Health Insurance? Help Us Afford It

The Associated Press has reported that the health insurance industry is offering "for the first time to curb its controversial practice of charging higher premiums to people with a history of medical problems."

If you've ever had a medical problem, then lost a job or started a small business and tried to buy individual health coverage, you likely have run into this little problem:

If you need it, you really can't afford it.

Republicans have long pushed for "market solutions" to the health insurance problem. And the "solutions" the market keeps delivering tend to be priced somewhere beyond sky-high.

According to the AP article posted by CBS News, "[a]bout 7 percent of Americans buy their coverage as individuals, while more than 60 percent have job-based insurance."

The percentage for individuals likely would be much higher if monthly premiums for health insurance did not rival or exceed mortgage payments and car payments. Meanwhile, people with employer-provided health insurance are paying sharply higher premiums and co-payments and getting squeezed hard, too.

"The offer here is to transition away from risk rating, which is one of the things that makes life hell for real people," health economist Len Nichols of the New America Foundation public policy center told the AP. "They have never in their history offered to give up risk rating."

According to the AP report on the CBS News site, insurers hope to head off the creation of a government insurance plan that would compete with them, something that liberals and many Democrats are pressing for.

The AP report did not mention that Republicans long have opposed government-sponsored health insurance plans, touting vague "market solutions," instead. These are the same "market solutions" that have helped keep many of the 47 million or so uninsured Americans priced out of the health-insurance market and in the "if you need it, you can't afford it" category.

The current offers from the insurance industry fall short in one very big category: small business, which creates the vast majority of new jobs in the American economy. Small businesses, under the new proposal, would have to keep paying higher premiums and deal with risk ratings. One sick employee could send premiums through the roof.

So the news on risk ratings seems to be significant, but now is not the time for the Obama Administration to ease off on its health-insurance plans. If anything, the White House needs to ratchet up its proposals and keep holding the health-insurance industry's feet to the fire.

-- Si Dunn

Stimulating New Jobs: Where's the Leadership?

New York Times columnist Frank Rich got it exactly right when he stated:

"As the nation’s anger rose last week, the president took responsibility for what’s happening on his watch — more than he needed to, given the disaster he inherited. But in the credit mess, action must match words. To fall short would be to deliver us into the catastrophic hands of a Republican opposition whose only known economic program is to reject job-creating stimulus spending and root for Obama and, by extension, the country to fail. With all due deference to Ponzi schemers from Madoff to A.I.G., this would be the biggest outrage of them all."

Anger did rise, and it's still boiling up. There should be more job-creating stimulus spending now and more focus on the "real" people in the American economy: workers, mid-level and low-level managers, small-business owners and entrepreneurs starting new companies.

Yes, the appalling problems in the upper levels of the American economy must be fixed. At the same time, it is vital to deal with the difficulties, challenges and economic emergencies now facing people below the rank of "Master of the Universe." Specifically, emergency focus now should be given to Main Street and rural America, as well.

Where are the Congressional and White House leaders who can cut through the bailout noise and be stronger--and louder--advocates for the millions of Americans struggling in the heartland? These layoff victims need jobs now and can't find any, and thousands of small businesses who could hire them are unable to get crucial loans.

"Congress and the White House Team Up to Tackle Middle America's Deepening Crisis" -- that should (but won't) be tomorrow's big headline.


-- Si Dunn

A Digital March on Washington

It's time for a digital march on Washington--a million-blog, million-Tweet march--to get Congress and the White House to pay more attention to small business.

Small businesses are responsible for producing about 75 percent of all new jobs in this economically troubled land.

If small business owners could receive just a fraction of the staggering billions of dollars now being shoveled into the bailout shredders, we could create millions of jobs at a time when millions of jobs are needed.

Put economic crooks like Bernard Madoff under the jail. Fire the mega-wealthy executives who flew their companies deep into the ground. And start distributing money to everyone with a small business, no matter how small--with the restriction that it be used to expand operations and hire new employees.

A digital march on Washington. No one needs to organize this or set up a non-profit group or collect membership dues.

Just blog, Tweet, email...make any kind of digital noise you can toward our leaders in Washington. Do it now!

Tell Congress and the White House to quit staring, mouths agape, at AIG and other firms that have done horrendous damage to the national and world economies.

Urge them, implore them, order them (we elected them) to wake up and put some significant new muscle into small business.

It's time to start the recovery from the bottom up. The top, clearly, is just too screwed up.


-- Si Dunn

White House Declares: 'If We're Toast, Let's Have Breakfast!'

By Si Dunn

A top NASA scientist has declared “We’re toast…!” if we don’t act quickly and urgently to counter global warming.

According to a source deep within the White House, the Bush Administration has been spurred into high gear by this new NASA warning and is pushing forward its latest environmental action plan: generous tax breaks for all American manufacturers of bread, butter, margarine, jellies, preserves and jams.

“Hey, if we’re toast," the White House source said, "we may as well go out in grand style with a good breakfast. How about a short stack of carbon-credit pancakes and some greenhouse eggs and ham on the side?”

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My Baggage Can Beat Your Baggage

By Si Dunn

Yawn. Another Democratic “debate.” Another rash of unscientific online polls claiming Obama “won.” More newspaper articles contending Clinton put Obama “on the defensive.” And major television journalists still harping on flag lapel pins, angry pastors and invisible snipers.

One more voice of opinion won’t matter in this cosmically insignificant scale of things. But here it is, anyway-- just another tiny crackle in the rising, roaring, utterly unfocused static of the blogosphere.

In the Philadelphia television event, Sen. Clinton came across as more competent—and advised and rehearsed—particularly on matters of international affairs, while Sen. Obama came across as more genuine but a bit less ready to serve, particularly on matters of international affairs.

Hillary’s main credibility problem is that her face still lights up with a “Gotcha!” little smirk and smile when she gets an opportunity to score a political dig against Obama. It’s at least partially her inability to disconnect from old-style politics that keeps her low in the polls of personal likeability.

Barack’s main problem is that he is still—bottom line--more smooth political style than actual political substance. Of course, in America, style almost always wins over substance, because most people don’t like to pay any attention to details until after something happens that that they don’t like.

Hillary Clinton may yet squeak out a win in Pennsylvania. However, she may not win the nomination unless she learns very quickly how to come down to the level of talking with (not just to) voters directly across a kitchen table, over coffee and cookies, with absolutely nowhere else to go for a few hours on a rainy afternoon.

She does have baggage; she’s right about that. Countless people have rummaged through it, and some are still rummaging through it, desperately looking for any nuggets of undiscovered dirt—or any new clues as to who she really is behind that policy wonk facade.

But we all have baggage that we struggle to deal with or hide or ignore or wish away.

As our potential leader and commander in chief, Hillary Clinton needs to sit down with us now and tell us honestly, in unflinching depth and detail, how her famous baggage has affected her, how she deals with it, and, most importantly, how she will keep dealing with it if she returns to the White House next January.

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