The Buffalo News Op-Ed Page Goes Full-Boehner Republican

The Buffalo News is vilified as a pinko outfit by conservatives, and condemned as a right-wing rag by liberals. Usually, that would be evidence of evenhandedness and equal-opportunity advocacy.

On Friday, it wrote something that was quite literally a parroting of right-wing talking points. If that editorial wasn’t ghost-written by someone like Andy Rudnick, Bob Wilmers, or some other wealthy and well-connected plutocrat, then I’m shocked. Every single bitchy little disingenuous Republican complaint about health care reform was in there.

Luckily for us, Paul Krugman disembowelled each one in the Times that same day.

The crux of the op-ed piece is that costs aren’t brought down by health care reform.

Instead, he has thrown his weight behind an expensive collection of entitlements, mandates and regulations that will only raise the deficit again. And he has turned away from some obvious steps that would reduce costs.

Increased competition between health insurance companies, by allowing them to sell nationwide, is the traditional American way to bring costs down. Medical malpractice reform must be addressed with reasonable caps on damages, so that doctors and hospitals will make costly diagnostic and care decisions based less on fears over lawsuits.

And as the debates rage despite the Democrats’ intent simply to push through the plan they want, it remains puzzling that so little attention is being paid to the health reform plan — as opposed to the health reform rhetoric — advanced by Republicans. The Common Sense Health Care Reform and Affordability Act has a lot of the things that the public is asking for and could lower costs as well.

Included in that plan are items worthy of actual debate instead of political posturing. Among them are provisions that would allow children to stay on their parents’ policies longer, guarantee that people with pre-existing health problems will be able to get insurance and not allow insurance companies to drop people if they get sick

Wow, that Republican plan seems great! Why won’t the Democrats include those things?

While those provisions also are in the Democrats’ plan, so are a slew of others — all costing a lot of dollars, which the Democrats say would be covered by an unlikely combination of scenarios including future congressional cuts in popular programs. The Republican proposal is contained in 219 pages. There are 2,000 pages in the Democrats’ bill.

In an editorial where the Buffalo News decries Democratic “posturing” on health insurance reform, it’s downright shocking to see it take up the dumbest anti-intellectual meme the Republicans have – how many pages a bill has.

Where was this editorial when massive tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans were passed through reconciliation during George W. Bush’s administration? Tax cuts that exponentially grew the deficit, and which still make up the vast bulk of it today.

Buffalo News:

With health care already tied to a sixth of the American economy and heading higher, that cost control is essential. The difference essentially is that the Republicans first want to control costs and Democrats first want to expand entitlements. In this case, expansion should follow cost control — not undermine it.

Krugman:

Well, if having the government regulate and subsidize health insurance is a “takeover,” that takeover happened long ago. Medicare, Medicaid, and other government programs already pay for almost half of American health care, while private insurance pays for barely more than a third (the rest is mostly out-of-pocket expenses). And the great bulk of that private insurance is provided via employee plans, which are both subsidized with tax exemptions and tightly regulated.

The only part of health care in which there isn’t already a lot of federal intervention is the market in which individuals who can’t get employment-based coverage buy their own insurance. And that market, in case you hadn’t noticed, is a disaster — no coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditions, coverage dropped when you get sick, and huge premium increases in the middle of an economic crisis. It’s this sector, plus the plight of Americans with no insurance at all, that reform aims to fix. What’s wrong with that?

Buffalo News:

It is unclear whether the president is willing to get to the heart of the matter. Already, he has consumed 13 months on aggressively pushing health care as a top priority when the public, during a difficult recession, is concerned first about jobs. This is neither good political thinking nor good decision making.

Economies bounce back. Health insurance is still beyond the reach of 40+ million Americans – a number that grows each year, and is made worse by recessions.

Buffalo News:

If the sound economic approach in a time of huge federal debts and deficits demands health care cost control, do that first. And do it without saddling a new bill with a thousand pages that crushes real reform by expanding entitlements without really figuring out how to pay for them.

Finally, there is a difference between health insurance and health care. The latter is important not only from a cost standpoint, but also from the standpoint of quality delivery of medical care in this country. The president loves to talk about how excellent the care is and how low-cost the price is at the Cleveland Clinic and other such superior medical facilities. If that is the future he aspires to, where is the action to get there?

This obviously is no simple task, but if the president and the Congress would accomplish this improvement along with cost reduction, they will have advanced the public’s well being far beyond what has been presented so far.

Krugman:

The second myth is that the proposed reform does nothing to control costs. To support this claim, critics point to reports by the Medicare actuary, who predicts that total national health spending would be slightly higher in 2019 with reform than without it.

