Help Save Healthcare for Children: Action Needed

It's been more than 100 days since Congress allowed the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP, known as Healthy Families in California) to lapse. Even in this Congress this inaction stands out as one of the cruelest failures imaginable.

9,000,000 low-income children and pregnant women will permanently lose comprehensive and affordable health care coverage if Congress doesn't act. We must hold their feet to the fire as passionately and effectively as we defended Obamacare last year.

Dozens of the nation's leading health care and children's advocacy groups have organized a day of action to #SaveCHIP. Here's how you can help:

• Use this fact sheet and this toolkit to call your representatives and senators at (877) 233-9025 and request they fund CHIP for five years as part of the Jan. 1‌9 vote to fund the federal government;
• Help get the word out on social media -- use #SaveCHIP to educate your friends and family about why this is so important to millions of Californians;
• Tell your coworkers, neighbors, and friends to join you! The more people speak out about the importance of CHIP on the same day at the same time, the greater the impact on Congress.

Republicans just gave trillions of dollars to the ultrarich in tax cuts. There is simply no excuse for cutting off this life-saving and life-changing healthcare for children and pregnant women.

What Motivates Republican Health Care Proposals?

House Republicans passed a health care bill that the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said would result in 23 million Americans losing their health insurance. Surveys indicate it is wildly unpopular with the American people. This past week Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell revealed the long-awaited Senate Republican health care bill, touted as an improvement over the House version. The CBO said it would result in 22 million people losing their health insurance.

While this may represent an improvement of a million over its House counterpart, this is improvement of the same kind as it being better to contract bubonic plague than the Ebola virus. Also heavily unpopular with the public, there were so many Republican senators voicing public opposition to McConnell's bill that he wound up withdrawing it from consideration. But don't be fooled. Another round of secret GOP deliberations is taking place with an eye to reintroducing something along similar lines in the near future.

You may be wondering, why are they coming up with "health care" bills that result in fewer people having health care? What do they really want? The key to understanding this from the Republican point of view is that these are not really health care bills at all. They are tax cuts, an issue much more dear to Republican hearts than saving people's lives with medical care. This effort is not about health care at all. It is about repealing the taxes President Obama and the Democratic congress imposed on high income earners to provide the funds to expand Medicaid for the poor by several million people and to provide the subsidies people of limited means are getting to make the purchase of health insurance affordable to them.

When these taxes are repealed there is no way to square the circle; Medicaid and premium assistance has to be cut. The only choices to be made are whose medical treatments to cut the most. The AMA, Hospital Associations, AARP, Urban League and Nurses Union all say these Republican repeal plans would be catastrophic. Harvard Medical School says upward of 45,000 Americans will die each year if these "reforms" are enacted. Yet saving the wealthy 3% on their taxes is more important to Republican politicians. 

AARP Urges Defeat of GOP Health Plan

AARP has come out strongly against the Republican health proposal. The organization's  announcement today is reproduced below. It's one of the most concise list of the plan's shortcomings I've seen. This harmful legislation would take health care away from millions of people, take billions of dollars away from Medicare and inflate the budget deficit. If it passes in its present form many thousands of people will die. It's that stark. To go to the AARP's full newsletter on the topic click here.

In a statement today, AARP Executive Vice President Nancy LeaMond announced AARP’s opposition to the House plan that would make changes to our current health care system, such as shortening the life of Medicare, hiking costs for those who can least afford higher insurance premiums, risking seniors’ ability to live independently, and giving tax breaks to big drug companies and health insurance companies:

“AARP opposes this legislation, as introduced, that would weaken Medicare, leaving the door open to a voucher program that shifts costs and risks to seniors.
“Before people even reach retirement age, big insurance companies could be allowed to charge them an age tax that adds up to thousands of dollars more per year. Older Americans need affordable health care services and prescriptions. This plan goes in the opposite direction, increasing insurance premiums for older Americans and not doing anything to lower drug costs.
“On top of the hefty premium increase for consumers, big drug companies and other special interests get a sweetheart deal.
“Finally, Medicaid cuts could impact people of all ages and put at risk the health and safety of 17.4 million children and adults with disabilities and seniors by eliminating much-needed services that allow individuals to live independently in their homes and communities. Although no one believes the current health care system is perfect, this harmful legislation would make health care less secure and less affordable.

