This is an unacceptable and heartless attack on women's access to healthcare, and we need you to speak out by asking the Chair of the committee, Representative Dan Cooper, to strip the amendment from the budget.
If the amendment is not removed, state employees will lose insurance coverage of abortion--which they currently ONLY have in cases of rape, incest, or when necessary to save the life of the woman. Attacking women's access to healthcare just to score political points is the worst kind of cynicism. Doing so in a year when families all across South Carolina are struggling to make ends meet is unconscionable.
Thank you for speaking out,
Jessica Bearden Director of Public Policy - Planned Parenthood
This is in consideration of the plan put forward by Jim Rex, candidate for South Carolina Governor concerning the use of an increase in the cigarette tax to pay for education first and then health care.
While this is a out of the box idea, you have to watch out on funding education from a sales based activity. This thought process has gotten South Carolina into a lot of trouble by basing service funding off of sales based taxes. What's worse, if you read the article, Governor Sanford will allow an increase in the cigarette tax but offset it with a decrease in income or other taxes. How idiotic of Republicans once again, the State is in dire straits already and this would make it worse.
This entire thought process is unimagineable by the Republican Leadership and the question that has to be asked, are you kidding me? The basics of revenue generation for the government is not rocket science but the Republicans in South Carolina somehow missed those classes when they went to college.
What should be done is the increase in the cigarette tax would fund Human Services, Medicaid, and Tobacco use reduction programs, all of these areas are under stress from the smoking related health issues anyway. This would fund these services from these additional funds and create less stress on general income tax revenues, which could be redirected into education.
Education should be funded fully off of the property tax, without being exempted as currently. But a more targeted approach can provide property tax relief and also improve state funding for public education, according to this new report by Daphne A. Kenyon, a visiting fellow at the Lincoln Institute. State governments who have tried to reduce property taxes and improve school performance at the same time have not met with much success according to the report. Arguing that the use of property tax revenue for schools is fundamentally sound, the report points out that increasing state aid for education does not necessarily result in lower property taxes, and it cautions against switching to greater reliance on a sales tax to fund schools. The report also recommends a targeted approach, distributing state aid for public education to the neediest school districts, schools, and students.
We have to all agree it makes no sense to allow cigarettes in South Carolina to have the lowest tax when smoking related illnesses in the State put a strain on the health services in the State.
I would like to enjoy watching Scott Brown's leggy daughter sing, but the memory of the man who called my law office on Monday desperate to get followup treatment after an ER visit from anyone makes it impossible. I would love to be a Republlican, but being the nearsighted attorney that I am, i am up to my elbows in the human misery of divorces of people who could barely take care of their children when married, whose lifetime of honest work has secured nothing.
No amount of zoloft and Scotch keeps the rising sound of suffering and fear in our culture out of my ears. I know how evil Exxon, Cigna and Walmart are. I know the poor are not saints. We are asked to choose between a decent world and a brutal one. It is a hard messy business. This is no time for a Caribbean vacation or a month long crycing jag.
On January 30th. in Charleston, we are going to do some of the many things we need to do right now. Read about it in the extended text.
We do our best here at IJ to keep our focus on the Palmetto State, but every now and then we find ourselves being sucked into some other state's politics. And today our eyes, along with the rest of the nation's, are focused squarely on Massachusetts and what promises to be a nail-biter of a special election to fill Ted Kennedy's former Senate seat.
Today Democrat Martha Coakley and Republican Scott Brown square off in an election that will have significant consequences for all American's ability to gain access to affordable health insurance. If Coakley loses, Democrats will lose their magic 60th seat in the U.S. Senate, which could dramatically alter the outcome of the health care reform bill still being hammered out by Congress. It will also serve as a 2010 rallying cry for conservatives, who have channeled all their hopes and resources into scooping up the liberal icon's former seat.
Image, left, Setup of Lowcountry Democratic Operations Center, Oct. 2009. Additional space within the building has been rented for the day to accommodate the event.
Lowcountry people supportive of President Obama’s agenda for Hope and Change will work all day Saturday, January 30 to bring ideas and effort together for a better America. That day, FOX news personalities Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly will be cultivating an atmosphere of fear at the North Charleston coliseum.
Democrats will devote the day to solution-oriented training discussions, phone banking and voter registration efforts at the Lowcountry Democratic operations center and elsewhere in North Charleston. Supporters of President Obama are invited to register and participate. Full details on the day’s events can be found at http://tinyurl.com/sc-change2010.
(First Congressional District candidate Robert Dobbs offers up a possible solution to SC's growing health care crisis. - promoted by Jennifer Read)
Here is a program South Carolina could look at to help its citizens.
In Wisconsin they have a program called Badger Care, funny name but effective program that was started by former Governor Tommy Thompson.
