Today's release of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling validating President Obama's signature health care overhaul marks a groundbreaking watershed in American history and the culmination of a process begun exactly 100 years ago by Theodore Roosevelt. The United States has now joined the civilized countries of the world in establishing access to medical care as a national policy priority and commitment. In simple terms, the principle at issue was whether when somebody is sick in this country they should be able to see a doctor, or not. That has now been decided in the affirmative.
As with other great progressive intiatives initially decried by conservatives such as Social Security and Medicare, if the Republicans are not able to win this year's election and overturn the law, it will likely attain immense popularity once its full provisions take effect. The winners will be the American people, particularly the 50 million currently without health insurance.
The ruling is sure to engender an even higher pitch of furious opposition than has existed up to now from the hard Republican base. But it will also give the President and his allies a second opportunity to win the public debate about the law and its real meaning for public health in the nation. He and they must clearly do a better job of promoting the plan than they did the first time around.
There is a good foundation to start from. The public remains supportive of many of the Affordable Care Act's provisions. Popular features include carrying dependents on parents' insurance until age 26, that no one may be denied insurance due to pre-existing conditions, the prohibition against dropping expensive patients and against imposing lifetime caps, and the requirement that insurance companies spend at least 85% of their revenues on actual health care for customers.
It will also be necessary to refute the many sensationalist and erroneous charges that have been brought against it. People who currently have employer-provided health plans, who pay for their own privately-purchased insurance, or who are on Medicare or Medicaid should not see any change at all. People will still be able to go to their regular doctor. There are no "death panels." People will have to purchase health insurance, but will receive subsidies to do so on a sliding scale based on their income. A basic value of the law is responsibility: everybody needs health care at some point, so it's only fair that everybody contributes to its provision. The Government Accountability Office calculated that many of the ACA's other provisions will act to reduce costs in the health care system as well. Already in the past two years we have seen a marked slowing in the rate of escalating health costs.
The High Court's decision removes the constitutional challenge to Obamacare, but not the political one. That makes it all the more crucial for proponents to work for Barack Obama's re-election. Only a Mitt Romney presidency and close to 60 Republican votes in the U.S. Senate (they currently have 47) are likely to reverse the health initiative now. So while today's announcement is highly historic it does not end the story quite yet. The last chapter will be settled on November 6--Election Day-- 2012.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Monday, June 25, 2012
Seeing Glacier Before It's Too Late
At the end of the week we'll be leaving on a trip I've been looking forward to for many years. My mother often spoke glowingly of a trip she took as a young woman, before I was born and even before she met my father. Back in the late 1940s she and a couple of friends toured throughout the West to many of the National Parks and Monuments. That was quite an undertaking for three women at that time, long before the interstate freeway system. One of the places she spoke of most fondly was Glacier National Park.
For some time I've wanted to see the park in the northern Rockies known as the "Crown of the Continent," and this will finally be the year. I've been particularly eager of late because the namesake glaciers are melting fast. They will probably be gone by 2030, say the climate scientists. It's all part of an ongoing human-caused catastrophe that's underway and gaining momentum.
In this quarter's National Parks magazine, a publication of the National Parks Conservation Association, the grim facts are presented. The toll will likely claim, by 2100, roughly 40 percent of global plant and animal species, "including 21 percent of mammals, 37 percent of freshwater fish and 70 percent of plants." Global sea level is up 2 inches, but over 4 inches on the U.S. East Coast. As the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets continue to melt, the ocean should rise by over four feet by century's end. That would inundate the Everglades, a third of Olympic National Park's coastline and a number of island nations.
So we'll enjoy Lake McDonald and traverse Going to the Sun Road. We'll ride pack horses and hike around Many Glacier. We'll skip across the border one day and cruise Waterton Lake on the Canadian side. We'll see moose, elk and maybe grizzlies. At least the pictures will last!
For some time I've wanted to see the park in the northern Rockies known as the "Crown of the Continent," and this will finally be the year. I've been particularly eager of late because the namesake glaciers are melting fast. They will probably be gone by 2030, say the climate scientists. It's all part of an ongoing human-caused catastrophe that's underway and gaining momentum.
