COVID-19 & Healthcare

States implementing ‘ObamaCare’ in good faith are seeing good results

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The Tea-Publican strategy for 2014 is to once again run against the Affordable Care Act (aka "ObamaCare"), focusing on every little problem, real or imagined, with the implementation of the program. Of course there are going to be problems with implementation, but rather than make adjustments to fix those problems, the Tea-Publican ideological knee-jerk reaction is to yell "kill it!"

Imagine how different the course of human history would have been without trial and error eventually leading to success and the advancement of the human race. If these people had been in charge, all modern scientific and technological advancements would never have occurred because damn near every one of them was a failure at first.

"ObamaCare" was set up to allow the 50 states to experiment and to learn what works best to establish best practices. AS FDR famously said of his New Deal programs, " It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something."

For all the nit-picking by Tea-Publicans over the implementation of "ObamaCare," things are actually going quite well in states that are making a good faith effort to implement the program. Matthew Iglesias writes at Slate, Obamacare Rollout Is Going to Be Like a Train Getting You to Your Destination in a Timely Manner:

You heard it here first from me in April,
but I want to reiterate that over the next 18 months you're going to
read a lot of stories about problems with Affordable Care Act
implementations. Many of those stories are going to be accurate. But
fundamentally Affordable Care Act implementation is going to work out
great, and people are going to love it.

The latest evidence comes to us today from California, America's largest
state and one of the states that's tried the hardest to actually
implement Obamacare. As Sarah Kliff explains, their exchanges are
getting set up, and it looks like premiums for "silver" and "bronze"
plans are both going to be lower than was previously expected [California Obamacare premiums: No ‘rate shock’ here].

Far from a "train wreck," in other words, the biggest single set of
clients for the program is getting something like a nice, smooth
high-speed train ride. There was also good news from Oregon recently,
where insurers that had initially come in with high premium bids are now
asking to resubmit with cheaper offerings in the face of competition [Oregon may be the White House’s favorite health exchange]. And the Affordable Care Act's goal of slowing the growth in aggregate health expenditures is also coming true.

Now of course not every state is going to have as happy an experience as California and Oregon.

Good news day

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by David Safier

The news has been so dismal when I've picked up my morning paper lately, I've considered trying to find a local chapter of NewsAnon to cut back on my addiction. Then came today. It wasn't all good, of course, but I'm not going to let the perfect news day be the enemy of a day with enough good news to cheer me up.

We will return to our regularly scheduled cynicism and dismay in the next post.

From today's Star:

  • Great front page pic of Ironwood HIgh grads. Congrats, all!
  • Three high school grads are spotlighted. One, an Asian American, works
    in a UA lab and wants to be a neuroscientist. She also loves to play
    the steel drums. "It's the connection I make with people when I play."
    The second is a Somali-American who arrived in the U.S. at 9 without
    ever attending school and is graduating with A's and B's. Thanks to
    JTED, he interns in the phlebotomy lab at Tucson Medical Center and will
    soon be a certified nursing assistant. He wants to be a doctor. The
    third is a Hispanic-American who has been a varsity catcher for 3 years,
    took Advanced Placement classes, acted as a mentor for freshmen and
    raised a pig as part of Future Farmers of America. He's going to college
    on a partial baseball scholarship.
    It's the mixed-up, crazy-quilt American dream. If the future is truly this bright, I'll have to wear shades.
  • Baby gets a 3-D laser print of a splint that allows him to breathe on his own and leave the hospital. The age of miracles.
  • Factories are moving back to the U.S. because transportation costs and lag time from foreign factories are getting too costly.

The Arizona Republic might want to rethink this strategy

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie: The Arizona Republic has an editorial opinion today giving their direction to the Arizona House of Representatives on Governor Jan Brewer's Medicaid (AHCCCS) restoration plan, which could have just as easily been summed up in three words with a Nike ad: "Just do it." Our View: No time to punt on Medicaid. … Read more

9th Circuit Court of Appeals strikes down Arizona’s 20-week abortion ban

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

It looks like the "Mayor" of Washington, D.C., Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), has a bit of a problem with his plan to take his anti-abortion crusade nationwide. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Arizona's 20-week abortion ban law today. Doh! Court Strikes Down Arizona 20-Week Abortion Ban:

TalibanThe 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the law violated a woman's
constitutionally protected right to terminate a pregnancy before a fetus
is able to survive outside the womb. "Viability" of a fetus is
generally considered to start at 24 weeks. Normal pregnancies run about
40 weeks.

Nine other states have enacted similar bans starting at 20 weeks or even
earlier. Several of those bans had previously been placed on hold or
struck down by other courts.

Judge Marsha Berzon, writing for the unanimous three-judge panel on the
San Francisco-based court, said such bans before viability violate a
long string of U.S. Supreme Court rulings starting with the seminal Roe
v. Wade decision in 1973.

The judge wrote that "a woman has a constitutional right to choose to terminate her pregnancy before the fetus is viable."

Gov. Jan Brewer signed the ban into law in April 2012 after it was
approved by the Republican-led Legislature. Supporters said the law was
meant to protect the mother's health and prevent fetuses from feeling
pain. U.S. District Judge James Teilborg ruled it was constitutional,
partly because of those concerns, but the 9th Circuit blocked the ban
from going into effect until it ruled.

Lawyers representing Arizona argued that the ban wasn't technically a
law but rather a medical regulation because it allowed for doctors to
perform abortions in medical emergencies. Berzon rejected that reasoning
and deemed the legislation a law banning abortions before a fetus is
viable.

"The challenged Arizona statute's medical emergency exception does not
transform the law from a prohibition on abortion into a regulation of
abortion procedure," Berzon wrote. "Allowing a physician to decide if
abortion is medically necessary is not the same as allowing a woman to
decide whether to carry her own pregnancy to term."

Berzon was joined by judges Mary Schroeder and Andrew Kleinfeld.

Robert Robb is right: refer a clean Medicaid (AHCCCS) restoration bill to the voters

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

I hate it when I have to agree with the Arizona Republic's über-conservative columnist Robert Robb, but even a broken clock is right twice a day, am I right?

Keep in mind that this latest column from Robert Robb is actually the strategy for a legal challenge to Governor Jan Brewer's Medicaid (AHCCCS) restoration plan, likely from his old employer, the Goldwater Institute, which is actively opposing the Governor's plan. If the Governor's plan is enacted by the legislature, the Goldwater Institute will file a lawsuit. (To his credit, Robb has written several columns arguing in favor of Governor Brewer's plan as a practical matter, much to Goldwater's chagrin I imagine).

I have had several Democratic legislators tell me that they agree with the Governor's legal analysis that the hospital bed tax is just a provider assessment that can be imposed by an agency head. I suspect this is wishful thinking. I have little confidence in the Governor's lawyers. I have previously posted that I disagree with this analysis. I believe this is rightly characterized as a tax, and any new tax requires a two-thirds super-majority vote of both chambers of the legislature to be approved under Prop. 108 (1992). This is why I have long argued for the repeal of the undemocratic Prop. 108.