And again

A study of Congressional Budget Office data by a respected MIT economist finds that the Senate health care bill will save consumers money. The new study found savings of $200 on health insurance premiums for single folks and savings of $500 for a family of four in 2009 dollars once the new plans become available. Savings would be significantly more for lower income people because they would receive tax credits to help pay for premiums. These savings come on top of more generous benefits packages that will be available through the exchanges along with protections against losing coverage and against not being able to find coverage due to pre-existing conditions.

You can bet that Republicans will continue the false drumbeat of higher costs, but then we all know that Republicans don’t believe in science in the first place and would rather you just go ahead and die.

Republicans, wrong…again

A recent poll found that 90% of Canadians support, or somewhat support the Canadian health care system. The Canadian Institute for Research on Public Policy found that while the Canadian system may not be perfect, they want to keep what they have and Canadians praise President Obama for trying to reform the U.S. system. The poll found that 61% of Canadians think that the best thing about their system is that it is free and available to everyone while only 33% criticized the wait times for treatment. That doesn’t sound at all like what we are hearing from the right in this country at every opportunity.

Another poll by the same organization found that seven in ten Canadians are not at all worried, or not very worried about the H1N1 flu virus and most feel that Ottawa is doing an adequate job of distributing the vaccine. I wonder what those numbers would look like in the U.S.?

Denny the Dodger

Back in July, Denny Rehberg signed the Let Freedom Ring, “Responsible Healthcare Reform Pledge“. He pledged to not vote to enact any health care reform legislation that he has not read personally in it’s entirity and that has not been available on the internet for at least 72 hours. The good news is, that Denny has read the entire 1,990 page House health care bill that was released on Thursday. Since he left Washington almost immediately for an “emergency meeting” in Billings yesterday, we can only assume that he read the bill on the plane.

We know that he has read the entire bill, because he released a line-by-line critique to the folks at the Billings meeting. He could not, of course, have such a depth of knowledge of the bill unless he had read the whole thing. The fact that his bullet points almost exactly match those of Rush Limbaugh was surely just a coincidence.

Yes, this is the same Denny Rehberg whose brilliant legislative career includes sponsoring 25 bills, zero of which have made it into law ranking him 37th out of 440 members according to OpenCongress. Three of the 118 bills that he co-sponsored have made it into law and he votes 90% of the time with Republicans. I can’t imagine where the other 10% goes. He still wants to take a 30-day vacation before even thinking about health care. I guess it gives him a headache.

I drilled a bit deeper at the OnTheIssues website. Here’s where your Congressman stands;

• Rated 0% by NARAL, indicating a pro-life voting record. (Dec 2003)
• Rated 100% by the NRLC, indicating a pro-life stance. (Dec 2006)
• Rated 21% by the ACLU, indicating an anti-civil rights voting record. (Dec 2002)
• Rated 0% by the HRC, indicating an anti-gay-rights stance. (Dec 2006)
• Rated 31% by the NAACP, indicating an anti-affirmative-action stance. (Dec 2006)
• Rated 25% by the NEA, indicating anti-public education votes. (Dec 2003)
• Rated 0% by the CAF, indicating opposition to energy independence. (Dec 2006)
• Rated 0% by the LCV, indicating anti-environment votes. (Dec 2003)
• Rated 11% by APHA, indicating a anti-public health voting record. (Dec 2003)
• Rated 7% by the AFL-CIO, indicating an anti-union voting record. (Dec 2003)
• Rated 10% by the ARA, indicating an anti-senior voting record. (Dec 2003)
• Rated 0% by the AU, indicating opposition to church-state separation. (Dec 2006)

That’s pretty much Denny in a nutshell. We report, you vote.

Snowe Job

It’s come down to this. Democrats can’t stop two of their own from actively signing on to the Republican agenda so, we once again are willing to pay the price of letting more people die so a single Republican, Olympia Snowe, will play nice. President Obama is now actively courting Snowe by pushing her “trigger” idea for the public option. 4&20 Blackbirds did an excellent job this morning of skewering the trigger idea, but I would like to expand a bit on the numbers.

Last month, the Bugle expounded on the trigger option with several reasons why it is a bad idea and probably won’t work. The basic idea of the Snowe trigger option is that when 95% of a state’s residents can’t get decent health insurance coverage at an affordable rate, a public option plan would be triggered on a state-by-state basis. That’s not 95% of insured people, it’s “95% of state residents.” In Montana, that means that just over 900,000 Montanans could get screwed by their insurance providers before a public option would be triggered. If insurance rates reach the 95% plateau, the first thing that happens is that insurance companies get the opportunity to lower the screwing rate to 94.99% to avoid the option.What do you reckon they will do?

