health legislation thousands of miles away. No one is immune. When a person is regarded as merely an insurance loss statistic, lives are put in danger. Every patient, every prospective insuree, needs to be viewed as a fellow person with loved ones, passions, and a deeper purpose than to forfeit their life to bolster another’s political approval.
Actions will always speak louder than words, and President Trump’s actions thus far show little signs of respect for ensuring basic dignities for all Americans, from health care to civil rights. On the contrary, Trumpcare reinforces how much the 45th President of the U.S. does not understand America or what has made it “great.”
*Help to make sure Trumpcare never leaves the Senate: *Call your senators to oppose AHCA before the Senate vote. Visit Save My Care for more information.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 17 hours ago.
So far, Trumpcare has been described as “such a mess” and a “total disaster.” On average, only 30 percent of voters support the reform (vs. 47 percent against it). Furthermore, multiple Republicans who voted for Trumpcare did not even bother to read the bill in full. (In fairness, the failure to read legislation before voting on it is not a product of party affiliation. Many Democrats who voted for passage of the ACA admit to never having read it.) Suffice it to say, major health care reform warrants greater scrutiny.
Like the bulk of President Trump’s policies to-date, Trumpcare prioritizes the interests of wealthy conservatives over the basic rights of less affluent and privileged groups:
The bill weakens protections for people with pre-existing medical conditions. It rolls back the expansion of Medicaid and cuts taxes on the wealthy. It also significantly reduces federal assistance to lower-income Americans paying for health insurance, and it defunds Planned Parenthood.
Despite studies indicating that as many as 1 in 2 Americans have a pre-existing health condition, Trumpcare threatens the health coverage of this population. The AHCA seeks to narrow “Obamacare’s ban on letting insurers charge people with pre-existing health conditions more for their insurance plans than healthy people.” (Beginning in 2014, Obamacare protected people with pre-existing conditions by eliminating “pre-existing conditions” as a means for health insurers to deny coverage. Under Obamacare, no one could be denied coverage, charged more, or denied treatment based on health status.)
If enacted, Trumpcare is projected to result in tens of millions of Americans losing health insurance coverage. For instance, the AHCA erases the requirement that larger employers offer affordable health care to their employees as well as jeopardizes the health coverage of seniors and children by effectively capping these vulnerable groups’ federal spending per person. And while Republicans continue to counter that the health bill will save $337 billion over time, this remains a weak justification for stripping coverage from vulnerable groups.
Trumpcare would also be “devastating” for women. Although President Trump continues to insist that he “loves and respects” women, his policies tell a starkly different story. According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU):
The right to decide when and whether to have a family is fundamental to women’s equality in the workforce and society. Birth control and the right to abortion enable women to plan whether and when to have children, to pursue education and careers. This is how we are empowered to lead full and healthy lives. Yesterday’s executive order on religious exemptions signaled to employers that the government may say that if they object to birth control on religious grounds, they can deny contraceptive coverage as part of the health care plans for employees. This, coupled with the House’s repeal of part of the Affordable Care Act, could simultaneously limit women’s access to contraception and abortion, forcing many women into motherhood against their will.
Since the Republicans introduced their effort to demolish Obamacare, Democrats have been quick to highlight the flaws inherent in the plan to “make health care great again”:
[The Affordable Care Act] said to women of America ‘You can’t be charged more just because you’re a woman.’ Imagine becoming pregnant and having your insurer drop your coverage because you are no longer economic or you cost too much money. Imagine being a cancer survivor and having your coverage dropped because you survived cancer and you cost too much money. - *Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) *addressing the Senate floor on January 12, 2017.
Trumpcare is more than a political statement. It is a bill ripe with potential to deny coverage and basic reproductive services to those in real need of health care. The people whom Trumpcare would surely impact ― those with pre-existing conditions, women who need to exercise their fundamental right to choose, low-income Americans tackling serious illnesses ― do not have time. None of these people have time for Republicans to blindly vote “yes” on a bill, effectively exchanging health coverage for personal political gain.
