UPDATE: Cao is taking a "fresh look" at the language to determine if he can support the bill. Give his offices a call:
Washington, D.C.: (202) 225-6636
New Orleans: (504) 483-2325
Now that there seems to be a final bill that we can all look at, we can finally talk about what the bill, if passed, would mean for the citizens of LA-02, the site of what will be a spirited challenge to Rep. Joseph Cao (R), who, at press time, has pledged to vote NAY on the health care bill in the House when it comes to a vote in the next week.
That being said, let's see what the bill means for the folks living in LA-02, which was prepared by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and was done for all 435 districts in the nation:
Improve coverage for 186,000 residents with health insurance.
Give tax credits & other assistance to up to 102,000 families and 11,100 small businesses to help them afford coverage.
Improve Medicare for 61,000 beneficiaries, including closing the donut hole.
Extend coverage to 59,500 uninsured residents.
Guarantee that 12,600 residents with pre-existing conditions can obtain coverage.
Protect 400 families from bankruptcy due to unaffordable health care costs.
Allow 42,000 young adults to obtain coverage on their parents' insurance plans.
Provide millions of dollars in new funding for 19 community health centers.
Reduce the cost of uncompensated care for hospitals and other health care providers by $61 million annually.
And Congressman Cao wants to kill this bill because it allows women to buy health insurance that provides abortion coverage with their own money?
All I hear lately from the FOX News broadcasts is about how the country is opposed to health care reform. Granted, there are quite a few polls out there that show more folks (but not a majority) oppose the current health care bills being debated in Congress. But none of those polls ask the obvious follow-up question: Are you opposed to the bills because they don't go far enough, or because you're opposed to health care reform overall?
So, 37% of 535 folks is 197.95, so let's round that up to 198. Add those 198 to the folks that said they favored the reforms being discussed in Congress, and you have a majority of 59% supporting health care reform (and that's the same whether you rounded the 197.95 up or down).
When will folks like the Spinning Sinning Senator David Vitter get that? Oh, wait, he's part of the GOP caucus that a majority of the country believes is opposing the bill simply for the sake of denying President Obama a victory on one of his campaign promises:
We've got some folks protesting our very own Congressman Bill Cassidy's seeming indifference to health care reform, as he continually pans the Democrat's health care reform bill, which will bring health care to another 30 million people. That's right ... 30,000,000 people. Anyhow, here's the Advocate's coverage of the protest:
Quite a few of my libertarian Republican friends believe all Americans need in terms of health care is catastrophic care. I think President Obama destroys that viewpoint quite effectively here:
Since I didn't blog last week ... I wanted to give y'all a round-up of what happened that I found noteworthy in little blurbs:
The Sinning Senator once again has trouble telling the truth to the people of Louisiana, this time with respect to the safety standards on children's toys.
Senator Mary Landrieu appeared on MSNBC with Howard Dean, and morphed into a defender of the Senate's Health Care Bill:
Governor PBJ has been busy inviting supporters to join him for a duck hunt out in Cameron Parish during the first weekend of 2010. No news on whether former Vice President Dick "Buckshot" Cheney is scheduled to attend.
Ahhhh, dem Saints. To be honest, I'm fine with dem losing a game ... because a perfect season would lagniappe to what I really want to see - da Saints in Super Bowl XLIV!
Last week, Louisiana1976 highlighted an amendment put up by Senator Coburn of Oklahoma that will cut the $300 million that Senator Landrieu successfully inserted into the health care reform legislation prior to the vote to debate the bill in the Senate.
It all has to do with a tweaking of the Federal Medical Assistance Percentage, which determines how much money the federal government and the states have to put up for Medicaid coverage. The Louisiana FMAP has usually been around 67%, meaning that Louisiana usually puts up about 33% of the costs of Medicaid for a fiscal year. However, since the FMAP takes into account the average per capita income from five years to three years prior to the current fiscal year, that means for fiscal year 2011, it will take into account the per capita income of Louisiana between 2006-2008, the years that federal disaster assistance money flooded the state. Thus, the Louisiana FMAP drops from 67% to 63%, causing a $900 million hole in the state's budget this upcoming year.
Senator Landrieu fulfilled the #1 request of Governor PBJ by getting some funding to help close a $2.5 billion dollar hole in the state budget over the next five years.
While Governor PBJ has remained largely silent, the Sinning Senator has twittered his displeasure with "backroom deals" to get health care reform passed. Never mind that he's quite famous for some backroom dealings himself.
Ahhh, I digress.