Affordability is determined based on a sliding scale from 3% to 300% of the Federal Poverty Level, reaching 13% of your income at the 300% of FPL. Using 2006 Census data, median household income for Montana is $43,531. Using the affordability criteria, that family could pay $5,660 annually or about $472 per month for health insurance at the 13% threshold. jhwygirl correctly says that most Montanans are paying less than that currently. The Snowe amendment determines your income “after deducting any available tax credit or employer subsidy from the cost of such premium“. You may get a tax credit and you probably receive an employer subsidy, but let’s look at that a bit closer. An “employer subsidy” is the amount if money that is being deducted from your pay so that your employer can pay part of your health insurance. If insurance rates declined, presumably you would get a pay increase. A tax credit is only a percentage of what you paid out.

With a trigger option, insurance companies would know exactly the maximum premium they could charge. If a trigger level is actually reached in Montana, the insurance companies are first given the opportunity to lower rates ever so slightly. To meet the threshold, they could lower rates on one sector, such as young, healthy people and leave the elderly and poor paying higher rates. If they can’t do that, a state-level public option is instituted. It has to compete with Blue Cross, which now controls 75% of the Montana market. The whole idea of a robust public option is that you would have a pool of millions of people who could negotiate rates with health care providers. Montana is a very small market and providers would not be willing to negotiate significantly lower rates for such a small pool. Insurance companies would be able to charge more in one part of Montana and less somewhere else and still meet the trigger threshold while many people continue to pay exorbitant rates.

The trigger idea is bad on so many levels I could go on forever. The only viable answer is a strong, robust public insurance option on a national level to actually force insurance companies to compete. Holding Americans hostage to the vote of one or two Republicans or Democrats is just out and out wrong. Take a vote. We need to see if Ben Nelson or Blanche Lincoln, or other Democrats will actively sign on to the Republican agenda to bring down the most important advancement in American health in decades. If they do, they will pay the consequences, but they should not be allowed to hold the life of every American hostage to corporate lobbyists.

Failure to launch

I love this! Jonathan Karl at ABC News reported yesterday that

Democratic sources tell me that Reid – after a series of meetings with Democratic moderates – has concluded he can pass a bill with a public option.

That’s certainly good news. It’s possible that this is really just a trial balloon to see if they can get moderates on board, but there seems to be somewhat of a groundswell.  jhwygirl over at 4&20 Blackbirds is reporting on a new CNN poll that shows support for a public health insurance option at 61% and growing.

What was so great about the ABC reporting was this quote;

I am told that Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) – who worked for months to get Olympia Snowe’s support for the bill and has consistently said a public option cannot pass the Senate – was apoplectic when Reid told him he wanted to include the public option.  “Baucus went to DEFCON 1,” said a source familiar with the negotiations, referring to the alert level the military uses for an imminent attack on the homeland.

Har! Oh, to be a fly on the wall. I can just picture Max climbing the curtains. After all the work he did to placate his corporate overlords. He gave the insurance industry everything they wanted and they hit back with phony data and reports. Now this, which would be the final insult. In an update this morning, Max tried to make nice,

“From the moment he recommended a public option in his white paper nearly a year ago, Senator Baucus has made clear he would support a public option or any other mechanism to ensure choice, competition and get the 60 votes needed to pass the Senate,” said Baucus spokesman Scott Mulhauser.

Yeah, right! I’m sure that Max will follow the leadership on this one, he usually does, but you might want to console him and send him a polite note to let him know that Montanans will support his belated vote on a public option. Let’s get Max back down to code yellow.

Max Baucus  contact page or phone toll free 800-332-6106 or fax 202-228-1493

It’s Health CARE

Christina Turner was drugged and brutally raped. Fearing that she may have been exposed to HIV, her doctor recommended that she undergo treatment with anti-AIDS drugs. Fortunately, she never developed HIV. Months later, she lost her health insurance and discovered that the preventative treatment had morphed into a pre-existing condition and she could not get health coverage.

Peggy Robertson was in perfect health. When she applied for health insurance she found that she was not qualified because she had previously given birth by Caesarean section. She was told that had she been sterilized, she might possibly have qualified.

