Health & Healthcare
"You Do Not Have Health Insurance"
Published August 09, 2009 @ 09:06AM PT
There's a great post up at The Baseline Scenario concerning the diffuse worry that healthcare reform will negatively impact those with health insurance in the US. It basically eviscerates the lie that "employer-subsidized health care for the duration of your employment" is health insurance: "as long as your health insurance depends on your job, your health is only insured insofar as your job is insured – and your job isn’t insured."
Unlike NycWeboy, who believes no one is paying attention to the needs to reform Medicaid for better coverage and care of the poor, James at TBS thinks "people remain convinced that health care reform is for poor people. [But] It’s for everyone – everyone, that is, who isn’t independently wealthy or over the age of 65. Because all of us could lose our jobs."
FYI: Medicare = health insurance.
More great links to while away your Sunday afternoon after the jump.
Modeling Harlem Children's Zone
Published August 08, 2009 @ 09:00AM PT
I'm sort of putting this post up today as a reminder to myself to come back to it - it's a WaPo profile of Harlem Children's Zone, Geoffrey Canada's unique, high-intensity community & human development organization that President Obama sees as an anti-poverty and neighborhood development model.
This is the starting point for the Harlem Children's Zone: the womb. Geoffrey Canada's nonprofit has created a web of programs that begin before birth, end with college graduation and reach almost every child growing up in 97 blocks carved out of the struggling central Harlem neighborhood.
Folks over at PostBourgie are discussing a recent biography of Canada and HCZ. And I've mentioned HCZ in passing a couple times around this blog.
What do you think of this program? What's not to like? Anything?
Understanding Medicaid Reform
Published August 07, 2009 @ 05:13AM PT
Just a quick note to let you know that I've asked occasional guest blogger NycWeboy to post here weekly on the healthcare debate, paying particular attention to the issue of Medicaid reform and possible expansion. I thought it would be a nice accompaniment to Tim's Healthcare blog, and I for one could certainly stand to learn more about the Medicaid argument.
Then I can make sense of these fretful articles about governors fighting with the feds over who's going to pick up the check for this expansion. Sigh.
Evicting a Dying Woman?
Published August 05, 2009 @ 07:05AM PT
Is this what our affordable housing policy has come to?
I am sure stories like this happen nationwide, all the time. It's part of the problem of funneling people's lives through large bureacracies. But good beaureacratic systems have people on the front lines who can trigger pauses and detours here and there through the system, so as to prevent this kind of travesty - courtesy of my radical activist networks in New Orleans:
On Friday Arlene Craft, a terminally ill Katrina Survivor, received a notice of eviction from her apartment on Touro Street in New Orleans. The eviction notice came despite promises from HANO ,dating as far back as March, that the housing authority would provide housing voucher assistance to help Arlene pay her rent. The assistance has yet to come. Arlene, at last count, owes her landlord $2,000 in back rent. The only source of income that she is receiving is a $579 a month Social Security check. Too add insult to injury HANO is threatening to pull Arlene from its housing voucher program on August 15th even though she has yet to receive even a penny in housing assistance.
Read on for the rest. If you live in the NOLA region, there's a press conference today at 2pm at 2651 Touro St. You can email Mike, the main organizer, at howellnow at bellsouth dot net to learn more about how you can help.
Remember that just last week the UN arrived in New Orleans to investigate the government's trend of forced evictions since Hurricane Katrina. I should have more on their findings as they become available.
More eviction coverage at PiA is here.
(Photo from the LA Public Library collection of the eviction of Aurora Vargas from Chavez Ravine. "Last eviction, 1959. Plans for the housing project were thrown to the winds in favor of Dodger Stadium.")
Paying for Better Healthcare
Published August 04, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT
Good news! Turns out, we already are!
H/t to Steve Benen at The Washington Monthly, I see in 2008 we taxpayers spent almost $1,800 per federal worker to cover their healthcare:
Among the advantages: a choice of 10 healthcare plans that provide access to a national network of doctors, as well as several HMOs that serve each member's home state. By contrast, 85% of private companies offering health coverage provide their employees one type of plan -- take it or leave it.
Lawmakers also get special treatment at Washington's federal medical facilities and, for a few hundred dollars a month, access to their own pharmacy and doctors, nurses and medical technicians standing by in an office conveniently located between the House and Senate chambers.
In all, taxpayers spent about $15 billion last year to insure 8.5 million federal workers and their dependents, including postal service employees, according to the Office of Personnel Management.
There's also no "pre-existing condition" exclusionary cause for federal employees.
Check out the original article to read about Rep. Steve Kagen, a Democrat and former physician from WI who won't accept the federal package until all American's have the same coverage. No health insurance for Kagen, but he's got principles that clearly the rest of his colleagues lack.
(Photo from the rally for the right to healthcare in DC, June 2009, by NESRI)
Annie E. Casey Foundation Calls for Updated Poverty Measure
Published August 01, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT
As I'm scrolling through the weekend poverty news, I see that this week the Annie E. Casey Foundation released its 20th annual Kids Count report on child poverty in the U.S. The information is presented in a user-friendly on-line "data book" that I recommend checking out to learn more about the particulars of your state.
I took a look at the summary brief of the report and was pleased to see that in their recommendations for making better use of data to drive policy, that improvements include updating the US poverty measure to reflect contemporary economic and political realities. Why collect data if it's based on outmoded definitions of hardship? Excellent point! More on this below the fold.
KnoxNews.com has a handy round-up of the key findings in the report, based on data collected through 2006 (the current recession will be reflected in their next report):
The report documented improvements since 2000 in the infant mortality rate, child death rate, teen death rate, high school dropout rate, and teens not in school and not working. Four areas have worsened: low-birthweight babies, children living with jobless or underemployed parents, children in poverty, and children in single-parent families. (my emphases)
Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi - Katrina's darlings, weep - continue to rank worst among states for child well-being.
I rarely do this, but this extensive block quote from KnoxNews.com captures perfectly efforts to redefine the poverty measure is - check it out after the jump.
'Bamboozle' A Golden Rule for Some
Published July 31, 2009 @ 05:19AM PT
I'm a naysayer, a contrarian. I've always been that way. It comes in handy, especially when sorting out the abundant tomfoolery hoisted upon us by "them that have the gold," the Tarnished Golden Rule of Politics. An abundance of news, opinions and blogs about poverty-related issues illustrate how this rule works.
Recent news accounts of Wall Street's audacious behavior and self-interested medical providers illustrate the power of money in guiding (mis) behavior. Follow the money and you'll figure out this nation's and world's woes. Many in Congress and most corporations tend to follow the bucks which gets them in trouble.