Health care is a life-or-death issue, and must be treated as such.
As a Health and Societies major at the University of Pennsylvania, I was taught to dissect the U.S. health system from multiple perspectives. Yet, there is one common thread which rings true from every angle: there is a need for humanity in each and every aspect of health care. It is essential for all decision-makers to respect life - from the family physician, to the surgeon preparing to cut, to the nurse on the late-night ER shift, to the administrative manager overseeing departmental operations, to the politician voting on health legislation thousands of miles away. No one is immune. When a person is regarded as merely an insurance loss statistic, lives are put in danger. Every patient, every prospective insuree, needs to be viewed as a fellow person with loved ones, passions, and a deeper purpose than to forfeit their life to bolster another’s political approval.
Actions will always speak louder than words, and President Trump’s actions thus far show little signs of respect for ensuring basic dignities for all Americans, from health care to civil rights. On the contrary, Trumpcare reinforces how much the 45th President of the U.S. does not understand America or what has made it “great.”
*Help to make sure Trumpcare never leaves the Senate: *Call your senators to oppose AHCA before the Senate vote. Visit Save My Care for more information.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 17 hours ago.
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Trump’s Core Support Is Driven By Emotion, Not Fact, According To Sigmund Freud
This column was originally published by Truthdig.com.
I don’t always agree with Bill Maher (witness his views on Islam and the death penalty), but the comedian was at his best on the April 28 installment of “Real Time,” his Friday night HBO talk show. In both his opening interview with Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren and his closing “New Rules” monologue, Maher admonished liberals to stop trying to win over Trump voters, especially his white working-class backers, with facts.
“You’re wasting your breath,” Maher quipped. “Trump supporters aren’t changing their minds because the problem isn’t in the mind. It’s lower. It’s emotional. He could have Ann Frank’s skeleton in his closet. They’d all vote for him again.”
True to Maher’s observations, notwithstanding Trump’s buffoonish ineptitude on the job and the many ways he has already undermined the objective interests of his working-class supporters—appointing a cabinet stocked with right-wing billionaires and zealots committed to destroying public education and environmental protections; promoting a tax plan that is a shameful giveaway to the wealthy; pushing an Obamacare replacement bill that will strip millions of health insurance; backing proposed legislation that will end overtime pay, to cite just four initiatives—the president’s GOP base hasn’t deserted him. To the contrary, despite an overall approval rating that hovers at historic lows just above 40 percent, only 2 percent of those who voted for Trump in November say they now regret doing so, according to a Washington Post/ABC poll released on April 23.
If anything, in focusing on emotions, Maher touched only the surface of a complex and critically important dynamic that to date has left activists and pundits flummoxed, stunned and appalled. The question thus arises: If the key to understanding Trump’s core support lies in grasping its emotional underpinnings, what kind of emotions or attitudes are at work?
Is the thrust of Trump’s allure based on racism? Is it a derivative of misogyny? Is it related to the fear of changing demographics, and the frustrations and anger engendered by the economic losses inflicted by globalization and neoliberalism?
Trump supporters aren’t changing their minds because the problem isn’t in the mind. It’s lower.
Clearly, all of these attitudes are very much in play across the land. I’ve written before in this column of the widespread appeal on the right of “racial and gender-based nostalgia’”—the longing for a mythologized past that harkens back to the pre-civil rights era following World War II.
Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan masterfully channeled this mythology. At the heart of Trump’s presidential run was a hyper-nationalist vision of America drawn from distorted allusions to the wisdom of the founding fathers, the infantile narcissism and individualism of Ayn Rand and, on a more mundane level, patriarchal 1950s sitcoms like “Father Knows Best.” In the vision, America prevails über alles internationally, while white Christian men hold all positions of authority at home, and women and racial minorities happily accept their second-class citizenship.
But in the wake of Trump’s first three months in office and prompted by Maher’s musings, I’ve come to think there’s something far deeper going on at an emotional level among Trump voters.
