kenskystreet's blog

Insurers stop rescissions on Dems' demand -- Federal employees must wait for kids' benefits -- GOP wants health cost probe -- States leery of high-risk pool costs

It's Thursday. "Darling, save the last dance for Pulse."

WHAT WE'RE WATCHING — HHS’s pledge to protect the states from any cost overruns stemming from the high-risk insurance pool program doesn’t seem to be carrying water with some state lawmakers. HHS has asked the states to decide by tomorrow whether they’ll help the agency establish the program to cover people with pre-existing conditions or leave the responsibility to the feds. Their responses could set the tone for the relationship between the states and federal government as implementation plows ahead. The handful of states that have “opted out” so far, or are leaning that way, say they’re worried the $5 billion allotted to the program won’t be enough. HHS has said they expect some states to opt out and that the bottom line is that all people who have struggled to get covered because of pre-existing conditions will be able to get insurance, either through the states or feds.

A glance at some of the states that have announced their plans already, as reported by POLITICO and other publications:

--Opting to leave the program to HHS: Georgia, Nevada, Nebraska
--Leaning toward opting out: Louisiana
--Working in the states: Maryland, Pennsylvania, Montana, Wisconsin
--Leaning toward working in the states: North Dakota

Health insurers said Wednesday that by next month they would stop cancelling insurance plans on sick patients, a practice dubbed “rescission” that would have been illegal – except in cases of fraud or misrepresentation – by September under the overhaul plan. By moving up the deadline, insurers had a third opportunity to polish their image and build goodwill after the bruising reform debate. Congressional Democrats and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius pressed insurers to move up implementation of the provision. They also used the announcement to question whether Republicans, who have been touting a “repeal and replace” mantra, would want to bring back rescission.

FEDERAL EMPLOYEES’ KIDS MAY NOT GET ON HEALTH PLANS THIS YEAR – Jessica Marcy of Kaiser Health News reports: “Many parents breathed a sigh of relief when they heard that health insurance companies were opening up coverage to young adult children. But many people – including those who work for the federal government – probably won’t be able to get that coverage until next year. The federal employee health insurance program has announced that it is unlikely this year to offer young adults the ability to remain on their parents' policies until the age of 26. That means the government, which is the largest employer in the nation, will not follow the lead of some private insurance companies that will begin offering such coverage to young adults by June 1. The health care law passed last month requires insurers to offer to keep adults younger than age 26 covered through their parents’ health plans. That provision goes into effect in September, although for many insurers the change won't occur until the new plan year, which generally starts in January. But last week United Healthcare, WellPoint, Humana, independent Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans and Kaiser Permanente said they will offer such coverage immediately or by June 1. That came as a relief for many young adults, including those slated to graduate this spring who faced a loss of coverage. The Office of Personnel Management website says that young adults whose parents are enrolled in the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program (FEHBP), which covers more than 8 million people, would most likely not be able to receive such coverage before Jan. 1, 2011, based on current federal law.”

On Tuesday, the Oklahoma Senate passed one of the country’s most restrictive abortion laws, requiring that women seeking an abortion have a viewable ultrasound and listen to a detailed description of the fetus prior to the procedure. The law came on the heels of a stringent Nebraska measure, passed two weeks earlier, banning abortion at 20 weeks gestation. Taken together, the two new laws represent some of the most aggressive abortion legislation passed in recent years, leaving some to wonder: are these new laws isolated incidents or signs of a larger shift? POLITICO’s Sarah Kliff HAS THE STORY.

And we are the safe, hands-on providers of more than 32 million anesthetics each year. **

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Source: http://feeds.politico.com/click.phdo?i=a5f84d6810e5e9f0264d3598df0eb59f

Darrell Issa Dave Camp Dave Reichert David B. McKinley

Dems tell insurers to stop canceling plans; WellPoint agrees -- Abortion battle moves to states; Oklahoma enacts restrictions -- CMS denies playing politics with actuary report

It's Wednesday. "They say the darkest hour is right before the dawn but you wouldn't know it by Pulse." (h/t P.A.)

BREAKING – “A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows some signs of improvement for President Obama and the Democrats, with a bump in trust for Democrats, and Obama's approval ratings on the economy and health care pulling even for the first time since fall. The federal budget deficit remains Obama's toughest issue.

