Health Care Reform Summit: Women spoke truth

I watched all seven hours, tweeting my way through it even though there were times where I seriously wanted to damage the little electronic heads bobbing around spewing forth on my screen. But there were some highlights, and most of them delivered by women.

Rep. Louise Slaughter summarizes the discriminatory practice of pre-existing conditions:

"If you were unlucky enough to get beaten up once, you might go back and do it again."

She goes on to point out that all research at NIH through the 90s was done on white males, ignoring women's health issues.

She then reminds the legislators that changing these practices "takes legislation. It cannot be done without legislation." When she's done with that, she takes Rep. Ryan to task for his "voucher system" idea, reminding us all that "we're better people than that." She closes with a story of a woman who died wearing her dead sister's dentures. Maybe TMI, but still...we ARE better people than that, aren't we?

In the afternoon, Rep. Boehner makes the specious claim that federal funds will be used to pay for abortions.

Patty Murray argues for a public option, says that this bill at least gets "people out of that box of no choices." (starts at about 2:37:50)

And in the same video, at 2:53:40 or so, Nancy Pelosi reminds that the public option was the House Democrats' 'better way' of creating competition, says "it's time for the insurance companies to hear the people."

She goes on to deconstruct the John Boehner lie about public funding of abortion. She then takes Rep. Camp to task for misstating Medicare cuts as cutting benefits for seniors. She doesn't let 'em get away with anything.

There were other wonderful moments, but at the same time, the women really, really did bring it home.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Obama finally ditches bipartisanship (trueslant.com)
• HCR Summit: Summing Up (dailykos.com)
• Democratic Leaders Moving Ahead on Health Care (blogs.wsj.com)

Go Watch This: "Last Friday Night My Father Asked Me to Kill Him"

I lost my grandmother on Tuesday. On the way out of one meeting and already thinking ahead to the next, my cell phone rang. It was my aunt, calling from the grandmother's house to tell me she had died.

She'd just turned 83 earlier this month. Besides a little hypertension (controlled via medication), she had no serious health conditions. We're still waiting for final word on what happened -- it appears to be a stroke or heart attack -- but her death was sudden and unexpected.

Last evening I took to the sofa, exhausted from a long day of work and feeling I need a mulligan on 2010 (besides my grandmother, there have been other serious family illnesses, epic snow and cold, and frantic work schedules). I flipped channels rather aimlessly and eventually settled on MSNBC, where I could half-listen to the news.

And half-listen I did, until Keith Olbermann read his special comment and blew me away.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Celebrate International Women's Day with the White Ribbon Alliance

The White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood is an organization working to get women worldwide better access to lifesaving prenatal and childbirth care. Last year, on Mother's Day, we at MOMocrats encouraged our readers to share their own birth and adoption stories to promote the White Ribbon Alliance's Mother's Day Every Day initiative.

This year, we are hoping you will help us spread the word about a new WRA initiative, the White Ribbon Alliance Global Dinner Party. In honor of International Women's Day on March 8th, the White Ribbon Alliance is asking women around the world to hold dinner parties at their own homes and invite their friends to raise money and awareness to reduce maternal mortality. 

Details on the many ways you can participate and suggestions for making your own party a success are available at the WRA website in their Global Dinner Party Guide. If you are planning your own White Ribbon Alliance Global Dinner Party, let us know here in the comments. We'll feature the MOMocrats' own dinner parties — and link to other bloggers' posts about their Global Dinner Party events — in an upcoming post.

Wasn't the SEC Supposed to be the "Investor's Advocate?"

Please accept my apologies for the rhetorical question.

As someone who worked at the Securities and Exchange Commission for several years, I already know the answer to that question is, "yes." Unfortunately, that mission has gone missing and seems to have been replaced by keeping Wall Street bankers afloat at the expense of those of us who were just trying to save for retirement and our kids' college educations.