What is that something? Bluntly put, it’s this: Trump’s base has given him unwavering support because he professes to hate the same people, institutions and values they hate.
I’m talking about hatred of immigrants and Muslims (the all-purpose sociological “others,” who can be easily scapegoated as the source of our collective miseries); distrust of the press and the “fake” media; rejection of science and the disquieting truths it pursues; distain for judges and the rule of law, and the repudiation of civil rights. Many Trump voters also loathe the super-rich, having been flimflammed into believing Trump, one of the gaudiest and most predacious men on the planet, isn’t part and parcel of the despised global elite.
Hate is central to Trump’s power, and for good reason: Hate is a primal passion. Hate is part of our inherent makeup. We’re hard-wired for it and can never entirely free ourselves from its grip.
No one understood this better than the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. According to Freud, as elaborated especially in his later texts—and I apologize for simplifying an extraordinarily intricate body of work and bypassing the contributions of later analysts who amended and critiqued Freud’s ideas—human beings are driven by two basic instincts: the life impulse (Eros, from the Greek god of love) and its opposite, the death impulse (dubbed by later disciples, though not by Freud himself, as Thanatos, the winged Greek demon of death). Eros in this conception is directed at self-preservation and the quest to prolong life, both individually and socially. It embraces not only sexual gratification, but also life-affirming impulses and behaviors associated with communal engagement, harmony, collaboration and cooperation. Hate is an expression of Thanatos, as are the impulses to destruction, sadism and masochism, envy, fear, violence, and above all, war. Freud’s genius was his recognition that the life and death instincts don’t exist in isolation. Rather, they overlap and interpenetrate, forming an inseparable duality, forever clashing and vying for dominance.Freud laid out his instinct theory most concisely in a relatively unknown and underappreciated batch of letters exchanged with Albert Einstein in 1931-32. Although the correspondence between the great thinkers took place in the brutal aftermath of the First World War and during the uneasy quiet before World War II, it remains vitally relevant to Trump’s America.
Einstein and Freud met only once in person in 1927 and didn’t have further contact until 1931, when the Institute for Intellectual Cooperation, an advisory group to the League of Nations, invited Einstein to undertake a cross-disciplinary dialogue on war and peace with a scholar of his choosing.
Einstein selected Freud, to whom he wrote in April, 1931. He asked Freud to reflect on the “evils of war” in light of his theory of “how inseparably the aggressive and destructive instincts are bound up in the human psyche with those of love and the lust for life.” In a subsequent letter written in July, 1932, he asked directly if there was “any way of delivering mankind from the menace of war” once and for all, and if hate could ever be erased from society.
Freud’s response was less than sanguine. “All my life,” he told a League of Nation’s official about Einstein’s effort to reach out to him, “I have had to tell people truths that were difficult to swallow. Now that I am old [he died in 1939 at age 83], I certainly do not want to fool them.” Still, he promised to answer Einstein’s query.
Trump’s base has given him unwavering support because he professes to hate the same people, institutions, and values they hate.
In September, he penned a lengthy and wide-ranging reply. “Conflicts of interest between man and man,” he explained, “are resolved, in principle, by the recourse to violence.” After summarizing his dark view of the instincts, he added, “The upshot of these observations … is that there is no likelihood of our being able to suppress humanity’s aggressive tendencies. … It is all too clear that the nationalistic ideas, paramount today in every country, operate in quite a contrary direction.”
But all was not lost, Freud cautioned. Although war and aggression could never be completely eliminated, mitigating measures could be taken, emphasizing reason, culture, empathy and community. “From our ‘mythology’ of the instincts,” he wrote, “we may easily deduce a formula for an indirect method of eliminating war. If the propensity for war be due to the destructive instinct, we have always its counter-agent, Eros, to our hand. All that produces ties of sentiment between man and man must serve us as war’s antidote. … All that brings out the significant resemblances between men calls into play this feeling of community, identification, whereon is founded, in large measure, the whole edifice of human society.”
