One wonders how seniors, the poor, and veterans will react to the potential of having their federal health care plans pulled out from under them by a Governor Emmer in the name of states rights.
So this is perhaps less of an episode of Gross Inaccuracies and more of reminder to Gary Gross about the things he conveniently left out of his most recent hit piece on Tarryl Clark.
Apparently now you only have to be in the room with single payer advocates to be counted as one of them:
From the outset of the event, the focus of the conversation was almost exclusively about Canadacare and single-payer health care.
As you will recall, Gary, I too was at this event and if we used your logic we might also have to wonder if Representative Gottwalt (who was also there) is a single payer advocate. Oh but wait, I actually took some video of the event and put it up on youtube. Let's review what Clark said about health care reform:
Weird, for all your guilt by association rhetoric, I don't hear Clark saying anything one way or the other about single payer health insurance. But this isn't the best part of the Gross attack piece. He brings up this little exchange:
From the outset of the event, the focus of the conversation was almost exclusively about Canadacare and single-payer health care. Loretta Linus spoke enthusiastically, though a bit combatively, about CanadaCare:
“The doctors are wonderful. You get good care. And it just makes me mad when they talk about how they have to come over here to get good care & that’s not true. Now they say that Canadians have to come over here for good treatment. Well don’t you believe it. Don’t you believe it one bit. That government is so good to all its people. I don’t care if you’re rich or poor. They take care of you. And so many of the people come & they talk crap about how awful their system is. Well, don’t you believe it. Single payer is wonderful if it’s run right.”
She wasn’t the only single-payer advocate to speak that night.
Hey Gary, did you let your readers know what your good friend Steve Gottwalt was doing while this elderly woman expressed her opinion to those people who you consistently claim "work for we the people"? Oh, let me remind them:
Your "adopted representative" immediately began smirking, raising eyebrows, and generally mocking this woman and her opinion. That's right, while a constituent spoke, your "adopted representative" sat there and immediately dismissed her opinion. In fact, he did more than that. He took it one step further and openly mocked her to the audience WHILE SHE SPOKE! Given that this is completely acceptable to the Republican Party in St. Cloud due to the endorsement it received from local party leadership, I wonder why you didn't include this little exchange to your hit piece on Clark.
The local grocery store in St. Cloud, Coborn's, and their public relations guru, Steve Gottwalt, have been taking a bit of a hit lately after it was revealed they were sending letters to employees about health care reform and unionization urging them to oppose them.
The St. Cloud-based grocery chain in September asked its employees in a letter to contact their congressional representatives to oppose two pieces of legislation — one of them a House version of health care reform legislation.
...
Steve Gottwalt, spokesman for the company, said someone — not an employee — asked whether the letter was a threat. He said it is not at all a threat and employees are free to take any stance on the legislation without risk of retaliation.
In the discussion of the pending health care in Congress, we have heard the vast rumors of death panels to pull the plug on Grandma, increased abortions and others so silly they are not worth the ink to include them.
I recently received a copy of a letter sent to Coborn’s employees stating that if passed, the health care bill would among other things “result in layoffs.” The letter, reported in Sunday’s Times, went on to say that it would be a “destructive government takeover of health care.”
The letter also informed the employee that the pending “unionization bill” was not good for the company, saying it would bring a “loss of benefits.”
We don’t see a head of a company ever looking out for issues that might help the employees, do we?
I find the letter sent out by Coborn’s President Christopher Coborn very troubling by putting pressure on its employees to take political sides on issues that affect them today and in their future.
Putting employees in fear of loosing benefits and even their jobs so that critical legislation is not completed is over the top. I hope that each Coborn’s employee can think on their own what is best for them.
I have three relatively simple questions for Mr. Coborn and his PR flak, Gottwalt:
1. What percentage of your employees do you provide health insurance to?
2. If employees are free to take any stance on the legislation (as Gottwalt claims), what would the purpose be in urging them to oppose the legislation? Also, if someone had to ASK if it was a threat, then doesn't it stand to reason that it has crossed some line?
