Tag: Obamacare

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Death by a Thousand Cuts

Hey, remember Ebola? The disease that was going to kill us all in the weeks leading up to the November elections? Remember that guy who died in Houston? And that nurse who rode on an airplane, endangering the entire traveling American public? And that other nurse who rode her bike around New York state, infecting millions? Remember Senator Lindsey Graham’s adorable hysterics? Remember how the national media, particularly Fox News, tried to scare the crap out of us, day after day after day? Pay no attention to the experts! Block all air traffic from Africa! Quarantine everybody for 40 days! Thanks to Obama and Harry Reid, we’re all going to die!

Yeah.

Then, like magic, the day after the mid-term elections, the crisis ended. Being something of a cynic, I predicted what would happen in an October 30th column titled, “The Ebola ‘Crisis’ Isn’t.” The usual right-wing commenters took their shots: “When a community organizer president, a lawyer Ebola czar, and the ultra liberal editor of an entertainment weekly tell you there’s nothing to worry about, you can rest assured there’s not.” And, “The Flyer editor’s a doctor now … smart dude!”

No, I’m not a doctor, but I’ll take doctors’ and scientists’ opinions over those of Sean Hannity and various anonymous nuts, any day.

And speaking of nuts … what’s really nuts is what’s about to happen to Tennessee’s health-care system. Earlier this year, Governor Bill Haslam issued a directive to all state department heads to cut their budgets by seven percent. Last Friday, TennCare released its proposed new budget, which slices $165 million in spending. That number actually represents around $400 million in lost revenue, due to the subsequent loss in matching federal spending.

From The Tennessean: “The proposed budget eliminates grants to safety net hospitals, ends funding for programs for babies born with health problems, halts coverage of hospice services, and limits in-home assistance for the elderly to those poor enough to qualify for Supplemental Security Income. Doctors and other health providers would get hit with a 4 percent reimbursement reduction. Other cuts include funding for medicines and mental health services.”

Dave Chaney, a spokesman for the Tennessee Medical Association, said, “For more than 20 years, physicians have accepted very low rates to take care of patients, and the rates keep being cut as the cost of providing care goes up and the program continues to add people and covered services. That’s an unsustainable trend.” No doubt.

And of course, it’s all made even worse by the state’s ideology-driven refusal to participate in any variation of the Affordable Care Act. That foolishness is costing the state millions more in lost, no-risk health-care funding. Unfortunately, there’s no known cure for stupid.

Maybe it would help if we could drum up some Ebola cases in Chattanooga.

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Opinion Viewpoint

A New Day in Washington

With the stock market at an all-time high, with almost 50 consecutive months of positive job growth, with the nation’s annual deficit at a six-year low, and with America now the leading producer of oil and gas products in the world, why are a majority of Americans so dispirited and disappointed with President Obama and the Democrats? 

And, separately, with a divided government in Washington now, is there hope for progress on key issues in Washington over the next two years?

Let’s answer in reverse order. 

Yes, there is hope for progress, but it depends on two things. First, which wing of the Republican Party will lead and negotiate matters of legislative seriousness in Washington. If Republicans follow the “sore winners” wing of their party — symbolized by Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who declared election night that the Republican sweep ends an era of “Obama lawlessness” — it’s unlikely anything meaningful gets done. The paralysis and foolishness of Washington will only persist. 

But if Orrin Hatch of Utah, Rob Portman of Ohio and, yes, Mitch McConnell — the GOP Senate majority leader from Kentucky who on election night called for cooperation and change — are the dominant faces of Republican leadership, there’s a chance for a new day to emerge. 

Can important compromises be reached between the president and Congress on trade, taxes, immigration, and energy policy? 

Very likely, especially if Republicans agree to the creation of a public-private bank to jumpstart critical U.S. building initiatives — including new airports, broadband networks, roads, schools, pipelines, and subway lines. In addition, the Republicans need to accept that an outright repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA, aka “Obamacare”) isn’t going to happen. They should aim instead to repeal the medical device tax portion of the ACA, a policy change I support, as do many Republicans and Democrats. 

But, first, the Republicans should give the president the trade promotion authority he has sought but been denied by the Senate’s Democratic leadership over the past years. What a White House visual that would be in the next few weeks: the president, surrounded by a bipartisan group of lawmakers, signing a piece of legislation! 

