Posts tagged with 'sebelius'
Weekly Pulse: Key Dems Back Public Health Insurance Option
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The chairs of five key congressional committees have finalized a plan for healthcare reform, and their blueprint includes a critical public option. The chairs’ decision to support government-administered health insurance for everyone who wants it is sure to attract ferocious opposition from both the insurance industry and its patrons in the GOP.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) also put single-payer healthcare on the agenda by introducing the American Health Security Act (AHSA) of 2009. John Nichols of The Nation describes the bill as an important piece of legislation. If AHSA became law, it would create a federal health insurance system administered by the states. The insurance program would give patients an unlimited choice of doctors and hospitals because their insurance would cover them everywhere. The proposed program would be financed by redirecting current healthcare spending and supplementing the total with a modest tax increase that would cost most consumers less than their current health insurance premiums.
As Ezra Klein of TAPPED explains in his public insurance primer, single payer healthcare is a step beyond the public option. Under single payer, the government is the sole supplier of health insurance, whereas, under the public option, consumers are allowed to choose public or private insurance. Public insurance will be cheaper and more comprehensive because the government will be able to use its vast bargaining power to lower prices. Also, U.S. government administered health insurance plans like Medicare and SCHIP consistently spend a smaller portion of their budgets on administrative costs than private insurers. Republican Congressional leaders are opposed to the public option because they fear that the private insurance industry won’t be able to compete with government-administered insurance.
Dave Weigel, the Washington Independent’s crack conservatologist, interviewed Rick Scott, the founder and principle funder of Conservatives for Patients Rights. CPR has been running ads nationwide warning that Obama is plotting a government takeover of healthcare. Scott also resigned from Colombia/RCA, a for profit-hospital corporation, in the middle of a $1.7 billion fraud investigation. Weigel asked Scott if he was concerned that his past might color public perceptions of his current healthcare advocacy:
TWI: People can still say, “Look, this was the guy who resigned in the biggest fraud settlement in American history.”
RICK SCOTT: But, you know, we were the biggest company. If you go back and look at the hospital industry, and the whole health care industry since the mid-1990s, it was basically constantly going through investigations. Great institutions, like ours, paid fines. It was too bad.
With all the talk about healthcare reform, it’s easy to forget that there’s more to health than insurance or the medical care it can provide. Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! explored the bigger picture with Dr. Steven Bezruchka, a public health scientist who studies how inequality itself makes us sick.
Yesterday, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius had her first Senate confirmation hearing yesterday for the post of Secretary of Health and Human Services. As Emily Douglas of RH Reality Check notes, last week, Sebelius signed a bill into Kansas law that would force women to undergo medically unnecessary ultrasounds before obtaining abortions. The normally pro-choice Sebelius probably signed the bill to dodge controversy before her confirmation hearing, according to Dana Goldstein of TAPPED.
Agit prop ultrasounds are a favorite tool of anti-choice activists, who claim that the sight of the sonogram is necessary to informed consent. But women have been making decisions about abortions without sonogram assistance since the beginning of civilization. In practice, the ultrasounds are just another obstacle that anti-choicers throw in the path of abortion providers. It’s disconcerting that Sebelius was willing to sign a frivolous law to ease her own confirmation.
RH Reality Check’s Kay Steiger offers a first hand account of Sebelius’s first day of confirmation hearings. The governor said she supports a public option for health insurance and opposes conscience clauses for healthcare providers who seek to deny women abortion and contraception on religious grounds.
Finally, members of Congress are engaged in last minute wrangling prior to a vote on Obama’s budget. Democrats may try to use the budget reconciliation process to put healthcare reform to the Senate in a filibuster-proof format. (Due to an obscure rule, the Senate can pass a budget reconciliation with a simple majority, but only if the provisions in the budget are deemed to relate directly to spending and revenue.) Brian Beutler of Talking Points Memo reports that Congressional Republicans are vehemently denouncing the reconciliation option. Surprise, surprise.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care. Visit Healthcare.NewsLadder.net for a complete list of articles on healthcare affordability, healthcare laws, and healthcare controversy. And for the best progressive reporting on the ECONOMY, and IMMIGRATION, check out, Immigration.NewsLadder.net and Economy.NewsLadder.net.
This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and created by NewsLadder.
Weekly Pulse: Not in Kansas Anymore: Sebelius Tapped to Lead HHS
By Lindsay Beyerstein, TMC MediaWire blogger
The Obama administration unveiled two major nominations on Monday: Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius for Secretary of Health and Human Services and Nancy-Ann DeParle for health czar. The czar is responsible for shepherding healthcare reform legislation through Congress and the Secretary will be responsible for implementing the plan.
