Insuring kids nice, but too expensive, Rick?

Rick Santorum Rejects Obamacare’s Success At ‘Pro-Life’ Event
By Scott Keyes on Dec 15, 2011
Link
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2011/12/15/389859/santorum-rejects-obamacares-success-at-pro-life-event/

At a pro-life event in Iowa yesterday, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum (R) spoke out against new data showing that 2.5 million young adults now have health coverage as a result of the Affordable Care Act. Ignoring the good news, Santorum insisted that health care reform had “failed miserably” by not doing more to bring down costs and said that insurance was “too expensive” to cover young adults.

Asked if he saw any contradiction between attending an event that celebrated life and criticizing the health law for extending health coverage to living people, Santorum replied that he didn’t:

KEYES: Could we get your reaction to the new study that the Affordable Care Act extended coverage to 2.5 million young adults in this country?

SANTORUM: How about the same reaction that’s also caused a dramatic increase in the price of health insurance? In fact, a substantial increase in the cost of health insurance to millions of Americans. It has failed miserably in the one area the president suggested it would have the most impact, which is decreasing the cost of health care in the country. [...]
KEYES: But if we’re at an event though celebrating life, shouldn’t we be pushing to cover more young adults like the Affordable Care Act is doing?

SANTORUM: No. Again, if government had unlimited amounts of money we could cover everybody with all the coverage in the world, but of course we don’t. The objective President Obama sold to the American public was that this would reduce health care costs, make it more affordable, save the government and people money, and thereby expand insurance. It is not doing it in that fashion. It is simply spending more money and wasting more money.

KEYES: So it’s just too expensive to cover the kids?

SANTORUM: It’s too expensive, number one. Number two, it’s the wrong approach in solving health care, which is government-run, top-down and that’s why it’s wasteful and inexpensive.

Despite Santorum’s claims, the government is not financing the coverage expansion; the ACA allows families to keep young adults on their existing health plans until they turn 26. The provision has added more young people to health care risk pools and has had a negligible effect on premiums.

The fact that Santorum dismissed this achievement at a pro-life event demonstrates just how much Republicans are willing to let their dislike for President Obama’s policies shade their judgment of policy outcomes. For years, the Republican Party has fought the perception that they care more about pre-birth fetuses than post-birth humans who are struggling to make ends meet. Santorum’s remarks Wednesday did little to shed that reputation.

Fees or taxes?

Tennessee family home burns while firefighters watch
By Eric Pfeiffer | The Sideshow –

December 6, 2011 LINK

A Tennessee couple helplessly watched their home burn to the ground, along with all of their possessions, because they did not pay a $75 annual fee to the local fire department.

Vicky Bell told the NBC affiliate WPSD-TV that she called 911 when her mobile home in Obion County caught fire. Firefighters arrived on the scene but as the fire raged, they simply stood by and did nothing. "In an emergency, the first thing you think of, 'Call 9-1-1," homeowner Bell said. However, Bell and her husband were forced to walk into the burning home in an attempt to retrieve their own belongings. "You could look out my mom's trailer and see the trucks sitting at a distance," Bell said. "We just wished we could've gotten more out."

South Fulton Mayor David Crocker defended the fire department, saying that if firefighters responded to non-subscribers, no one would have an incentive to pay the fee. Residents in the city of South Fulton receive the service automatically, but it is not extended to those living in the greater county-wide area.

"There's no way to go to every fire and keep up the manpower, the equipment, and just the funding for the fire department," Crocker said.

The South Fulton policy produced precisely the same nightmare scenario last year, when homeowner Gene Cranick--who had likewise failed to pay the $75 annual fee for rural Obion County residents--saw his house engulfed by flames as South Fulton firefighter watched close by. That incident sparked a debate among conservative pundits over the limits of fee-for-service approaches to government. For his part, Mayor Crocker stressed that the city's firefighters will help people in danger, even those who haven't paid the fee.

"After the last situation, I would hope that everybody would be well aware of the rural fire fees, this time," Crocker said

HCR coming through for breast cancer victims

Op-Ed

'Obamacare' to the rescue

A woman who felt President Obama had let the middle class down has changed her mind.