Obama and the Democrats have to be willing to do their part. The president’s first reaction to the election last Wednesday was a seeming effort to dodge any accountability for our party’s losses. Fortunately, on Sunday, Obama pushed the reset button by acknowledging that the buck stops with him.   

If I were advising the president, I’d recommend three things:

First, he should sign the Keystone Pipeline legislation and then agree not to change immigration laws unilaterally right now. And, in exchange, the Republicans should agree to raise the minimum wage and not repeal the ACA. This deal is achievable if the president leads on it.  

Independent analysis of the environmental impact of building the Keystone Pipeline substantiates a negligible carbon impact, and, in addition, a large number of Congressional Democrats want it as well. The long-term job-creation impact of the pipeline’s construction is in dispute. But what is not is that the pipeline’s construction would immediately produce thousands of well-paying jobs.    

Second, to deal with immigration, the president should appoint a bipartisan, Baker-Hamilton 9/11-like commission to offer recommendations by June to the president and Congress. He should ask majority leaders John Boehner and McConnell to agree to a vote on all or some of the recommendations before Congress adjourns for the year in the fall. If the Republicans don’t act in good faith, then the president can act by executive action at the end of the year. 

Next, raise the carried-interest rate to 25 percent, and lower the corporate tax rate to 20 percent to make it more competitive globally, while granting a 90-day, 12.5 percent tax holiday for repatriation. Proceeds from the tax holiday could fund a public-private bank to begin rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure. 

And last, Obama should be more social with Congress, spending regular time with congressional leaders from both parties who have complained that they don’t see the president enough. If for no other reason, better answers to the avalanche of foreign policy challenges the country faces are likely to be attained if there’s increased dialogue and trust between Congress and the president. 

Some will argue that these recommendations aren’t big enough. But it’s surely preferable for the political argument in this country to be about how to do more things in Washington and not just about how to get something — anything — done.

And we the people should do our part. Let us be as diligent in educating ourselves on the issues as we are in hurling invective at our political opponents. Let us not attack others’ political ideas unless we have alternatives to fix problems we know exist. 

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter From the Editor: Endorsement Gate

“Lamar was proven right.” That’s the tagline at the end of one of Senator Lamar Alexander’s political ads. It follows a clip of Alexander and President Obama arguing over the cost of the Affordable Care Act. Alexander says premiums will go up. The president says it’s “not true.” So who’s right?

The Congressional Budget Office report on the health-care law says that premiums have gone down under Obamacare for comparable health insurance to that available before the law was passed. However, when you factor in people who didn’t have health insurance and therefore were paying nothing prior to the law’s passage, then yes, their rates have gone up — from nothing to something. In states that have opted in to the federal plan, rates have gone down, and the number of people who now have health insurance has dramatically risen. In other states, not so much.

So Lamar wasn’t “proven right.” In fact, a Washington Post “Pinocchio Test” of the ad says, “Alexander mixes up so many apples and oranges here that the ad is a virtual fruit basket,” and gives Lamar “two Pinocchios.” Meaning the ad has a high bull caca quotient.

Meanwhile, Alexander’s primary opponent Joe Carr is running ads condemning Alexander for supporting Obamacare. Oy.

And then there are Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey’s well-funded attack ads on three Tennessee Supreme Court justices, ads that link them to supporting, yup, Obamacare. The Tennesse high court has never issued a ruling of any kind on the subject. It’s a lie so blatant and low-down I’m amazed Ramsey can look at himself in the mirror.

Obama and Obamacare have become the ultimate stinkbombs for GOP candidates. Want to smear your opponent? Accuse him of supporting the president and/or the Affordable Care Act. It’s the new “He wants to take away your guns.”

And let’s not forget the “endorsementgate” brouhaha, as Flyer writer Chris Davis dubbed it. Ninth District Democratic congressional candidates Steve Cohen and Ricky Wilkins have spent the past two weeks sniping at each other over who is endorsed by the ACSFME union. This week, the ante was raised when a rogue fake “ballot” emerged wrongly suggesting Wilkins was endorsed by President Obama. The Democrats, unlike the Republicans, are actually seeking to be connected with the president.