Becoming more concrete, Freud cited the “satisfaction of material needs and enforcing the equality between man and man” as additional components of tempering aggression—goals, he added, the Bolsheviks had pursued in vain. He also endorsed the League of Nations as an international arbiter of justice.
The exchange between Einstein and Freud was published in pamphlet form in 1933. The rise of Hitler, however, limited the press run to 2,000 copies, causing the correspondence to fall into obscurity.
There are at three basic takeaways to be drawn from the correspondence to burnish our efforts to combat and counter Trumpism:
First, to return to Maher, there is a pressing need to appreciate the full gravity of the hatred Trump represents. Attitudes of hate among Trump’s base cannot be assessed simply as a regrettable but rational response to the depredations of Wall Street and globalization, as Elizabeth Warren and even Bernie Sanders have argued. They are decidedly more than that.
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), in the spring issue of its quarterly Intelligence Report, warns that “After half a century of being increasingly relegated to the margins of society, the radical right entered the political mainstream last year in a way that had seemed virtually unimaginable since George Wallace ran for president in 1968.”
The SPLC estimates there were at least 917 hate organizations active throughout the U.S. in 2016, to go along with another 623 extreme anti-government groups. They are but the most obvious manifestation of a much larger phenomenon.
Second, while progressives may never convert the KKK, skinheads, the Oath Keepers and other entrenched extremists, larger segments of Trump’s base can be reached, and turned around. The lies behind Trump’s faux populism can be exposed—and in this essential enterprise, facts, faithfully and accurately presented, still matter.
The hate Trump has directed against immigrants, constitutional rights and egalitarian values can be turned against him through clear expositions of his hypocrisies, conflicts of interest and his obscene quest to gut the social safety net for the purpose of enriching himself, his family and his cronies. Although the progress made on this front has been uneven, elements of both the mainstream and alternative media—from The New York Times and the Washington Post to The Intercept and Truthdig—have accomplished a good deal, publishing articles and analyses that have helped to arouse and fortify resistance movements the across the country. Those efforts must redouble.
Finally, and most important of all, in the spirit of Freud’s Eros, the left will have to fashion and promote a positive, life-affirming vision of the future to rival and displace the death instinct behind Trump’s “Make America Great Again” mantra.
Every major movement of social and political transformation, in addition to championing specific short-term reforms, has been animated by higher principles promising both solidarity and liberation. The American Revolution was moved by the demand for “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The French version was driven by the ideals of “liberté, égalité, fraternité.” The civil rights movement was propelled by Martin Luther King Jr.’s “dream” of racial harmony and justice. Even Obama’s 2008 presidential run was keyed by a single word of inspiration: “Hope.”
What, then, in this critical hour is our shared vision of the future? I don’t pretend to have the answers, except to say that in the broadest terms it will be communitarian, diverse, inclusive, respectful of democratic institutions and the environment, and welcoming toward individual freedoms. It will not, if it is to succeed, call for a restoration of the hierarchical neoliberalism of the recent past. Try as Hillary Clinton might to convince us that she, too, is part of the resistance and perhaps worthy of another bid for high office, she isn’t. Period. Full stop.
In the meantime, Donald Trump remains the leader of the most powerful nation on earth. We remain mired in the politics of hate. And that, as Bill Maher has already told us, is anything but funny.type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related... + articlesList=58e3ef7ee4b09deecf0e1b01,58fa02afe4b0f02c3870e8dd,58ed00d2e4b0ca64d9199c3b,58875293e4b0111ea60b99f7
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 13 hours ago.
I don’t always agree with Bill Maher (witness his views on Islam and the death penalty), but the comedian was at his best on the April 28 installment of “Real Time,” his Friday night HBO talk show. In both his opening interview with Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren and his closing “New Rules” monologue, Maher admonished liberals to stop trying to win over Trump voters, especially his white working-class backers, with facts.
