Republicans object to transparency measure

The DSCC just issued this press release:

Today, Senate Republicans objected to a commonsense transparency measure that would have required all amendments to the Senate health care bill to be posted online before being considered. Republican Senator Mike Enzi, on behalf of his Republican colleagues, led the effort to block Senator Reid from implementing this measure today, which would have allowed anyone to read the numerous amendments being offered to the health care bill online.

“Senate Republicans continue to show that they have no interest in reforming our broken health care system,” said Democratic Senatorial Campaign Communications Director Eric Schultz. “Instead of agreeing to a commonsense measure that would have required all amendments to be posted online, Republicans continue to obstruct and offer delay. The American people are tired of these political games and will remember which party worked toward health care reform and which party stood back and did nothing. If Republicans want to hide their amendments from the American people, they ought to explain why.”

Senator Reid asked unanimous consent that no amendment be in order to the Reid substitute (SA #2786, any subsequent substitute amendment, and HR 3590) unless the text (or internet link to the text) of the amendment is posted on the home page of the official Senate website of the Member who is sponsoring the amendment, prior to the amendment being called up for consideration by the Senate, and the amendment is filed at the desk. This request would be in effect for the duration of consideration of HR 3590. Senator Enzi and Senate Republicans objected to the request.

'That's the American way'

Here's a great comic from Ed Stein:


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Top 10 Surprises in the Sarah Palin Book

Obama to unveil his Afghan plan Tuesday

AFP has the story:

WASHINGTON — US President Barack Obama will announce his new Afghan strategy in an address to the nation Tuesday from the prestigious West Point military academy, the White House said.

In a defining moment for his young presidency, Obama is widely expected to order more than 30,000 additional American troops into battle against an emboldened Taliban-led insurgency.

But the president, who vowed Tuesday to "finish the job" in Afghanistan, will also lay out an exit strategy for withdrawing forces from the war begun eight years ago in response to the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Click here to read the entire article.

President Obama's weekly address

President Obama calls to our attention the men and women in uniform who are away from home sacrificing time with family to protect our safety and freedom. He also talks about the progress of health care reform, the Recovery Act, and job creation to ensure that next Thanksgiving will be a brighter day.

Governor Beshear's weekly address

Click here for a version of this video with closed captioning for the hearing impaired.

Governor Beshear appoints Kenton Co resident

Today Governor Steve Beshear issued this press release:

FRANKFORT, Ky. – Gov. Steve Beshear has named Covington resident Joseph U. Meyer acting secretary of Kentucky’s Education and Workforce Development Cabinet.

“I am grateful to have someone with Joe’s experience agree to serve the cabinet as acting secretary,” said Gov. Beshear. “He has a long and distinguished commitment to education, including his work as deputy secretary, state senator, local school board member and as an attorney for local school districts, and will continue to serve the state well.”

Gov. Beshear appointed Meyer deputy secretary of the cabinet in September 2008, while continuing his duties as senior policy adviser to the Governor.

“I am committed to building on the foundation that Gov. Beshear and Secretary Mountjoy have laid in the areas of education and workforce development,” said Meyer. “The services we provide are critical to the success of Kentuckians and the Commonwealth. We will continue this important work.”

Before joining the Beshear administration, Meyer served as senior policy adviser for state auditor Crit Luallen. In 2004, he was chief of staff for the chair of the House majority caucus. From 1979 to 2003, he practiced law in Covington. He also served as deputy director and general counsel for the Kentucky Association of the Counties in Frankfort.

Meyer served the Commonwealth as a state senator from 1988 to 1996 and as a state representative from 1982 to 1988. He received his law degree from Northern Kentucky University, a master’s degree from St. Louis University and a bachelor’s degree from Bellarmine College.

Last month, current Education and Workforce Development Cabinet Secretary Helen Mountjoy announced that she would be leaving the Cabinet at the end of November to return to her home in Owensboro. Mountjoy’s last day in the office is Nov. 25.

The Kentucky Education and Workforce Development Cabinet coordinates learning programs from P-16 and manages and supports training and employment functions in the Department for Workforce Investment. The cabinet employs nearly 3,000 full and part-time workers with an annual budget of $2.5 billion.

Republicans: Wrong on Recovery

Health Insurance Reform: The Case for Change

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has analyzed the impact of health insurance reform on Kentucky.

Under reform in Kentucky:

• 654,000 residents who do not currently have insurance and 196,000 residents who have nongroup insurance could get affordable coverage through the health insurance exchange.


• 444,000 residents could qualify for premium tax credits to help them purchase health coverage.


