Passing the Kimmel Test

I've spent much of my adult life in Delaware County.  But in the early 2000s, I lived in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and taught at Mount Saint Vincent University.  While there, I, like all residents of Canada, had access to single-payer health care.  I can vouch for how well it works.

The healthcare system in Canada was established by the Canada Health Act of 1984, which assures quality of care through federal standards. Note that the government doesn't participate directly in patient care, or in any way interfere in the confidentiality between patient and healthcare provider.  What's more, Canada's analog to Medicare is provincial, and in this case, that's a compliment.  Canada's healthcare is cost-effective partly because of its administrative simplicity. In each province, each doctor or other healthcare provider handles every insurance claim.  In all circumstances, those claims are made  against the insurer that covers the province.  A healthcare card, that very much resembles our Medicare card, is issued to anyone who enrolls for the program.  Everyone so enrolled gets the same level of care.

Alberta is one of Canada's western provinces.

Virtually all basic care is covered, including maternity and infertility problems.   Private rooms, cosmetic surgery, and some forms of elective surgery are not considered basic and therefore are generally not covered, but can be paid out-of-pocket or through private insurers.

In Canada, such basic health coverage is not affected by loss or change of jobs, and there are no lifetime limits or exclusions for pre-existing conditions.

Medications are covered by public funds or through employment-based private insurance, and drug prices are negotiated with suppliers by the federal government to control costs.

Much as I enjoyed my year in Halifax, I'd be the first one to admit that Canada isn't heaven, even within its healthcare system.  Canadians do wait for some treatments and diagnostic services.  But the median wait time for such things is usually less than three months.

Talk your way around all that, Bill Cassidy ...

FUBAR Alternate Reality

The degree to which boorish, churlish behavior has become accepted, and even to some degree admired in our nation, is disheartening.

Take Rep. Lynne DiSanto of the South Dakota state legislature.  On Facebook, under the headline All Lives Splatter, Ms. DiSanto posted a cartoon that showed a car apparently hitting people in the street.  The cartoon was captioned  nobody cares about your protest and keep your ass out of the road.

When asked for an apology, Ms. DiSanto responded with the kind of non-apology-apology typical of out-of-touch, insensitive bullies.   DiSanto deleted her post, saying she perceived it as encouraging people to stay out of the street.  DiSanto then added I am sorry if people took offense to it and perceived my message in any way insinuating support or condoning people being hit by cars; I perceived it differently.

But there's hope for the fact-based, reality-based community - for those who perceive words like those Ms. DiSanto used as having intrinsic meaning.  Not long after her post was deleted, the real estate firm for which the Representative worked stated that DiSanto was no longer associated with the company, due to recent events.

Kudos to them ...

The March to Socialism

According to South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham, failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act (AKA Obamacare) will be the first step on a march to socialism.

That's questionable, to say the least.  Several facts argue to the contrary, among them:

• The bill, nicknamed Trumpcare 2 and put forward by Graham and his also-Republican Senate colleague Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, would return complete control of Medicaid to individual states, thereby giving them the ability to gut it altogether.
• Trumpcare 2 would make it easier for insurance companies to set lifetime limits on amounts paid, thereby reintroducing the possibility of bankruptcy due to health care costs.
• Trumpcare 2 would make it easier for insurance companies to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions (such as pregnancy).
• Trumpcare 2 would make it easier for insurance companies to deny coverage for mental health and addiction problems.

Pennsylvania's Democratic Senator Bob Casey will of course not vote to repeal Obamacare; Republican Pat Toomey (he of the Club for Growth) almost certainly will.  Should the latter take place, here's where you can go to tell Mr. Toomey what you think.

RTW (Right to Work)

Last year, our Supreme Court heard a case that involved public sector unions.  Specifically, a group of California teachers petitioned the Court, claiming their First Amendment rights had been violated.  How so?  They cite having to pay fees to a union for services the union might perform on their behalf, whether or not want they want to join the union, as the violation in question.

Trouble is, a ruling in agreement with this position would have overturned a legal precedent of almost four decades.  That precedent, set in 1977 in the case Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, established the principle that public workers can pay what are called fair share fees if they are represented by a union, even if they are not members.  The status of Abood as settled law has been upheld by both a federal district court, and by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. 

But for a while, it appeared that may not have been enough.  For instance, in a 5-4 opinion, Justice Samuel Alito called Abood questionable on several grounds, implying at least some support for the concept of right-to-work.

Mishandling language drives me crazy.  In particular, using words to obfuscate or confuse, rather than to clarify or inform, sets me off.  Take that phrase right to work.  Sounds benevolent, doesn’t it?  At first hearing, one might conclude that it indicates a belief in the right of every American to work where and how he or she chooses.

Canard alert!!!  RTW is simply the most recent tactic adopted by conservative state legislatures for their union-busting efforts.  Historically, the far right has failed to deep-six many of the advances championed by unions.  That’s why we have 40-hour work weeks, overtime pay, paid sick leave, minimum wage laws, workplace safety and health laws, and more.  But we’re not out of the woods yet, as this statement from a number of teachers’ and public-sector employees’ unions indicates.

The Supreme Court is revisiting decisions that have made it possible for people to stick together for a voice at work and in their communities — decisions that have stood for more than 35 years.

Private-sector union membership has declined over the last 40 years.  But unions of government workers help balance the representation equation.

Food Stamp Queens?

I’ll start with a brief bio.  I’m newly retired.  Social Security leaves me a couple hundred dollars short each month, so I applied for and was accepted into the SNAP program – that is, food stamps.

The instinct of some to condemn SNAP participants as freeloaders is troubling.  I’m neither.  I have a Master’s degree in Computer Information Science.  I taught for over 20 years at various institutions of higher education, in Pennsylvania and Canada.  The lack of a doctorate cost me jobs, though, and now causes me to have to rely on food stamps to supplement my income.

Despite millions of SNAP participants having stories like mine, we still see a disturbing trend.  When the poor or middle class object to preferential treatment for the rich, it's called class warfare.  But when the very-well-to-do call food stamp recipients welfare queens, it’s okay.

Caricatures of food stamp phonies created by conservative media are bogus.  Here’s the reality.  On average, an individual receives about $133 per month in food stamps.  That works out to about $4 per day.  As the Baltimore Sun put it, Blow it on a frappuccino, and that's one less day's food.

Any government action that discourages fraud is of course worthwhile.  But there's no evidence SNAP is out of control.  It helps feed more than 40 million Americans at an annual cost of $64 billion, or about $1600.00 per person per year.  That’s hardly exorbitant.  Rather, it emphasizes the hardships still created by the aftershocks of the worst recession in several decades.