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Representative Chris Carney: Keep standing up for us, not the insurance companies
Submitted by JasonRosenbaum on Wed, 03/17/2010 - 12:45pm.
The health reform vote is coming in the House. Representative Chris Carney (PA-10) needs to keep listening to us, not the insurance companies.
In Carney's district, the House's improvements to the Senate health reform bill will [pdf]:
- Improve coverage for 406,000 residents with health insurance.
- Give tax credits and other assistance to up to 179,000 families and 13,300 small businesses to help them afford coverage.
- Improve Medicare for 122,000 beneficiaries, including closing the donut hole.
- Extend coverage to 26,500 uninsured residents.
- Guarantee that 7,900 residents with pre-existing conditions can obtain coverage.
- Protect 800 families from bankruptcy due to unaffordable health care costs.
- Allow 45,000 young adults to obtain coverage on their parents' insurance plans.
- Provide millions of dollars in new funding for 13 community health centers.
- Reduce the cost of uncompensated care for hospitals and other health care providers by $46 million annually.
A vote for health reform is a vote to stand with these people. A vote against health reform is a vote for the status quo, where insurance companies make record profits by raising rates by double digits (28% in Pennsylvania in the last few months) and dropping millions of customers from their rolls.
The House may vote on health reform as early as this weekend. When the vote comes, Representative Carney has a chance to show us that he's still on our side.
I'm proud to work for Health Care for America Now
premium increases
the health insurance review authority is no longer in the bill: this was supposed to prevent large premium increases, just like the ones in your video
how will you prevent the insurance companies from raising the premiums on their customers who will be required by law to buy a private company's product under threat of IRS penalty if there is no mechanism to prevent it from happening?
As I understand it, the
As I understand it, the insurance review authority could not be added to the reconciliation bill as it it not directly related to budgeting. However, as has been noted, it's very difficult to add improvements to a bill which isn't passed.
As Steve Benen has kept repeating on the Washington Monthly blog, PASS THE DAMN BILL. Then, pass improvements to it. If the Congress doesn't pass the bill, don't kid yourself that they'll just start over. It will likely be a rerun of the early '90s, in that health reform won't be addressed again for another 20 years or so.
Pass the damn bill.
-Z
When perfect ruined the very good
Back in the stone age -- actually 1975 -- I was working with the Tenant Action Group to try to get a rent control bill passed in City Council. From our perspective it was a watered down bill that had lots of loopholes for landlords who wanted to raise rents, but they would have to work at it. Despite its weaknesses, in lots of cases it would have stabilized, though not frozen, rents. So even with our misgivings, we supported the bill, strongly.
Incredibly the bill actually got put up to a vote in Council's Committee of the Whole, which at that time had only 13 members due to deaths and resignations. There was one guy who had been elected on a ballot position quirk. He had been nothing but a seat warmer and wasn't running for re-election. But he was looking for a job after his term ended. We heard, though could never prove, that he was promised one in exchange for a no vote on our bill. Whatever his real motivations, he found a way to vote no that left him able to claim that he really loved tenants. He insisted the bill was too weak. It made it too easy for landlords to claim that they had made improvements that they should be able to charge for. It made tenants go through a lengthy process to contest unjust increases. It had too many exclusions, etc., etc., etc.
These things could always be corrected by amendment, later. But no our "hero" wanted them right now. Or so he said, just before he voted no.
The bill died in Committee on a 7-6 vote. This guy -- whose name completely escapes me since his moment of fame barely amounted to the five minutes he took for his floor speech -- cast the decisive vote. It was a vote for the perfect over the pretty good. It's now 35 years later and 60,000 families are priced out of affordable housing in Philadelphia. There is no rent control, good, bad or ugly. Perfect killed it, and it's still way dead.
The Councilman Was Probably Bill Boyle or Edward Cantor
The councilman was probably Bill Boyle or Edward Cantor, two of the three councilmen at Large who won with good ballot position and little else in the 1967 mayoral primary, were adopted by Frank Rizzo and the Democratic City Committee in 1971, and then abandoned to defeat in 1975. Both Boyle and Cantor wound up in the managing director's office for the remainder of the Rizzo administration, with Cantor in a higher position than Boyle. The third 1967 Councilman at Large candidate aided by fortuitous ballot position was Edgar C. Campbell, who served twelve years as Clerk of Courts after being defeated for Councilman at Large in 1975. His daughter was Carol Campbell, so I assume he would be less easy to forget.
