Nature has given woman the same powers, and subjected her to the same earth, breathes the same air, subsists on the same food, physical, moral, mental and spiritual. She has, therefore, an equal right with man, in all efforts to obtain and maintain a perfect existence.” ― Frederick Douglass
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| WOMEN'S RIGHTS |
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| HEALTHCARE |
Health
Care Takeaways from the Elections
Midterm voters made it clear
that health care issues mattered to them, even if it proved less than decisive
in the outcome of some major races. A plurality of voters, 41 percent, told exit pollsters that
health care was the most important issue for them, ahead of immigration (23
percent) and the economy (21 percent). Democrats chose to hammer Republicans on
health care in their campaign messaging, with a particular focus on Obamacare’s
protections for patients with pre-existing conditions, and the strategy largely
worked — albeit with some notable exceptions.
“Democrats finally got their
health-care revenge. The issue, more than any other, powered their majority win
in the House of Representatives,” writes Jeff Spross at The Week. “The focus on health care in 2018
suggests that, at long last, health care broadly — and ObamaCare specifically —
has the opportunity to become a winning political issue for Democrats.”
But the election may have
also demonstrated some limits to that appeal. Here, three takeaways on what the
elections results mean for health care:
1. Obamacare and the status quo
are safe. With Democrats taking control of the House, any further
Republicans efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act would be
futile. The New York Times Margot Sanger-Katz tweeted: “The biggest effects of Democratic
control of the House is the things that probably won't happen in the next [two]
years: There probably won't be another run at repeal and replace. There
probably won't be Medicaid block grants. We probably won't be privatizing
Medicare.” But Obamacare still faces a legal challenge in a federal district
court in Texas, with the judge’s ruling due at any time now — and further court
proceedings likely. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell suggested Wednesday
that Congress could still act to shore up Obamacare markets. "There are
serious problems with Obamacare, serious problems that need to get fixed,” he
said. “I think we are going to have to address that, now, on a bipartisan
basis.”
2. Medicaid expansion will keep
going. Voters in three Republicans states — Idaho, Nebraska and
Utah — approved ballot measures that called for
expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Expansion in those states
would extend coverage to more than 300,000 people — 150,000 in Utah; 90,000 in
Nebraska; and 62,000 in Utah. (A measure to extend Medicaid expansion in
Montana and pay for it through higher tobacco taxes appears to have failed.) Democrats also won
gubernatorial races in Kansas, Maine and Wisconsin, making Medicaid expansion
more likely to happen in those states. Maine voters last year approved a ballot
initiative to expand Medicaid, but outgoing Republican governor, Paul LePage,
blocked it. The ballot initiatives in Nebraska and Idaho did not lay out a way
to pay the state share of expansion costs, The New York Times’ Abby
Goodnough notes, adding, “That could potentially make
them vulnerable to the type of stalling that’s happened in Maine.” Utah’s
measure increases the states sales tax on non-food items from 4.7 percent to
4.85 percent to pay for expansion costs.
3. Democrats still face an
internal fight over “Medicare for all.” Some Democratic
candidates in tight, high-profile races embraced Medicare for all — and lost.
“Of note for the Democrats, many of their most prominent progressive
candidates, such as gubernatorial candidates Stacy Abrams (Georgia) and Andrew
Gillum (Florida) and senatorial candidate Beto O'Rourke (Texas), lost their
respective races,” analysts at IHS Markit wrote Wednesday. “The Democrats, therefore,
will be more likely to jettison some of their more pronounced liberal policies
such as ‘Medicare for All’ or a guaranteed USD15-per-hour minimum wage once
they take power in the House in January 2019.” Progressives will point to how
close those races were, in territory that’s traditionally been solid for
Republicans, as evidence that those policies shouldn’t be dumped. And they’ll
argue that more than half of Democrats in
contested House races backed Medicare for all, and that worked out well for the
party.
The debate will keep going
through the 2020 election cycle, which, by the way, starts today. [The Fiscal Times, November 7, 2018]
Dems
Won on Health Care. Now What?
Democrats rode a health care
message to their Election Day takeover of the House. Now that the election is
(mostly) over, how will they follow through on that campaign focus?
The party is still figuring
out its next steps on health care, and Nancy Pelosi and her colleagues will
have a lot of decisions to make and details to sort out. “The new House
Democratic majority knows what it opposes. They want to stop any further
efforts by Republicans or the Trump administration to roll back and undermine
the Affordable Care Act or overhaul Medicaid and Medicare,” writes Dylan Scott
at Vox. “But
Democrats are less certain about an affirmative health care agenda.”