AARP stands ready to work with both parties on legislation that puts Americans first, not the special interests.

Cal Voters for Obamacare; Back Increasing Tobacco Tax and Wages

A new Field Poll released this week sheds some interesting light on California's progressive attitudes regarding health care. It finds strong and growing support for the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), and for expanding Medi-Cal health services to the state's undocumented residents. An expanded Field Poll release also shows registered voters in the Golden State overwhelmingly in favor of an initiative proposal to raise the cigarette tax by $2 a pack to provide more money for health care. The same survey finds even higher support for a hefty increase in the state's minimum wage. The independent, non-partisan Field Poll, established by Mervin Field in 1947 as the California Poll, has long been the most accurate ongoing assessment of political opinion in California.  

The Affordable Care Act is growing in popularity in California. 62% say they favor the law, and only 33% oppose it. The survey found that "Opinions about this cross party lines, and include not only large majorities of Democrats and no party preference voters, but a plurality of Republicans as well." This is likely based on an even stronger favorable perception of the ACA's implementation here, as Covered California. "More than two in three voters (68%) believe that the state's implementation of the ACA in California been successful, while just 20% believe it has not."

The Medi-Cal question found that 58% of registered voters agreed with covering undocumented immigrants not eligible for ACA, against 39% opposed. Last year's numbers were 51% to 45%, evidencing that the humanitarian progressive bent in California opinion is gathering strength.

In May health and labor groups introduced an initiative to hike cigarette taxes by $2 a pack and use the expected $1.5 billion in new revenue to increase reimbursement rates and expand coverage to more people for Medi-Cal. The SEIU union, California Medical Association, California Dental Association and American Cancer Society have thus far raised $2 million to advance the measure.  Field Poll found California voters backing the idea 67% to 30%, with 50% of all voters saying they "strongly favor" the increase. Another 17% say the "somewhat favor" the higher tax. California presently taxes cigarettes 87 cents a pack, a lower rate than 30 other states.

The California minimum wage was raised legislatively from $8 to $9 on July 1, 2014 and will go up to $10 on January 1, 2016. The new proposal would hike it by an additional $1 an hour every year for the next five years, to $15 an hour by 2021. State voters strongly approve, 68% to 30%.

If California goes ahead and implements these ideas it will provide an interesting large-scale test case for the nation as a whole. Here's hoping they all pass.    

Data Shows Obamacare a Major Success

Have you noticed we don't seem to be hearing much of that hysterically negative political invective or media coverage about Obamacare anymore?  That's likely because the Obamacare success story continues to gather momentum.  Check out this chart from the Urban Institute:





This parallels the findings of the Commonwealth Fund, Gallup Poll and the Rand Corporation, all of which report their research shows the number of uninsured people has declined by 9.3 to 9.5 million since the enrollments got under way.  And the chart above makes clear, the numbers would even be a lot better except for roughly half the states governed by Republicans who spitefully have blocked federal Medicaid expansion in their jurisdictions.  For states not expanding Medicaid the uninsured percentage has dropped from 21.1% to 18.3%.  For all adults in every state it's gone from 18.5% to 13.9%.  In states accepting the federal help, the uninsured rate is down from 16.5% to barely 10%.  And what about the "sticker shock" and supposedly "ruinous costs" detractors kept predicting?  Well, the average premium for the great majority qualifying for subsidies to help with their purchase is just $82 a month.  

Yes, there's been very little reporting on this of late.  In the case of Republican flacks and the scandal-and-crisis-obsessed media, I guess good news is no news.  For the rest of us?  It's time to spread the word. 

Colin Powell Supports Universal Health Care

Colin Powell, speaking in Seattle at a forum for survivors of prostate cancer (a history that readers of this space will know that he and I share), made an impassioned plea in favor of universal health care in America.  The former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of State had this to say:

"I am not an expert in health care, or Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act, or however you choose to describe it, but I do know this: I have benefited from that kind of universal health care in my 55 years of public life, and I don't see why we can't do what Europe is doing, what Canada is doing, what Korea is doing, what all these other places are doing."