“You’re wasting your breath,” Maher quipped. “Trump supporters aren’t changing their minds because the problem isn’t in the mind. It’s lower. It’s emotional. He could have Ann Frank’s skeleton in his closet. They’d all vote for him again.”
True to Maher’s observations, notwithstanding Trump’s buffoonish ineptitude on the job and the many ways he has already undermined the objective interests of his working-class supporters—appointing a cabinet stocked with right-wing billionaires and zealots committed to destroying public education and environmental protections; promoting a tax plan that is a shameful giveaway to the wealthy; pushing an Obamacare replacement bill that will strip millions of health insurance; backing proposed legislation that will end overtime pay, to cite just four initiatives—the president’s GOP base hasn’t deserted him. To the contrary, despite an overall approval rating that hovers at historic lows just above 40 percent, only 2 percent of those who voted for Trump in November say they now regret doing so, according to a Washington Post/ABC poll released on April 23.
If anything, in focusing on emotions, Maher touched only the surface of a complex and critically important dynamic that to date has left activists and pundits flummoxed, stunned and appalled. The question thus arises: If the key to understanding Trump’s core support lies in grasping its emotional underpinnings, what kind of emotions or attitudes are at work?
Is the thrust of Trump’s allure based on racism? Is it a derivative of misogyny? Is it related to the fear of changing demographics, and the frustrations and anger engendered by the economic losses inflicted by globalization and neoliberalism?
Trump supporters aren’t changing their minds because the problem isn’t in the mind. It’s lower.
Clearly, all of these attitudes are very much in play across the land. I’ve written before in this column of the widespread appeal on the right of “racial and gender-based nostalgia’”—the longing for a mythologized past that harkens back to the pre-civil rights era following World War II.
Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan masterfully channeled this mythology. At the heart of Trump’s presidential run was a hyper-nationalist vision of America drawn from distorted allusions to the wisdom of the founding fathers, the infantile narcissism and individualism of Ayn Rand and, on a more mundane level, patriarchal 1950s sitcoms like “Father Knows Best.” In the vision, America prevails über alles internationally, while white Christian men hold all positions of authority at home, and women and racial minorities happily accept their second-class citizenship.
But in the wake of Trump’s first three months in office and prompted by Maher’s musings, I’ve come to think there’s something far deeper going on at an emotional level among Trump voters.
What is that something? Bluntly put, it’s this: Trump’s base has given him unwavering support because he professes to hate the same people, institutions and values they hate.
I’m talking about hatred of immigrants and Muslims (the all-purpose sociological “others,” who can be easily scapegoated as the source of our collective miseries); distrust of the press and the “fake” media; rejection of science and the disquieting truths it pursues; distain for judges and the rule of law, and the repudiation of civil rights. Many Trump voters also loathe the super-rich, having been flimflammed into believing Trump, one of the gaudiest and most predacious men on the planet, isn’t part and parcel of the despised global elite.
Hate is central to Trump’s power, and for good reason: Hate is a primal passion. Hate is part of our inherent makeup. We’re hard-wired for it and can never entirely free ourselves from its grip.
No one understood this better than the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. According to Freud, as elaborated especially in his later texts—and I apologize for simplifying an extraordinarily intricate body of work and bypassing the contributions of later analysts who amended and critiqued Freud’s ideas—human beings are driven by two basic instincts: the life impulse (Eros, from the Greek god of love) and its opposite, the death impulse (dubbed by later disciples, though not by Freud himself, as Thanatos, the winged Greek demon of death). Eros in this conception is directed at self-preservation and the quest to prolong life, both individually and socially. It embraces not only sexual gratification, but also life-affirming impulses and behaviors associated with communal engagement, harmony, collaboration and cooperation. Hate is an expression of Thanatos, as are the impulses to destruction, sadism and masochism, envy, fear, violence, and above all, war. Freud’s genius was his recognition that the life and death instincts don’t exist in isolation. Rather, they overlap and interpenetrate, forming an inseparable duality, forever clashing and vying for dominance.Freud laid out his instinct theory most concisely in a relatively unknown and underappreciated batch of letters exchanged with Albert Einstein in 1931-32. Although the correspondence between the great thinkers took place in the brutal aftermath of the First World War and during the uneasy quiet before World War II, it remains vitally relevant to Trump’s America.