Bill Caudle lost his job and along with it his health insurance coverage. His wife Michelle was undergoing treatment for ovarian cancer, a pre-existing condition, that precluded getting any insurance coverage. Bill’s solution was to join the Army at the age of 39 in order to get health insurance and to care for his family.

We’ve heard these stories daily for months now and there never seems to be a shortage. If your baby is too large, you can’t have health insurance. If your baby is too small, you can’t get coverage. How do you get access to the health care system in this nation if you are denied? Going on the NBC “Today Show” worked for the Bates family. Their beautiful baby girl will now get health care. Bernie Lange is a news anchor on a small market TV station. He was able to use his journalistic contacts to point out the utter senselesness of denying care to his baby. Baby Alex was able to beat the system. Unfortunately, that is not the case for the vast majority of those who are denied the care that they need to stay alive. If you are not allowed to participate, you will have a 40% higher chance of early death. You may be forced to join the 45,000 of your friends and neighbors who die each year not because they are denied care, but because they are denied access to care. If you are healthy, you are allowed to join the club. If you are sick, that is if you NEED health care, you are asked to go bankrupt and die quietly.

How did we come to a point where we can ignore the second word in the phrase “Health Care“? Just when did we allow the gatekeepers, who we allow to be immune to federal regulation, to decide that only those who don’t need care will be allowed to participate in our health care system? Why do we no longer care? Republicans think it is about corporate profits. Max Baucus thinks it’s about 60 votes. It’s about your friends and neighbors, who are dying because we, the American people, won’t allow them to participate.

I want everyone who thinks this system is broken to raise your right hand. Thank you. Now the rest of you can just sit down and shut up! We will fix this insane system without your help and we’ll let you know when we are finished.

The real cost of coal

As Congress moves haltingly forward with health care and energy reforms, the National Research Council has released a very interesting peer-reviewed report on the Hidden Health and Environmental Costs of Energy Production and Consumption.

The report, done for the Department of Energy, examines the “hidden costs” of energy, such as the damage done to human health through air and water pollution. Not all societal costs are reflected in market prices. Based on 2005 numbers, the report was able to quantify about $120 billion in extra costs, mainly health damage, associated with electricity generation and motor vehicles. These are costs that don’t show up in energy prices, but actually amount to the early death and added health costs for thousands of Americans every year. Total early deaths due to indirect energy costs were estimated at 18,000-19,000 per year. These costs do not include damages from climate change, national security risks, or the direct effects of some pollutants.

In 2005, the report found that annual damages from coal-fired electricity amounted to just over half, or $62 billion. Damages were due mainly to the health effects of air pollutants such as, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, ozone and particulates from 406 coal-fired power plants which produce 95% of the nations coal-generated electricity. Costs are about 3.2 cents for every kilowatt-hour of energy produced. Coal plants also emit about a ton of CO2 per megawatt-hour of electricity.

Other electricity-producing sources show slightly less nonclimate damage. Natural gas is responsible for $740 million in damage each year. Nuclear power produces just over 20% of our electricity and produces little direct damage, but the report points out that many risks are borne by other nations as we mine only about 5% of the world’s uranium. Potential risks of long-term storage of radioactive waste could not be quantified in this report.

Nonclimate and health damages generated by motor vehicles amounted to about $56 billion per year. Operation of the vehicles accounted for less than one-third of the damages. Most of the damages came from mining and drilling the fuel. Nonclimate damage per vehicle-mile traveled ranged 1.2 to 1.7 cents per mile. Damages from corn-grain ethanol were similar or greater than gasoline because of the energy needed to produce the corn. Interestingly enough, electric and hybrid vehicles showed somewhat higher nonclimate damages. These vehicles produce little or no emissions, but the power used to produce the electricity to charge the batteries is heavily reliant on fossil fuels. Damage due to energy produced for manufacturing the batteries and electric motors accounts for about 20% of the life-cycle damage.

One final note; nonclimate and health damages due to the use of diesel fuels produced by converting coal using the Fischer-Tropsch process was one of the dirtiest ways to make vehicle fuel and produced the highest life-cycle amount of greenhouse gases. Governor Schweitzer would like to build a Fischer-Tropsch plant to produce diesel fuel from the coal in the Otter Creek tracts in southeastern Montana.

