The Columbus Dispatch indicates that John Boccieri’s latest statement indicates that he is considering supporting health care reform in the final form, despite voting against the House version last year.
“After reviewing the president’s health care proposal and watching portions of his bipartisan health care summit, I’m encouraged the proposal contains important provisions to reduce fraud, waste, and abuse and reduce the deficit,” Boccieri said. “I am hopeful that going forward from last week’s summit with bipartisan ideas, we can finally move toward providing affordable, quality coverage for everyone.”
I think after Boccieri came back to the district, he encountered the Democratic activists who helped get him elected and that they were not going to there for him come November if he continued to vote against health care and the Republicans were going to come after him no matter what he did anyways.
So why not do the thing that will at least get you some allies?
I wish the blogs could take credit for this conversion, but it was totally the Democratic activists in Boccieri’s district that put the pressure on him.
John Boehner makes it perfectly clear that no matter how many GOP ideas the White House incorporates, the Republicans are interested in seeing it defeated in ANY form, even as he admits that most Republicans agrees with most of the bill (and yet, he didn’t mentioned what these points were as a starting point in the recent health care summit. I know, Boehner, disingenuous? I’m stunned, too!)
If the American people stay engaged in this fight, I don’t think (current health care reform) is going to happen,” the House Minority Leader and West Chester Twp. Republican told an audience of about 140 residents, business leaders and politicians at a special speaking engagement Monday, March 1, at the Manchester Inn. The Chamber of Commerce Serving Middletown, Monroe and Trenton sponsored the event.
…
While Boehner said there are about eight to 10 points in the current health care legislation most Republicans agree with, he said Congress and the president need to find more common ground and not just “have some Republican crumbs sprinkled on top.”
Boehner claims that the biggest area of disagreement is a mandate to buy insurance and fining businesses who fail to provide health insurance.
Boehner, who once said that the health care bill would “virtually eliminate Medicare Advantage“ (that was, of course, untrue according to the CBO) and publicly decried the cuts in Medicare in the health care bill wants to balance the the budget:
Noting that legislators were able to balance the budget in the latter Clinton years, Boehner said following the event Monday that he believed spending got out of hand after Sept. 11 , when large funds were expended for the Department of Homeland Security and to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.
However, he said none of these three areas could afford to lose funding and said he would rather see cuts made to three “entitlement programs” — Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
“I think they are important programs, but they aren’t sustainable in the long-term,” he said. “We need to figure out ways to control that spending.”
Boehner specifically cited concerns involving Medicare, which he said would “swell to levels I can’t imagine” as more baby boomers start to retire.
Now John Boehner wants to cut Medicare and Social Security. Sounds like Boehner is signing up on Paul Ryan’s radical budget.
Sometime, parody and fact is hard to distinguish. Absent the MoveOn.Org disclaimer at the end, and I’d almost think this could be an actual Boehner campaign ad.
Congresswoman Mary Jo Kilroy knows that the national Republicans have painted a big target on her back. She knows she’s likely facing a rematch from her ‘08 opponent in which she narrowly won thanks, in part, to a high youth turnout fueled by the presidential election that is unlikely to materialize in ‘10.
And yet, she not only voted for the House health insurance reform bill, but she also voted against the Stupak anti-choice amendment.
If you’ve got some spare change, give Kilroy some coin. If you live in the area and have some spare time, then give Kilroy’s campaign your time.
Kilroy is living proof that you don’t have to wear an uniform to show the courage of your convictions.
I thought it would be a good idea to investigate whether or not I should switch to my husband’s health insurance plan.
I had no idea how HUGE the price difference would be!
My company struggles every year to figure out how to continue covering our employees – my boss covers all of our premiums and gives us the best insurance he can. There have been years when we decide to skip any pay increase so that we can maintain our health insurance coverage (which has gone up 30% in one year).
Now, switch to my husband’s insurance.
He works for a large international corporation. We have 7 employees; his firm has more than 170,000.
They can provide me similar coverage for 1/6th the price my company pays! Seriously, for what my boss pays to cover me for TWO months, the large company can cover me for an entire year!
Two lessons:
No matter what they say, our policymakers don’t care about small businesses.
When a large institution can spread the costs/risks associated with health care among its people, it can save A LOT of money. I wonder how much money a government program made up of 300 million people could save!? Hmmm…
So, I may not be the best person to ask since I came into this debate feeling much more positive about Obama than Clinton, but if you were to ask – and I assume since you are reading my blog, you are asking – I think Obama won. For starters, he feels way more sincere than Clinton. His answers were substantive, and most importantly he didn’t seem to have to run around trying to spin old positions like Clinton has had to do repeatedly with previous statements and votes about the war and about NAFTA. (She’s come the closest I’ve seen to owning up to making a mistake in the original Iraq vote in her closing statement tonight, thankfully.)
