Just to show that I’m not reflexively opposed to everything Dianne Feinstein does, she is on the floor of the Senate right now leading the fight in getting the entire US government to follow the Army Field Manual for interrogations and intelligence gathering, which would effectively ban waterboarding and any other forms of torture from being used by the CIA. She has worked very hard on this issue, and it looks like she’ll get passage in the Senate on this today. That’s very significant.
Daily Archives: February 13, 2008
Blue Cross Backs Down
This is why we have a fourth estate:
Facing a torrent of criticism Tuesday, Blue Cross of California abruptly halted its practice of asking physicians in a letter to look for medical conditions that could be used to cancel patients’ insurance coverage.
In a statement issued about 6 p.m., the state’s largest for-profit insurer said, “Today we reached out to our provider partners and California regulators and determined this letter is no longer necessary and, in fact, was creating a misimpression and causing some members and providers undue concern.
“As a result, we are discontinuing the dissemination of this letter going forward.”
The Los Angeles Times occasionally earns its moniker of the Los Angeles Dog Trainer, but they have covered the many Blue Cross issues with a great deal of honor and professionalism. And they can be proud of the results.
Meanwhile, as comprehensive health care reform goes out the window for the coming year, Ezra Klein has a couple ideas about how to make the current private insurance system work a little better. He’s right that making insurers compete to offer better care is actually counter-productive, because the costs incurred would outweigh the new memberships. But government can play a role to force insurers to compete in ways positive to both their bottom line and the welfare of their consumers, through some mandated steps (over):
Universality: Insurers cannot compete effectively unless everyone is in the pool. If the healthy can leave, insurers cannot compete to offer better care. They’ll have to compete to attract the healthiest, which means offering the lowest costs, which means insuring the fewest sick people. The system has to be universal.
Community Rating: Insurers cannot be allowed, before offering insurance, to use demographic subslicing to cherrypick the market. That means no more preexisting histories, no complex formulas around age and income and race and region. They offer insurance to anyone who wants it for the exact same price. No exceptions.
Risk Adjustment: Merely having everyone in the system won’t be enough, and nor will forcing insurers to do away with their most delicate cherrypicking tools. Insurers will just become sophisticated at advertising on G4 Tech TV, and in snowboarding magazines, and in urban centers — in places, in other words, where the young and the healthy gather. So atop the universal system, atop the community rating, you need risk adjustment, which means either that insurers are reimbursed more for taking on sicker patients, or, my preferred method (and the one used in Germany), insurers with particularly healthy pools pay into a central fund that redistributes to insurers with less healthy pools. At the end of the day, it has to be as profitable for an insurer to insure a sick person as a healthy one.
Information Transparency: It needs to be easy for individuals to compare insurers on plan comprehensiveness, price, outcomes, etc. That means we need a marketplace where folks can go to shop for insurers, and they need to have standardized comparisons, or non-partisan rating authorities, providing information they can use.
One Market: This is contained in the last point, but there needs to be a singular place, or set of them, where individuals can shop around for insurance. This is hard stuff to find, and harder yet to understand, and real effort needs to go into constructing an easily accessible marketplace that customers can effectively navigate.
And the legislature can absolutely go through the incremental steps to implement these policies and make the current broken system a little more fair and more beneficial. The last two could arguably pass right now.
A little imagination from our leaders in the Legislature can at least improve what we have now.
WGA Strike is over
From the LA Times:
More than 90% of the 3,775 writers who cast ballots in Los Angeles and New York voted to immediately end the work stoppage, capping the entertainment industry’s most contentious labor dispute in recent history.
“Rather than being shut out of the future of content creation and delivery, writers will lead the way as TV migrates to the Internet and platforms for new media are developed,” said Patric M. Verrone, president of the WGA, West.
On Feb. 25, writers are expected to ratify a new three-year contract that ensures them a stake in the revenue generated when their movies, television shows and other creative works are distributed on the Internet. Whether the benefits from the new contract will be enough to offset the income writers and others lost because of the strike is a matter of debate. (LA Times 2/13/08)
Now, it’s likely that you’ll hear lots of interpretations on who won, including from some people here. I don’t really feel confident to declare a winner, but the debate will continue for a while, and then there will be another fight. That’s kind of the nature of this game. But the one thing that was positive? This strike proved that the strike, as a tool, was not dead. It proved that workers still have some leverage.
Other experts believe the writers won a victory that transcends any financial gains. “It was a defining moment,” said economist Harley Shaiken, a professor at UC Berkeley who specializes in labor issues. “It showed that a very disparate group of individuals could act with real solidarity — and that packed real economic power.”
Now, let’s get back to making some decent TV, and can we just stop filming Tila Tequila? Seriously, tv execs, enough with that crap, yo. No, I really don’t care who Tila hooks up with tonight, and that’s not going to change no matter how many times you show her in lewd and suggestive positions with people of various genders.
And why is Ricky Gervais on HBO? That man should be on every single tv, not pay cable. Except, maybe not in music videos.
DiFi’s Statement on FISA
After voting against stripping telecom amnesty from the bill, and seeing her amendments fail, Sen. Feinstein voted against the final bill. Here’s her statement:
“I have decided to vote against the FISA Bill before the Senate. This is not an easy decision because I strongly believe that we need to modernize the law relating to the gathering of foreign intelligence, and I support many of the provisions in the Senate bill.
However, I believe this bill didn’t do enough to protect against the assertion of executive power. I have said on many occasions that without the additional language to strengthen and tighten the exclusivity already in FISA, I could not support final passage.
I offered an amendment on this very issue. My amendment, which would have made it clear that FISA is the excusive authority for wiretapping U.S. persons for foreign intelligence purposes, received well more than a majority of this body – 57 votes. But it did not receive the 60 votes required. Given this strong vote, I remain hopeful that similar language will be included in a FISA bill that goes to the President.
There should never be another warrantless surveillance program. And I continue to believe that there should be a strong statement in law making it crystal clear that FISA must be followed, period.
Unfortunately, the bill before the Senate did not include such language and simply didn’t go far enough in protecting against executive power. That’s why I voted against the Senate bill.”
This elides the immunity issue and foregrounds the exclusivity amendment. But take it for what it’s worth.
There are now 54 other Congresscritters to focus on as the FISA bill head into a House-Senate conference. The House’s RESTORE Act is actually a fairly decent, though imperfect, bill. FDL has a petition you can sign to demand that it becomes the basis for what is sent to the President. Call your representative and reaffirm that.
UPDATE: From the comments, seems like Feinstein pulled a Lieberman here, voting for cloture, against the final bill, and releasing a statement about the latter and not the former. This, of course, makes me a chickensh*t. And Art Torres a bold truth-teller. And Dianne a patron saint.
Potomac Primary Open Thread
Polls are closing right now, so anyone want to make quick predictions or post some numbers?
Also, I love this song this electoral season, especially because San Diego is 70s and sunny the past few days and I’m enjoying the out-of-doors.
I like it in the city when the air is so thick and opaque
I love to see everybody in short skirts, shorts and shades
I like it in the city when two worlds collide
You get the people and the government
Everybody taking different sidesShows that we ain’t gonna stand shit
Shows that we are united
Shows that we ain’t gonna take it
Shows that we ain’t gonna stand shit
Shows that we are united