Back to the FMAP funding issue ... according to The Town Talk, the Sinning Senator is:
"holding off judgment specifically on the Coburn amendment until it comes forward for an actual vote."
Hmmm ... what is there to decide, Sinning Senator? Either you'll vote nay to help out Louisiana, or you'll vote yea to appease your friend from Oklahoma, and you'll screw us all back home.
As Charlie Melancon said in a conference call on the Coburn amendment yesterday, and cut short in a tweet (tweet italicized):
"David Vitter needs to remember that he works for the people of Louisiana, not the Senator from Oklahoma. We're talking about $300 million to head off a state budget crisis and help families that need it most. It doesn't take a Harvard education to figure out that this is common sense and the right thing to do for Louisiana."
While most of us would expect that our Senators do the best thing for the people of this state, it doesn't always work that way with the Sinning Senator ... he looks out for himself before he looks out for the people of Louisiana.
In honor of the late, great Ashley Morris, I have entitled this post after the famous FYYFF post he wrote in the aftermath of the Federal Flood, and the talking heads' inane commentary about whether to rebuild New Orleans.
It's so nice to see a religious group getting involved in politics, such as the Family Research Council, (one of the national partners of the Louisiana Family Forum), especially when they are wealthy enough to focus on things like health care reform, in the form of push polls to Louisianans. Specifically, they're focusing on the following items in the Senate's health care legislation:
As Congress prepares to vote on a health care overhaul plan, Family Research Council (FRC) today announced an eight week campaign to call all household phones in Louisiana to survey each household on provisions of the Senate health care bill. These include abortion funding, rationing, higher taxes, and government-run health care, or the public option.
Never mind that 894,000 Louisianans who do not currently have insurance will be able to afford health insurance, thanks to the legislation. No,
let's focus on the "funding" for abortion. The issue is that the bill currently allows private health insurance companies that receive federal subsidies to offer abortion coverage, which, to abortion opponents means that the federal government is paying for abortions. Never mind that the bill also requires any abortion coverage to be paid for with premiums paid by the beneficiary of the health care plan.
FYLFFYFF.
Never mind that health insurance companies will no longer be able to deny coverage to people when they need it for any reason other than they haven't paid their premium. No, let's focus on the "rationing" that will occur. I don't know if anybody at the Family Research Council or the Louisiana Family Forum has noticed this yet, but there is already rationing of health care in this nation ... 1 American dies every 12 minutes, 5 an hour, 120 a day, 45,000 every year because they lack health insurance ... if that's not rationing, I don't know what it is.
FYLFFYFF.
Never mind that the bill closes the donut hole in the Medicare Part D coverage that forces many seniors to pay thousands for brand name prescription drugs every single year. No, let's try to scare seniors into thinking the bill will legalize euthanisia:
"National health care changes being pushed by President Obama, Senator Reid, and Speaker Pelosi would institute rationing of medical care by an unelected board that can reject surgeries, drugs, or therapies which you or your loved ones may need. There are also great concerns about euthanasia. Do such documented facts make you want to stop changes to our health care system?"
Health Insurance Reform and Louisiana: The Case for Change
The health care status quo is not an option for our states. If we do nothing, by 2019 the number of uninsured people will grow by more than 30 percent in 29 states and by at least 10 percent in every state. The amount of uncompensated care provided will more than double in 45 states. Businesses in 27 states will see their premiums more than double. And fewer people will have coverage through an employer.1 The time for health insurance reform is now.
Under reform in Louisiana:
894,000 residents who do not currently have insurance and 214,000 residents who have nongroup insurance could get affordable coverage through the health insurance exchange.
558,000 residents could qualify for premium tax credits to help them purchase health coverage.
653,000 seniors would receive free preventive services.
116,000 seniors would have their brand-name drug costs in the Medicare Part D “doughnut hole” halved.
51,000 small businesses could be helped by a small business tax credit to make premiums more affordable.
Health Insurance Reform Provides Early Relief and Health Security, as proposals implemented in 2010 and 2011 will produce real benefits for:
Families: The 4.4 million residents of Louisiana will benefit as reform:
Ensures consumer protections in the insurance market. Insurance companies will no longer be able to place lifetime limits on the coverage they provide, use of annual limits will be restricted, and they will not be able to arbitrarily drop coverage.
Creates immediate options for people who can’t get insurance today. 11 percent of people in Louisiana have diabetes2, and 32 percent have high blood pressure3 – two conditions that insurance companies could use as a reason to deny health insurance coverage. Reform will establish a high-risk pool to enable people who cannot get insurance today to find an affordable health plan.