That 15 minute mess on health care at the beginning seemed interminable. I did not like Brian Williams’ final question, but I thought both candidates handled it very well.
In my final analysis, I’m still for either of these candidates over any of the three GOP candidates still running, tho my strong preference is for Obama.
I don’t feel bad about deciding to pass up the opportunity to secure tickets to the debate, especially since State Route 315 is closed due to treacherous road conditions. I can’t say I’d be looking forward to driving home from Cleveland tonight.
Stay tuned for audio of Eric pontificating on the BBC!
It’s pretty well recognized that college professors as a group are more liberal than the population at large. The unexplored question was always “why?” People like David Horowitz would blindly speculate that it was hostility towards conservatives that drove them from academia, but nobody actually tried to learn why there weren’t more conservatives in academia. Until now.
Politically conservative professor Matthew Woessner – an Ohio State graduate and asst. professor of public policy at Penn State – has conducted a scientific study into political orientation and higher education with his wife (a liberal professor at Elizabethtown, and also an OSU grad), and the conclusions may be surprising to some people.
The Woessners have peered into the psyche of conservative undergraduates to find out why so few of them want to earn Ph.D.’s and become professors. Their paper on the topic, “Left Pipeline: Why Conservatives Don’t Get Doctorates,” is available online and will be published as part of a book published in August by the American Enterprise Institute.
The Woessners found that liberal students have values and interests that point them to careers in academe, while most conservative students do not.
“The personal priorities of those on the left,” the Woessners conclude, “are more compatible with pursuing a Ph.D.”
Basically, liberals are twice as likely to want to pursue a PhD. It’s not because of their undergraduate experience – in fact, conservatives are slightly more likely to be satisfied with their undergraduate experience than liberals. Conservatives in the university environment don’t experience widespread discrimination. Interestingly, politically moderate students did worse in college than liberals or conservatives; but those two groups performed reasonably similarly in grades. Essentially, what it boils down to is the fact that liberals are far more interested in the things a PhD provides than conservatives: less family oriented, more interest in writing original works, less focused on financial success, more interested in developing a meaningful philosophy of life, and more interested in contributing to scientific knowledge.
Horowitz is, as expected, full of it.
David Horowitz, the conservative activist, has staged a national campaign for colleges to hire more conservative professors, and he tells stories about right-wing students who have been turned off by hostile leftists in the classroom. He even proposed an “academic bill of rights,” which encourages colleges to foster a variety of political beliefs and become more intellectually diverse.
But Mr. Woessner says he never confronted intolerance in the classroom. Even some of his most liberal professors went out of their way to solicit his views.
So, what’s the key to increasing the percentage of conservatives pursuing PhDs (and thus potentially entering the workforce as professor material)? (Emphasis mine.)
The research led the Woessners to conclude that if higher education wants to attract more conservatives to the professoriate, it should smooth the way financially, offering subsidized health insurance and housing for graduate students, and adopting family-friendly policies for professors.
Become more socialist? Boy, that’s a surprise!
Here’s the real irony for me – I work in a university environment, and I’ve current got the most liberal benefits I’ve had over my entire career. The best health care plan I’ve seen. Tremendous leave plans, including paternity leave. Free (if hard to get due to popularity) child care. Adoption assistance. A flexible work environment that allows individuals to adjust their hours to whatever is in the best interests of their families. While I don’t think graduate students get quite the same benefits I do, it seems to me that the benefits provided while working at a major midwestern university are already quite good.
One of Bush’s visitors tonight at the SOTU is actually prohibited by US law from being here in the states. HT Sullivan.
Tatu Msangi, a nurse and single mother from Tanzania: Tatu Msangi is a 35-year-old single mother from Tanzania. When Tatu became pregnant, she went to the antenatal clinic at KCMC and discovered she was HIV-positive. Tatu enrolled in a Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission (PMTCT) program and delivered a healthy daughter, named Faith. As part of her treatment, Faith received a dose of nevirapine after she was born. She is now over two years old, and she is HIV-free. As part of her work at KCMC, Tatu counsels HIV-positive women and encourages them to participate in the PMTCT program. KCMC is supported by the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief’s (PEPFAR) through the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. Tatu and her daughter Faith are examples of the hope and compassion that is transforming lives with support from PEPFAR.
US law prohibits HIV-positive people from entering the US. One set of rules for the common man, another set for our betters like Dubya? Sure appears that way.