By Spike Dolomite Ward

LA Times LINK

December 6, 2011

I want to apologize to President Obama. But first, some background.

I found out three weeks ago I have cancer. I'm 49 years old, have been married for almost 20 years and have two kids. My husband has his own small computer business, and I run a small nonprofit in the San Fernando Valley. I am also an artist. Money is tight, and we don't spend it frivolously. We're just ordinary, middle-class people, making an honest living, raising great kids and participating in our community, the kids' schools and church.

We're good people, and we work hard. But we haven't been able to afford health insurance for more than two years. And now I have third-stage breast cancer and am facing months of expensive treatment.

To understand how such a thing could happen to a family like ours, I need to take you back nine years to when my husband got laid off from the entertainment company where he'd worked for 10 years. Until then, we had been insured through his work, with a first-rate plan. After he got laid off, we got to keep that health insurance for 18 months through COBRA, by paying $1,300 a month, which was a huge burden on an unemployed father and his family.

By the time the COBRA ran out, my husband had decided to go into business for himself, so we had to purchase our own insurance. That was fine for a while. Every year his business grew. But insurance premiums were steadily rising too. More than once, we switched carriers for a lower rate, only to have them raise rates significantly after a few months.

With the recession, both of our businesses took a huge hit — my husband's income was cut in half, and the foundations that had supported my small nonprofit were going through their own tough times. We had to start using a home equity line of credit to pay for our health insurance premiums (which by that point cost as much as our monthly mortgage). When the bank capped our home equity line, we were forced to cash in my husband's IRA. The time finally came when we had to make a choice between paying our mortgage or paying for health insurance. We chose to keep our house. We made a nerve-racking gamble, and we lost.

Not having insurance amplifies cancer stress. After the diagnosis, instead of focusing all of my energy on getting well, I was panicked about how we were going to pay for everything. I felt guilty and embarrassed about not being insured. When I went to the diagnostic center to pick up my first reports, I was sent to the financial department, where a woman sat me down to talk about resources for "cash patients" (a polite way of saying "uninsured").

"I'm not a deadbeat," I blurted out. "I'm a good person. I have two kids and a house!" The clerk was sympathetic, telling me how even though she worked in the healthcare field, she could barely afford insurance herself.

Although there have been a few people who judged us harshly, most people have been understanding about how this could happen to us. That's given me the courage to "out" myself and my family in hopes that it will educate people who are still lucky enough to have health insurance and view people like my family as irresponsible. We're not. What I want people to understand is that, if this could happen to us, it could happen to anybody.

If you are fortunate enough to still be employed and have insurance through your employers, you may feel insulated from the sufferings of people like me right now. But things can change abruptly. If you still have a good job with insurance, that doesn't mean that you're better than me, more deserving than me or smarter than me. It just means that you are luckier. And access to healthcare shouldn't depend on luck.

Fortunately for me, I've been saved by the federal government's Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan, something I had never heard of before needing it. It's part of President Obama's healthcare plan, one of the things that has already kicked in, and it guarantees access to insurance for U.S. citizens with preexisting conditions who have been uninsured for at least six months. The application was short, the premiums are affordable, and I have found the people who work in the administration office to be quite compassionate (nothing like the people I have dealt with over the years at other insurance companies.) It's not perfect, of course, and it still leaves many people in need out in the cold. But it's a start, and for me it's been a lifesaver — perhaps literally.

Which brings me to my apology. I was pretty mad at Obama before I learned about this new insurance plan. I had changed my registration from Democrat to Independent, and I had blacked out the top of the "h" on my Obama bumper sticker, so that it read, "Got nope" instead of "got hope." I felt like he had let down the struggling middle class. My son and I had campaigned for him, but since he took office, we felt he had let us down.

So this is my public apology. I'm sorry I didn't do enough of my own research to find out what promises the president has made good on. I'm sorry I didn't realize that he really has stood up for me and my family, and for so many others like us. I'm getting a new bumper sticker to cover the one that says "Got nope." It will say "ObamaCares."