Ensures free preventive services. 47 percent of Louisiana residents have not had a colorectal cancer screening, and 20 percent of women over 50 have not had a mammogram in the past two years.4 Health insurance reform will ensure that people can access preventive services for free through their health plans. It will also invest in a prevention and public health fund to encourage prevention and wellness programs.
Supports health coverage for early retirees. An estimated 62,400 people from Louisiana have early retiree coverage through their former employers, but early retiree coverage has eroded over time.5 A reinsurance program would stabilize early retiree coverage and provide premium relief to both early retirees and the workers in the firms that provide their health benefits. This could save families up to $1,200 on premiums.
Seniors: Louisiana’s 653,000 Medicare beneficiaries6 will benefit as reform:
Lowers premiums by reducing Medicare’s overpayments to private plans. All Medicare beneficiaries pay the price of excessive overpayments through higher premiums – even the 78 percent of seniors in Louisiana who are not enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan.7 A typical couple in traditional Medicare will pay nearly $90 in additional Medicare premiums next year to subsidize these private plans.8 Health insurance reform clamps down on these excessive payments.
Reduces prescription drug spending. Roughly 116,000 Medicare beneficiaries in Louisiana hit the “doughnut hole,” or gap in Medicare Part D drug coverage that can cost some seniors an average of $4,080 per year.9 Reform legislation will provide a 50 percent discount for brand-name drugs in this coverage gap.
Covers free preventive services. Currently, seniors in Medicare must pay part of the cost of many preventive services on their own. For a colonoscopy that costs $673, this means that a senior must pay $15710 – a price that can be prohibitively expensive. Under reform, a senior will not pay anything for that colonoscopy, or for any other recommended preventive service. A senior will also get free annual wellness visits to his or her provider, with a personalized prevention plan to remain in good health.
Small businesses: While small businesses make up 74 percent of Louisiana’s businesses, only 37 percent of them offered health coverage benefits in 2008.11 51,000 small businesses in Louisiana could be helped by a small businesses tax credit proposal that makes premiums more affordable.12 And these small businesses would be exempt from any employer responsibility provisions.
States: State budgets will be relieved from rising health care costs as reform:
Reduces state employee premiums. Coverage would immediately be expanded to the uninsured, decreasing the amount of uncompensated care costs that gets shifted to the premiums of state employees. For states that provide early retiree health benefits to their state employees, a reinsurance program would provide premium relief of up to $1,200 per family policy per year for all employees.
Reduces uncompensated care. Right now, providers in Louisiana lose $1.3 billion in uncompensated care each year,13 which states subsidize at least in part. Instead, under reform, uncompensated care would begin to be reduced immediately as more uninsured people gain coverage.
Health Insurance Reform Provides Stability, Security, and Choice.
Provides relief from rising health care costs.
Ends the “hidden tax”. The $1.3 billion spent on uncompensated care in Louisiana often gets passed along to families in the form of a hidden premium “tax”.14 By expanding coverage to the uninsured, health insurance reform will eliminate this burden on people who already have insurance.
Provides premium tax credits. Without reform, individuals and families in Louisiana will spend increasing amounts of money out-of-pocket to cover premiums, deductibles, and co-payments, from $4.1 billion today to up to $6.3 billion 2019.15 Through health insurance reform, 558,000 Louisiana residents could be eligible for premium credits to ease the burden of these high costs.16
Promotes health insurance portability and choice. Health insurance reform establishes a health insurance exchange that will provide individuals with a wide variety of choices and ensure that they will always have coverage, whether they change jobs, lose a job, move or get sick.
Currently 894,000 residents of Louisiana do not have health insurance, and if nothing is done, by 2019 this population could swell to 1.1 million. The exchange will help the uninsured to obtain needed coverage and will also help the 214,000 Louisiana residents who currently purchase insurance in the individual insurance market to get quality coverage at an affordable price.17
Supports long-term home and community based services: It is estimated that 65 percent of those who are 65 today will spend some time at home in need of long-term care services,18 which typically cost almost $18,000 per year.19 This means that 312,000 older residents of Louisiana who are aged 55 to 64 today will need home health services after they turn 6520 – services that are not always covered by Medicare, Medicaid, or private health insurance.
Health insurance reform will create a new voluntary long-term care services insurance program, which will provide a cash benefit to help seniors and people with disabilities obtain services and supports that will enable them to remain in their homes and communities.
Reform will encourage states to expand their home and community based services through Medicaid by providing enhanced funding, and it will create a program to provide community support services for disabled Medicaid enrollees who would otherwise need to be in a nursing home. These programs could help improve care for many of the 201,000 disabled Medicaid beneficiaries in Louisiana.21
Health Insurance Reform Improves Quality and Reforms the Delivery System.