3. Can you explain, with detail, how this legislation (especially health reform) will negatively impact your business? Is it because you will be required to give your employees health insurance?
One of the cruxes of the entire conservative movement, aside perhaps from an unhealthy obsession with the 2nd Amendment, is their purported adherence to the 10th Amendment:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Now I don't necessarily share their passion for the 10th Amendment nor do I believe that it definitively proves their strict constructionist states rights beliefs but it is their belief none the less. Any true conservative will swear by the 10th Amendment and use it as a cudgel against any supposed deviation from the ideas of strict constructionism.
So, given that Bachmann is supposed to be a "rock ribbed conservative", it would stand to reason that she too believes in this principle of strict constructionism and the 10th Amendment, right? WRONG. Today at her town hall forum on health care reform she completely tossed out the amendment even going so far as to suggest "erasing the boundaries" around each of the states in order to create so called competition in the health insurance industry.
But what about the commerce clause, you ask, which allows the federal government to regulate interstate commerce? Well, that depends on whether or not you define health insurance as "interstate" or "intrastate". This leads to a bit of a sticky wicket for conservatives such as Bachmann. Why? Because part of their new claim is that due to its "intrastate" nature, health insurance cannot be regulated by the federal government (HOORAY 10th Amendment). However, if you turn health insurance INTO interstate commerce then suddenly the federal government will have the authority to regulate. To make matters worse for conservatives, they believe that given the absence of any mention of health care or health insurance in the Constitution there is no authority to make ANY law regarding it so Bachmann shouldn't even be able to create such a provision. Perhaps Bachmann or someone in the conservative movement should have thought this one through a little more rather than just parroting Anne Coulter...
As we continue to debate or, more accurately, hurl insults at one another about health care reform my good friend on the other side of the aisle, Gary Gross of Let Freedom Ring, has tried to claim that Representative Steve Gottwalt has the magic bullet for reform and that Democrats simply have not listened. In his most recent rant, Gross brings it up once again:
Saying that Republicans haven’t proposed health care solutions is either ignorance-driven or it’s plain dishonest. I’ve written more than a few times about Steve Gottwalt’s Healthy Minnesota Plan legislation.
Shortly after the last session ended, both Tarryl Clark and Larry Hosch sat down at a Senate District 14 DFL meeting and I asked Representative Hosch about the Gottwalt bill. I had left it in the file drawer but given that Mr. Gross wants to discuss the viability of the plan set forward by Representative Gottwalt I pulled it out and put it up on youtube:
Representative Hosch directed me to the fiscal note for this particular bill which has this to say:
The assumption that this bill is cost-neutral on an accrual (service year) basis is a default position which we take because this proposal constitutes a completely new method of purchasing, for which DHS has no relevant experience. The effects of private market rates, including private market inflation, and of underwriting, and the extent of expected MCHA losses are all areas of great uncertainty. The specification of the benefit set required by the bill is very general, which adds to the uncertainty about the expected fiscal result, because it is not possible to evaluate how attractive the new product may be to potential applicants compared to the existing product. Thus our assumption of cost-neutrality should not be interpreted as the result of analysis, but as a statement of our inability to advise the Legislature whether this bill should be expected to cost money or to save money, or to what extent. A 30% to 40% variance from cost-neutrality -- in either direction -- should be considered entirely possible. It is assumed that the systems work required for this proposal will allow implementation to begin January 1, 2011. [Emphasis Mine]
So what is the point? While Mr. Gross and Mr. Gottwalt would like you to believe that they have the key to reform, it is clear that this particular bill is not ready until many of its questions are answered with more certainty. The bill could cost us more money in MCHA which is the states high risk pool. The benefit set could be worse than MnCare. Also, this is a high deductible plan which is good for those who have money, but bad for those with little which is exactly the population this will cover. High deductible plans are the number one driver to increased bankruptcies that cite medical costs as the primary reason for the bankruptcy.
There certainly is the potential of this bill working out as a part of the solution to health care problems but it is entirely disingenuous for Mr. Gross and Mr. Gottwalt to claim that it is ready to be implemented or that it would clearly solve any issues.
