FINAL UPDATE: A Letter to My Senators on Good Faith Toward 9-11 First Responders

Dear Senator,

I urge you to press for another vote this session on providing health benefits to 9-11 First Responders and volunteers.

Please call on the opposition to act in good faith and without further delay on this important matter.

Thanks for your leadership, Senator.

Kind regards,

Jim Hancock

FINAL UPDATE: AP reports passage of the bill.


UPDATE: MSNBC reports a deal has been reached in the Senate Wednesday Afternoon. Almost there...

Earth Day at 40 | Unfinished Business

On this day 40 years ago, I bailed out of Leon High School for a sunny day on the lawn in front of the library at Florida State University, listening to smart people talk about what I came to understand as an obligation to treat the earth responsibly.

Today, I'm more convinced of that obligation than ever, and my convictions run wider and deeper than ever. We've made significant progress on so many fronts, even as it's clear the work is far from finished.

Here's a nice piece in the Washington Post—with links to quite a bit more on what remains to be done on the way to that time when we can say the words "Happy Earth Day" without a hint of irony.

it doesn't take a genius | Medical Bankruptcies in the US

In 1981, 8% of families filing for bankruptcy did so in the aftermath of a serious medical problem.*

A 2001 study in five states found that illness or medical bills contributed to about half of bankruptcies.

In 2007, using a conservative definition, The American Journal of Medicine discovered that 62.1% of all bankruptcies were medical.

Most 2007 medical debtors were well educated, owned homes, and had middle-class occupations.

Three quarters had health insurance.

Using identical definitions in 2001 and 2007, the share of bankruptcies attributable to medical problems rose by 49.6%.

The odds that a bankruptcy had a medical cause in 2007 were nearly two and a half times higher than in 2001.

It doesn't take a genius to see where this curve leads. The knuckleheads who say we can't afford to fix health care are not thinking clearly. We can't afford not to fix it. Tell them to snap out of it and get to work.




* Sullivan TA, Warren E, Westbrook JL. The Fragile Middle Class: Americans in Debt. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; 2000


photo by Andy Kiel

Health Insurance Reform | An Exchange with Beetlejuice

I've had an interesting exchange about health care reform with someone called Beetlejuice who responded to my clipping from Garrison Keillor in London a few days ago. See what you think.

Beetlejuice said...

I'm on the right but I'm not paranoid, I just like my health care and insurance the way it is. The liberals want free healthcare for everyone including non-citizens and non-taxpayers,and taxpayers to pay for it for them.If you like socialism, that's cool.We're not paranoid,we just have a different opinion.

jim hancock said...

Beetlejuice, you've misunderstood or been misled about what liberals want in health care. We want affordable world class coverage for every citizen and we're not willing to concede that the US is the only developed nation on the planet incapable of delivering that.

Your willingness to accept second-tier economic status is inscrutable to people like me who refuse to settle for less than the American ideal. I do not like my health care the way it is—it is expensive and restrictive and getting more so every year. My health insurance premiums have risen 59.56% since 2005—my monthly insurance premiums are greater than the take home pay of a full-time minimum wage worker—and my deductible has risen to $5,000.

The US leads the OECD in health care spending measured per capita and as a percentage of GDP. US per capita spending on health insurance and administration is double that of the next ranked OECD nation.

To our shame, the US also leads the OECD in infant mortality measured by the number of children who die before reaching their first birthday.

The US—my nation and yours—lags well below the median for life expectancy among OECD states. In short, we are paying too much money for too little value and I don't think there is anything smart or noble or principled about that.

You are the tiniest bit paranoid. You're afraid thoroughgoing health care reform would inevitably lead to socialism driven by the liberals. But you've misunderstood or been misled about what we want. We want this nation to be as great in every way as we—you and I—say it is.

Beetlejuice said...

I am worried that i will pay much higher taxes AND not have a choice to get my own healthcare. We are a free country after all, Under Obama-care if I drop my current (Blue Sheild) policy with my employer I will automatically be put into the goverment plan. I believe that is page 16 of the Bill. My free choice is to have the healthcare I want, not what the govt wants me to have.Personal freedom is important.

jim hancock said...

