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"Pass Health Reform" say State Legislators; Denounce Industry-Backed Obstruction in the States

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The fight for comprehensive health care reform has long been waged in state legislatures across the nation. While continuing to support comprehensive federal reform, progressives in state capitols have also continued to fight for legislation in their own states to extend coverage to families, improve affordability and quality, and stop to the profiteering of the health insurance industry.

Denouncing the industry-backed attempts to astroturf anti-reform initiatives in the states, a group of state legislators representing more than 1000 of their progressive colleagues, working with Progressive States Network (where I work), signed a letter to President Obama stating both their support of "a robust and comprehensive health care proposal" coming out of Congress, and their support of the reconciliation process to achieve that goal.

The was done partly to counter the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which released a press release by a handful of state legislators from across the country, complaining about not being invited to President Obama's health care summit -- after having spent the last year actively engaged in attempts to obstruct reform. Like their rightwing colleagues in Washington D.C., ALEC and the state legislators they represent have also decided against proposing any substantive solutions on health care. Instead, they have put all their energies behind attempts to pre-emptively obstruct elements of any federal heath care reform bill that might emerge.

It's clear why right-wing state legislators are attempting to derail health care reform. One need look no further than the makeup of the committee that is drafting their model legislation on health care, which includes the executive director of state services for Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association's Office of Policy and Representation in Washington, D.C. as well as a director of state policy at the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA). Representatives from both the health insurance industry and the prescription drug companies are literally writing the corporate-friendly legislation upon which these efforts at obstruction are based -- legislation which, according to the New York Times, is now moving in 36 states.

As the letter from the PSN-allied legislators argues:

Their [ALEC-aligned] approach would simply continue the widespread pattern of insurance company abuses and excessive profiteering.  That road is clearly not the answer.
With the insurance industry attempting to block reform in the states through their allies on the right, progressives are fighting back. But we need to do more. By targeting insurance industry abuses in the states, progressives can accomplish many goals, including refocusing the debate and putting the insurance companies on notice that, if they were to succeed in killing federal health care reform, more regulation might then await them in each of the 50 states.

Most of all, these types of legislative proposals would help continue to expose the conservative opposition to all serious health care reform, and their efforts to obstruct any solution -- even if contradicting themselves in the process.

ALEC, right-wing state legislators, and their insurance company allies continue to work to kill any reform, at any costs. That's why its worth highlighting that progressive state legislators are standing up to say that, after the repeated good-faith attempts at bipartisan outreach on the part of President Obama, reconciliation on national healthcare reform is now the best option, and it's also why progressives in the states are continuing to work to refocus the health care debate, and expose corporate-led obstruction in state capitols.


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The big question is not whether there will be "death panels". There will always be decisions made as to what forms of treatment should be given to anyone who is sick or needs an operation.

The big question is who will staff those "death panels"?

Do you want your "death panel" to be a private insurance company employe whose salary and bonus is determined by how much money they save the insurance company or do you want your "death panel" to be staffed by a disinterested government bureaucrat?

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We don't need to spend a lot of time on why the right wing wants to derail health care reform efforts. It's a waste of time.

Getting back on topic, I've always held the belief that health care reform should be a state initiative much more than a federal initiative. It's nice to see that dozens of state legislatures want to get into the game, but in order for that to happen, Washington is going to have to allow them to keep a larger chunk of tax dollars. Most states in this country were in terrible fiscal shape BEFORE the economic collapse late in 2007.

Unfortunately, the current generation of leaders are incapable of empowering state governments. On the one hand, the Democrats in Washington would never willingly take money out of Congress' coffers by allowing state governments to keep more of their tax money. On the other hand, the Republicans would also never allow this and would instead argue that if you're going to change the tax code, you might as well give tax cuts to the upper class.

It'll take a new breed of politician to actually fight for real change. In the spirit of all the gasoline/electric cars (of which I am a proud owner) driving around on the roads here in SoCal, let's call that person a HYBRID legislator; someone willing to adopt ideologies from both parties that work and make sense while discrediting those that do not.

No hybrid legislator (true pragmatist) will emerge from the Baby Boomer's. That group has grown increasingly irascible and partisan with age. Nevertheless, I hold out hope that perhaps a hybrid will emerge from Generation X over the next 5-10 years as that group assumes power in Washington. Naturally, I'm confident my own Generation Y will provide plenty of hybrids, but that's still a decade or more away and our country is teetering at the edge of the cliff.

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