Reduces preventable readmissions. The current health care system does not place enough emphasis on improving quality of care. For example, nearly 20 percent of Medicare patients who are discharged from the hospital end up being readmitted within 30 days.22 For Louisiana, that’s 40,700 readmissions each year which could potentially be prevented with improved care coordination.23 Health insurance reform will invest in innovations in primary care and will provide financial incentives to hospitals to better coordinate care at discharge to avoid preventable readmissions.
Lessens Paperwork. Physicians spend on average about 140 hours and $68,000 a year just dealing with health insurance bureaucracy.24 For the 12,926 physicians in Louisiana, this adds up to 1.8 million hours and $878 million in costs.25 By simplifying and standardizing paperwork and computerizing medical records, doctors will be able to focus on caring for their patients instead of dealing with bureaucracy.
Incentivizes primary care. Roughly 4,900 doctors in Louisiana practice primary care and would qualify for a new 5 to 10 percent payment bonus under health insurance reform.26
Invests in the health primary care. Approximately 1.5 million people, or 34 percent of Louisiana’s population, cannot access a primary care provider due to shortages in their communities.27 Health insurance reform will expand and improve programs to increase the number of health care providers, including doctors, nurses, and dentists, especially in rural and other underserved areas.
The GOP noise machine is at full roar here in Louisiana over Senator Landrieu's vote to allow debate on the health care reform bill.
Let me put it out there ... the GOP doesn't want to see a health care reform bill signed by President Obama. They'd rather obstruct and derail any health care bill designed by the Democrats in Congress so they can run next fall on a "Do Nothing Congress." Let's take a look at what the GOP and their noise machine is saying:
And you know, no matter how folks try to spin it, Mary Landrieu accepted $100 million in exchange for her help. How is this any different than what Bill Jefferson got 13 years for doing?
Hmmm ... invoking the black boogeyman who got thrown in the pen. Yeah, that's an ad hominem attack, rather than looking at what the $100 million (actually, it's $300 million) goes to. For ol' Dollar Bill, that money went into his freezer. For Mary, it's going to plug the $500 million hole in the state budget caused by the flood of federal money that came into Louisiana thanks to Hurricane Katrina, artificially boosting our per capita income, which in turn increased the share that the state would have to pay under the Medicaid rules.
"We understand the money is needed in Louisiana but the overall bill is going to outweigh the benefits."
Yeah, the money is needed, and it was requested by one of the RNC's own - Governor PBJ, a Republican. Notice that he hasn't said one. dang. word. about this yet? And it's Tuesday, y'all.
The benefits of this bill ... oh, boy, are they legion (pdf alert):
On page 78 you'll learn that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ends discrimination based on pre-existing conditions.
On page 17, it makes preventive care completely free, with no cost-sharing. (This might be of particular interest to those who have chosen to seize on concerns about the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force Recommendations on mammograms to spread baseless myths and advance their own political agenda.)
Flipping back to page 16, you'll find that insurance companies are prohibited from dropping your coverage or watering it down when you get sick and need it most.
Also on page 16, you might notice that it puts an end to lifetime caps on coverage.
Page 18 is where the bill extends family coverage eligibility for young Americans through the age of 26.
On page 83 it requires insurance companies to renew any policy as long as the policyholder pays their premium in full - that means they can't refuse to renew your coverage just because you get sick.
Page 307 is home to tax credits for small businesses to help them afford insurance for their employees.
And folks looking to scare our senior citizens about what reform means for them might be interested to check out page 923 and learn that it provides a 50% discount on drugs for seniors in the so-called donut hole.
I think the benefits to Louisiana on this bill outweigh the costs of this bill - a $130 billion reduction in the federal deficit, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office - that the GOP is trying to scare y'all about.
I'll be the first to admit that I've been pretty tough on Senator Landrieu this past year when it comes to her position on health care reform.
That's why I want to take the time to thank her for her vote on allowing the Senate to debate H.R. 3590, thereby paving the way for a potential vote on health care reform.
So, thank you, Senator Landrieu. I appreciate your vote.
If y'all are so inclined, give a shout to the Senator today, and thank her for her vote on Saturday night. While the Tigers fell short, she delivered for those of us that don't have health insurance. Her office numbers are below:
Washington D.C.: (202) 224-5824 New Orleans: (504) 589-2427 Baton Rouge: (225) 389-0395 Shreveport: (318) 676-3085 Lake Charles: (337) 436-6650
Senator Landrieu will vote to allow debate to proceed, thanks to the phone calls to her office from ordinary Louisianans like us, as well as a poll from Health Care For America Now that showed 82% of Louisianans want to see a debate on the health care bill take place on the Senate floor.