Beetlejuice, apparently, you've never experienced the joys of COBRA coverage from an existing carrier and the search for new insurance while the 18-month clock to secure coverage winds down (tck, tck, tck). When I neared the end of my COBRA mandated coverage in 2000, my existing insurer told me they would be happy to continue my policy at a premium of $6,000 per month. I thought health insurance that cost $72,000 a year should probably come with no deductible but that, of course, was not to be.

Page 16 of H.R. 3200, America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 as proposed (I don't know what this Obama-care proposal you refer to is and find no trace of it in the public record) begins with Section 102. Protecting the Choice to Keep Current Coverage and says pretty much exactly the opposite of what you believe or have been led to believe it says.

You can find a certified US Government Printing Office copy of H.R.3200 as a downloadable pdf here.

Not to put too fine a point on it Beetlejuice but under the current regime you have virtually no rights to affordable health insurance coverage whatsoever starting 18 months and one day after you leave your current employer-provided health plan. Without health care reform, if you leave your employer-provided program, your "free choice" of insurers will be determined by what you can afford to pay ($6,000 a month in my case, but your mileage may vary). You might get another 36 months of coverage if you are HIPAA-eligible, but I wouldn't count on it if I were you.

I hope you don't find it disrespectful when I observe that we're living in a broadband world and your language suggests you've gotten most of your information about health care reform from narrowcast sources.

When you made a comment here, I offered a thoughtful response gleaned from a variety of credible, publicly available sources. Your response seems to be repeating something you heard someone say...where? on talk radio? cable tv? at a barbecue? It seems to me that one of us is doing most of the heavy lifting on something that matters a great deal to both of us.

People who lie about health care reform are not protecting democracy and they are not your friends. People who repeat lies without attempting to find out if what they're saying is true are not journalists or intellectuals or patriots, they are gossips and gossips are not to be trusted.

There's an old saying which, at the risk of being offensive, I repeat here in it's original form.

"Eat shit," the saying goes, "50 million horseflies can't be wrong."

Well...yes they can.

jim hancock said...

Oops, I forgot to speak to your concern about paying higher taxes Beetlejuice. You're partly right about that and partly wrong.

Here's a post that explains what I mean.

follow the link to the original source if you want more detail.

Beetlejuice said...

Jim, respectively, healthcare is really not a right, according to the constitution. If I choose to buy insurance on the open market that should be my choice, not Uncle Sam's. Your links and factoids may be valuable in some respects, but the bigger picture is still personal liberty.

jim hancock said...

You're spitting into the wind Beetlejuice. No one is trying to take away whatever right you believe you have to pay as much as the market will bear for as little service as the provider can get away with.

America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 is being shaped to protect that right along with providing a higher standard of care and a greater level of protection for you should your employer lay you off or decide it can no longer afford to contribute to your health plan. As things stand, if that happens, you are SOL.

And then you will have the government-guaranteed right to go to an emergency room when you're so sick you can't put it off any longer and see how that level of care suits you—knowing that taxpayers like me are footing a much higher bill for your care than we would pay if we scaled health care now so that people who want and can afford private health insurance can buy it; and people who don't want or can't afford private health insurance have access to care that keeps them out of the emergency rooms except for emergencies.

I get it. Someone has frightened you with lies and half-truths and has framed this discussion as an assault on your personal convictions so you would sooner lose your home than allow the rest of us the liberty to opt into a different, demonstrably better health care plan.

You're being punk'd, and not in the ha ha, we're all in this together, you're a good sport, let's have a beer way. Those people—the ones who know what they're doing—are not your friends.

I'm glad you think my links and factoids might be useful in some respects. I'm sad you believe people like me want to take away your personal liberty.

Thanks for the polite tone of your comments. We're in this together.

Martin Luther King | April 30, 1967

For the troops to fall into line is a noble thing; for civilians to fall into line is shameful.
— Garrison Keillor, Salon, Theirs Not To Reason Why , April 2, 2008

What's Your News IQ?

What's Your News IQ?