When I worked there, first as an attorney in the Enforcement Division and then as Deputy Director of Public Affairs, I was excited about the work of the agency. There was a lot of personal satisfaction in knowing that we were trying to catch the "bad guys" who did their best to get rich on insider trading schemes, "cooking the books" or just outright lying to clients. 

A Modest Proposal

It sounds like satire. But single mother Terri Carlson is, apparently, all too serious: she wants to marry as soon as possible, and she is advertising her availability on the internet.

And not just through traditional venues, like Match.com, but on YouTube, on her own website, and on national television. Terri is currently considering proposals from all interested single male suitors, with one condition: the man she marries must have health insurance. (Preferably with low co-pays and no lifetime limit on payable benefits.)

Terri Carlson has a preexisting condition, a rare, genetic autoimmune disease called C4 Complement Deficiency, that leaves her especially vulnerable to complications from common infections like colds and flu. Managing her disease requires regular doctors' visits and several medications. After over two decades as a stay-at-home mother to her four children, a divorce meant Carlson could no longer be covered under her husband's employer's group insurance policy.

One of These Things is Not Like the Other

I was looking at the list of invitees to the White House’s forthcoming summit on health care reform. Do you notice anything interesting about the list?

There is precisely one woman – Speaker Nancy Pelosi – on the list of invitees. Twenty of the 21 invitees are men, with the vast majority (everyone except Charlie Rangel and James Clyburn) being white.

I’m not a hard charger for identity politics. I’d take a Senate full of the late, great, and much-missed Paul Wellstone (D-MN) over a Senate full of Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) every day and twice on Sunday.

10 Things I Wish the Obama Administration Would Do to Fundamentally Improve the Economy

I mean besides pass a jobs bill. Here they are in no particular order.

1. Pass a meaningful health insurance reform bill, Congress, so POTUS can sign it. What many people overlook is how it will unstick our economy to have affordable, universal (or near-universal) health insurance coverage. We're a nation premised on mobility--go where the opportunities are. Some of us are locked into jobs we can't change because a move to a new job would mean being denied health care because of a pre-existing condition. Knowing that you could get high quality, affordable and portable health insurance no matter your job situation would benefit entrepreneurs and small business owners specifically, but it'd help everyone overall.
2. Make the banks swallow the bitter pill of mortgage principal write-downs. But do it in a way that's consistent with the green economy we all need and want: tie mortage reductions to permanent changes in the "sustainability quotient" of a house. Weatherization, solar panels, landscaping that includes vegetable gardens, xeriscaping in arid climates--credit energy-saving renovations having to do with home buying and maintenance. Encourage people to put permanent "green equity" into their houses. The idea borrows from location efficient mortgages and other lending tools that take into account proximity to and use of public transportation. Make this voluntary for all who want it, and it takes some of the moral hazard out of reducing the principal for people about to be foreclosed on too. I've written about this previously, here. Ease people's obligations or they'll be locked down and drowning in their homes as well.
3. Bring back Glass-Steagall. We need to separate plain vanilla retail banking services that most consumers use from the high-risk, high-gain roulette of Wall Street's more exotic offerings. Last I heard, even Senator John McCain supports the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall, the 1933 Depression-era legislation I learned about from brave presidential candidate Obama. Now I'd like to see President Obama act on the things he outlined in his Cooper-Union speech: where are the international collaborations with overseas regulators in other countries to enact restraints on transnational mega-banks you mentioned? I seem to recall you saying specifically the "Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, the International Accounting Standards Board, and the Financial Stability Forum" needed to cooperate to ensure casino banking doesn't tank any one country and take others down with it. **cough Goldman Sachs, Greece **cough**

Dear Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, This Hate-o-Gram is For You

Feb 14, 2010: Updated with new information at the end of the post. See you over the jump.

Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield loves to send me letters. Unfortunately, each sweet valentine lets me know how much more I can pay them. In November, they raised our monthly insurance rate $100 from $297/month to $397/month. That's 33%.