• 724,000 seniors would receive free preventive services.


• 129,000 seniors would have their brand-name drug costs in the Medicare Part D “doughnut hole” halved.


• 44,800 small businesses could be helped by a small business tax credit to make premiums more affordable.

Health Insurance Reform Provides Early Relief and Health Security.
Proposals implemented in 2010 and 2011 will produce real benefits for:

• Families: The 4.3 million residents of Kentucky will benefit as reform:
  
  
  • Ensures consumer protections in the insurance market. Insurance companies will no longer be able to place lifetime limits on the coverage they provide, use of annual limits will be restricted, and they will not be able to arbitrarily drop coverage.
  
  
  • Creates immediate options for people who can’t get insurance today. 10 percent of people in Kentucky have diabetes, and 30 percent have high blood pressure – two conditions that insurance companies could use as a reason to deny health insurance coverage. Reform will establish a high-risk pool to enable people who cannot get insurance today to find an affordable health plan.
  
  
  • Ensures free preventive services. 36 percent of Kentucky residents have not had a colorectal cancer screening, and 22 percent of women over 50 have not had a mammogram in the past two years. Health insurance reform will ensure that people can access preventive services for free through their health plans. It will also invest in a prevention and public health fund to encourage prevention and wellness programs.
  
  
  • Supports health coverage for early retirees. An estimated 66,800 from Kentucky have early retiree coverage through their former employers, but early retiree coverage has eroded over time. A reinsurance program would stabilize early retiree coverage and provide premium relief to both early retirees and the workers in the firms that provide their health benefits. This could save families up to $1,200 on premiums.
  
  
• Seniors: Kentucky’s 724,000 Medicare beneficiaries will benefit as reform:
  
  
  • Lowers premiums by reducing Medicare’s overpayments to private plans. All Medicare beneficiaries pay the price of excessive overpayments through higher premiums – even the 87 percent of seniors in Kentucky who are not enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan. A typical couple in traditional Medicare will pay nearly $90 in additional Medicare premiums next year to subsidize these private plans. Health insurance reform clamps down on these excessive payments.
  
  
  • Reduces prescription drug spending. Roughly 129,000 Medicare beneficiaries in Kentucky hit the “doughnut hole,” or gap in Medicare Part D drug coverage that can cost some seniors an average of $4,080 per year. Reform legislation will provide a 50 percent discount for brand-name drugs in this coverage gap.
  
  
  • Covers free preventive services. Currently, seniors in Medicare must pay part of the cost of many preventive services on their own. For a colonoscopy that costs $637, this means that a senior must pay $148 – a price that can be prohibitively expensive. Under reform, a senior will not pay anything for that colonoscopy, or for any other recommended preventive service. A senior will also get free annual wellness visits to his or her provider, with a personalized prevention plan to remain in good health.
  
  
• Small businesses: While small businesses make up 72 percent of Kentucky’s businesses, only 41 percent of them offered health coverage benefits in 2008. 44,800 small businesses in Kentucky could be helped by a small businesses tax credit proposal that makes premiums more affordable. And these small businesses would be exempt from any employer responsibility provisions.


• States: State budgets will be relieved from rising health care costs as reform:
  
  
  • Reduces state employee premiums. Coverage would immediately be expanded to the uninsured, decreasing the amount of uncompensated care costs that gets shifted to the premiums of state employees. For states that provide early retiree health benefits to their state employees, a reinsurance program would provide premium relief of up to $1,200 per family policy per year for all employees.
  
  
  • Reduces uncompensated care. Right now, providers in Kentucky lose $1.1 billion in uncompensated care each year, which states subsidize at least in part. Instead, under reform, uncompensated care would begin to be reduced immediately as more uninsured people gain coverage.

Health Insurance Reform Provides Stability, Security, and Choice.

• Provides relief from rising health care costs.
  
  
  • Ends the “hidden tax”. The $1.1 billion spent on uncompensated care in Kentucky often gets passed along to families in the form of a hidden premium “tax”. By expanding coverage to the uninsured, health insurance reform will eliminate this burden on people who already have insurance.
  
  
  • Provides premium tax credits. Without reform, individuals and families in Kentucky will spend increasing amounts of money out-of-pocket to cover premiums, deductibles, and co-payments, from $4 billion today to up to $6.5 billion in 2019. Through health insurance reform, 444,000 Kentucky residents could be eligible for premium credits to ease the burden of these high costs.
  
  
• Promotes health insurance portability and choice. Health insurance reform establishes a health insurance exchange that will provide individuals with a wide variety of choices and ensure that they will always have coverage, whether they change jobs, lose a job, move or get sick.
  