The Pew Research Center poses a 12 question multiple choice (my 7th grade science teacher called it multiple guess) quiz about prominent people and major events in the news -- to compare your basic news awareness with 1,005 randomly sampled adults asked the same questions in a recent national survey.

You'll also be able to compare your News IQ with the average scores of men and women; with college graduates as well as those who didn't attend college; with people who are your age as well as with younger and older Americans. Take the News Quiz.

Katrina | two years on

In three minutes and 54 seconds you'll see something you can do that's very simple and direct — that should have been done already. Better now than never.

are Republican voters as stupid as Tom Cole thinks?

Are Republican voters as stupid as Oklahoma Congressman Tom Cole thinks?

I don't believe so. I hope not.

It could have been any of a number of elected officials but it happened to be Congressman Cole I heard last weekend saying, "We are the party of small government, low taxes and a strong defense."

Really? He believes his constituents will buy that? He is relatively new to the Congress but I see he attended . . . well, look for yourself:

A former college instructor in history and politics, Cole holds a B.A. from Grinnell College, an M.A. from Yale University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma. Cole has been a Thomas Watson Fellow and a Fulbright Fellow at the University of London. He currently serves on the national Board of the Fulbright Association. He also serves on the board of the Aspen Institute.

So if he's not the dumb one, who does he think is?

I doubt Congressman Cole or anyone else would consciously settle for an ineffective government solely on the basis of it's runty size.

I doubt anyone would seriously contend that taxes too low to contribute to the common good were better than higher but measureably more beneficial taxes — any more than they would insist on only the cheapest footware and brag that they are "the family of worthless shoes."

Insisting "We are the party of strong defense" is a triumphalist jingo devoid of meaningful metrics. Everyone knows that . . . now.

I should think Congressman Cole would wish to be in the party of wildly efficient government, intelligently scaled taxation and universally effective foreign policy. I would be willing to wager a small amount that behind closed doors he would say that, or something like it, is precisely what he wants.

But not in public. Because he apparently thinks Republican voters are stupid . . . bless their hearts.

in Iraq, the later it gets, the later it gets

in response to a calling in a debt at the White House prioritizewisely said...

unfortunately, jim, when we pull out, and massive slaughters occur and baghdad becomes a militaristic haven breeding ground for evil, it will not only rest on bush's conscience, but also yours, for you champion the withdrawal, you sicko. why not let the military, who signed up to do this, and bush the instigator, and freer of the people of iraq, follow through with their promises to the iraqis. Yes, america is hurting a little, but iraq needs us more, you selfish sicko. You should be writing childrens poems or something, where your propaganda can do less harm.

It already weighs on my conscience. Somewhere near 35,000 Iraqi dead in 2006 . . . over 600,000 excess Iraqi deaths since the Shock and Awe campaign in 2003. Shock and Awe . . . you tell me who the propagandists are . . . about 50,000 Iraqis displaced every month . . . Nearly every session of the Iraqi Parliment since November adjourned for lack of a quorum . . . former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi no longer in Iraq, reportedly splitting his time betwen Amman and London . . . Adnan Pachachi said to be living in Abu Dhabi . . .

I'm sick that I failed to mobilize fellow Americans stop our part of this madness before it began.

I'm frustrated that I failed to moblize enough voters in 2004 to put the brakes on The Bush Doctrine.

I lament that others reap what my elected representatives have sown by action and inaction.

Mr or Ms Prioritizewisely, Baghdad is presently the 'militaristic haven breeding ground for evil' you fear because evildoers fill the vacuum created by Mr Bush's misadventure. A bad thing is today much worse because we as a people failed in our duty. I am horrrified to be a part of that.

The harm is done, friend, with more to follow no matter what.

I'm convinced we need to swallow hard and engage every stakeholder in the region to make the best of what is just godawful in every dimension. Shia, Sunni, Iraqis, Turks, Saudis, Iranians, Jordanians, Syrians, Kuwaitis . . . the whole lot.

The most strident get out now advocates I've heard, acknowledge that disengagement will take months — force protection alone guarantees that. It's time to break our engagement in this Lose/Lose scenario and get on with what the American president likes to refer to as hard choices. The later it gets, the later it gets.