On Health, Care, and the Battle on the Hill

Just a little something from Katha over at Nation Magazine. Let's git 'er done:

Listening to the radio earlier this summer, I heard a 59-year-old nurse named Robin Batin testify in the most heart-rending way before the House subcommittee on oversight and investigations, chaired by Representative Bart Stupak. When she developed invasive breast cancer, her insurance company, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, rescinded her coverage because of a pre-existing condition--dermatitis--even though her dermatologist called to say it was acne, not, as the company claimed, a precancerous condition. Stupak confronted the heads of Assurant Health, UnitedHealth and WellPoint with the fact that there are some 1,400 conditions that can be used to cancel a policy, most of them so minor and obscure that the executives had never heard of them. Between 2003 and 2007, the three companies saved $300 million by rescinding at least 19,776 policies. By the time Batin finally got her surgery, her tumor had doubled in size. The Congressmen were shocked--they had no idea. Neither did I. The program? This American Life. I love Ira Glass, but come on, people! "Rescission" should be a word on the tip of everyone's tongue by now.

As of this writing, it is far from clear how much of the vocal opposition to reform represents wider popular feeling and how much is a mobile mob of gun nuts, birthers and teabaggers paid for and organized by lobbyists and Republican outfits like Americans for Prosperity, Conservatives for Patients' Rights and FreedomWorks. Several polls show a majority of Americans still want reform. But polls don't mean much politically if everyone stays quiet. Where's the superb organizing the Obama campaign was famous for? Where's the pushback from the left--for the public plan, or even for single-payer? It may be a non-starter in Congress, despite the upcoming vote on Representative John Conyers's HR 676, but one thing you can say for single-payer--it's easy to explain and to understand.

Oh army of Obama supporters who swarmed the country less than one year ago, we need you back knocking on our doors and sleeping on our sofas. We need you to stand on street corners handing out fliers that explain what healthcare reform is really all about and how people can make sure it doesn't get swallowed whole by the drug and insurance companies. Surely you're not too young and strong and healthy and vegan to care about boring parent stuff like health insurance? The diss on you was always that you were infatuated with Obama's charisma and with vague notions of "change"--not with the long slog of political engagement. That isn't true, though, is it?

Coming in 2007

“Jailhouse Conversion” (NYT Magazine)
By Chris Suellentrop (writes the Opinionator blog for The New York Times on the Web. This is his first article for the magazine.) (published Dec. 24.) Even if it a bit old it is not stale by any means, but forward looking. These are Chris's words, because I could not improve on them as far as it goes. My apologies for not posting yesterday but I just could not find the time.

Perhaps most remarkably, the outgoing Republican-controlled Congress came tantalizingly close to passing the Second Chance Act, a bill that focuses not on how to “lock them up” but on how to let them out. The bill may become law soon, if Democrats continue to welcome the new conservative interest in rehabilitation.
***
the Second Chance Act is a small bill. It authorizes less than $100 million over two years to address a significant problem: about 700,000 ex-offenders (the population of a good-size American city) will leave prison in 2007 — and two-thirds of them are likely to be rearrested within three years. The bill would provide states with grants to develop model programs for prisoners returning to society. Those states that accept the grants will be asked to re-examine any laws and regulations that make it unreasonably difficult for ex-offenders to reintegrate themselves into their communities — the classic example is the ban on allowing felons to receive a barber’s license. (If the felon in question is Sweeney Todd, of course, the ban might make sense. But a blanket prohibition that includes check bouncers and marijuana users seems overly broad.) The bill also provides money to faith-based organizations and other nonprofits for prisoner-mentoring programs. Finally, it requires states to measure how well their programs achieve the bill’s main goal: reducing the rate of recidivism among recently released prisoners.
***
as a symbolic political gesture, the Second Chance Act completely reverses recent practice. For the first time in decades, Congress is poised to pass a bill that aims to make the lives of prisoners and ex-prisoners easier, not more difficult. In the 1990s, Democratic and Republican Congresses scrapped the Pell Grant program for prisoners, barred drug offenders from receiving federal student loans and cut highway money for states that did not revoke or suspend the driver’s licenses of drug felons. Now leading politicians of both parties are proposing that states remove laws and regulations that wall off the ex-criminal class from the community. Rather than eliminating education and substance-abuse treatment programs, Congress may well finance them. When I met with Mark Earley, a former political star of the Christian right and a present-day prison reformer, I began explaining to him why I was surprised by the Second Chance Act and the so-called “re-entry movement” surrounding it. He knew why I was surprised: “First of all,” he said, by the very fact “that there is common ground” between Republicans and Democrats. “And second of all, it’s this?”

Drug War, Congress, Sentencing, SCOTUS

The drug war and the new congress, sentencing and the Sixth Amendment, and it was an eventful week at SCOTUS. Doc Berman's is still the place to go.

Policy Recommendations

Regarding changes in the law, and policy, my first question is, do we really need, "a long term, systematic, comprehensive, institutionalized counterterrorism policy for the United States" as Kenneth Anderson suggests here? If anything, my preference is to reduce bureacratization. The constitution adequately provides for practically anything, we already have a gigantic court system, including a counter-terrorism or FISA court, and our policy toward terrorists and terrorism is very clear already if not constantly evolving. An "institutionalized" policy sounds too much like a new cabinet level or deputy level position, sort of like "drug czar" and I'm not convinced that Anderson's reasons are good ones. The political argument seems to be that once Congress has acted courts must lay off, and that is simply not the way we work. Or is it?