Spike Dolomite Ward is the founder and executive director of Arts in Education Aid Council, a nonprofit organization that is restoring the arts to public schools in the San Fernando Valley. http://www.aieac.org

Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times

A cure-all: Strengthen Middle Class

OPINION

Jobs Will Follow a Strengthening of the Middle Class

Bill Marsh/The New York Times
Sources: Robert B. Reich, University of California, Berkeley; "The State of Working America" by the Economic Policy Institute; Thomas Piketty, Paris School of Economics, and Emmanuel Saez, University of California, Berkeley; Census Bureau; Bureau of Labor Statistics; Federal Reserve

By ROBERT B. REICH

Published: September 04, 2011 LINK

Robert B. Reich is the former secretary of labor, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of "Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future."

THE 5 percent of Americans with the highest incomes now account for 37 percent of all consumer purchases, according to the latest research from Moody's Analytics. That should come as no surprise. Our society has become more and more unequal.

When so much income goes to the top, the middle class doesn't have enough purchasing power to keep the economy going without sinking ever more deeply into debt - which, as we've seen, ends badly. An economy so dependent on the spending of a few is also prone to great booms and busts. The rich splurge and speculate when their savings are doing well. But when the values of their assets tumble, they pull back. That can lead to wild gyrations. Sound familiar?

The economy won't really bounce back until America's surge toward inequality is reversed. Even if by some miracle President Obama gets support for a second big stimulus while Ben S. Bernanke's Fed keeps interest rates near zero, neither will do the trick without a middle class capable of spending. Pump-priming works only when a well contains enough water.

Look back over the last hundred years and you'll see the pattern. During periods when the very rich took home a much smaller proportion of total income - as in the Great Prosperity between 1947 and 1977 - the nation as a whole grew faster and median wages surged. We created a virtuous cycle in which an ever growing middle class had the ability to consume more goods and services, which created more and better jobs, thereby stoking demand. The rising tide did in fact lift all boats.

During periods when the very rich took home a larger proportion - as between 1918 and 1933, and in the Great Regression from 1981 to the present day - growth slowed, median wages stagnated and we suffered giant downturns. It's no mere coincidence that over the last century the top earners' share of the nation's total income peaked in 1928 and 2007 - the two years just preceding the biggest downturns.

Starting in the late 1970s, the middle class began to weaken. Although productivity continued to grow and the economy continued to expand, wages began flattening in the 1970s because new technologies - container ships, satellite communications, eventually computers and the Internet - started to undermine any American job that could be automated or done more cheaply abroad. The same technologies bestowed ever larger rewards on people who could use them to innovate and solve problems. Some were product entrepreneurs; a growing number were financial entrepreneurs. The pay of graduates of prestigious colleges and M.B.A. programs - the "talent" who reached the pinnacles of power in executive suites and on Wall Street - soared.

The middle class nonetheless continued to spend, at first enabled by the flow of women into the work force. (In the 1960s only 12 percent of married women with young children were working for pay; by the late 1990s, 55 percent were.) When that way of life stopped generating enough income, Americans went deeper into debt. From the late 1990s to 2007, the typical household debt grew by a third. As long as housing values continued to rise it seemed a painless way to get additional money.

Eventually, of course, the bubble burst. That ended the middle class's remarkable ability to keep spending in the face of near stagnant wages. The puzzle is why so little has been done in the last 40 years to help deal with the subversion of the economic power of the middle class. With the continued gains from economic growth, the nation could have enabled more people to become problem solvers and innovators - through early childhood education, better public schools, expanded access to higher education and more efficient public transportation.

We might have enlarged safety nets - by having unemployment insurance cover part-time work, by giving transition assistance to move to new jobs in new locations, by creating insurance for communities that lost a major employer. And we could have made Medicare available to anyone.

Big companies could have been required to pay severance to American workers they let go and train them for new jobs. The minimum wage could have been pegged at half the median wage, and we could have insisted that the foreign nations we trade with do the same, so that all citizens could share in gains from trade.

We could have raised taxes on the rich and cut them for poorer Americans.