"All these other places" have a "single payer" health care system, akin to "Medicare for all."  It's what many Democrats had actually been hoping for in the Health Care initiative.  Readers of this space will certainly know that I have strongly backed Obamacare as a way to increase Medicaid to the poor and help subsidize those of modest means to afford health insurance.  It's a huge improvement over the way things have been done (or not done, to be more accurate) in our country, for it's a moral imperative that everyone deserves needed medical care.  

Most people agree.  In a November CNN/ORC Poll, 40% of the people supported Obamacare and 58% did not.  But of those, 14% were opposed because they felt Obamacare doesn't go far enough. Add those to the 40% who back Obamacare and you have a majority who feel  public action is called for compared to 44% who don't.  AS CNN puts it,  "That means that 54% either support Obamacare, or say it's not liberal enough."

Powell gives voice to this view.  Alex Lazar of ABC News relates how 

Powell told the audience about a woman named Anne, who as his firewood supplier, faced a healthcare scare of her own. Anne asked Powell to help pay for her healthcare bills, as her insurance didn't cover an MRI she needed as a prerequisite to being treated for a growth in her brain. In addition, Powell's wife Alma recently suffered from three aneurysms and an artery blockage. "After these two events, of Alma and Anne, I've been thinking, why is it like this?" said Powell.

That is certainly the same question most people with a heart and an open mind have been asking for a long time now.  Why is it so important in the minds of some to make sure sick people do not get medical treatment?  As Powell elaborated:

"We are a wealthy enough country with the capacity to make sure that every one of our fellow citizens has access to quality health care.  Let's show the rest of the world what our democratic system is all about and how we take care of all of our citizens.  I think universal health care is one of the things we should really be focused on, and I hope that will happen," said Powell. "Whether it's Obamacare, or son of Obamacare, I don't care. As long as we get it done.
                                    
Amen to that.

It's Personal, Not Politics

This week I saw the best argument I have seen on why the Affordable Care Act, ACA or Obamacare, is so desperately needed.  A fellow from Clovis, CA named Steve Spriggs wrote a piece that appeared in the Fresno Bee this week, telling of a ghastly injury that happened to his son in 2010, courtesy of a "16-year-old driver who ran a red light at 50 miles per hour."  Matthew was 22 at the time.  He now has two metal plates in his skull, a reconstructed right leg and five shattered disks in his spine that will have to be fused at some point in the future.  It has already cost "hundreds of thousands of dollars."  You can read the complete piece here.

Thanks to the ACA, Matt has been able to stay on his father's insurance until now.   The family would be bankrupt otherwise.  Matt will now be able to buy insurance on the exchange, and cannot be turned down for his pre-existing conditions.  Spriggs writes, "I am relieved that my son now has a way to avoid becoming a burden on society when I am gone." 

He next turns his fire against "petulant Republican congressmen" including his (and mine), Rep. Devin Nunes, calling them out as "reckless ideologues" who "are willing to bring down our government and crash the world's financial systems in order to keep millions of people uninsured."  They offer "no viable alternative" and "are trying to harm my family in a very direct and personal way."  Spriggs concludes with the thought, "This is not political to us.  This is personal.  This is my son's future."

I really urge you to read the fourteen-paragraph offering yourself, and decide whether you think the ACA is something that needs to be repealed, or whether it is a godsend for millions.  Go to the link: It's Personal, Not Politics, by Steve Spriggs.  

Obamacare Comes Up in History Class

I had a fascinating and illustrative occurrence regarding the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) issue in one of my community college History classes on Wednesday this week.  I have never seen this effect in a class before. 

The lesson was actually on the early Federalist period, that is the administrations of George Washington and John Adams.  The point was about Alexander Hamilton, one of the main movers of the Constitutional Convention and the first Secretary of the Treasury.  At the Convention he pushed for the establishment of a government with strong powers, and got most of what he wanted in that regard.  As Treasury Secretary he also pushed for decisive action, successfully advocating for a National Bank, among other things.  From nearly the beginning, his ideas and plans ran into opposition from another prominent cabinet member, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, who held to the view that, "That government is best which governs least." 

I mentioned that the fundamental difference in perspective between the Hamiltonian Federalists and the Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans is the same philosophical debate that has formed the basis of the American political divide from those early days until the present.  Students were quick to see that Hamilton's view corresponds in general more closely to the Democratic Party of today and Jefferson's to the Republicans.  It wasn't long before people began turning to the current U. S. government shutdown and the controversy at the heart of it, the dispute over Obamacare.