Boyle had much greater populist instincts than Cantor, who liked to style himself as a hard-headed common sense businessman. Boyle's campaign slogan was something like "of the people, from the people, for the people." Boyle also was influenced from time to time by his association with my father, whom he had thrown six votes to as wardleader in 1966, and then been elected as first vice-chairman of the 17th ward in 1966. They had a falling out after both were elected to City Council in 1967, and Boyle left the 17th Ward.
As his stint as a deputy managing director was ending in 1979, Cantor encouraged his son Sam's candidacy for Councilman at Large, but Sam got clobbered. The whole Cantor family moved to Florida in the 1980's, where Sam practiced law and his parents enjoyed life until their deaths at a ripe old age.
While serving in the managing director's office, Boyle started coming out more as a gay man. He worked with Mark Segal to push a gay rights bill for Philadelphia into law; that did not happen until a new wave of councilpeople including my father were elected in 1979.
For whatever reason, Boyle found himself unemployable in the 1980's. He died in poverty, living in a friend's house. He was only in his early or mid-50's when he passed away.
Regardless of the identity of the councilman, the basic point of Stan's posting is clear: offers for change have to be seized while they are on the table; they cannot be discarded because there is a piece of paper somewhere with a better proposal.
A basic principle of contract law is that an offer and an acceptance are needed to bring a deal to a close; the absence of an acceptance allows an offer to be withdrawn at any time. Good contract law is also in this case good politics: something won is much, much more meaningful over the long haul than something (better) that was advocated and died.
It is time to show that the Democrats can get something meaningful done on health care reform. We already know and have known for decades that Democrats have many ideas on health care reform; we do not need more years, decades, or generations to prove that.
For the record . . .
it was definitely Boyle. Your comments further refresh my memory. Because Boyle was thought of as being on our side, we couldn't believe he would vote to kill the bill. But he did, and the movement for rent control, completely spent, never recovered.
That's right Z
Obama added it because it seemed like a really popular idea. But it was a temporary proposal until the Exchanges start.
In the long term, regulator control over rates is hard to manage. Competition from a public plan would be better.
But we might get this in separate legislation, along with the end of the anti-trust exemption for insurance companies.
pass the bill
We need to just pass this bill. This is the hump. It will
be easier to come back and make adjustments and modifications
after the authorizing legislation has the effect of law.
Every day this drags on and on... hurts democrats more and
more.
Plus with stats like those published above... every congressperson
should have plenty of ammo to go back home with. Who can argue
with results like those projected above.
The dems need backbone. It's been extremely frustrating to see
the dems NOT be able to effectively govern.
I shudder to think that I could well be put into the position
of 1980--- wherein I just could not bring myself to vote for
Carter (I enthusiastically supported Kennedy in the primaries)...
Let's not waste another day... pass this bill. NOW.
Premiums
First of all, if you buy insurance as an individual or get it from a small business, your premiums are going to go down because you will be able to purchase insurance through the exchange which will create a large pool for these folks.
Second, if your income is less than 400% of the federal poverty line, you will get a tax credit to pay for health insurance. At lower levels of income, the subsidy is huge. A family of 3 with an income of 27,000 will pay about 90 a month for really good insurance.That is a subsidy of about $1100 a month!
Third, there will be more competition in the exchange, which will eventually be opened to everyone. All the blues in PA and all the for-profit insurance companies will be able to sell statewide in the Exchange.
Is this enough? No. We need a public option. But passing this bill will set the stage for a public option because, as premiums go up, it won't just be individuals who pay but the feds. So there will be pressure to institute a public option and a framework in place that makes it much easier to do so.
Why this is so hard.
I understand the frustration people have with the Democrats who are voting now as well as the Democrats who are undecided or wavering.
But let me just tell you one reasons this is so hard.
Anti-reform groups, mostly funded by insurance companies, are spending almost 500,000 on TV ads in Congressman Carney's district. We'll spend about 10% of that on the ad above.
Anti-reform groups are spending about 300,000 on TV ads in Congresswoman Dahlkemper's district. We're not running ads there at all. We'd like to but don't have the money.
These are districts that have Republican pluralities and are fairly conservative to begin with.
I'm really hopeful that Reps. Carney and Dahlkemper will vote with us because, in both cases, they have been real leaders in their districts, patiently explaining why this legislation is in the interest of the majority of constituents.
But make no mistake, this is not an easy vote for them.
We don't really live in a Democracy anymore. We live in an oligarchy with some Democratic elements. And it's tough to do something as bold--even if not bold enough--as this legislation.
So, I don't complain anymore about "the Democrats." Instead, I try to do something to help them. And you can, too.
The best weapon we have against all this money is to call constituents and ask them to call the members of Congress. I've posted before about how you can join us. Here is the link: http://youngphillypolitics.com/it_health_care_america_right_now