  
  • Currently 654,000 residents of Kentucky do not have health insurance, and if nothing is done, by 2019 this population could swell to 830,000. The exchange will help the uninsured to obtain needed coverage and will also help the 196,000 Kentucky residents who currently purchase insurance in the individual insurance market to get quality coverage at an affordable price.


• Supports long-term home and community based services: It is estimated that 65 percent of those who are 65 today will spend some time at home in need of long-term care services, which typically cost almost $18,000 per year. This means that 349,000 older residents of Kentucky who are aged 55 to 64 today will need home health services after they turn 65 – services that are not always covered by Medicare, Medicaid, or private health insurance.
  
  
  • Health insurance reform will create a new voluntary long-term care services insurance program, which will provide a cash benefit to help seniors and people with disabilities obtain services and supports that will enable them to remain in their homes and communities.
  
  
  • Reform will encourage states to expand their home and community based services through Medicaid by providing enhanced funding, and it will create a program to provide community support services for disabled Medicaid enrollees who would otherwise need to be in a nursing home. These programs could help improve care for many of the 213,000 disabled Medicaid beneficiaries in Kentucky.

Health Insurance Reform Improves Quality and Reforms the Delivery System.

• Reduces preventable readmissions. The current health care system does not place enough emphasis on improving quality of care. For example, nearly 20 percent of Medicare patients who are discharged from the hospital end up being readmitted within 30 days. For Kentucky, that’s 48,500 readmissions each year which could potentially be prevented with improved care coordination. Health insurance reform will invest in innovations in primary care and will provide financial incentives to hospitals to better coordinate care at discharge to avoid preventable readmissions.


• Lessens Paperwork. Physicians spend on average about 140 hours and $68,000 a year just dealing with health insurance bureaucracy. For the 11,318 physicians in Kentucky, this adds up to 1.6 million hours and $770 million in costs. By simplifying and standardizing paperwork and computerizing medical records, doctors will be able to focus on caring for their patients instead of dealing with bureaucracy.


• Incentivizes primary care. Roughly 4,400 doctors in Kentucky practice primary care and would qualify for a new 5 to 10 percent payment bonus under health insurance reform.


• Invests in the health primary care. Approximately 480,000 people, or 11 percent of Kentucky’s population, cannot access a primary care provider due to shortages in their communities. Health insurance reform will expand and improve programs to increase the number of health care providers, including doctors, nurses, and dentists, especially in rural and other underserved areas.

Editorial comic roundup

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President Obama's weekly address

The President talks about engaging in new markets that hold tremendous potential to spur job creation here at home.

Governor Beshear's weekly address

Click here for a version of this video with closed captioning for the hearing impaired.

The Wrong Side of History

The most recent column from Nicholas Kristof is a must-read:

Critics storm that health care reform is “a cruel hoax and a delusion.” Ads in 100 newspapers thunder that reform would mean “the beginning of socialized medicine.”

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page predicts that the legislation will lead to “deteriorating service.” Business groups warn that Washington bureaucrats will invade “the privacy of the examination room,” that we are on the road to rationed care and that patients will lose the “freedom to choose their own doctor.”

All dire — but also wrong. Those forecasts date not from this year, but from the battle over Medicare in the early 1960s. I pulled them from newspaper archives and other accounts.

The GOP's no-exit strategy

Yesterday's column from E.J. Dionne was great. Here's an excerpt:

Republicans are using the filibuster to stall action even on bills that most of them support. Remember: The rule is to keep Democrats from ever reaching the exit.

As of last Monday, the Senate majority had filed 58 cloture motions requiring 32 recorded votes. One of the more outrageous cases involved an extension in unemployment benefits, a no-brainer in light of the dismal economy. The bill ultimately cleared the Senate this month by 98 to 0.

The vote came only after the Republicans launched three filibusters against the bill and tried to lard it with unrelated amendments, delaying passage by nearly a month. And you wonder why it's so hard to pass health care?

Mitch McConnell: Lying on Health Reform

Vice President Joe Biden on 'The Daily Show'

Part 1:


Part 2:

Senate healthcare bill hits Obama cost target

There's good news on healthcare reform. Reuters has the story:

U.S. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid released a healthcare reform plan on Wednesday that budget analysts said would extend coverage to tens of millions of the uninsured and reduce the budget deficit over 10 years.

After weeks of closed-door talks to merge two Senate bills, Reid told Democrats the Congressional Budget Office pegged the plan's 10-year cost at $849 billion -- below President Barack Obama's $900 billion goal for his top domestic priority.