People had various comments to make, some in favor and some opposed.  It was good to see the students relating historical precedents to contemporary issues.  I was about to end the discussion; after all this was a History class and we needed to move on with more matters of the 1790's.  But a new hand up caught my eye.  It was Irene, a young woman who had never spoken up in class before.  Intrigued, I called on her.

Irene said she had gone to the federal website, Healthcare.gov, and coveredca.com, the California exchange, the previous night.  It was the first day the exchanges had opened, October 1.  She had this to share: "Our family of four has been paying almost $600 a month for health insurance.  I found a silver-level plan that looked very good for us.  With the tax credit, it will cost us $68 a month.  We'll be saving $500 a month.  This is wonderful!"     

You could have heard a pin drop.  Every hand went down as the class of 55 students went into dead silence.  There was nothing more to say.  We went back to Chapter 7 on the Washington and Adams administrations in office.  When class was dismissed, probably two dozen people headed immediately toward Irene to ask her how to find these sites.  Sometimes it's people who don't talk a lot who have some of the most  interesting things to say.    

Obamacare Exchanges Slated to Open Tomorrow

Tomorrow, Tuesday, October 1 will be the day the new Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) health exchanges go into effect, as you can see at  Healthcare.gov.  People who do not have employer-provided health insurance, are not on Medicare, Medicaid or military medical care will be able to get  competitive coverage at reasonable rates.

Most purchasers of moderate means will get tax subsidies to help pay for their policies.  This will include individuals who make up to $45,960 and families of four who make up to $94,200.  A family of six will get help up to an income of $126,000.   After tax breaks, the costs will be bargains.  In Pennsylvania, for instance, a 27-year-old earning $25,000, choosing a mid-level silver plan which  covers about 70 percent of medical costs, would pay $145 a month after their tax break assistance. A family of four with two children under the age of 18 that earned $50,000 a year would pay $282 per month after tax breaks for the same silver plan. 

As President Obama has been saying in recent days, people will be able to get health insurance protection for about the same cost as their cell phone bills.  These bargains are possible due to the exchanges, which will allow people to compare the offerings of the various insurers in their states directly across the board from each other on the exchange web sites.  The provision that at least 80% of premium revenues must then be spent on health care by the providers, and the requirements of what must be provided in each level of the plans also helps make sure that services provided are adequate and readily comparable for all competitors at each level.  Upper-income Americans have had some taxes raised to help pay for the subsidies, as shown at this IRS site. 

The relative simplicity and economy of the coverage will provide an attractive option for folks looking to protect themselves against the medical vicissitudes of life.  Though the enrollment begins October 1, people will have until March 31 to secure their coverage or they will have to pay a fine.

As I write this the Republican effort in the House of Representatives to tie the overall U.S. budget to the repeal or postponement of the health care roll out is still underway.  There is no way the Democratic Senate or President Obama will go along with this, so the result of GOP stubbornness on this, if they persist, can only be a government shutdown.  The reason for their frantic eagerness to try to gut the law was revealed by Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican who has been leading the fight to kill Obamacare.  He said, "Once they taste the sugar of subsidized health care we'll never get rid of it."  Indeed.  Once people can afford to take their kids to the doctor they won't want to give that up.  Yes, that certainly makes sense to me.  What doesn't is why anybody would think that's a bad thing.            

     

Historic Court Ruling on Health Care

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.

High Court to Try Health Law This Week

The stakes will be high this week as the Supreme Court devotes three days of hearings to challenges to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  Not since the civil rights cases of the 1960s has the high court set aside so much time for oral arguments on a single topic.  The issues fall into three categories: jurisdiction, mandates and severability.  These issues will be argued successively by attorneys attacking and defending the Health Law, and when the court rules it will both determine the future of the Act passed two years ago this month and enter the middle of the election battle being contested this year.  Any decisions the justices reach will be rendered at the end of the court's session, probably in late June. 

The first issue to be discussed concerns jurisdiction, or more precisely, timing.  Since the parts of the law the plaintiffs object to haven't even taken effect yet, the court wants to hear why it is required to act now, since no one has yet been "injured" by the legislation.  An 1867 law, the Anti-Injunction Act, prevents court action on new taxes until they have begun operating.  Most court watchers do not expect this concern to derail the proceedings.