During the address, the President asks that small business owners and employees give us their comments and questions on the report. What are your experiences with health care as somebody involved in small business, and what are your thoughts and questions on the new CEA report in light of those experiences?
Lawmakers get some perks beyond regular insurance coverage, too. For an annual fee of about $500, they are entitled to health services at a fully staffed clinic on-site at the Capitol and they can check in for medical care at military hospitals, too.
...
Meanwhile, the president's health care reform bill would give consumers some, but not all, of the same benefits as members of Congress and their families get.
Congressional leaders said on Thursday that they don't expect any vote soon.
A curious little piece in the Forest Lake Times caught my eye today. Michele Bachmann was at Birchwood Health Care Center in Forest Lake for what was labeled a "fact finding mission".
It was a fact-finding mission for Sixth District Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, R-Woodbury, on Thursday as she spent an hour at Birchwood Health Care Center in Forest Lake. Health care professionals from as far away as Waite Park were in Forest Lake to express their concerns to the congresswoman.
Let's forget for a moment the inherent contradiction in Bachmann and facts and focus on what this particular meeting signals for the 2010 election. There is a distinct possibility that Bachmann will face off against an individual with extensive experience in the health care industry.
Upon graduating from the University's Medical School, she practiced general internal medicine in the Twin Cities for more than two decades, became the president of Aspen Medical Group, and later served as vice-president and medical director of HealthPartners health plan. Because of her deep concern about health care costs, coverage and quality, she ran for lieutenant governor in 2006 for the Independence Party and subsequently participated on Gov. Pawlenty's Health Care Transformation Task Force.
Consider that when campaigning against Patty Wetterling, Bachmann went for the social issue and who is a better family person schtick. When campaigning against an accomplished transportation expert, Bachmann went after the energy/transportation issue. Her modus operandi appears to be choosing her opponents strongest issue and hammering away with her own pretended expertise. Is it so far fetched to imagine that Bachmann sees some writing on the wall and is preparing to out health care Maureen Reed?
During the Tinklenberg/Bachmann debate last year there was discussion of the health care issue but how will that dynamic change when going up against Reed? Perhaps Reed will ask Bachmann about her votes against children's health care...
According to a new report out by a group known as the Commonwealth Fund, Minnesota ranks 23rd overall in the area of health care for our children. The organization uses indicators such as access, quality, and cost to evaluate the children's health care systems used by each of the states.
While you can make your judgments about what this data actually means, for me this report highlights the need for expanded access to health care for our children. Unfortunately, those efforts have been consistently thwarted by forces more concerned with saving a buck than they are with making sure the highest possible percentage of children are covered.
All session long the Minnesota State Legislature has been working on a Health Care Reform Bill to fundamentally change and improve the delivery, access, and affordability of health care in Minnesota. While some have decried it as not being enough, the reality is that there is only so far we can go when you have a Governor with the obstinance of one Tim Pawlenty.
In the greater scheme of things we here in Minnesota provide health care access to an amazing percentage of our citizens and there are some who claim that as enough. This bill would have added to that amazing number another 30,000+ Minnesotans while decreasing the cost of health care by some 15%. One of the biggest pieces of this reform is to pay providers for the quality of health care rather than simply the quantity of health care provided. Now, given the Governor's insistence that educators be paid based on "quality" one has to wonder why he is opposed to paying the health care industry by the same measure.
Unfortunately, this particular reform is dead in the water today according to a recent article from the Bemidji Pioneer as Pawlenty took out the "protection from reform pen" (isn't that what he called it?) and vetoed the legislation. His reasoning?
“The goal was to make fundamental changes in how we deliver and provide care in order to lower costs and improve quality, and to use some of the savings to expand access,” he wrote. “Unfortunately, many months later, this bill fails to achieve those goals.”
Apparently adding 30,000 Minnesotans, lowering costs by 15%, caps the percentage low income citizens can be forced to spend on health care, and changing the way providers are compensated are not fundamental changes. Mr. Pawlenty, did you read the bill or is this yet another veto to solidify your image for your buddy John McCain at the expense of the people of Minnesota.
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