Even if this prediction were correct, it points to a pretty good bargain. The actuary’s assessment of the Senate bill, for example, finds that it would raise total health care spending by less than 1 percent, while extending coverage to 34 million Americans who would otherwise be uninsured. That’s a large expansion in coverage at an essentially trivial cost.

And it gets better as we go further into the future: the Congressional Budget Office has just concluded, in a new report, that the arithmetic of reform will look better in its second decade than it did in its first.

Furthermore, there’s good reason to believe that all such estimates are too pessimistic. There are many cost-saving efforts in the proposed reform, but nobody knows how well any one of these efforts will work. And as a result, official estimates don’t give the plan much credit for any of them. What the actuary and the budget office do is a bit like looking at an oil company’s prospecting efforts, concluding that any individual test hole it drills will probably come up dry, and predicting as a consequence that the company won’t find any oil at all — when the odds are, in fact, that some of the test holes will pan out, and produce big payoffs. Realistically, health reform is likely to do much better at controlling costs than any of the official projections suggest.

And to the Buffalo News’ general Republican talking point that the whole thing is fiscally irresponsible, Krugman:

How can people say this given Congressional Budget Office predictions — which, as I’ve already argued, are probably too pessimistic — that reform would actually reduce the deficit? Critics argue that we should ignore what’s actually in the legislation; when cost control actually starts to bite on Medicare, they insist, Congress will back down.

But this isn’t an argument against Obamacare, it’s a declaration that we can’t control Medicare costs no matter what. And it also flies in the face of history: contrary to legend, past efforts to limit Medicare spending have in fact “stuck,” rather than being withdrawn in the face of political pressure.

So what’s the reality of the proposed reform? Compared with the Platonic ideal of reform, Obamacare comes up short. If the votes were there, I would much prefer to see Medicare for all.

For a real piece of passable legislation, however, it looks very good. It wouldn’t transform our health care system; in fact, Americans whose jobs come with health coverage would see little effect. But it would make a huge difference to the less fortunate among us, even as it would do more to control costs than anything we’ve done before.

I don’t mind the Buffalo News taking a political stand that differs from mine. I do mind the Buffalo News acting as stenographer for FreedomWorks and the Republican National Committee, repeating half-truths and outright lies about a reasonable bill that probably doesn’t go far enough to expand insurance coverage to all Americans.

Maybe Stan Lipsey and the union guys who write editorials at the News don’t have to worry about how their medical care gets paid for. But a lot of working poor and middle-class people in Buffalo do. For the city’s only paper to advocate against insuring them based on make-believe concern trolling is sickening.

Drop

Courtesy Marquil at Empirewire.com

Paterson

Courtesy Marquil at Empirewire.com

Dear Chris Lee,

I know you adore the telephone town-hall meetings, but let me tell you why they’re pretty lame and inconvenient.

Now, I’m really happy that you hold anything at all. Some representatives don’t. But invariably, you hold your “town halls” at 5:40 pm. At 5:40 pm, I’m just getting home from work and scrambling to help get dinner ready. Or I’m helping with homework. 5:40 literally couldn’t be less convenient for regular working families.

Move the time to 6:30. Give us a chance to take a breath after a long day at work.

And more to the point, on the one occasion I stuck through a few minutes of a telephone town hall meeting, the one comment that got through was merely parroting your current position. I rolled my eyes and figured that the calls were being screened so as not to be too contrary to your stated position. Now, admittedly that may not be the case, but it was the impression I got.

How about this. Your district isn’t all that big. Maybe 60 miles across at its widest? How about holding genuine, in-person town hall meetings throughout the district, and do them at times when working people can attend. 6:30 is about right.

Thanks,

BP

Barbara Miller-Williams: Cop Lawmaker.

The state pension system is hopelessly broken, and I don’t see how there’s a path to fixing it. Under this scheme, state workers can pad their state-tax-free state pensions by working ungodly and insane amounts of overtime during their last several years before retirement so that their lifetime pension payout is as large as humanly possible.

Take Barbara Miller-Williams.

The chairwoman of the Erie County Legislature is also a Buffalo Police Officer, and at age 60 she’s fast approaching retirement. That means that in 2006, she only racked up $384 in overtime earnings – the last year it didn’t count towards her pension calculation.

In 2007, however, that hopped to $7,600 just in overtime. In 2008, it skyrocketed to $25,000 in OT. In 2009, she doubled that by racking up an incredible $51,000 just in overtime, on top of her $60,000+ salary.