Next the justices will hear the meat of the oppenents' case, their objection to mandates.  The Act says almost all individuals and larger employers will have to buy health insurance or suffer financial penalties.  (Individuals already covered under employer-purchased plans will not need to make any changes.) Subsidies are to be made available for people with incomes below $80,000 on a sliding scale.  There are also mandates on states; they will have to cover everyone under medicaid who makes 133% or less of the poverty level, or suffer cuts in federal aid.  The Medicaid arguments will be heard Wednesday.  The Administration will contend that the Act adheres to the Constitution's grant of congressional power to "regulate commerce among the several states" and to do what is "necessary and proper" to "promote the general welfare."  For instance, the uninsured used $116 billion in health care in 2008, a cost that insurers pass on to the insured through higher premiums.  They will say the new law rights this inequity and serves a clear public interest.  Opponents will contend the mandate is a power not expressly granted by the Constitution and thus void.   If the court goes against the Medicaid mandate it will be overturning a principle it established earlier, when it allowed the federal government to threaten to withhold highway funds from states if they had legal drinking ages under 21.

Finally, the severability issue will determine whether the whole law must survive or fall as an indivisible whole, i.e. whether certain issues can be "severed" from the law and separately thrown out while keeping the rest in force.  If the court rules against the insurance mandate, what about the other requirements?  Will that strike down the provisions requiring insurers to cover children on their parents' plan until their 26th birthday, the bans on excluding people from coverage due to pre-existing conditions and of dropping them from coverage if they get sick, or the percentages insurers must actually spend on health care?  Those are the kinds of things that will be decided on the severability question. 

All in all, the case and eventual ruling figures to be one of the most momentous in decades.  Health care for 50 million people and the scope of congressional authority are clearly at stake.  The principles allowed or curtailed will shape policy and people's lives for many years to come.  



       

What to Do About Contraceptive Coverage

One of the hot topics in the forefront of current public debate concerns the Affordable Health Care Act's requirement that contraception must be covered in health plans.  See the Department of Health and Human Services summary here.  While religious bodies that object to contraception are allowed to exempt their ministry employees from this coverage, the Obama Administration has ruled that the Act requiresthat employees not directly involved in the ministry of the body, such as employees of a church-owned hospital, must be covered.  In order to keep such religious bodies from having to pay premiums for services they do not agree with, health insurers have said they will be happy to include the coverage free.  Insurance companies have not made this offer out of charity; it's because paying for birth control pills is a lot cheaper than paying for prenatal care, delivery and health care for a child.  But this has not satisfied all the objectors.  Let's take a look at the positions.

Opponents see the mandate as an egregious intrusion of government control into the realm of religious free choice.  The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, for example, decries the requirement on its website under the heading "unconscionable to require citizens to buy contraceptives against their will."  They and others see First Amendment ramifications that threaten religious liberty.  The Blunt Amendment (Senator Roy Blunt, R-Missouri) to the Health Care Act, which passed the House but was defeated in the Senate, would have allowed any employer to opt out of the mandate on religious, moral or other personally-held grounds.

Supporters see the mandate as providing needed services used by most women, and as a part of the larger issue of women's freedom to make their own decisions.  A survey by the Public Religion Research Institute covered in the Washington Post shows the majority of Americans support the mandate, with Catholics supporting it more strongly than the population as a whole.  The story points to other findings that 99% of all women and 98% of Catholic women have used artificial contraception at some point in their lives.

Since there are strongly-held principles in apparent conflict here, where should the balance of rights and interests be drawn?  It seems to me that the outline of a reasonable and just solution is clear, and it lies in personal choice.  To deny a widespread pharmaceutical practice used by virtually every American woman due to the objections of religious bodies smacks not of freedom of religion but of establishment of religion prohibited under the same First Amendment.  The statement of the bishops that anyone will be made to "buy contraceptives against their will" is completely wrong.  First, the employer will not be buying them.  Second, no woman is required to ask for or take them.  Only women who ask their doctor for a prescription for birth control pills will get one.  The idea that anyone will be forced to ingest birth control pills against her will is a complete invention and red herring.