“The Post’s Dan Balz and Jon Cohen, analyzing the poll, say it shows the most anti-incumbent electorate since 1994 but “for President Obama and his party, there are some positive signs. … The public trusts Democrats more than Republicans to handle the major problems facing the country by a double-digit margin, giving Democrats a bigger lead than they held two months ago, when Congress was engaged in the long endgame over divisive health-care legislation. A majority continues to see Obama as ‘just about right’ ideologically, despite repeated GOP efforts to define the president as outside the mainstream.”

Those polled also say they trust Obama over Republicans in Congress to deal with the economy, health care and, by a large margin, financial regulatory reform.

WHAT WE'RE WATCHING — House Democrats on Tuesday asked insurers to immediately stop using rescission and WellPoint, under fire for reports that it was targeting breast cancer patients to cancel their plans, immediately agreed. Democrats plan to continue pushing the image that they’re keeping insurers on their toes as the overhaul is implemented.

The abortion battle moves to the states as Arizona becomes the first post-health care law state to ban abortion coverage in plans sold on the public exchange (with exceptions to save the health or life of the mother). The new law, signed this weekend by Gov. Jan Brewer, requires insurers who do offer abortion coverage to sell it “as a separate optional rider for which an additional insurance premium is charged.”

Hitting mailboxes this weekend: AARP’s tutorial on what health reform means. Expect to see more like this from the advocacy groups, hoping to sort out what’s in the plan and what’s not, and what it all means.

PULSE WITH US – Thanks for your feedback on the future of Pulse. There’s lots of interest in what’s happening in the states, on the Hill and HHS and among health providers. And the song lyrics will continue, due to overwhelming demand. We’ll try to live up to your requests for no “gangsta rap” and no messing with the classics, though we’d argue that the Beatles are now public domain.

HAPPENING TODAY – White House health care “czar” Nancy-Ann DeParle speaks to the National Conference on Diabetes today at 10 a.m. at the Newseum in D.C.

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Source: http://feeds.politico.com/click.phdo?i=873a8d396b5fc4e180daccf0d8bbcd45

Allyson Schwartz American Samoa Amy Klobuchar Ander Crenshaw

Investing in Open Government to Create A More Efficient and Effective Government

Ed. Note: This post is part of our Sunshine Week series, a national initiative to celebrate and focus on government transparency and open government.

Federal agencies collect enormous amounts of data about such diverse matters as automobile safety, air travel, air quality, workplace safety, drug safety, nutrition, crime, obesity, the employment market, and health care.  The Obama Administration has made it a priority to share this and other government information – what the President has called a “national asset” – to improve citizen education and decision-making, and to spur innovation and job creation.  

Federal agencies are working hard to foster open government, and we encourage you to examine what they have done. For example:

• The Department of Homeland Security created “Virtual USA,” enabling public safety officials across all levels of government to share information in real time, and improve response to national disasters. 
• The Department of Energy, as part of its efforts to promote clean energy, launched OpenEI.org, containing dozens of clean energy resources and data sets, including maps of worldwide solar and wind potential, information on climate zones, and energy best practices.  The Department intends to expand these resources to include on-line training and technical expert networks.
• The Environmental Protection Agency, together with other federal, state, local, and tribal agencies, developed AIRNow.gov, offering the public daily Air Quality Index forecasts and real-time Air Quality Index conditions for over 300 cities across the country as well as links to detailed state and local air quality cites.
• And six federal agencies—the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, the U.S. Coast Guard, the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Agriculture, and the EPA—created Recalls.gov, to alert the public to unsafe, hazardous, or defective products and up-to-date consumer safety information.

Throughout the week, WhiteHouse.gov will continue highlighting the Administration’s commitment to open government, including the accomplishments of three other departments  – Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, and Transportation.  We hope you will take a moment to read these blog posts.  What unites these federal agencies is that they all consider open government to be a long-term investment in building a stronger democracy and creating a more efficient and effective government. 