I’m beyond weary of seeing and hearing this stuff. Thursday can’t come soon enough. No more signs, at least until October. No more duplicitous, hateful ads for a blissful couple of months.

I’m so confident that the entire electorate shares these sentiments, that I’m preparing a bumper sticker: “Bruce Was Proven Right.”

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter From the Editor: Groundhog Day at Beaver Creek

As longtime readers of this column know, I slip off to my old haunts in Western Pennsylvania for a trout-fishing trip each year around this time. I just got back. It’s always the same two friends (once three, tempus fugit), and the same cabin on the same little creek in the Laurel Highlands, near Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural masterwork, Fallingwater.

We call the trip “Groundhog Day,” after the Bill Murray movie of the same name, in which events repeat themselves day after day. Each year, we cook the same meals, drink the same brand of beer, stop at the same country store to buy licenses, etc. Even the jokes are old:

Priest says to Mary, “How are you, my dear.”

“Not so good, Father. My husband just died.”

“Oh, sorry to hear it, lass,” says the priest. “Did he have any last words?”

“Yes, Father, he said, ‘For God’s sake, Mary, put the damn gun down.'”

But every year, I learn a few things. For instance, I learned this year that one of my friends, a lawyer who took early retirement, got BlueCross BlueShield medical insurance through Obamacare that saved him $200 a month. He’s a nominal Republican. Or was.

I also learned, as I do every year, to be thankful that Tennessee isn’t as backward as Pennsylvania when it comes to its liquor and beer laws. All alcohol in the Keystone State is sold through state stores. The hours are very limited and you can’t buy less than a case of beer at a time. You have to go to a different state store for liquor and wine. The closest liquor store to our cabin was 24 miles away. Talk about roughing it.

And I learned it costs big money to drive across Pennsylvania. Because of the vagaries of Delta Airlines pricing, I flew into Cleveland instead of Pittsburgh, this year. One of my friends, who drives in from Detroit, picked me up at the airport. Entering the state of Pennsylvania on the turnpike costs $7. Just to enter. When we got off the turnpike, 90 miles later, we paid another $6. This might be something Tennessee should consider. Imagine what we could charge to drive from Memphis to Johnson City.

But I digress. It was a great trip. My friends are well and happy. The weather cooperated. And I caught the largest trout I’ve ever caught — a 24-inch rainbow — and let him go.

I’m hoping he’ll still be there next year and want to take part in Groundhog Day.

Bruce VanWyngarden
brucev@memphisflyer.com

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Editorial Opinion

Waiting for a Cure

Taking stock of his governmental realm in a luncheon address to members of the Memphis Rotary Club on Tuesday, Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell listed several areas of public life that he was especially concerned with — most of them expected: education, public safety, and economic development prominent among them.

Mark Luttrell

An additional one that he laid special emphasis on was public health — an issue which, as he acknowledged, he had little familiarity with in his previous roles as a prisons administrator and as Shelby County Sheriff. It had come to loom large in this thinking, though — notably the problem of the county’s soaring rates of infant mortality, which have attained crisis proportions.

What, he was asked, would be the impact of a decision by the state — even at this late stage — to accept funds for Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act? What has been the impact of the Haslam administration’s inclination so far not to accept the funds? And what was his attitude toward it all?

As diplomatically as possible (given that Luttrell is a member in good standing of the state’s reigning Republican Party), the mayor explained that the impact of not having the expansion funds has been serious, even critical, since a major portion of federal funding to The Med had been discontinued on the expectation that substitute funding to it and other hospitals administering indigent care would be administered through Medicaid expansion.

Luttrell took note of Haslam’s frequent reiterations of his hopes that he will be able to obtain a waiver from the Obama administration that would allow the state to secure the add-on Medicaid funding to be administered through private insurance sources. The mayor said he had hopes that Tennessee might obtain such a waiver at some point.

The reality is not so hopeful. Arkansas is the major (and perhaps the only) other state to get such a waiver, and our neighboring state began floating a more or less complete version of its plan well over a year ago. As anyone knows who has paid close attention to the workings of Tennessee state government — and especially to the actions of the last two legislative sessions — Governor Haslam has owned up to not having a developed waiver plan and is in the position of asking that one be presented to him by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Moreover, while Haslam is thought to be sincere in his wish to find some contrivance that would allow the state to make use of Medicaid funding, the fact is that the GOP majority in the General Assembly is ill-disposed toward the idea and has basically tied the governor’s hands with legislation in the session just ended. Any plan that the governor might come up with, or that he and HHS might agree on, must be approved by both chambers of the legislature.