Jim Heaney FOILS Barbara Miller-Williams’ police payroll information and discovers that the chairwoman of the anachronistic and useless county legislature is simultaneously legislating and working near-60-hour weeks as a police officer.

This gaming of the system – which is universally done and for which Barbara Miller-Williams is not unique – helps boost her lifetime pension by about $14,000 per year. She will receive $44,000 per year from her state pension and pay no state income tax on that sum.

There’s a simple fix. Merely calculate one’s pension based on the earnings average throughout their career. But who’s got the political will to make that change? An Albany legislator who is waiting on a state pension? An Albany pol who relies on union support and money for re-election? Yeah, not so much.

Of course, Barbara Miller-Williams is also the chairwoman of the Erie County Legislature. Last year, she was a backbencher while working her regular police job plus an average of 19 police OT hours per week. Unless she never went to sleep during 2009, I’m amazed at how she could have served her constituents in the legislature, such as that is.

At least she underscores Kevin Hardwick’s point that being in the leg is a part-time gig.

But Miller-Williams’ police job prohibits her from working more than 20 hours at any other job. Her predecessor as chairwoman, Lynn Marinelli, says she worked 40 – 60 hour weeks when she was chair. Maria Whyte says the difference between the two is palpable; Miller-Williams is hard to find.

John Mills gives Jim Heaney a quote that I’m still trying to wrap my head around. It reads like, and was probably intended to be, a compliment. But honestly, it doesn’t get more backhandedly insulting than this:

“I attend more committee meetings than most people, and she’s there,” said the Orchard Park Republican. “I thought she’d have a longer learning curve, but she’s a much brighter person than I think a lot of people give her credit for.”

Shorter John Mills: “I thought she was an total idiot. I found out that “total” was too strong.”

If you want to talk about status quo, this pension largesse is among the biggest budgetary drags on taxing entities throughout the state. If you want to talk about agendas, the biggest agenda in this state has to do with public money and how to amass it.

I don’t begrudge Barbara Miller-Williams gaming the system to squeeze every penny out of it that she can.

But the system really needs to be changed.

Minimum Standards Unmet

You may recall this post that Marc Odien wrote the other day in response to repeated claims being made by the county administration that its jail system lives up to – or exceeds – minimum state standards.

But the state has taken issue with the county’s claims, and ordered the county to take corrective action in March 2009, claiming that conditions at the jail were unsanitary, unhygienic, and otherwise substandard. The county balked, and the state Commission of Corrections took the county to court.

And won.

So far, the anti-agenda, anti-status quo folks have lost every time they try. Tim Howard? In 2006, the state concluded that Ralph “Bucky” Phillips’ escape (and subsequent cop-killing) was thanks to the Alden Correctional Facility not meeting the state’s minimum standards.

This is getting to be a habit.

The Sheriff was trying to cut corners by classifying different prisoners in the county jail differently. For instance, if you get popped for disorderly conduct in Hamburg, you might get kept in a lock-up until the first available arraignment time. That’s usually a very short time frame measured in hours, not days. Town lock-ups that detain people pre-arraignment are not considered “jails”. The jails, however, are considered jails. A 2002 law permits towns to ship inmates awaiting arraignment to the county jail.

Sheriff Howard wanted to treat pre-arraignment detainees differently from post-arraignment detainees who are held for longer periods awaiting trial.

All this over toilet paper and toothbrushes.

Artvoice Best of Buffalo 2010

It’s that time of year again for the Artvoice Best of Buffalo awards. Your vote would be much appreciated.

I hear rumors of people campaigning to defeat me in this endeavor, and there are a handful of worthy blogs out there, most of them writing for, or affiliated with, WNYMedia.net. PinkBflo, Chris Smith, Buffalo Chow, Marc Odien – all of them are great, and a win for any of them would be appropriate. I’d also add Jen from Lockport to that list. And Kelly/Jaquandor.

But then again, I give you a 7-year, almost daily track record of Failboated excellence here. So, you know. Write my name down.

Fear and Debt

The Health Care Association of New York put this together to advocate against cuts to health services in New York State.

Given the usual breathless, actor-portrayed predictions of death & destruction from these types of advertisements, at least this self-parody reveals a sense of humor.

All is well though, because Lt. Governor Richard Ravitch says the state should just borrow $6 billion to close the budget gap. Yeah, that’s a great idea.

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• Skelos: Yep, there will be borrowing (timesunion.com)

Paladino for the People

Carl’s in. The only thing we don’t have yet is a formal announcement.

The race for the Republican nomination for Governor of the state of New York just got equal parts interesting and curmudgeonly.

ltr to ed cox

It’s a Fair Cop

(Make your own here)