In this way, the decision is where it belongs: with the patient.  Make the coverage available to all.  If anyone has a religious or any other objection, she may decline to ask for contraception.  But the decision should not be up to her employer, her preacher, her husband or any other person.  These may give advice, but as with any other medical decision in a free country, the choice is up to the patient.  Picture the shoe on the other foot: Imagine how it would go over if a man had to get permission from his boss in order to buy a condom.  If a boss is a Jehovah's Witness should he have the authority to keep any of his employees from getting a blood transfusion when they are bleeding to death?  If the boss is a Christian Scientist should he or she be able to deny employees antibiotics when they contract an infection because the boss doesn't believe in them, regardless of what the sufferer believes?  Under what principle do we give a person's employer the power to make life and death medical decisions, rather than letting people choose for themselves?  When viewed in this light the issue clarifies itself.  The mandate to cover everyone and let them decide their own medical needs for themselves is better from a public health perspective and more in accord with American concepts of personal liberty, including religious liberty.        

An Illness Gets Me Thinking

I've had something happen this week that once again underscored for me the importance of making sure that everyone has access to medical care. This past Monday around noon I came down with a case of the sniffles. It didn't seem too serious at first, but over the course of the afternoon the runny nose got worse.

I have had allergies before, though not for some years, and this seemed like such an episode. It is late spring/early summer and I'd just been noticing some new flowers, particularly the verbenas, in bloom around the house. The drip from the nose was very thin and watery and became constant, except when being interrupted by sneezing. Then my left eyelid got swollen and puffy and began to water incessantly too. I finally took some antihistamine and went to bed.

I suffered all day Tuesday, using one tissue after another all day. I kept taking antihistamines but my condition persisted. It seemed peculiar that only the left nostril and eye were affected. The right side side, to my relief, was still clear so I could breathe out of one side of my nose and see out of at least one eye.

The body's mechanisms and defenses are remarkable. Like Tuesday morning, when I woke up Wednesday at first the symptoms were much improved. Before long, though, they were back at full strength. It's as though the body makes a maximum effort to keep the air passages open so it can try to renew itself in sleep, and then, exhausted, is once again overwhelmed. By mid morning I was miserable. I resolved to go to the doctor, hoping for perhaps a stronger, prescription antihistamine that could overcome my body's allergic reaction to whatever pollens were bedeviling it.

Instead, I was surprised when he looked into my left ear and exclaimed, "My gosh, it's sure red in there!" The same was true when he peered up my left nostril. It seemed I didn't have just an allergy going on. A full-blown infection of the ear, nose and sinus was underway. He prescribed a five-day antibiotic treatment of Azithromycin (often called the Z-pack) and a nasal spray to dry things up. With these in hand, I was already considerably better by bedtime Wednesday and felt definitely on the mend by Thursday. Ah, the wonders of modern medicine!

Fortunately, I'm someone with good employer-provided medical coverage. It doesn't cost me much to see the doctor or get prescriptions. Yet I still waited two days, both because I incorrectly self-diagnosed what was wrong and because I therefore didn't want to waste even an insurance company's money on something that probably couldn't be remedied except by time.

What would I have done if I'd had no insurance at all? Well, I can afford to pay, so I might have waited another day trying to save the $90 doctor visit and $150 prescription cost. What if I were really hurting for money, like most of the community college students I teach? Well then, I can imagine waiting a long time, hoping it would go away of its own accord. $240 is a couple of weeks pay for some of them, or their share of a month's rent. They would just suffer and get worse for another several days or a week. Maybe an infection like mine left untreated for 10 days could cost someone an eye. And if it were something more dangerous, they might well wait until it was too late and even die. It happens. That's why Harvard Medical School estimated 45,000 Americans die every year because they have no health insurance.

That's also why it's such a moral imperative to make sure everyone does have some form of coverage. It needs to be treated as a human right. As Garrison Keillor has written, "if lower taxes are your priority over human life, then we know what sort of person you are. The response to a cry for help says a lot about us as human beings."

Health Care Wars: Why Not the Truth?

On Wednesday the Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act passed last year by President Obama and congressional Democrats. Three Democrats in the chamber joined the unanimous Republican caucus to pass the repeal 245-189. Since Democrats hold a majority in the Senate and the President would veto repeal even if the Senate were to go along with the House, the vote will not actually lead to repeal any time soon.