So, like Luttrell, we Tennesseans can still hope for a cure; we just shouldn’t count on one. 

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Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said…

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

About Bryce Ashby and Michael LaRosa’s Viewpoint on requiring state legislators to take remedial civics classes …

I entirely agree with the Bryce Ashby and Michael LaRosa that our state legislators should be required to pass a civics test in order to hold office. That would certainly reduce the laughing-stock potential of Tennessee nationally.

But why stop there? Equally important to the functioning of our representative republic is an informed electorate. Let’s require a simple civics test at the polls on each election day. (My parents had to do this back in the 1950s, along with a $1 poll tax. Both measures have since been declared unconstitutional.)

But just think about it: If voters even had to come up with one correct answer regarding the fundamentals of our government, there would never be a Democrat elected in Tennessee again!

Bill Busler

About Bruce VanWyngarden’s column on Obamacare …

The Affordable Care Act was drafted in a Senate committee chaired by Max Baucus of Montana. Years ago, I considered moving to Montana, so I took the Billings Gazette for a long time. I followed the career of Baucus from the state legislature to Congress to the Senate. He was a Democrat in a Republican-leaning state.

His Senate committee quickly discarded the single-payer system, like Medicare, when it met resistance. They switched to a plan that originated in a conservative think tank and was the basis of the Massachusetts health-care plan. Baucus took nearly 200 suggestions from Republicans to be bipartisan. It got no Republican votes, and Republicans have zealously tried to impede and repeal it, yet they have no replacement plan for the 7.5 million now signed up.

Why is Governor Haslam afraid of Tenncare being defunded after expansion? If he’s really concerned about the state’s finances, he wouldn’t have let more than $100 million in money already taxed and collected go to other states. No one has seen the alternative to Tenncare that the governor is supposedly proposing to Health and Human Services. There is a kicker in a provision in the law called the “shared responsibility tax” on employees that could run as high as $72 million. What will they do if the the governor and the legislature don’t act?

Greg Cravens

Raymond Skinner

About Jackson Baker’s post, “Whalum Slams Joe Brown’s Pretensions to Party Leadership” …

TRUTH !!!!!! “How in the world, how on God’s green earth, can a person be literally gone from Memphis and Shelby County for 20 years and come back and claim to be the Democratic boss?”

Tom Guleff

About Bianca Phillips’ post, “House Resolution Seeks to Defend Tennessee Marriage Amendment” …

Soon Joe Carr and his sorry ilk will be in the trash heap of history along with the segregationists of yesteryear. Meanwhile, they will waste our tax money passing useless resolutions and defending discriminatory laws that will soon be void. Marriage equality is winning!

Chris in Midtown

About a post titled “What’s Wrong With Zach Randolph’s Defense?” …

He’s slow and can’t jump. I’m prone to brevity.

38103

About a Toby Sells News Blog item, “Halbert: State is to Blame for Untested Rape Kits in Memphis” …

We can thank the Tennessee Republicans for not funding the testing of rape kits. And they call themselves “Christians” … only if Charles Manson is the Pope. Let us not forget it was these same Republicans who tried to pass a bill that would have redefined rape to make it legal. Vote Republican and you vote to support rape of women and children.

Sam Cardinal

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Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said…

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

About Toby Sells’ cover story “The Pension Crisis” …

All financial security markets are much higher now than they were pre-recession. All “paper losses” experienced via the recession should have been more than recovered by now, unless some dumb moves were made. So the fall the funds took during the recession is no excuse.

What it boils down to is they took absolutely no action when it became apparent they were way underfunded. They did some very dumb stuff under Mayor Willie to make sure his appointee buds would get fat. Remember the “retire in 12 years giveaway” for appointees? This just made it worse. Also, the legions of police and firemen drawing disability pensions while they work other city jobs is an amusing sideline to this mess. They could have taken action years ago to change the fundamentals of the plans, but nothing was done.