Einstein and Freud met only once in person in 1927 and didn’t have further contact until 1931, when the Institute for Intellectual Cooperation, an advisory group to the League of Nations, invited Einstein to undertake a cross-disciplinary dialogue on war and peace with a scholar of his choosing.
Einstein selected Freud, to whom he wrote in April, 1931. He asked Freud to reflect on the “evils of war” in light of his theory of “how inseparably the aggressive and destructive instincts are bound up in the human psyche with those of love and the lust for life.” In a subsequent letter written in July, 1932, he asked directly if there was “any way of delivering mankind from the menace of war” once and for all, and if hate could ever be erased from society.
Freud’s response was less than sanguine. “All my life,” he told a League of Nation’s official about Einstein’s effort to reach out to him, “I have had to tell people truths that were difficult to swallow. Now that I am old [he died in 1939 at age 83], I certainly do not want to fool them.” Still, he promised to answer Einstein’s query.
Trump’s base has given him unwavering support because he professes to hate the same people, institutions, and values they hate.
In September, he penned a lengthy and wide-ranging reply. “Conflicts of interest between man and man,” he explained, “are resolved, in principle, by the recourse to violence.” After summarizing his dark view of the instincts, he added, “The upshot of these observations … is that there is no likelihood of our being able to suppress humanity’s aggressive tendencies. … It is all too clear that the nationalistic ideas, paramount today in every country, operate in quite a contrary direction.”
But all was not lost, Freud cautioned. Although war and aggression could never be completely eliminated, mitigating measures could be taken, emphasizing reason, culture, empathy and community. “From our ‘mythology’ of the instincts,” he wrote, “we may easily deduce a formula for an indirect method of eliminating war. If the propensity for war be due to the destructive instinct, we have always its counter-agent, Eros, to our hand. All that produces ties of sentiment between man and man must serve us as war’s antidote. … All that brings out the significant resemblances between men calls into play this feeling of community, identification, whereon is founded, in large measure, the whole edifice of human society.”
Becoming more concrete, Freud cited the “satisfaction of material needs and enforcing the equality between man and man” as additional components of tempering aggression—goals, he added, the Bolsheviks had pursued in vain. He also endorsed the League of Nations as an international arbiter of justice.
The exchange between Einstein and Freud was published in pamphlet form in 1933. The rise of Hitler, however, limited the press run to 2,000 copies, causing the correspondence to fall into obscurity.
There are at three basic takeaways to be drawn from the correspondence to burnish our efforts to combat and counter Trumpism:
First, to return to Maher, there is a pressing need to appreciate the full gravity of the hatred Trump represents. Attitudes of hate among Trump’s base cannot be assessed simply as a regrettable but rational response to the depredations of Wall Street and globalization, as Elizabeth Warren and even Bernie Sanders have argued. They are decidedly more than that.
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), in the spring issue of its quarterly Intelligence Report, warns that “After half a century of being increasingly relegated to the margins of society, the radical right entered the political mainstream last year in a way that had seemed virtually unimaginable since George Wallace ran for president in 1968.”
The SPLC estimates there were at least 917 hate organizations active throughout the U.S. in 2016, to go along with another 623 extreme anti-government groups. They are but the most obvious manifestation of a much larger phenomenon.
Second, while progressives may never convert the KKK, skinheads, the Oath Keepers and other entrenched extremists, larger segments of Trump’s base can be reached, and turned around. The lies behind Trump’s faux populism can be exposed—and in this essential enterprise, facts, faithfully and accurately presented, still matter.