The BadgerCare Plus plan for childless adults offers a limited benefit plan with basic health care services, such as primary and preventive care, and generic drugs. People who have been without health insurance for a year or more, or who lost their health insurance through no fault of their own and meet the income requirements, are eligible.
The BadgerCare program is a health insurance program that provides health coverage to low-income, uninsured families with children under the age of 19 who are not eligible for Medicaid and who are uninsured.
Some of us in Charleston, SC, believe it is time to bring a FREE CLINIC of the scope and size of the clinics that have been held in New Orleans, Little Rock, and (this weekend) Kansas City to the Palmetto State.
I believe, that, like the other cities, we can get a donated venue, that over the course of 2 days can see 1000 to 1500 people who do not have insurance to cover exams. The Charleston area, while not centrally located in the state, has many hospitals, a Medical University, and many opportunities for people to follow up their initial care. The Charleston Metropolitan area has 4 free clinics that run on a continuous basis, however, they are unable to see anywhere near the number of people in need.
South Carolina is one of the most medically needy places in the United States. Additionally, with few exceptions, our politicians are not behind healthcare reform, so we are likely to remain among the medically needy for some time to come. Jim Clyburn is one such exception. His district is in the Charleston, SC area.
Jim Roosevelt presented an informative lecture at the Citadel in Charleston, SC on health care reform on December 3, 2009.
James Roosevelt Jr. is president and CEO of Tufts Health Plan, a non-profit health maintenance organization. Roosevelt (Image at Right) joined Tufts in 1999 as senior vice president and general counsel and held that position until June 2005, when he became president and CEO. As the general counsel, he presided over the legal department and the company's compliance, privacy and government relations functions. He worked with the
Massachusetts Legislature on that State’s Health Plan, which pushed coverage rates to 97% and is currently working with the Obama Administration and industry on the national healthcare reform plan.
Roosevelt felt fair coverage regulations, preventing discrimination, requiring coverage for preexisting conditions and making coverage available to more people was the necessary starting place for reform. He sees an expanding effort for cost control as the next natural phase. The Federal legislation sets up a number of pilot projects in this area and some nationwide initiatives. He sees the future as larger healthcare provider organizations who are compensated based on the health of their participants, instead of a fee for service model which rewards treatment, not health. The proper operation of such systems required implementation of integrated electronic records so performance can be validly measured. That has only recently become possible. Evolving such a system through competition and regulation will take many years.
Representing the party of do-nothings, Congressman Henry Brown proved just that in the month of November.
Brown didn't vote on multiple items brought before the House in that month, but more specifically he didn't vote on H.R. 3961: The Medicare Physician Payment Reform Act of 2009. I guess his rhetoric of reforming Medicare is just that - rhetoric.
The bill passed 243-183 and has been applauded medical associations and patient advocates. The three remaining Republican congressmen did vote - No.
Under H.R. 3961, the sustainable growth rate (SGR) would be replaced with a new formula in which only physician services, and not other services provided incidentally to a physician visit (such as laboratory services or drugs), would be counted in each category; the update for 2010 would be the percentage increase in the Medicare economic index (MEI), which is 1.2 percent; and the new SGR formula would take into account spending for each category of service since 2009 or, beginning in 2014, for the previous five years.
You have to be kidding me, is what I thought when I read the story and heard the interview. Sarah Palin would be lucky, oh my gosh, to even find it on a map and it would have to have the countries already colored in.
"Now is not the time for cold feet, second thoughts, or indecision," Palin wrote. "It is the time to act as commander-in-chief and approve the troops so clearly needed in Afghanistan....We can win in Afghanistan by helping the Afghans build a stable representative state able to defend itself."
Sarah believes we need to take everything McChrystal says as fact and give him everything he needs. Well let's break this down with some real thought. We Sarah, National Security Advisor General Jones told Der Spiegel, “Generals always ask for more troops. Take it from me. I believe we will not solve the problem with troops alone. The minimum number is important, of course. But there is no maximum number, however… You can keep on putting troops in, and you could have 200,000 troops there and Afghanistan will swallow them up as it has done in the past.”
Sarah, here is a bit of a current and past history lesson on Afghanistan:
We already out number the Taliban 12:1
1,449 coalition deaths in Afghanistan as part of ongoing coalition operations (Operation Enduring Freedom and ISAF) since the invasion in 2001.
As of September 19, 2009, 139 foreign private contractor deaths in Afghanistan as part of the War in Afghanistan.
The Soviet army lost 14,427, the KGB lost 576, with 28 people dead and missing between December 25, 1979 and February 15, 1989.
The Soviet had a total of 620,000 soldiers served with the forces in Afghanistan and couldn't win.
The cost of the War in Afghanistan is around $232 billion.