Chris Lu is Assistant to the President and Cabinet Secretary

Source: http://feeds.whitehouse.gov/~r/whitehouse/open/~3/lzBCxZlrRQ4/investing-open-government-create-more-efficient-and-effective-government-0

Bill Pascrell Jr Bill Posey Bill Shuster Billy Long

All at DNC Blue Room meeting with Obama were donors

By popular demand, I'm posting the full list of guests at President Barack Obama's March 7 Democratic National Committee-organized meeting in the White House's Blue Room.

All 30 guests were donors to Obama's 2008 campaign, according to Federal Election Commission records. Most have some tie to Wall Street or high finance.

More on the session here and here.

The guest list, as best we can determine it based on data the White House released Friday, is after the jump:

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Source: http://feeds.politico.com/click.phdo?i=ea672a66611510d48a650e3bd811a159

Bobby Schilling Brad Miller Brad Sherman Brian M. Higgins

Prison Care

(Click for larger image)

Source: http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/pn1WWNvDlIo/-Prison-Care

Alcee L. Hastings Allen B. West Allyson Schwartz American Samoa

Gingrich opposes Afghan drawdown two weeks after calling for 'rapid' pullout

Follow the flip-flopping Newt
 

Newt Gingrich last night:

I think we are drifting to a very, very dangerous situation. None of the generals recommended the speed of the drawdown the president wants. We are beginning to lose in the region. ... And if you watch what is happening there?s a steady drift from the United States at a time when the president is signaling his desire to get out as fast as he can and potentially faster than the generals think is safe.

Newt Gingrich two weeks ago:

I think that we need to think fundamentally about reassessing our entire strategy in the region. I think that we should say to the generals we would like to figure out how to get out as rapid as possible with the safety of the troops involved. And we had better find new and very different strategies because this is too big a problem for us to deal with the American ground forces in direct combat.

I guess now it's clear why Newt Gingrich has had so many wives. At least to him, statements on foreign policy carry about as much weight as the words "I do."

Source: http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/LCqUvVyq0Z0/-Gingrich-opposes-Afghan-drawdown-two-weeks-after-calling-for-rapid pullout

Frank D. Lucas Frank Guinta Frank Pallone Jr Frank R. Lautenberg

Midday open thread

• Let's have a moment of silence for the end of Glenn Beck's television career... Okay, moment's over. You may now return to laughing your ass off.
• What was that about the war in Iraq being over?
  

  Three more American soldiers were killed this week, the United States military announced Thursday, bringing the combat-related deaths for United States forces in Iraq to a monthly toll not seen since 2008.

• The FEC lets Stephen Colbert have his Super PAC.
• Even Republicans are sick of their own bullshit:
  

  ?I think I?ve kind of supported enough pledges,? freshman Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) told POLITICO. ?I?ve restricted myself too much this Congress.?

  Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), one of Sarah Palin?s conservative ?Mama Grizzlies? who signed Norquist?s anti-tax pledge while running for election last year, said she wouldn?t ink her name to the new pledge. And she?s not certain she?ll sign any others in the future.

  ?I support the concepts in their pledge, but what matters most is my pledge to uphold the United States Constitution,? Ayotte told POLITICO. ?I?m looking very carefully at all pledges because I want to make sure I support the underlying concepts. People who draft pledges tend to define what they mean differently.?

  Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, Republican Conference chairman, said much the same: ?My only pledge is to the United States of America.?

• Heterosexuals just can't get a break:
  

  The five ballplayers summoned before a protest committee at the Gay Softball World Series stood accused of cheating. Their alleged offense: heterosexuality.

  ...

  Ultimately, the committee ruled that three of the five were ?nongay? and stripped the team of its second-place finish.

• Shocker: Regularly spanking your kids means they're "more likely to have behavior problems that may escalate into antisocial behavior. They may also be at greater risk for anxiety disorders or depression and ultimately may be more likely to engage in domestic violence and child abuse as adults." But don't worry, moms and dads. Occasional spanking is still okay.
• Hey, Michele, you can't play "Walking on Sunshine" at your campaign events either:
  

  Katrina & The Waves would like it to be known that they do not endorse the use of 'Walking On Sunshine' by Michele Bachmann and have instructed their lawyers accordingly.

  ...

