Our Health Policy Matters

There's a simple reason why (after more than a decade) Donald Trump and the Republicans have no plan to replace Obamacare. I'll explain in a few minutes. But first, some background. When the Affordable Care Act (or Obamacare) was passed in 2010, it was an effort to expand health care coverage to a lot of people who needed it, while controlling their costs. It had certain key provisions, not the least of which were that people couldn't be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions, that all chronic diseases needed to be covered fairly, and lifetime coverage caps had to be lifted. The problem was that if you left matters to insurers to set insurance premiums based on what this would cost, the price of insurance would rise dramatically. So the government took a look at three different programs and ultimately put them together into one system. For people whose income was so low that they couldn't afford any real cost-sharing, the government expanded Medicaid. For elders...

Claiming that D.C. crime is out of control, President Trump has brought in the National Guard. Never mind that crime rates are down in the District. The optics are compelling. Trump blames homeless people. As Fox News reported , he is giving them two choices – jail or homeless shelters to treat mental health and substance use disorders. If these choices seem reasonable, they aren’t. Sending someone to jail who hasn’t committed a crime is a bad, even unconstitutional, idea. Like our new South Florida gulag, this notion offends many of us. And many, if not most, of the people who are chronically homeless have seriously undertreated mental health conditions. Jails and shelters don’t have the money or resources to provide that treatment. What this boils down to is comfort. Seeing homeless people congregating makes some people uncomfortable. President Trump is suggesting that the freedom to congregate peacefully is a freedom reserved only to some of us – not everyone. There’s bigotry t...

Mayor Florsheim has proposed a budget with a 2.7 mill increase for the coming fiscal year. This will mean an increase in taxes of approximately $500 per year for a home with a market value (not an assessed value) of $250,000, with larger increases for many homes in our city. While I appreciate the time and effort that went into his budget calculation, like many people I don’t believe that this is a sustainable increase on top of the increases of the past few years. What I appreciate even more is that the Mayor has invited members of the public to work together to offer their own perspective and suggestions to the City Council. In the past few weeks, I have offered several short-term suggestions, including a job freeze, a search for an alternative health insurance provider, and greater advocacy at the state level for fairer PILOT funding for Middletown. As an example, the Mayor’s budget proposes $77,800 for a Grantwriter versus zero from the Finance Department. Maybe we wait on that? ...