You can watch Senator Landrieu's speech announcing her vote to allow the debate to proceed below, while she's still saying that she's unsure of how she'll vote on the bill itself:
UPDATE: Call her office ... the D.C. # is (202) 224-5824.
After months of hearing that Senator Landrieu is ... (emphasis added)
Senator Landrieu is committed to reforming the health care system and ensuring that all Americans are covered. She is currently reviewing all of the reform proposals, but does not believe that health care reform starts with a public option. Sen. Landrieu supports a predominantly private system that features a federal backup plan that serves as a safety net. This approach is part of the bipartisan Healthy Americans Act, which she has co-sponsored.
As the debate proceeds, Sen. Landrieu is open to compromise in a comprehensive legislative package, and is focused on appropriate consumer protection and patient-centered care.
Click on the picture above, or here to send a message to Senator Landrieu's office, and invite your friends to do the same via Facebook or email.
We know that the Senator is "concerned" about the federal deficit, so it is necessary to remind the Senator that the bill that she may keep from hitting the floor for a vote is one that will reduce the deficit by $130 billion, according to the Director of the conservative Congressional Budget Office.
In other words, if she votes to keep this bill from getting a vote, she's voting to increase the deficit.
MSNBC partnered with the National Association of Free Clinics to put on a health care clinic this past weekend in the New Orleans Convention Center:
The transcript is here. Some highlights of essay written by Countdown's Senior Producer Rich Stockwell:
Eighty-three percent of the patients they see are employed, they are not accepting other government help on a large scale, not "welfare queens" as some would like to have us believe. They are tax-paying, good, upstanding citizens who are trying to make it and give their kids a better life just like you and me.
Ninety percent of the patients who came through Saturday's clinic had two or more diagnoses.
Eighty-two percent had a life-threatening condition such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, or hypertension. They are victims of a system built with corporate profits at its center, which long ago forgot the moral imperative that should drive us to show compassion to our fellow men and women.
Health reform is not about Democrats or Republicans or who can score political points for the next election, it's about people. It's about fairness and justice in a system that knows none. I'd defy even the most hardened capitalist-loving-conservative to do what I did on Saturday and continue to pretend that the system in place right now is working.
How about it, Senator Landrieu? How do YOU respond to the question Mr. Stockwell ends his damning essay with:
"What does it say about us as a nation of people who can live in a country so rich and yet allow this to continue?"
Well? Let's call her and find out:
Washington D.C.: (202) 224-5824 New Orleans: (504) 589-2427 Baton Rouge: (225) 389-0395 Shreveport: (318) 676-3085 Lake Charles: (337) 436-6650
UPDATE: This does not in any way constitute an endorsement for Congressman Cao's re-election. It is simply a recognition that the Congressman was the only member of the Louisiana delegation in the House of Representatives to vote for health care reform.
If you're confused about health care reform, we don't blame you. With all that's being said on the news and on the internet, it's hard to decipher the real message, the real truth about what reform means to us as a country and as individuals. As we've noted in earlier posts, there are many myths circulating with the intention of dissuading Americans from believing that a change in our current health care system would be a positive one. Whatever the motivation, let's focus on what is happening now.
There has been a lot of talk the past few weeks about the false possibility of health care rationing in the current storm of discussions surrounding President Obama's health care reform plan, as well as options put forth by Congressional Democrats such as Senator Max Baucus.
While rationing may be a popular topic - particularly among the conservative and right leaning blogosphere, it is, at its core, a health care myth. Unlike the health care debate in 1994, where Harry and Louise were lamenting government rationing on behalf of the insurance companies, rationing has no place in current health care reform bills.
According to the American Medical Association, "The health reform plans being debated in Congress ensure that health care decisions will be made by you and your doctor - no one else."
We have never been closer to passing Health Care Reform that helps all Americans. Now is the time to push our Congress to support the Public Option. On October 20th, we need to flood the phone lines of Senator Mary Landrieu's office with calls telling her to support the Public Option. Please commit to call yourself and in addition call 10 of your friends, family members, casual acquaintances, or complete strangers and get them to commit to calling as well. It can be done in 5 easy steps:
1. 1-866-288-1495
2. enter your zip code
3. Tell Senator Landrieu to support the public option
4. Call 10 people to do the same
5. Change America