  As the singer of 'Walking on Sunshine' I don't endorse its use by Michele Bachmann's presidential campaign.  I've performed ?Walking on Sunshine? for so many years in so many different countries that it?s become the one constant in my life and the one thing I can count on to bring happiness to myself and others. The song is used in commercials and movies as a vehicle for a feel good moment or empowerment but if I disagree with the policies, opinions or platforms for its use, I've no choice but to try and defend the song and prevent its misuse. Music can be both powerful and moving and sometimes even a little dangerous.

• For just $100, you can have your very own copy of Sarah Palin's fantasy film, The Undefeated.
• Will politicians ever learn? Don't go Godwin.

Source: http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/M4uxzLrTrSw/-Midday-open-thread

Daniel K. Inouye Daniel Lipinski Daniel R. Coats Daniel Webster

Lieberman/Coburn Medicare plan gets 'Very Serious Person' approval, panned by Dems

Oh, yay. Here comes the "let's all be reasonable" analysis of Sens. Lieberman's and Coburn's plan to make seniors pay a lot more for Medicare over at TIME's Swampland blog.

Sen. Joe Lieberman has found an ally for the middle-of-the-road Medicare reform proposal he laid out a few weeks ago. On Tuesday, the independent Senator from Connecticut and conservative Republican Tom Coburn unveiled a tweaked version of Lieberman?s plan. They hope to build a coalition of support for the proposal, which they say could save $600 billion over the next ten years. The plan won?t save Medicare for all future generations, but it's full of reasonable ideas that could gain bipartisan support?if politics don?t stand in the way.

Reasonable unless you care about preserving affordable care for seniors and not forcing them to delay treatment until they can qualify for the program. Reasonable if you're a beltway pundit, but not so much if you're going to be needing affordable medical care in your 60s. And reasonable if you're a Republican demanding the deficit gods be appeased on the backs of the middle-class.

Which is why plenty of mainstream (not flaming liberal) Dems "immediately recoiled" at the idea. What's a "reasonable" idea for deficit cutting? Real shared sacrifice, making the rich pay some damn taxes again..

Source: http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/asoqumrMv3w/-Lieberman-Coburn-Medicare-plan-gets-Very-Serious-Person-approval,-pannedbyDems

Claire McCaskill Cliff Stearns Colleen Hanabusa Collin C. Peterson

SMArt Prize for Patients, Physicians, and Researchers

This week a research team at Children’s Hospital of Boston and Harvard Medical School launched a prize to encourage innovative app developers to build new products and services that benefit patients and providers. The prize was created with funding from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT within the Department of Health and Human Services, and constitutes just the latest in a growing number of examples of the Federal government fostering R&D collaboration through open innovation.

The SMArt Prize competition could speed innovation in any number of areas. Developers might build a medication manager, a health risk detector, a laboratory visualization tool, or an app that integrates, in real time, patient data with external data sources—such as publication data in PubMed, CDC statistics, environmental data, financial data available at http://www.data.gov/health. In doing so, SMArt promises to help patients, doctors, and others realize the full potential of information technology to help transform how we manage health and healthcare.

The best app developed for the SMArt API by May 31 will win a $5,000 prize, as determined by an all-star panel of judges including:

• Susannah Fox (Director of Health Research, Pew Internet & American Life Project)
• Regina Herzlinger (Nancy R. McPherson Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School)
• David C. Kibbe (Chair, ASTM International E31 Technical Committee on Healthcare Informatics; Principal, The Kibbe Group LLC; Senior Advisor, American Academy of Family Physicians)
• Ben Shneiderman (Professor of Computer Science at the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory, University of Maryland, College Park)
• Doug Solomon (Chief Technology Officer, IDEO)
• Edward Tufte (Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Statistics, and Computer Science, Yale University)
• Jim Walker (Chief Health Information Officer, Geisinger Health Systems)

This endeavor is an example of why I share Bryan Roberts’ view that the stage is now set for dramatic jumps in healthcare innovation.  The evolving ecosystem of health IT will be further expanded by modular architectures, open APIs and the applications that can engage them.  This development will dramatically expand the market for health IT by offering applications that can meet any niche and any need - from individual consumers to small practices to large organizations—thereby  making the transformative power of health IT felt more fully and broadly. 

We look forward to celebrating all those who compete! 