The continuing debate over the measure is instructive. What is particularly interesting and disappointing to me about it is how the Republican case is being made. Since its introduction the Republicans have made no bones that they don't like the health care act. They don't like it primarily because they philosophically do not agree with it. They don't like government programs, they don't like government getting involved in the economy (even if thousands of preventable deaths can be avoided) and they don't like the purchase requirement (mandate) that is necessary to fund the premiums for lower-income Americans. Okay, fine. These are all arguments they can make. One doesn't have to agree with them, but they are valid contentions from their point of view.

So why do they have to lie? The measure was titled the "Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act." In addition to saying Health Care will cost "millions of jobs" they further say that repeal will save billions of dollars. The Congressional Budget Office, the non-partisan fact providers for the lawmakers, found that the law would actually save money, $230 billion over 10 years, and probably result in a net gain in jobs, not eliminate them. At the least it will be neutral on jobs. Go to FactCheck.com, a group with a good reputation for neutral evaluation of the truth, for corroboration.

It's depressingly familiar to see these misrepresentations. Why do they have to tell lies to strengthen their case? They could be saying, "Sure, the bill may save some money but we feel there are other reasons to oppose it that are more important." They could say, accurately, "The bill does not promise to be a big job creator." But they don't. Instead they disregard facts and make up lies. When people feel they have to make up lies to justify an argument it says a lot about either the strength of their position or about their character and ethics. Or maybe both.

Health Debate: Asking the Right Questions Matters

Finally. Six months after the Health Care Bill passed a scientific survey actually asked people what they thought about the health care debate in a way that illuminates popular opinion on the issue. What it found out is that twice as many people feel the government should be doing more on health care, not less.

Yes, you read that right. You probably remember hearing that government sponsored health care assistance is unpopular and that most people oppose it. Surveys have indeed shown pluralities opposed rather than supported the Affordable Health Care Act that congress passed and President Obama signed in March. But what they didn't tell you was why. I kept asking that at the time.

I suspected that not all who were against the specific bill were against the nation helping out those without coverage or requiring insurance companies to stop denying or terminating coverage based on one criterion or another, but that many were for a more progressive approach, i.e. a single payer plan or one that would cover all those currently left out of the system. The new survey, undertaken by the Associated Press in conjunction with Stanford University, bears this out. You can see all the raw results here. In fact, it finds that twice as many feel the bill does not go far enough, rather than feeling government should do less or nothing on health care.

The survey found 30% said they favor the law, 40% oppose it and 30% are neutral. But more importantly, 40% agreed "it should have done more" while a hard core of of only 20% say, "The government should not be involved in health care at all." A solid 75% favor extensive changes in the U.S. health care system. Republicans who feel they can count on an enormous outpouring of support for their promise to repeal the measure may be in for a rude awakening. See the AP's own article on the survey here.

Student Survey on Health Bill

I took a survey in my classes last week that indicated a surprising level of support for the recently passed health care legislation. It was published in the local newspaper. You can find the article posted on the Visalia Times-Delta's website.

While the poll of 191 community college students is not a large or diverse enough sampling to be considered a scientific survey, the results are quite interesting considering they come from Tulare County, one of the most conservative-voting counties in California. By lack of diversity, I refer particularly to the respondents' ages. Most are in their late teens or early twenties. Ethnically, they are plenty diverse. Overall, 62% approved of the legislation, 33% disapproved and 5% indicated no opinion.

The figures for the specific facets of the Health Care Act were extremely high for the benefits. These include such things as the ban on refusing insurance to people for pre-existing conditions or forbidding cancelling people who get sick. Yet even the costs were popular. 62% were in favor of the higher taxes on higher income people and 61% supported the mandate to buy and subsidies for those making less than $88,000 to help them do so.

Coupled with the recent Gallup poll that found 49% thought the Act was a good idea while only 40% a bad one, it is possible the opposition has been overstated. It certainly hasn't been overstated in vehemence, but perhaps it has in numbers. After all, some of the opposition came from people on the left, who wanted to see a public option. It is likely most of those folks are moving into the pro-reform camp now, rather than supporting a return to the status quo and getting nothing at all.