Correlation doesn’t necessarily imply causation, but we’d like to remind everyone that In These Times floated Sebelius’ name for HHS in September of 2008; Ramon Castellblanch wrote:
Three major obstacles face the next secretary. One, tens of millions of Americans lack health insurance. Two, any attempt to deal with this crisis will result in the private insurance industry—and its lobbyists—swooping in to turn policy changes into a windfall for itself. And three, for eight years, the department has been crippled by low morale and staff departures caused by Bush administration mismanagement. The next secretary must have the ability to help undo this damage.
Castellblanch argued at the time that Sebelius was the right person for the job because of her executive experience as governor, her knowledge of the insurance industry, and her strong progressive values.
Julie Burkhart of RH Reality Check writes of Sebelius’ record as governor, “[Gov. Sebelius] has been a tireless advocate for expanded health care for pregnant women, for comprehensive and medically accurate sexual education and for more accommodating adoption statutes.”
Naturally, the right wing hates the Sebelius nomination because of the governor’s strong pro-choice record, but there doesn’t seem to be much they can do about it.
Anti-abortion groups are insinuating that Sebelius is a close ally of Dr. George Tiller, a Kansas physician who performs late-term abortions. Operation Rescue has tried unsuccessfully to shut down his clinic for years, making Dr. Tiller the White Whale of the Kansas anti-abortion movement. The alleged smoking gun is the revelation that Sebelius invited Tiller to the governor’s mansion for dinner. As Ezra Klein points out in the American Prospect, Tiller and his staff did dine with Sebelius, but only because they placed the winning bid at fundraising auction.
Burckhart reports in RH Reality that the Speaker of the Kansas House, Mike O’Neal, introduced two anti-choice bills on Tuesday in an attempt to embarrass the governor on abortion. Presumably, he hopes to force Sebelius to veto the bills before her confirmation hearing.
Senators Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts of Kansas, both conservative Republicans, have pledged to support Sebelius. Brownback says abortion is murder. So, it might seem odd that he’s supporting the ardently pro-choice Sebelius. Once again, home state boosterism triumphs over the “rights of the unborn.” Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly concludes that Sebelius’ confirmation is all but assured: If Operation Rescue can’t even pick up Sam Brownback, the religious right doesn’t have the political muscle to sustain a serious senate fight.
The liberal group Catholics United is also supporting Sebelius, Sarah Hepola reports in Salon.
As governor, Sebelius proposed that the state provide health insurance for every uninsured child in Kansas from birth to age five. In 2008, Jonathan Stein of Mother Jones praised Gov. Sebelius for vetoing a voter-disenfranchising ID law and nixing unhealthy coal-fired power plants.
Sebelius’s record as a reform-minded insurance commissioner may provide a preview of coming attractions at HHS. Sebelius served as commissioner from 1995 to 2002. As a candidate, she signalled her independence by refusing campaign contributions from the insurance industry. As insurance commissioner, Sebelius backed a number of pro-consumer reforms for health insurance including a patient’s bill of rights, mandated maternity coverage, and enhanced privacy protections. Sebelius also blocked a proposed merger of Kansas’ non-profit health insurance company, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, by a for-profit company because the deal would have increased insurance premiums and forced hospitals to turn away patients who couldn’t pay. The insurance companies fought Sebelius all the way to the Supreme Court and lost.
Obama’s pick for health czar, Nancy-Ann DeParle, is a health policy veteran from the Clinton administration. Matt Cooper of Talking Points Memo notes that she is married to New York Times reporter Jason DeParle.
Nancy-Ann DeParle currently works for a private venture capital firm and serves on the boards of various medical device companies. There was speculation that the Obama administration might scrap the health czar post alltoghether after former Sen. Tom Daschle was forced to abandon his confirmation bid when his income tax irregularities came to light. Ezra Klein writes in the Prospect that DeParle seems like an odd choice given the health czar’s portfolio as the president’s top liaison to Congress on health care reform:
DeParle must, of course, resign from the boards of medical device companies before she takes the job. According to the Obama administration, DeParle’s recent affiliations present no conflict of interest—time will tell whether that assertion bears up under scrutiny.
On the whole, Sebelius and DeParle are two strong picks to advance Barack Obama’s health care reform agenda. If confirmed, these two nominees will bring energy and experience to the fight.
Weekly Pulse: Czar 44, Where are You?
Weekly Pulse: Czar 44, Where are You?