Aneesh Chopra is the U.S. Chief Technology Officer

Source: http://feeds.whitehouse.gov/~r/whitehouse/open/~3/17bvtayBfvc/smart-prize-patients-physicians-and-researchers

Devin Nunes Diana DeGette Diane Lynn Black Dianne Feinstein

Rage Against the TSA Machine

The backdrop of my favorite science-fiction novels, Frank Herbert’s Dune series, is something called the Butlerian Jihad. Some 10,000 years before the main events of the story take place, humanity rebelled against “thinking machines” — intelligent computers — controlling people’s lives. The revolution was sparked because a computer decided to kill, without the consent of any human authority, the baby of a woman named Jehanne Butler.

I bring this up because I’m wondering why we can’t have a Reppertian Jihad. Its namesake would be Lena Reppert, a 105-pound, 95-year-old Florida woman. Her daughter claims Reppert was forced by airport security to remove her adult diaper in compliance with a body search. Reppert is dying of leukemia. She did not have another clean diaper for her trip.

The Transportation Security Administration belatedly denied forcing the removal of the diaper. Sari Koshetz, a spokeswoman for the TSA, insisted that the agency was sensitive and respectful in dealing with travelers, but she also told the Northwest Florida Daily News that procedures have to be the same for everyone: “TSA cannot exempt any group from screening because we know from intelligence that there are terrorists out there that would then exploit that vulnerability.”

That’s apparently why Drew Mandy, a 29-year-old disabled man with the mental capacity of a two-year-old, had his six-inch plastic toy hammer yanked from him by TSA on his way to Disney World. Mandy used the hammer as a security blanket of sorts. But the TSA agents insisted it could be used as a weapon. “It just killed me to have to throw it away because he’s been carrying this, like, for 20 years,” Mandy’s father told WJBK in Detroit. What his dad doesn’t understand is that if Islamic terrorists can’t have plastic toy hammers, no one can.

Mandy’s father says he wrote to the TSA and got an apology and a promise that agents would be retrained, but horror stories like these keep mounting. I’d tell you how thorough the TSA search was of blogger and advice columnist Amy Alkon (who collects such tales), but this is a family magazine. Suffice it to say, your government left nothing to chance.

And that’s what brought to mind Dune’s Butlerian Jihad. The holy war against machines was also a war against a mindset. “The target of the jihad was a machine-attitude as much as the machines,” a character explains. “Humans had set those machines to usurp our sense of beauty, our necessary selfdom out of which we make living judgments.” In the aftermath, a new commandment was promulgated: “Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.”

It seems the first commandment of the TSA is that every mind must be trained in the likeness of a machine. “Garbage in, garbage out,” is how computer programmers explain the way bad inputs determine bad outputs. Likewise, if TSA workers are programmed not to use common sense or discretion — surprise! — TSA workers won’t use common sense or discretion.

Why not? One reason is we’ve institutionalized an irrational phobia against anything smacking of racial or religious profiling. Once you’ve decided that disproportionate scrutiny of certain groups is verboten, you’ll have to hassle everyone equally. Thus we’re told that a 95-year-old woman’s diaper is just as likely to be the front line in the war on terror as a 22-year-old Pakistani’s backpack.

Defenders of the TSA insist we can’t abandon such mindlessness because, if we do, clever terrorists will start using adult diapers as IEDs. Others say we know that profiling isn’t effective because the Israelis don’t use it.

Both lines of argument assume security personnel cannot be trusted to be much more than automatons, mindlessly acting on bureaucratic programming. If that’s true of the current personnel, it’s not because it has to be.

In fact, the reason the Israelis don’t do simple profiling is that they use intelligent profiling conducted by highly intelligent screeners. At Ben Gurion International Airport, everyone’s interviewed by security. Some are questioned at length, others quickly. The controlling variable is the “living judgment” — to borrow a phrase from Dune’s Herbert — of the interviewers, and not wildly expensive full-body scanners and inflexible checklists.

Does anyone think that the personnel searching Lena Reppert honestly thought there might be a threat? Or is it more likely they were, machine-like, just doing what their garbage-in programming dictated?

— Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. You can write to him by e-mail at JonahsColumn@aol.com, or via Twitter @JonahNRO. © 2011 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

Source: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/270710/rage-against-tsa-machine-jonah-goldberg

Ben Chandler Ben Nelson Ben Quayle Ben R. Lujan