But starting in the late 1970s, and with increasing fervor over the next three decades, government did just the opposite. It deregulated and privatized. It cut spending on infrastructure as a percentage of the national economy and shifted more of the costs of public higher education to families. It shredded safety nets. (Only 27 percent of the unemployed are covered by unemployment insurance.) And it allowed companies to bust unions and threaten employees who tried to organize. Fewer than 8 percent of private-sector workers are unionized.

More generally, it stood by as big American companies became global companies with no more loyalty to the United States than a GPS satellite. Meanwhile, the top income tax rate was halved to 35 percent and many of the nation's richest were allowed to treat their income as capital gains subject to no more than 15 percent tax. Inheritance taxes that affected only the topmost 1.5 percent of earners were sliced. Yet at the same time sales and payroll taxes - both taking a bigger chunk out of modest paychecks - were increased.

Most telling of all, Washington deregulated Wall Street while insuring it against major losses. In so doing, it allowed finance - which until then had been the servant of American industry - to become its master, demanding short-term profits over long-term growth and raking in an ever larger portion of the nation's profits. By 2007, financial companies accounted for over 40 percent of American corporate profits and almost as great a percentage of pay, up from 10 percent during the Great Prosperity.

Some say the regressive lurch occurred because Americans lost confidence in government. But this argument has cause and effect backward. The tax revolts that thundered across America starting in the late 1970s were not so much ideological revolts against government - Americans still wanted all the government services they had before, and then some - as against paying more taxes on incomes that had stagnated. Inevitably, government services deteriorated and government deficits exploded, confirming the public's growing cynicism about government's doing anything right.

Some say we couldn't have reversed the consequences of globalization and technological change. Yet the experiences of other nations, like Germany, suggest otherwise. Germany has grown faster than the United States for the last 15 years, and the gains have been more widely spread. While Americans' average hourly pay has risen only 6 percent since 1985, adjusted for inflation, German workers' pay has risen almost 30 percent. At the same time, the top 1 percent of German households now take home about 11 percent of all income - about the same as in 1970. And although in the last months Germany has been hit by the debt crisis of its neighbors, its unemployment is still below where it was when the financial crisis started in 2007.

How has Germany done it? Mainly by focusing like a laser on education (German math scores continue to extend their lead over American), and by maintaining strong labor unions.

THE real reason for America's Great Regression was political. As income and wealth became more concentrated in fewer hands, American politics reverted to what Marriner S. Eccles, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve, described in the 1920s, when people "with great economic power had an undue influence in making the rules of the economic game." With hefty campaign contributions and platoons of lobbyists and public relations spinners, America's executive class has gained lower tax rates while resisting reforms that would spread the gains from growth.

Yet the rich are now being bitten by their own success. Those at the top would be better off with a smaller share of a rapidly growing economy than a large share of one that's almost dead in the water.

The economy cannot possibly get out of its current doldrums without a strategy to revive the purchasing power of America's vast middle class. The spending of the richest 5 percent alone will not lead to a virtuous cycle of more jobs and higher living standards. Nor can we rely on exports to fill the gap. It is impossible for every large economy, including the United States, to become a net exporter.

Reviving the middle class requires that we reverse the nation's decades-long trend toward widening inequality. This is possible notwithstanding the political power of the executive class. So many people are now being hit by job losses, sagging incomes and declining home values that Americans could be mobilized.

Moreover, an economy is not a zero-sum game. Even the executive class has an enlightened self-interest in reversing the trend; just as a rising tide lifts all boats, the ebbing tide is now threatening to beach many of the yachts. The question is whether, and when, we will summon the political will. We have summoned it before in even bleaker times.

As the historian James Truslow Adams defined the American Dream when he coined the term at the depths of the Great Depression, what we seek is "a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone."

That dream is still within our grasp.

Socialism v Social Democrat

LINK

Socialism vs Social Democracy — What’s The Difference?

By Coronare Modestus Faust

It’s very interesting living in the United States, where democracy came into its modern existence… but where its expression is also most truncated.