The fixes are going to be painful for retirees, because there will be major increases in the amounts they will pay for health insurance. There will also be major cuts in the amounts current workers will receive in retirement benefits. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to see current retirees’ pensions reduced. They refused to look at the problem or even consider doing anything about it until the state told them they had to get real with their financial statements.

The city’s credit rating is about to take a nosedive too. It was real clever becoming a stadium owner a few months ago, eh?

JuliusJones

Clearly, mistakes were made, but no one is to blame as we look forward, not back, and try to resolve this issue by redefining it. Thank heavens Memphis has Beale Street Landing or we’d be in serious trouble.

Jeff

About Bianca Phillips’ story on animal fighting, “For the Birds (and Dogs)” …

I find it interesting but not at all surprising that the penalties are stiffer for dog fighting than for cock fighting. After all, I’m betting a good number of those in the majority in the legislature either have attended a cock fight or have constituents who are heavily involved in cock fighting.

Both are pretty disgusting things to do in my opinion. Of course, maybe another part of the reason cock fighting carries lighter penalties is the fact that we eat chickens, and we make pets of dogs. Just showing a bit of favoritism for one species over another.

GroveReb84

Greg Cravens

A last-minute amendment has been added by Stacey Campfield (R-Knoxville) to allow the trunking of poor gay uninsured schoolchildren. I’m not sure how that will affect passage.

Chris in Midtown

A very good idea to try to punish those who are barbaric enough to want to watch such atrocities for sport. And though I will likely not agree with Chris in Midtown on much of anything, I have to say his post above is hysterical.

Niles 4334

About Bruce VanWyngarden’s Letter from the Editor about President Obama and the Affordable Care Act …

It doesn’t matter how high the Marx-Obama Healthcare Act is lauded by media and the O’Regime. The people won’t be forgetting the intrusive fiasco before the first Tuesday in November 2014 arrives.

Nightcrawler

I love how Nightcrawler is spewing the same tired warnings he did before 2008 and 2012. Some folks never tire of foaming at the mouth.

B

Not bad for a Muslim who wasn’t even born in the U.S., especially when you consider the you-know-what storm he inherited. Maybe we need to look for other Allah-worshipping, socialism-touting “aliens” out there who may want to run the country.

Miejep

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter from the Editor: Short Attention Span Theater

Some of you may remember a show called Short Attention Span Theater, which ran for several years in the early 1990s on what was then called the Comedy Channel. The basic concept was to show short clips from various movies and then send them up with comedic commentary and snark.

Now art has become reality as we are bombarded daily on our televisions with one-minute versions of the show in the form of political ads that assume we all have short attention spans. The plot for these scary mini-dramas is always the same: Show a picture of Nancy Pelosi and say the words “Obamacare,” “Washington,” and “liberal” in a deep voice and claim Politician X is affiliated with these hideous bogeymen. Then sign off by saying the ad was paid for by “Citizens for Truth” or some such bogus organization.

The only problem is that no comedians are coming on afterward to make fun of these things. And thanks to the Supreme Court’s recent decision that corporations are “citizens” and that anonymously funded political ads are protected free speech, tens of millions of dollars are being poured into attack ads geared to demonize health-care reform, Democrats, and President Obama — and ultimately to give control of Congress back to the GOP. They want to return the country to the “good old days” of the Bush administration, where corporate stooges ran federal regulatory agencies and the banking industry and Wall Street were unrestrained from making their billion-dollar bets with our money and mortgages.

They are putting millions of dollars into campaigns in the hope that useful idiots such as Sharron Angle, Christine O’Donnell, and Rand Paul can be brought into power by scaring a majority of Americans into believing that tax cuts for the rich are the way to “take our country back.”

If polls are to be believed, it just may work. Obama and the Democrats swept into power by using the Internet to motivate millions of voters to make a change from the ruinous Bush years. A commitment to sustain that momentum doesn’t seem to be there this year. Maybe it’s because the benefits and tax credits of the health-care reform bill are being phased in slowly and haven’t had an impact yet. Maybe it’s because no one is pointing out that the TARP and stimulus packages have kept us from a disastrous recession (see Viewpoint, p. 17).

Or maybe Americans really do have a short attention span.

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com