By Lindsay Beyerstein, TMC MediaWire blogger
The Obama administration may be about to pull the plug on the health czar. The position has gone unfilled since Obama’s appointee-apparent, former Sen. Tom Daschle, withdrew his name from consideration for both czar and Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) in early February. Several serious candidates are emerging in the unofficial race to lead HHS, but there’s no corresponding shortlist for health czar.
The czar and his Office of Health Reform were initially touted as proof that Obama was really serious about shepherding a health reform package through Congress. But the Obama team may ultimately decide that the Office of Health Reform is an obstacle instead of an asset without Daschle and ditch it altogether.
As Erza Klein explains in the American Prospect, the position was created especially for Daschle and any other candidate might be worse than nothing as far as passing a healthcare reform package goes. Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly agrees, and says that nixing the health czar doesn’t necessarily indicate that the Obama administration is any less committed to healthcare reform.
The purpose of the health czar was to create a single emissary to represent President Obama’s healthcare agenda to Congress. When the Clintons tried to reform healthcare in 1993, they discovered that various powerful administration officials were claiming to speak for the president.
The health czar was supposed to prevent future confusion as the president’s spokesperson. Many senior healthcare officials are already close to Obama and a similar situation could arise. Daschle would have been a credible health czar because he’s closer to the president than any of them, and a former congressional heavyweight to boot. Gov. Kathleen Sebelius is a front-runner for HHS secretary and she has a very good relationship with Obama. But Gov. Sebelius is a Washington outsider who has never served in the U.S. Congress, which might make her a less compelling candidate for czar.
Ezra Klein, linked above, argues that if nobody can fill Daschle’s shoes, appointing a less compelling czar might just add to the din of executive branch officials vying for the attention of key Congressional leaders.
Maybe it’s a good idea to send as many Obama health officials to Congress as possible. If nothing else, they might cut into time the reps are currently spending with health insurance industry lobbyists, as Talking Points Memo reports.
Speaking of contenders for Secretary of Health and Human Services, Gov. Howard Dean recently published an article on AlterNet defending Obama’s comparative effectiveness research (CER) agenda against right wing critics like Rush Limbaugh. Dean draws on his experience as a doctor and a healthcare policy-maker to argue that CER is a way to put more scientific evidence in the hands of doctors, so they can choose the very best treatment for the money. Right wingers don’t like the idea. They’re literally afraid that if science determines that a treatment is bogus, the government will stop paying for it. Right wingers calls this “rationing.” Taxpayers might call it evidence-based policy. Last we checked, Medicare and Medicaid were not faith-based programs.
As Dean points out, the CER to be funded by the new economic stimulus bill is officially for doctors, not legislators. “Mr. Limbaugh and his cohorts would have you believe that this research will be used to deny needed care to your great Aunt May and be run by the politburo. But the Bill passed by Congress states right up front that the Government can not make coverage decisions based on this research,” Dean wrote. Realistically, though, that’s kind of a hollow assurance. Once the research is done, there’s no way to stop legislators from using publicly available research findings to make healthcare decisions.
In another corner of the healthcare reform-o-sphere, Katrina vanden Heuvel says that time is right to reform New York’s draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws in The Nation. These laws have been on the books 35 years. The laws essentially force judges to send drug possessors to jail based on the weight of the drugs they were caught with, whether the judge thinks imprisonment would be a good idea or not. New York’s budget crisis might be a blessing in disguise for drug reform, vanden Heuvel argues, because policy-makers are sick of paying to keep drug offenders locked up whether they need it or not.
And finally, some good news from RH Reality Check. Many people just wouldn’t feel right stepping out without a spritz of perfume, a blast of breath-freshener, or regrettably, a head-to-toe shellacking with Axe Body Spray. As Joe Veix reports for RH, another spray-on product may one day be added to the essential equipment list: contraceptive. An Australian company is currently testing a hormone spritz for women. The product is applied to the forearm. Like the contraceptive patch, the spray is designed to deliver hormones through the skin. Researchers hope that through-the-skin delivery can produce the same results as pills, but with lower doses of hormones and fewer side effects.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care. Visit
href=”http://healthcare.newsladder.net/” title=”Healthcare.NewsLadder.net” id=”so75″>Healthcare.NewsLadder.net for a complete list of articles on healthcare affordability, healthcare laws, and healthcare controversy. And for the best progressive reporting on the ECONOMY, and IMMIGRATION, check out, <a href=”http://economy.newsladder.net/”>Immigration.NewsLadder.net and Economy.NewsLadder.net.
This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and created by NewsLadder.