Healthcare Reform Hits New York: NY Bridge Plan – $421/month!

Great news for all New Yorkers:

Obamacare came to New York in earnest Monday as the state started offering coverage for the uninsured with preexisting medical conditions.

Here are the details:

In March 2010, Congress passed the health care reform law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The law created a temporary program until January 2014 that makes coverage available for individuals who have a pre-existing medical condition, have not had insurance for six months, and who are legal US residents.

This new program is called the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP) and will be available throughout the country. In New York State, the PCIP plan is the NY Bridge Plan, administered by GHI, an EmblemHealth company.

PCIP plans will operate until the year 2014. At that time other provisions of health care reform will go into effect and state health benefit exchanges will be available for individuals to purchase coverage.

People who are eligible for the plan, which will have premiums running at a (relatively speaking) reasonable $421/month:

• Are legal US residents.
• Reside in New York State.
• Have one or more pre-existing medical conditions.
• Have not had health care coverage for the last six months.

Find more info about the NY Bridge Plan here.

Daily News

Hat tip: Elizabeth

Prop 8, AZ Immigration Laws and Healthcare Reform

As Taylor posted about below, today a federal judge in San Fransisco ruled that Proposition 8–which banned same sex marriage in the state of California–was unconstitutional.  The ruling highlights that:

Moral disapproval alone is an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and lesbians. The evidence shows conclusively that Proposition 8 enacts, without reason, a private moral view that same-sex couples are inferior to opposite-sex couples.

Furthermore, the court found that Proposition 8 violates the due process and equal protection rights of same sex couples.  One of the things that needs to be highlighted is that the judge in the case was originally nominated by the-deity-of-all-Republicans President Reagan and therefore cannot be deemed ’simply another liberal activist member of the judiciary’.  What’s even more ironic is that his original nomination was opposed by then Rep. Nancy Pelosi because she felt he was too insensitive to gays and lesbians in his work for the US Olympic Committee (this really happened).

The decision is AMAZING and is even better because of the fact that arguing against Prop 8 are the lawyers that represented Bush and Gore in Bush v. Gore from 2000. Yes, that’s right: W’s Solicitor General Ted Olsen is on board for the legalization of same sex marriage and working to make it happen.

What is even more interesting is the series of decisions made in the last few weeks by US District courts.  The first was the decision that the Arizona immigration laws are largely unconstitutional; the second the Prop 8 ruling; and the third was a decision in Virginia about healthcare reform.

The decision in Virginia hasn’t received nearly the same attention as the other two – but it is just as important.  In an attempt to undermine healthcare reform, Virginia passed a law exempting residents from the health insurance mandate passed by Congress earlier this year.  The lawsuit was filed in conjunction with the state law and says that Congress does not have the power to force people to have health insurance.  The administration filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit but a judge in VA ruled against the administration and provided the first legal victory against the reform law.  The ruling gives credibility to the notion that there is legitimate doubt about whether or not the Commerce clause grants Congress the right to mandate coverage.  If this case proceeds – and ultimately this will probably be decided by the Supreme Court – lasting healthcare reform may be far from certain.

Taken together the decisions highlight what a huge role that the judiciary plays in shaping American progress or impeding it (think Citizens United).  Judges matter, and their ability to apply the Constitution and support the enormity of rights and opportunities it expresses is forever our greatest advocate.  Today was yet another example that the Constitution is on our side in the fight for same sex marriage and that we continue to see progress (albeit wayyyy to slowly).

Some Of The Best Moments With Rep. Anthony Weiner

Here are some of the best moments from Anthony Weiner’s time with us last week at the THE BIG F—ING DEAL: Healthcare Q/A & Drinks. See him as he talks about progressive principles and living with Jon Stewart, drops the F-bomb a few times, makes fun of the Tea Partiers, speaks to how the grassroots can move forward, and more:

Watch the full length video here:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=CFF4732AD545287C

Comedian in Chief

This is the funniest I’ve seen Obama in a long time…

How Health Care Passed the House (And Now What?)

Well, health care reform passed! The House approved the reform last night with a vote of 219-212. If you’re not a C-SPAN or procedure fan like me you might be rather confused by the entire process. So lets go through it step by step.

Every bill, as we all learned in grade school, has to be passed by both houses. On Christmas eve, the Senate passed a bill that was sent back to the House. At this point, two things could have happened.

In the first case, the House and Senate could have met in something called conference, and then agreed to a new bill which would then be sent back to each house of Congress for a vote. However, since Brown won in MA, it was expected that the Senate would not be able to muster the 60 votes to get around a fillibuster and pass any bill that came back from conference.

So instead, the House last night passed the Senate bill in its entirety. In the coming days, the President will sign that bill into law. However, to get all the votes on the Senate version of the bill in the House, everyone had to agree that the Senate bill would be amended by another, and entirely new bill. So last night, after voting on the Senate bill, the House voted on a budget bill that would amend the soon-to-be law. The reason it was a particular type of budget bill is so that the senate could pass it using a process known as reconciliation. For all intents and purposes the process of reconciliation means that a simple majority in the Senate can pass the bill.

There are obviously a lot of stories on the bills and process out there, some of the ones I found particularly interesting were:

• A good dissection from the Times of what’s in the bill;
• An analysis from the Times on the bill’s political benefits and costs to Democrats and Obama;
• Lastly from the Times, an outline of the legal fights expected to shape up over the bill;
• Dana Milbank on some of the the ugliness seen from demonstrators and even Republicans: “Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) likened the Democrats to Soviets. “Say no to totalitarianism!,” he said.
• WAPO on the PR blitz that Obama is planning, and
• The Politico does an anaylsis of lawmakers whose reelection prospects have been significantly imperiled by their announced support of—or opposition to—health care reform.