The total cost of the War in Afghanistan for the Soviets is estimated at around $82 billion.
So rather than listening to what your radical war-monging right wing neo-cons say on Afghanistan, maybe some reality is needed. What we have wasted over in Afghanistan is public health care for everyone here!
Earlier today, a reader sent me an interesting video clip of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-Hell) talking about national health care legislation in 1973. Unfortunately I can't embed the video here, but you can see it for yourself on a USC library website.
My reader said the clip had Thurmond endorsing a public health insurance option, and he does lean that way just a bit in calling for a government-run program for the neediest Americans. But in researching the legislation Thurmond was promoting - "Medicredit" - I found that it was an AMA-sponsored bill primarily aimed at heading off an effort by Sen. Ted Kennedy for real national health care.
Not surprisingly, the Medicredit legislation proposed by Thurmond and others looks pretty much like what current Strom wannabe Jim Demint is flogging: some inadequate tax credits to pay for inadequate coverage by private insurers.
The Thurmond clip is interesting, but in trying to learn about Medicredit, I came across something downright depressing.
This editorial from the (Utica) Daily Press from January 15, 1971 shows just how successful the Strom Thurmonds and Jim Demints have been over the last 40 years in keeping insurance companies fat. (There's an Evans & Novak column on the same page you might find interesting as well).
National Health Care by 1975
First proposed 60 years ago during William Howard Taft's administration, revived briefly under Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman, the idea of national health insurance is one whose time at last has come.
It seems certain that before mid-decade there is going to be some form of national health insurance for all Americans, rich and poor alike, going well beyond the present Medicare and Medicaid programs.
While reformers may differ over details, there is general agreement that America's present health care deli very "system is not doing the job it should. Too many Americans, particularly those in rural and innercity areas, are not getting the medical attention which should be their right.
ALREADY A NUMBER of major plans are competing for the attention and approval of Congress.
The first was the American Medical Association's Medicredit Plan announced early in 1970. This was followed in August by the Health Security Program prepared by a committee headed by the late Walter Reuther and introduced in Congress by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.
In December, the National Healthcare Bill was introduced in the House by Rep. Omar Burleson, D-Tex. Now just recently, the Health Insurance Association of America (HIAA), representing both large and small private health insurers, announced its own comprehensive plan.
THE HEALTH SECURITY Program calls for an all-federal health insurance program paid for through increased Social Security deductions and general tax revenue. Its proponents estimate that it would cost the nation some $40 billion in its first year of operation, although a spokesman for the Department of Health, Education and Welfare estimates the actual cost would be closer to $77 billion.
The AMA's Medicredit Plan would simply offer tax credits to the poor and the near-poor toward the purchase of standardized coverage from qualified health insurers. It estimates the first-year costs of its program at $7.3 billion.
All the proposals have one goal in common — to reorganize the present health care delivery system and make it work better.
The upshot likely will be something which takes elements from all the plans, with the hoped-for end result of harnessing America's medical talents and resources for the benefit not just of some or'of most but of all the people.
So there's a vote in the Senate tomorrow. But I'm not holding my breath waiting for it to be successful.
It is easy to forget that two Democratic Congressmen from South Carolina voted for the Health Care Reform bill late Saturday evening. If you monitor the right wing cloud of paranoia and hate which serves as South Carolina’s dominate political atmosphere, you know they’re getting savaged for it.
John Spratt, in right side of image at left.
The right wing attacks are endless and contain more myth and lore than the legends of the Skunk Ape, a Southern hominid primate alleged to be like Bigfoot, but sadly shorter, less intelligent and smelling worse.
I learn today, for instance, that no copy of the healthcare bill exists, which is remarkable since they were busy showing one off last Thursday at the teabag rally near the Capital, the one the Republicans were blowing off committee meetings and votes to attend. Thankfully, we can hit the remote and turn off the right wing noise. I prune wing nuts out of my twitter and facebook feeds on a regular basis. However Congressmen Spratt and Clyburn can’t do that. Neither can their staffs.
They have to listen to the hurricane of right wing hate South Carolina generates five days a week. Their inboxes fill up with it. Their phones are full of it.
You need to call their offices this week and say thank you. Be grateful that we have two Congressmen who aren’t owned by the political right. Get a human being on the phone. Tell them you are a Democrat and you appreciate their hard work. Don’t take long and don’t try to fix the legislation today, just say thanks. Give them a softball call. Answering that phone was some fellow Democrat’s dream job, but it hasn’t been much fun lately. Let them have a short, positive interaction they will enjoy.
All we have to do is look at some of the recent hot political issues: health care, unemployment extension, immigration reform, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Health Care Reform:
We have been waiting for months for the Republicans to come up with a Health Care Reform package in writing to back up all of the rhetoric they have put forward against the plan being floated by the Democratic Leadership. Well we now have that plan in writing and believe it or not, it doesn't save as much money nor does it cover more people than the Democrat plan.