In a troubling reversal, the nation’s teen birth rate rose for the first time in 15 years, surprising government health officials who had no immediate explanation.
The birth rate had been dropping since its peak in 1991, although the decline had slowed in recent years. On Wednesday, government statisticians said it rose 3 percent from 2005 to 2006.
[S]everal experts said they have been expecting a jump. They blame the increase on increased federal funding for abstinence-only health education programs that do not teach how to use condoms and other contraception.
Some key sexually transmitted disease rates have been rising, including syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia. The rising teen pregnancy rate is part of the same phenomenon, said Dr. Carol Hogue, an Emory University professor of maternal and child health.
What’s wrong with giving young adults all of the information – including that abstinence is the only fool-proof way to avoid disease and pregnancy – and then trust them to make good decisions? It’s been shown to work, if you define “work” as reducing teen pregnancy and the spread of disease.
In the studies of adult populations, with adjustment for potential confounders, private for-profit hospitals were associated with an increased risk of death (relative risk [RR] 1.020, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.003–1.038; p = 0.02). The one perinatal study with adjustment for potential confounders also showed an increased risk of death in private for-profit hospitals (RR 1.095, 95% CI 1.050–1.141; p < 0.0001).
Interpretation: Our meta-analysis suggests that private for-profit ownership of hospitals, in comparison with private not-for-profit ownership, results in a higher risk of death for patients.
What does this show? That patient survival is apparently a liability for for-profit hospitals. Efficiency is king! Profits rule all! If your health gets in the way of profits, too bad!
Jenna Bush, that’s who. Yes, the President’s (blond) daughter. When asked by Diane Sawyer if she supported her father’s “abstinence-only” plan.
No, I mean, not at all, first, because I’m not part of the administration. You know, I’m just my father’s daughter. … I think that when we’re talking about keeping kids safe, and we’re talking about Ana and other kids that are living with HIV or other STDs … kids need to have education; they need to be educated in order to make the right decision for themselves.
I finished watching The New Asylums last night, and it’s a great little documentary. It seems that our prison mental care facilities are far beyond what is available in the “real world” to these men when they are released, and since many of them become homeless and run out of meds, their mental illnesses flare up again and they become recidivists (’cause it’s hard not to be a violent criminal when you are suffering from a psychotic schizophrenic episode).
In fact, judges will admit that they often send people to prison because that’s the only place where they will get treatment. And prison can be incredibly bad for someone with a mental illness, because while they do a good job of providing care, the system just isn’t set up to deal with these people the way they need to be dealt with, and sometimes it can be difficult to determine the “difference between ‘mad’ and ‘bad’.”
It seems to me that a better public health system (universal care, anyone) would help a lot of these guys stay out of trouble in the first place.
Yesterday I watched part of a PBS documentary called “Frontline: The New Asylums“, which demonstrates that the prison system has become the dumping ground for the mentally ill. 16% of all inmates in Ohio have been diagnosed with a mental illness. It’s really quite remarkable. Ohio, thankfully, does much better than most states in dealing with mentally ill inmates. Lots of footage from Lucasville, and with Columbus PD.
At National Right to Life’s conference this year, Mitt Romney set out to convince anti-abortion leaders he was their candidate. At the podium, he rattled off his qualifications. To a layman’s ears, it sounded pretty standard for abortion politics. He wants to overturn Roe v. Wade. He supports teaching only abstinence to teens.
But for those trained to hear the subtleties, Mr. Romney was acknowledging something more. He implied an opposition to the birth control pill and a willingness to join in their efforts to scale back access to contraception. There are code phrases to listen for – and for those keeping score, Mr. Romney nailed each one.
One code phrase is: “I fought to define life as beginning at conception rather than at the time of implantation.” The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists defines pregnancy as starting at implantation, the first moment a pregnancy can be known. Anti-abortion advocates want pregnancy to start at the unknown moment sperm and egg meet: fertilization. They’d also like you to believe, despite evidence to the contrary, that the birth control pill prevents that fertilized egg from implanting in the womb.
Mr. Romney’s code, deciphered, meant, “I, like you, hope to reclassify the most commonly used forms of contraceptives as abortions.” In fact, he told the crowd, he already had some practice redefining contraception: “I vetoed a so-called emergency contraception bill that gave young girls abortive drugs without prescription or parental consent.”
Romney isn’t the only one, of course. Brownback, Tancredo, and McCain (!!) have all used similar language, much to the delight of the wingnuts over at RABid I’m sure.
Contraception (including of the emergency variety) is not an abortifacient. If we allow people to erroneously define it so, banning of contraceptives like the pill are inevitable.
AP, 