The hate Trump has directed against immigrants, constitutional rights and egalitarian values can be turned against him through clear expositions of his hypocrisies, conflicts of interest and his obscene quest to gut the social safety net for the purpose of enriching himself, his family and his cronies. Although the progress made on this front has been uneven, elements of both the mainstream and alternative media—from The New York Times and the Washington Post to The Intercept and Truthdig—have accomplished a good deal, publishing articles and analyses that have helped to arouse and fortify resistance movements the across the country. Those efforts must redouble.
Finally, and most important of all, in the spirit of Freud’s Eros, the left will have to fashion and promote a positive, life-affirming vision of the future to rival and displace the death instinct behind Trump’s “Make America Great Again” mantra.
Every major movement of social and political transformation, in addition to championing specific short-term reforms, has been animated by higher principles promising both solidarity and liberation. The American Revolution was moved by the demand for “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The French version was driven by the ideals of “liberté, égalité, fraternité.” The civil rights movement was propelled by Martin Luther King Jr.’s “dream” of racial harmony and justice. Even Obama’s 2008 presidential run was keyed by a single word of inspiration: “Hope.”
What, then, in this critical hour is our shared vision of the future? I don’t pretend to have the answers, except to say that in the broadest terms it will be communitarian, diverse, inclusive, respectful of democratic institutions and the environment, and welcoming toward individual freedoms. It will not, if it is to succeed, call for a restoration of the hierarchical neoliberalism of the recent past. Try as Hillary Clinton might to convince us that she, too, is part of the resistance and perhaps worthy of another bid for high office, she isn’t. Period. Full stop.
In the meantime, Donald Trump remains the leader of the most powerful nation on earth. We remain mired in the politics of hate. And that, as Bill Maher has already told us, is anything but funny.type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related... + articlesList=58e3ef7ee4b09deecf0e1b01,58fa02afe4b0f02c3870e8dd,58ed00d2e4b0ca64d9199c3b,58875293e4b0111ea60b99f7
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 13 hours ago.
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What The House GOP Isn’t Telling You About Their Obamacare Repeal Bill
Absent from the half-time celebration at the White House of the one-vote passage of the American Health Care Act (“ACHA”) by the GOP-controlled House of Representatives, there were many statements about both premiums and deductibles going down and pre-existing condition coverage continuing as a result of this legislation. But no one in the Rose Garden or the rotunda of the Capitol building was heard to utter the famous magic words associated with the Obamacare passage from Day One: “If you like the health plan you have now, you can keep it!”
Certainly, it has been clear enough for a while that, under ACHA, if you are on Medicaid, you are looking at an $880 billion in overall funding reduction, so millions of those depending on Medicaid coverage will lose at least part of that.
The same result applies for those who purchase policies on the Obamacare exchanges with direct subsidies from the Federal Treasury, because those subsidies will be replaced by substantially lesser advanced tax credits that will, therefore, force choices for less generous coverage.
In addition, if your state chooses to waive the federal requirement that your individual (i.e., non-workplace) market plan include 10 “essential” coverage elements—like maternity and infant care, mental health, prescription drugs, hospitalization)—you will lose whatever benefits are waived no matter what your pay. And there will be even greater coverage degradation of existing policies if protections for those with a pre-existing medical condition (here’s a list of them) are waived by your state and you somehow lose coverage for over 63 days, and in any event whatever coverage of your condition is not waived will cost a lot more.
But nobody on the GOP side has acknowledged that the famous “you can keep it” phrase regarding your family’s current health insurance policy quite possibly will no longer apply to the 160 million persons (nearly 50 percent of the marketplace) currently receiving their health care coverage through plans provided by their employers. How did this happen without virtually any public notice of this element of the GOP plan until the very morning it passed?
It should have been clear enough that at least those who work in many small businesses across America and get their health insurance though their employer would be at risk to losing coverage. The late-April revisions to the AHCA offering states the options to waive essential benefits and pre-existing condition protection against price discrimination would apply not only to the ObamaCare Exchange and individual marketplace but also to the small group market relevant to firms with 50-100 employees or less, depending on the relevant state regulations.