In this quarter's National Parks magazine, a publication of the National Parks Conservation Association, the grim facts are presented. The toll will likely claim, by 2100, roughly 40 percent of global plant and animal species, "including 21 percent of mammals, 37 percent of freshwater fish and 70 percent of plants." Global sea level is up 2 inches, but over 4 inches on the U.S. East Coast. As the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets continue to melt, the ocean should rise by over four feet by century's end. That would inundate the Everglades, a third of Olympic National Park's coastline and a number of island nations.
So we'll enjoy Lake McDonald and traverse Going to the Sun Road. We'll ride pack horses and hike around Many Glacier. We'll skip across the border one day and cruise Waterton Lake on the Canadian side. We'll see moose, elk and maybe grizzlies. At least the pictures will last!
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Is Coal on the Way Out?
There is good news on the energy and environmental fronts: the use of coal is declining, and fast. Jonathan Fahey of the Associated Press reports in a new article that the proportion of U.S. electrical generation powered by coal has dropped from 50% to less than 40% in just the past four years. The reason? Natural gas is now beating coal, not only to meet tighter EPA clean air regulations, but also on price as supplies unleashed by new technologies become more abundant.
To show you how fast this is happening, natural gas "will be used to produce 29% of the country's electricity this year, up from 20% in 2008." Another 20% comes from nuclear power plants, and 11% comes from renewable sources such as hydroelectric, wind and solar. To underscore how much this trend is worrying the coal industry, I saw a TV commercial from them this morning. Click on this link to see how they are pushing back.
The transition is environmentally significant because, as the AP article reports, "Power plants that burn coal produce more than 90 times as much sulfur dioxide, five times as much nitrogen oxide and twice as much carbon dioxide as those that run on natural gas, according to the Government Accountability Office, the regulatory arm of Congress. Sulfur dioxide causes acid rain; nitrogen oxides cause smog; and carbon dioxide is a so-called greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere." This March, EPA issued new regulations that would make it virtually impossible to build any new coal-fired power plants unless they can develop a cost-competitive way to capture the carbon dioxide. So far things are not going well in the effort to produce this technology.
The apparent coming phaseout of coal for power generation in the United States is certainly a step in the right direction. Half the CO2 and a lot less of the poisons associated with coal while cutting costs and keeping production and jobs domestic is a win on all fronts. It should not, however, be viewed as a permanent or the best solution. While certainly better than burning coal, burning natural gas still generates a lot of greenhouse gasses, and the "fracking" process used to free the gas from subterranean rock strata is a threat to water tables and in some cases even to geological stability. Read up on some of the threats here.
The long-term responsible solution remains with renewable and non-polluting energy sources, but the move to natural gas is at least better than what we have been doing, and is therefore a positive development.
To show you how fast this is happening, natural gas "will be used to produce 29% of the country's electricity this year, up from 20% in 2008." Another 20% comes from nuclear power plants, and 11% comes from renewable sources such as hydroelectric, wind and solar. To underscore how much this trend is worrying the coal industry, I saw a TV commercial from them this morning. Click on this link to see how they are pushing back.
The transition is environmentally significant because, as the AP article reports, "Power plants that burn coal produce more than 90 times as much sulfur dioxide, five times as much nitrogen oxide and twice as much carbon dioxide as those that run on natural gas, according to the Government Accountability Office, the regulatory arm of Congress. Sulfur dioxide causes acid rain; nitrogen oxides cause smog; and carbon dioxide is a so-called greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere." This March, EPA issued new regulations that would make it virtually impossible to build any new coal-fired power plants unless they can develop a cost-competitive way to capture the carbon dioxide. So far things are not going well in the effort to produce this technology.
The apparent coming phaseout of coal for power generation in the United States is certainly a step in the right direction. Half the CO2 and a lot less of the poisons associated with coal while cutting costs and keeping production and jobs domestic is a win on all fronts. It should not, however, be viewed as a permanent or the best solution. While certainly better than burning coal, burning natural gas still generates a lot of greenhouse gasses, and the "fracking" process used to free the gas from subterranean rock strata is a threat to water tables and in some cases even to geological stability. Read up on some of the threats here.