The CBO analysis also said the plan would reduce the deficit by $127 billion over 10 years and $650 billion in the second decade while extending coverage to 31 million more Americans, Democrats said, a rosy report card that could boost the bill's prospects in a sharply divided Senate.

Poll: 56 Percent Approve of President Obama

A new ABC News/Washington Post poll shows that Americans still approve of the job that President Obama is doing:

President Obama is showing durability against significant economic and policy challenges, maintaining majority approval for his job performance in the face of broad unemployment, a controversial health plan and continued doubts about his work on the war in Afghanistan.

...Obama, for his part, has a 56 percent job approval rating overall, better than on any individual issue tested in this ABC News/Washington Post poll save one – 60 percent for his handling of international affairs.

...Tellingly, Americans by 2-1, 61 percent to 31 percent, say leaders of the Republican Party are mainly criticizing Obama without presenting other ideas, rather than offering alternatives to his proposals. Independents, the center of politics, hold this view by 54-37 percent. And the ranks of independents are broad: They again account for a plurality of Americans, 39 percent in this survey, while Republicans, in the tank all year, make up just 21 percent of the population.

Yet more Republican obstructionism

Today's Los Angeles Times provides more examples of Republican obstructionism:

So far, only six of Obama's nominees to the lower federal courts have won approval. By comparison, President George W. Bush had 28 judges confirmed in his first year in office, even though Democrats held a narrow majority for much of the year. President Clinton put 27 new judges on the bench in his first year.

The slow pace of approving judges has gotten little attention while Democrats and Republicans have fought over healthcare, the budget and the economic stimulus bill. In mid-summer, Obama and the Democrats also won confirmation for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

But liberal activists have voiced growing irritation that Republicans are quietly using their minority power to block Senate votes on Obama's judicial nominees. They note that during the Bush administration, Republicans insisted the president's nominees deserved up-or-down votes.

Kentucky reaches goal on children's health care

Governor Steve Beshear penned a column for Friday's Herald-Leader. Here's an excerpt:

One year ago, my administration launched an aggressive plan to tackle head-on one of the biggest hurdles to our children's and our state's future: Lack of health insurance.

Numbers showed some 67,000 children lacked health coverage — even though they were eligible for programs like the Kentucky Children's Health Insurance Plan (KCHIP) or Medicaid.

So we set an initial goal of signing up 35,000 of those uninsured children by June 30, 2010.

I'm thrilled to say that we expect to reach that mark six months ahead of schedule.

GOP's 'big tent' turns into political coffin

Be sure to check out the most recent column from DeWayne Wickham:

[Today's Republican Party] finds political strength mostly in states of the old Confederacy, where the Southern Whigs were once prominent. And just as the dying Whigs tried to save themselves by aligning with immigration opponents, today's GOP has cast its lot with a fringe collection of nativists, "birthers" and "tea party" protesters in hopes of political resurrection.

I don't think that's going to happen.

Despite recent victories in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races, the Republican Party hasn't reversed its fall into the political abyss — it's just slowed the descent. While claiming to be a "big tent" party that tolerates a wide range of views, the GOP is actually just a right-wing pup tent.

President Obama's weekly address

The President looks back at a week where we honored those who serve on Veterans Day, and mourned those we lost at Fort Hood.

Health Insurance Reform Is Good for Business

Governor Beshear's weekly address

Click here for a version of this video with closed captioning for the hearing impaired.

House Republicans: Lying on Health Reform

Here's a great new ad from the DNC:

Mitch McConnell: Senate Stonewaller

The Daily Beast has compiled a list of the Senate's biggest obstructionists. Sadly, our own Mitch McConnell comes in at number four:

As the Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell has set the stage for the numerous procedural difficulties Democrats have faced in moving legislation forward. “Mitch McConnell is the architect of the Republican filibuster, which now is applied to virtually all controversial bills,” Thomas Mann, a senior fellow of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, told The Daily Beast. While a Republican filibuster on major legislation like health-care reform are hardly surprising, critics have accused McConnell of going overboard by flexing the muscle on less objectionable legislation. This month, the GOP filibustered an extension of an unemployment bill; when they finally relented, it passed 98-0. Republican leaders said they did it to protest what they saw as a lack of consideration for their proposed amendments. But arguments over parliamentary procedure were likely little comfort for the 200,000 laid-off workers who temporarily lost their unemployment benefits thanks to the delay. Majority Leader Harry Reid has gone after the Republican leadership in recent days over a host of alleged delays, including putting off confirming the surgeon general during the H1N1 crisis.