The report estimates that their numbers represent a minimum cost due to nonclimate damage because many factors could not be evaluated due to lack of data. Coal remains the dirtiest way we can produce electricity and this report only points out that we pay considerably more than the per-ton price that we pay for our dirty fuel. Large advertising campaigns about “Clean Coal” and all the energy company hype don’t make it any cleaner and won’t save any lives. Moving away from dirty energy sources will not only save money in the long run, it will save lives.

What’s not to like?

Cripes! What happened? I took a few days off to visit some relatives down in Mormondom and I came back to winter! What is this, Montana?

I see by an article in the Missoulian this morning that the Montana health insurance cabal is positioning itself for passage of the Baucus Boondoggle. They certainly have nothing to complain about. “After all, it does mandate that everyone in America eventually buy their product, or pay monetary penalties.” And not only that, if you can’t afford the mandated coverage, the rest of us taxpayers will cheerfully chip in and pay for your insurance with subsidies.

That of course doesn’t mean that insurers won’t still work the bill even more to their advantage. With the new bill “Premiums will go up and people are going to be angry and upset...” says David Kibbe, CEO of New West Health Services. Of course it’s not their fault that health insurance will cost more. It’s the damn government. On the individual mandate, Frank Cote, spokesman for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Montana states,”The fear of any insurer is if the mandate is not strong enough, then the new mix of insured will be mostly unhealthy people – and that will increase the cost of insurance.” And of course, the insurance lobbyists have seen to it that the mandate is about as weak as they can make it. Insurance companies won’t be able to deny or cancel health insurance because of a pre-existing condition. That’s a good thing for us, but of course it “…will increase the cost of insurance for everyone.“  Companies can only charge older consumers four times as much as everyone else? Well, that’s certainly going to “drive up the price more for younger customers.” A new tax on “Cadillac Health Plans”? You know the insurance companies won’t stand for that “…thus further increasing the cost of insurance policies.” Jeepers! It sounds to me like, if we didn’t have this “government-run health care” between us and our friendly insurance companies, premium prices would drop like a rock.

Yesterday, Jim Hightower jumped all over our own Max Baucus and his health care bill;

“Take Max Baucus. Please! He’s the lightweight Montana Democrat to whom President Obama entrusted the heavy job of shepherding health care reform through the upper chamber. It was like asking Tweety Bird to lift a bowling ball.“

Ouch! Now that’s harsh, but I have to say that I can only agree. After having a tailored bill written by the former vice president of public policy for Wellpoint, the country’s largest health insurance provider, who replaced a staffer who went to work for Wellpoint as a lobbyist… Max gets really irked if anyone insuates that he is in any way influenced by the more than $3 million he was paid contributed to his campaign coffers by the health industry. That didn’t stop Hightower from jumping all over him,

“To explain such spectacular servitude to the special interests by a Democrat who should be expected to stand for the interests of ordinary folks, the milquetoast chairman simply stated that his goal was to produce a bill that could win the industry’s support and get the 60 votes needed to overcome a Republican filibuster.

That’s his goal? If the meek ever inherit the earth, Baucus will be a land baron!”

“It was not so long ago that Montana sent people like Mike Mansfield and Lee Metcalf to the U.S. Senate — real Democrats of stature who didn’t suck up to lobbyists and run scared of Republicans. One has to ask: Is Baucus really from Montana?

Sorry Max. Sorry that it took somebody from Texas to put our feelings into words.

Baucus Boondoggle Escapes Committee

Sadly, following President Obama’s half-hearted support of a public option and now the release of the Baucus Boondoggle, I’m beginning to think that the Onion got it right.

Congress Deadlocked Over How To Not Provide Health Care

The Onion provides an apt and insightful quote from Senator Harry Reid,

“People should know that every day we are working without their best interests in mind,” Reid said. “But the goal here is not to push through some watered-down bill that only denies health care to a few Americans here and a few Americans there. The goal is to recognize that all Americans have a God-given right to proper medical attention and then make sure there’s no chance in hell that ever happens.“

The Baucus bill comes with,

• No public option
• No employer mandate
• Neutered State Co-ops
• Higher costs for older people
• Lots of words about illegal aliens and abortion
• $3,800 penalty for choosing not to play
• Zero Republican support

About the only thing good about the Baucus bill is that there is finally a bill. Now we can go to mark-up, amendment and a conference committee to replace all the stuff Baucus frittered away

Health premium costs jumped 5% this year while the economy tanked and 10% of us were unemployed. Let’s get to work and fix this piece of c**p.