But even employees of our largest public and private companies could have their current coverage limited or eliminated, as the Wall Street Journal pointed out on the morning the House voted. Under the Obamacare rules now, a big company can choose the benefit package of any state to apply to its employees in all states—a rule that hardly matters while all policies are required to provide the ten essential benefits.
If just one state (as Wisconsin’s governor has already suggested he would consider) chooses to pursue the coverage waivers under the new AHCA, a big company could simply impose this “lowest common insurance denominator” of coverage to all its U.S. employees, unless the current rules are changed (but the ACHA leaves them place). As a further result, the Obamacare ban on lifetime caps on insurance benefits would also be undercut for any insurance coverage remaining after the waivers take effect. If you still think the GOP plan won’t affect you because you have a job with insurance, think again.
Neither the GOP generally, Speaker Ryan and his leadership team, nor President Trump ever campaigned on the platform to “repeal and replace your workplace health care policies.” It surely seems that somebody’s got some explaining to do: the town hall meetings during the current Congressional recess might be a good place to start.
Terry Connelly is an economic expert and dean emeritus of the Ageno School of Business at Golden Gate University.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 12 hours ago.
Certainly, it has been clear enough for a while that, under ACHA, if you are on Medicaid, you are looking at an $880 billion in overall funding reduction, so millions of those depending on Medicaid coverage will lose at least part of that.
The same result applies for those who purchase policies on the Obamacare exchanges with direct subsidies from the Federal Treasury, because those subsidies will be replaced by substantially lesser advanced tax credits that will, therefore, force choices for less generous coverage.
In addition, if your state chooses to waive the federal requirement that your individual (i.e., non-workplace) market plan include 10 “essential” coverage elements—like maternity and infant care, mental health, prescription drugs, hospitalization)—you will lose whatever benefits are waived no matter what your pay. And there will be even greater coverage degradation of existing policies if protections for those with a pre-existing medical condition (here’s a list of them) are waived by your state and you somehow lose coverage for over 63 days, and in any event whatever coverage of your condition is not waived will cost a lot more.
But nobody on the GOP side has acknowledged that the famous “you can keep it” phrase regarding your family’s current health insurance policy quite possibly will no longer apply to the 160 million persons (nearly 50 percent of the marketplace) currently receiving their health care coverage through plans provided by their employers. How did this happen without virtually any public notice of this element of the GOP plan until the very morning it passed?
It should have been clear enough that at least those who work in many small businesses across America and get their health insurance though their employer would be at risk to losing coverage. The late-April revisions to the AHCA offering states the options to waive essential benefits and pre-existing condition protection against price discrimination would apply not only to the ObamaCare Exchange and individual marketplace but also to the small group market relevant to firms with 50-100 employees or less, depending on the relevant state regulations.
But even employees of our largest public and private companies could have their current coverage limited or eliminated, as the Wall Street Journal pointed out on the morning the House voted. Under the Obamacare rules now, a big company can choose the benefit package of any state to apply to its employees in all states—a rule that hardly matters while all policies are required to provide the ten essential benefits.
If just one state (as Wisconsin’s governor has already suggested he would consider) chooses to pursue the coverage waivers under the new AHCA, a big company could simply impose this “lowest common insurance denominator” of coverage to all its U.S. employees, unless the current rules are changed (but the ACHA leaves them place). As a further result, the Obamacare ban on lifetime caps on insurance benefits would also be undercut for any insurance coverage remaining after the waivers take effect. If you still think the GOP plan won’t affect you because you have a job with insurance, think again.
Neither the GOP generally, Speaker Ryan and his leadership team, nor President Trump ever campaigned on the platform to “repeal and replace your workplace health care policies.” It surely seems that somebody’s got some explaining to do: the town hall meetings during the current Congressional recess might be a good place to start.
Terry Connelly is an economic expert and dean emeritus of the Ageno School of Business at Golden Gate University.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 12 hours ago.
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