Shame on Rob Sanders

CBS News aired a segment last night about a local rape victim. Nurses took DNA evidence, but Commonwealth's Attorney Rob Sanders decided against testing it. Watch as Sanders tries to justify his decision:

'Republican comeback'? Not so fast.

There's a great article about the supposed "Republican comeback" on CQ Politics today. Here's an excerpt:

Republicans have been working overtime for days now trying to come up with newer and bolder ways of describing the 2009 election as an unmitigated triumph — and a crystal clear sign their party will score a historic comeback in next year’s congressional races.

...But there’s a significant amount of countervailing evidence, not only in the relative handful of election returns from last week but also in the current polling about the national political environment and in the race-by-race assessments of the midterm campaigns for Congress, which by history’s guide will inevitably turn on voter views of the first two years of this presidency.

Although polls show widespread voter anxiety, especially about the economy, Obama is holding on to a base of support roughly equivalent to his 53 percent share of the popular vote a year ago. The Republican Party “brand,” badly damaged during George W. Bush ’s tumultuous second term, looks about as weak as it did then. And the GOP’s ability to seize the governorships of Virginia and New Jersey was mostly about the strong GOP candidates and flawed Democratic candidates in both places.

SNL takes on Fox News

Last night's Saturday Night Live opened with an hilarious Fox News parody. Check it out!

President Obama's weekly address

The President condemns the despicable attacks at Fort Hood, honoring those who were killed and injured.

The Republican Health Plan

Today's New York Times examines the Republican health care plan:

House Republican leaders have produced their own health care reform bill. Here is the first thing you need to know: It would do almost nothing to reduce the scandalously high number of Americans who have no insurance. And it makes only a token stab at slowing the relentlessly rising costs of medical care.

Despite that, the Republicans are pitching their bill as far more affordable than the Democrats’ approach. And you are sure to hear a lot in coming days about how it could reduce health insurance premiums. How it compares in that respect with the Democratic proposal is not yet clear. But a lot of the Republicans’ savings on premiums come from reduced coverage. Pay less and get less.

...there should be no illusions here. The “affordable” Republican health care reform isn’t health care reform.

Governor Beshear's weekly address

Click here for a version of this video with closed captioning for the hearing impaired.

This week's ads

Several good ads have been released this week. Here's a collection:

KCHIP successes

Today's Courier-Journal commends Governor Steve Beshear's successes with KCHIP:

[Last year, Gov. Beshear] pledged “courage and commitment to act now” to cover at least 35,000 of the state's 67,000 children who were eligible for the Kentucky Children's Health Insurance Program (KCHIP) or Medicaid but were not enrolled in the government medical programs to help needy children and families. He gave it two years.

This week, the Governor announced 32,000 more children have been signed up for KCHIP and Medicaid, and that the state is on pace to sign up another 3,000 children by the end of the year, beating the Governor's self-imposed timetable.

Gov. Beshear should be saluted not only for making this a priority, but for making good on this priority. But there are miles to go, as he strives to sign up every eligible family in the state.

Editorial comic roundup

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Boehner Misrepresents FactCheck.org’s Findings

The nonpartisan FactCheck.org has busted Republican leader John Boehner for misrepresenting their statements:

Last week House Republican Leader John Boehner’s office issued a "Leader Alert" titled "10 Facts Every American Should Know About Speaker Pelosi’s 1,990-Page Gov’t Takeover of Health Care."

It’s a partisan document containing misleading characterizations of the bill.

...We’re sure seniors who see benefit cuts of any kind won’t be happy about it. But to characterize these as "massive cuts," and our article (as well as CBO’s analysis) as a "grave warning" is simply rubbish.

Mitch: The Public Option 'May Cost You Your Life'

Thanks to the folks at Think Progress for catching Mitch's latest attempt at shameless fearmongering:

For months now, conservatives have been scare-mongering about health care reform with outrageous claims that it would lead to “death panels” that could “pull the plug on grandma.” In Congress, some Republican backbenchers have claimed that Americans will die if health care reform passes Congress. “We’ve been battling this socialist health care, the nationalization of health care, that is going to absolutely kill senior citizens,” said Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ radio show. “They’ll put them on lists and force them to die early.”

Now, the scaremongering has been embraced by the congressional GOP’s leadership. In an interview on Dennis Miller’s radio show [last week], Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said that the public option “may cost you your life.”

...In his efforts to derail health care reform, McConnell has regularly fear-mongered about the British and Canadian health care systems, claiming that a public option would look just like them. Unsurprisingly, McConnell has gotten his facts wrong when he’s described other health care systems.