Unemployment Extension
The unemployment extension bill was held up for 7 weeks by the Republicans so they can argue about ACORN, again, and attempt to get a Real Estate Extension Tax Credit. Two issues that should have been seperate from the unemployment extension bill.
Immigration Reform:
Health Care Reform is now making the Administration and Congress address this important issue and how illegal immigration deals with the health care reform debate. Congress, along with the current and prior Presidents, have not been forceful enough to create a true immigration reform package to end illegal immigration and put all illegal immigrants either on the books or out of the country. We cannot move forward on any true reform with health care or immigration unless both issues are addressed. However the Republicans want an all or nothing solution to the immmigration issue.
Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
Taxpayers in South Carolina will pay $6.7 billion for total Iraq and Afghanistan war spending since 2001. For the same amount of money, the following could have been provided:
3,594,955 People with Health Care for One Year OR 4,866,884 Homes with Renewable Electricity for One Year OR 179,567 Public Safety Officers for One year OR 127,932 Music and Arts Teachers for One Year OR 858,968 Scholarships for University Students for One Year OR 1,253,611 Students receiving Pell Grants of $5350 OR 65,587 Affordable Housing Units OR 3,894,311 Children with Health Care for One Year OR 1,006,577 Head Start Places for Children for One Year OR 129,600 Elementary School Teachers for One Year OR 89,350 Port Container Inspectors for One year
So what does the Republican Party use as the litmus test (another word for discrimination):
Does the candidate support gay rights;
Is the candidate against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan;
Does the candidate support public option;
Does the candidate support environmental regulation?
The list goes on and on. Doesn't sound like an inclusive political party.
Organizing for America Volunteers in Charleston, South Carolina joined supporters of President Obama from across the United States in generating over 150 thousand calls to Congress in support of Healthcare Reform today.
The phone bank event began at 12 noon with a handful of daytime volunteers and was expected to continue into the evening. By 4 pm, the national effort had already surpassed the day’s goal of 100 thousand calls and a new goal of 200 thousand calls was set. As of 5 pm, it appeared that over 1000 calls a minute were going into the Offices of the Senators and Congress.
After classes, some student volunteers from Garret and Stall High Schools worked the phones for a while, as did a student from Trident Tech. The effort finishes with a final group of volunteers expected to come in about 7 pm. Over 500 calls had been made before 3 pm and the day's goal was at least a Thousand.
Many of the Charleston Calls went into the District of Congressman Joe Wilson, who screamed “Liar” to the President during his address to a Joint Session of Congress in September.
Volunteers reported that many of the voters there were disgusted with Wilson and ready to advise him of their support of the President. Some felt calling was pointless, but changed their mind after talking with Volunteers who argued that Wilson’s indifference did not entitle him to our silence. Repeated statements to the media by Republicans that the President had little or no support in South Carolina offended the President’s supporters and helped motivate calls.
Other volunteers were working the sidewalk, signing callers up as they waited for CARTA busses.
Charleston Democratic/OFA Headquarters is coming along with three computer work stations in place. Several more are planned. Volunteers were using cell phones and paper call sheets today, but the network and telephones are expected shortly. This should make it possible to go to “paperless” phone banking with autodial, freeing volunteers to concentrate on their calls and providing immediate feedback to the national organization without keying in handwritten data.
The Charleston Democratic Party is still accepting donations of computers, chairs and tables.
I would like to enjoy watching Scott Brown's leggy daughter sing, but the memory of the man who called my law office on Monday desperate to get followup treatment after an ER visit from anyone makes it impossible. I would love to be a Republlican, but being the nearsighted attorney that I am, i am up to my elbows in the human misery of divorces of people who could barely take care of their children when married, whose lifetime of honest work has secured nothing.
Image, left, Setup of Lowcountry Democratic Operations Center, Oct. 2009. Additional space within the building has been rented for the day to accommodate the event. 
Roosevelt (Image at Right) joined Tufts in 1999 as senior vice president and general counsel and held that position until June 2005, when he became president and CEO. As the general counsel, he presided over the legal department and the company's compliance, privacy and government relations functions. He worked with the 
John Spratt, in right side of image at left.
The phone bank event began at 12 noon with a handful of daytime volunteers and was expected to continue into the evening. By 4 pm, the national effort had already surpassed the day’s goal of 100 thousand calls and a new goal of 200 thousand calls was set. As of 5 pm, it appeared that over 1000 calls a minute were going into the Offices of the Senators and Congress. 
Other volunteers were working the sidewalk, signing callers up as they waited for CARTA busses. 