Now they're raising rates up to 39% for individuals otherwise not insured through employers, or some 800,000 people in California. I guess all that wining and dining and lobbying stupid fucking senators and congressmen for all of 2009 so that they'd oppose health insurance reform was expensive. Not to mention profitable--eightfold growth in the last quarter of 2009 alone.

And this is in a state, California, where health insurers are permitted to spend ONLY 70% of the premium collected on patient health care. The rest of the 30%? OVERHEAD. As in, first class flights for insurance executives, expense account dinners, pricey corporate retreats at five star resorts. A $9 million salary for the CEO of Wellpoint, which is Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield's parent corporation.

WHY AM I PAYING FOR MY INSURER TO LOBBY AGAINST MY INTERESTS? I'd love to grab every Medicare-supported Teabagging fool out there and shake them by the shoulders to get an answer to that question. Great for you if you're on Medicare, but what about your kids and grandkids? Why should they have to pay 30% off the top to an insurer who'll lobby against their interests and pad their bottom line by culling the sickest and most in need of care, and only insuring the healthiest?

Why the Tea Party Convention "Delegates" Aren't

The National Tea Party Convention being held this week in Nashville, sponsored by the Tea Party Nation group run by Tennessee traffic law attorney Judson Phillips, has been calling its 600 convention attendees "delegates." If you've been following media coverage of this event, you may have seen news organizations (outside of Fox) printing the term in scare quotes as I just did, or referring to the Tea Party attendees as "so-called delegates." Why?

As a former delegate to the 2008 Missouri Democratic Convention, I can tell you exactly why.

Here is the Merriam Webster dictionary definition of the verb, to delegate:

1 : to entrust to another <delegate authority>
2 : to appoint as one's representative

At a traditional political convention, whether at the state or national level, the delegates in attendance have been entrusted with the authority to represent other members of the party. Though the selection process for political convention delegates varies from party to party and state to state — some convention delegates (like the Democratic Party's superdelegates) are appointed by party officials at the national, state, or local level; some are actually elected by party members at local meetings held before the convention takes place — the position of delegate is meant to be a representative one. As in, delegates undertake their duties with the explicit understanding that they have been invited to a convention not to represent their own personal interests, but to represent the interests of a group  — the interests of their city or township, for example, or, at the national level, the interests of their state.

Why President Obama Should Not Forget Melanie Shouse

Yesterday President Obama, speaking at a Democratic National Committee fundraising event, mentioned a woman named Melanie Shouse. This is what he said:

I got a letter — I got a note today from one of my staff — they forwarded it to me — from a woman in St. Louis who had been part of our campaign, very active, who had passed away from breast cancer. She didn't have insurance. She couldn't afford it, so she had put off having the kind of exams that she needed. And she had fought a tough battle for four years.  All through the campaign she was fighting it, but finally she succumbed to it. And she insisted she's going to be buried in an Obama t-shirt.

But think about this: She was fighting that whole time not just to get me elected, not even to get herself health insurance, but because she understood that there were others coming behind her who were going to find themselves in the same situation and she didn't want somebody else going through that same thing. How can I say to her, "You know what?  We're giving up"?  How can I say to her family, "This is too hard"? How can Democrats on the Hill say, "This is politically too risky"? How can Republicans on the Hill say, "We're better off just blocking anything from happening"?

I knew Melanie. I live in St. Louis. I met her when I attended my first volunteer meeting for the Obama campaign. Melanie was a slight woman, with cropped hair that was too gray for her young face. At the time that I met her, from the moment you saw her, you could tell she was sick. She was obviously frail. Yet this tiny, frail woman who had been aged beyond her years by sickness and pain was nonetheless one of those rare people who positively vibrate with energy at all times. Melanie radiated enough determination to ignite the instant attention of anyone in a room with her. You didn't forget Melanie, once you'd met her. Melanie Shouse made an impression.