The Healthcare Bill in Plain English

What’s the in the health care bill being reconciled in Congress? Here’s a clean break down from the Washington Post.

John Shadegg (R-AZ) Support Public Option

Never mind his contradictory website, Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ)’s spokeswoman confirms he supports the Public Option because:

“health insurance companies should have to compete for our business as individual consumers. Forcing them to compete, even through a public option would be better than an individual mandate…”

and

the best way to pay for those with pre-existing conditions is to “spread their costs among the healthy, among the taxpayers.”

Article here.

Video:

Meeting Gillibrand, The Public Option, and Medicare For All

Despite much rhetoric to the contrary, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is quite charming in person, far more so than I had originally assumed prior to meeting her last Wednesday evening. I met her at a fundraiser scheduled by Young Professionals for Gillibrand, which was held at The Gates, a club on the West Side. As barely a young professional myself, I saw it as a unique opportunity to go there and, as our friend Joe Biden likes to say, “test her metal” – to see for myself if she was really ready for prime time. After the night was through, Zac and I were in complete agreement: she didn’t disappoint.

After an impassioned speech and a few questions, it was my turn to stick myself in there and see if she could speak to the issue that I cared most about: fixing our wasteful, inefficient and immoral health care system. The question I asked, though not verbatim, went something like this:

Senator Gillibrand, I’d first like to thank you the recent letter you signed and sent to Harry Reid demanding that we use reconciliation to bring back the public option and score a big victory for the American people. [Applause]

As for going forward on health care reform in the near future, what are our chances that we will get the public option, the government run alternative that will provide real competition to the exploitative, wasteful, and inefficient health care corporate cartel that is gauging American workers and holding this nation back from progress? [Applause]

Okay, maybe I didn’t pull a Keith Olbermann and use the word “cartel,” but I did say pretty much everything else. At this point, although I was very impressed with what Gillibrand had been saying prior to my question, I was expecting the same old politician/focus-group-tested-response, like:

Great Question. We are currently working very hard to bring back the public option, and we will all do our best. We need to remember that the most important thing is not the specifics, but that we have some competition, not necessarily in the form of a government plan.

But she didn’t say that. Read more

Obama Sends Unambiguous Message Re: Healthcare — PASS IT NOW

YES!

“So just in case there’s any confusion out there, let me be clear. I am not going to walk away from health insurance reform. I’m not going to walk away from the American people. I’m not going to walk away from this challenge. I’m not going to walk away from any challenge. We’re moving forward.”

His voice rising, he added: “We are moving forward!” [snip]

“Yes, we could continue to ignore the growing burden of the runaway cost of healthcare,” said Obama, wearing a suit jacket but no tie. “The easiest thing to do right now would be to just say, ‘Ah, this is too hard. Let’s just regroup and lick our wounds and try to hang on.’

“We’ve had a long and difficult debate on healthcare and there are some, maybe even the majority in this town, who say, perhaps it’s time to walk away,” the president told his party. “But here’s the thing, Democrats. If we walk away we know what will happen. We know that premiums and out-of-pocket expenses will skyrocket this decade and the decade after that, and the decade after that.”

Xpostfactoid via Andrew Sullivan

Nadler: How We Can Still Do True Healthcare Reform

Here we are, at the end of a week in which I’m sure I wasn’t alone in trying really hard to look away from what was going on in Washington (and failing miserably).  As someone who thinks that the Senate healthcare bill as is may not be worth passing, but does not want to see healthcare reform fail again, I’ve been stuck– I can’t really hate on those House members who are unwilling to pass the Senate’s bill, and I think that anyone who calls Rep. Raul Grijalva a “monster” for standing up for a better bill has kind of lost it.  But I still don’t want the reform effort to collapse – we need results, and we can’t wait another decade.

So all of that said, Manhattan’s very own Rep. Jerrold Nadler issued a great press statement today explaining how true healthcare reform is still possible, still do-able, and still needs to be done.  Read the whole thing.  If healthcare reform has been getting you down, this could make you feel a bit better.  Via TPM, Nadler’s statement:

"As Speaker Pelosi has said, the House of Representatives does not have the votes to pass the Senate health care bill alone. It is clear that the great majority of the House Democratic Caucus – right, left and center – is unwilling to pass the Senate bill as it stands. But we must not let this fact, or the election results in Massachusetts, cause us to abandon comprehensive health care reform.

"We must instead negotiate an agreement with the Senate to pass a few key changes to the Senate bill through the reconciliation process so that both Houses can pass a comprehensive bill. We can then take various popular insurance reforms that cannot be passed through the reconciliation process – dealing with such subjects as pre-existing conditions, rescissions and annual and lifetime benefits – put them in a separate bill, and see if the Republicans dare to filibuster them. The alternatives – giving up on comprehensive reform or attempting to only pass small pieces separately – are either unacceptable or impractical.

"Though the process of crafting and passing health care legislation has been frustrating and disappointing for many of us, we still have a rare opportunity to enact true reform, and we must not give up."

Several members of NYC’s congressional delegation have really stepped up to the plate during this long, drawn-out, ugly healthcare reform process.  Major props to Nadler and to Rep. Anthony Weiner (remember his public debate against Betsy “Death Panels” McCaughey?) for standing up for real healthcare reform, without giving up or giving in.

And now, for kicks, here’s Anthony Weiner explaining for a live audience how Betsy McCaughey is a liar whose pants are on fire:

 

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