Some big-picture agenda items
are clear, though. “The top priorities for Ms. Pelosi, the House Democratic
leader, and her party’s new House majority include stabilizing the Affordable
Care Act marketplace, controlling prescription drug prices and investigating
Trump administration actions that undermine the health care law,” reports
Robert Pear in The New York Times.
House Democrats also plan to
vote early next year on plans to ensure patients with preexisting medical
conditions are protected when shopping for insurance, Pear reports. And they’ll
likely vote to join in the defense of the Affordable Care Act and its
protections for those with pre-existing conditions against a legal challenge
now before a Texas federal court.
Here are a few areas where
House Democrats will likely look to exercise their newly won power.
Stabilizing Affordable Care Act
markets: “I'm staying as speaker to protect the Affordable Care
Act,” Pelosi said in an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation,” calling that her “main
issue.” And Vox’s Scott says that “a bill to stabilize the Obamacare insurance
markets would be the obvious first item for the new Democratic majority’s
agenda,” adding that a bill put forth by Reps. Richard Neal
(MA), Frank Pallone (NJ) and Bobby Scott (VA) is the likely starting point.
Democrats may look to provide funding for the Obamacare “cost-sharing
reduction” subsidy payments to insurers that President Donald Trump ended in October 2017. And they may look
to restore money for Affordable Care Act outreach and enrollment programs after
the Trump administration slashed that funding by 84 percent, to $10 million,
Pear says. “Another idea is for the federal government to provide money to
states to help pay the largest medical claims,” he adds. “Such assistance,
which provides insurance for insurance carriers, has proved effective in
reducing premiums in Alaska and Minnesota, and several other states will try it
next year.”
Investigating the Trump
administration ‘sabotage’: “Administration
officials who have tried to undo the Affordable Care Act — first by
legislation, then by regulation — will find themselves on the defensive,
spending far more time answering questions and demands from Congress,” Pear
writes.
Reining in prescription drug
prices: Trump, Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have
all pointed to this as an area of potential cooperation, But Vox’s Scott calls
this “another area where Democrats know they want to act but don’t know yet
exactly what they can or should do.” Some options include pushing to let
Medicare negotiate drug prices directly with manufacturers and requiring makers
of brand-name medications to provide samples to manufacturers of generics,
potentially speeding the development of less expensive competitors.
“There are a lot of levers to
pull to try to reduce drug prices: the patent protections that pharma companies
receive for new drugs, the mandated discounts when the government buys drugs
for Medicare and Medicaid, existing hurdles to getting generic drugs approved,
the tax treatment of drug research and development,” Scott writes. But it’s not
clear just what policy mix would really work to bring down drug prices, and the
pharmaceutical industry lobby is likely to push back hard on such efforts.
Democrats may also be hesitant to give President Trump a high-profile win on
the issue ahead of the 2020 election.
Medicare for all: Much
of the Democratic Party may be gung-ho for some sort of Medicare-for-all
legislation, but don’t expect significant progress over the next two years.
“House Democratic leaders probably don’t want to take up such a potentially
explosive issue too soon after finally clawing back a modicum of power in
Trump’s Washington,” Scott writes. And Democrats have to forge some sort of
internal consensus on just what kind of plan they want to push in order to
further expand health insurance coverage. [The Fiscal Times, November 12, 2018]
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| EDUCATION |
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| HIDDEN IN THE ATTIC |
Franklin, Tennessee has long been a site of
conflict. In April 1863 a skirmish between Union Gen. Gordon Granger’s and
Confederate Gen. Earl Van Dorn’s forces produced more than 200 casualties. The
second and more well-known Battle of Franklin was fought 153 years ago this
month, on November 30, 1864, between Union Gen. John M. Schofield’s and
Confederate Gen. John B. Hood’s armies. Lasting less than one day, the battle was one of the most ferocious of the
entire Civil War. In an offensive that came to be known as the
“Pickett’s Charge of the West,” Hood hurled his army at Schofield’s
well-defended Yankees. The result was a bloodbath. Hood lost more than 6,000
men, including 1,750 killed. Among the Confederate dead were six generals,
including the beloved Patrick Cleburne. Schofield by contrast lost 2,326 men,
with 189 killed in action. [Civil War
Trust, November 27, 2017]
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| POLITICS |
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| WHIMSEY |
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| READ |
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| PAKISTAN |
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| ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA |
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| UNITED KINGDOM UK food safety agency welcomes conviction in girl’s food allergy death |
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| GREAT BRITAIN |
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