The long-term responsible solution remains with renewable and non-polluting energy sources, but the move to natural gas is at least better than what we have been doing, and is therefore a positive development.
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
America's Best Students Assessed
I spent last week in Kansas City grading advanced placement high school exams in European History. Almost 110,000 of the better students across the country took this test, and a few more than 400 teachers from east to west were involved in the scoring. I thought I'd share a few observations about what I saw and what it suggests about the state of education today
All of these students were enrolled in an AP class at their high school to prepare them for what was likely to be on the test. And we scorers, 60% of whom teach at the high school level and 40% in college, were trained and then monitored to keep our scoring consistent and on standard.
I can't go into specifics about the questions themselves, having signed a confidentiality agreement with Educational Testing Service, but there were positives and negatives about the students' performances on the essays I saw.
Here are some of the strengths. Basic grammar and spelling were good, indeed better than I expected. The great majority were able to express themselves clearly and directly. Reading comprehension was a strength, too: although some faltered, most by far were able to correctly interpret the meanings of a selection of short historical documents. Students were generally able to place similar perspectives together into coherent groups. Most could form a fairly reasonable explanatory thesis.
There were general areas of mediocrity. Placing events in correct chronological order was one of these. Some had this nailed, but many were completely at sea on it. While some had their facts straight, others were hit and miss with them. Though some excelled at analyzing ideas like cause and effect, quite a few were so-so at best. Additionally, though some were quite thorough many were fairly lazy, doing only as much as was required to meet a standard. For instance, they had to correctly characterize at least seven of twelve documents. Not a few only attempted seven, and if they got any of these wrong they failed to earn that point.
Then there were the true weaknesses. Penmanship seems to be a dying art. Only a few could product legible cursive writing. Most of the easiest to read were printed. Another, perhaps more important, weakness was a widespread inability to discern a statement's likely reliability or the likely source of bias in a point of view. These critical thinking skills are crucial to the proper functioning of a democratic society, and sadly, based on what I saw, most of our best and brightest high school students have little facility with them.
Overall I felt more positive about what I had seen than I expected (perhaps my expectations were pretty low?), but there are areas of real concern for our society as well.
All of these students were enrolled in an AP class at their high school to prepare them for what was likely to be on the test. And we scorers, 60% of whom teach at the high school level and 40% in college, were trained and then monitored to keep our scoring consistent and on standard.
I can't go into specifics about the questions themselves, having signed a confidentiality agreement with Educational Testing Service, but there were positives and negatives about the students' performances on the essays I saw.
Here are some of the strengths. Basic grammar and spelling were good, indeed better than I expected. The great majority were able to express themselves clearly and directly. Reading comprehension was a strength, too: although some faltered, most by far were able to correctly interpret the meanings of a selection of short historical documents. Students were generally able to place similar perspectives together into coherent groups. Most could form a fairly reasonable explanatory thesis.
There were general areas of mediocrity. Placing events in correct chronological order was one of these. Some had this nailed, but many were completely at sea on it. While some had their facts straight, others were hit and miss with them. Though some excelled at analyzing ideas like cause and effect, quite a few were so-so at best. Additionally, though some were quite thorough many were fairly lazy, doing only as much as was required to meet a standard. For instance, they had to correctly characterize at least seven of twelve documents. Not a few only attempted seven, and if they got any of these wrong they failed to earn that point.
Then there were the true weaknesses. Penmanship seems to be a dying art. Only a few could product legible cursive writing. Most of the easiest to read were printed. Another, perhaps more important, weakness was a widespread inability to discern a statement's likely reliability or the likely source of bias in a point of view. These critical thinking skills are crucial to the proper functioning of a democratic society, and sadly, based on what I saw, most of our best and brightest high school students have little facility with them.
Overall I felt more positive about what I had seen than I expected (perhaps my expectations were pretty low?), but there are areas of real concern for our society as well.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)