Americans are politically aware of only two political/economic dimensions: Republican or Democrat; Conservative or Liberal; Right or Left; Capitalist or Socialist; Big Government or Small Government; Free-Market or Communist…

We are politically poorer for it and, hence, less respectful of nuanced but significant differences in perspective, less respectful of other alternatives to the current political structure…. and therefore, afford ourselves less opportunity for new solutions to solve our varied and serious problems.

I am almost constantly defending myself against the accusation of being a “Socialist” — an insult in America — when what I am is far from it. But even so, what is wrong with one supporting a socialist perspective? Or a Libertarian perspective? Nothing. Neither is a perspective that I maintain, but they’re certainly valid for anyone else if this is indeed a free society of democratic values and expression.

And, if that is true, why are these other perspectives not proportionally represented in the United States government through our elected branches? And, now we’re back to where we started and where our political expression is truncated.

So, let me shed some light on the nuanced but significant difference between Socialism and Social Democracy…. between a Socialist and a Social Democrat (distinctions and movements quite well understood everywhere outside the United States).

Socialism vs Social Democracy — What’s The Difference?

• One is about collective ownership of the means of production;
• the other about organic social solidarity with private ownership of production.

• One is restrictive;
• the other libertarian.

• One is metaphysical (excessively abstract reasoning);
• the other empirical (demonstrable, verifiable reasoning).

• One is dogmatic;
• the other scientific.

• One is emotional;
• the other reflective.

• One is destructive;
• the other constructive.

• Both are in pursuit of the greatest possible welfare for all.

– One aims to establish happiness for all;

– the other to enable each to be happy in one’s own way.

• The first regards the State as a society “sui generis,” of a unique essence, the product of a right outside of and above all society, with special rights and able to exact special obediences;
• the second considers the State as an association like any other, generally managed no better and no more efficient than others.

• The first proclaims the sovereignty of the State;
• the second recognizes no sort of sovereign.

• One wishes all monopolies to be held by the State;
• the other wishes the abolition of all monopolies.

• One wishes the governed class to become the governing class;
• the other wishes the disappearance of classes.

• Both declare that the existing state of things cannot last.

– The first considers revolutions as the indispensable agent of evolutions;

– the second teaches that repression alone turns political evolutions into revolution.

• The first has faith in a cataclysm;
• the second knows that social progress will result from the free play of individual efforts.

• One wishes that there should be none but proletariats;
• the other wishes that there should be no more proletariats.

• The first wishes to take everything away from everybody;
• the second wishes to leave each in possession of its own.

• The one wishes to expropriate everybody;
• the other wishes everybody to be a proprietor.

• The first says: Do as the government wishes;
• the second says: Do as you wish yourself.

• The former threatens with despotism;
• the latter promises liberty.

• The former makes the citizen the subject of the State;
• the latter makes the State the employee of the citizen.

• One proclaims that labor pains will be necessary to the birth of a new world;
• the other declares that real progress will not cause suffering to any one.

• The first has confidence in social war;
• the other believes only in works of peace.

• One aspires to command, to regulate, to legislate;
• the other wishes to attain the minimum of command, of regulation, of legislation.

• One would be followed by the most atrocious of reactions;
• the other opens unlimited horizons to progress.

• The first will fail;
• the other will succeed.

• One desires equality; the other seeks equity.

– The first by lowering heads that are too high;

– the other by raising heads that are too low.

• One sees equality under a common yoke;
• the other will secure equity in complete liberty.

• One is intolerant;
• the other tolerant.

• One frightens;
• the other reassures.

• The first wishes to instruct everybody;
• the second wishes to enable everybody to instruct one’s self.

• The first wishes to support everybody;
• the second wishes to enable everybody to support one’s self.

• One says:

– The land to the State

– The mine to the State

– The tool to the State

– The product to the State

• The other says:

– The land to the cultivator.

– The mine to the miner.

– The tool to the laborer.

– The product to the producer.

• One is the infancy of Socialism;
• the other is its manhood.

• One is already the past;
• the other is the future.

• One will give way to the other…

Based upon the writing of ~ Ernest Lesigne – Liberty V, 10 (December 17, 1887), No. 114, p. 5.