Our Health Policy Matters

What did the politician say after bumping his head while walking along a sidewalk as he waved to his constituents?     “I never look at the poles.” Whether political leaders admit to looking at the polls or not, when you look beyond the headlines some current polls are saying a lot about how people feel about health and mental health policy issues.   In the spirit of post-State of the Union bipartisanship, let’s hope that President Obama and Congressional leaders use three recent polls to listen to us about health reform, and to educate us about mental illness. First, this is what the President and members of Congress will hear if they listen to what people are telling pollsters about the health reform law. We like a number of the elements of health reform, and don’t want them repealed. We’re not afraid that health reform will affect our existing health coverage. We don’t think the current law went too far. The headlines from three January polls suggest that we remain divided about

Why should Floridians care if members of its House of Representatives delegation vote to repeal all the provisions of health reform this week? Because even though the Senate and the President have said they will stop the measure dead in its tracks, a vote to repeal is a vote against the interests of Floridians . If every provision of health reform were to be repealed, here are just some of the people of Florida who would be affected : 86,300 young adults who would lose insurance coverage through their parents’ health insurance plans; 182,672 Medicare recipients in the donut hole who would be charged at least $250 more for their prescription drugs in 2011 than they were in 2010; Early retirees of 190 Florida employers – including the University of Miami, Stetson University, Eckerd College, the PGA Tour, Inc., The Wackenhut Corporation, Tampa General Hospital, the Archdiocese of Miami, the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office, the Florida Firefighters Insurance Trust Fund, Duvall County P

We were all understandably shocked by the horrifying shooting in Tucson AZ this past weekend.   A Congresswoman was critically injured, and six people, including a nine year old girl, were killed. Media commentators have asked an important question – are public officials safe from violence anymore?   As a former public official who received threats of violence, that's a question about which I care personally. There’s a consensus answer to it.   In our vitriolic political environment, hateful rhetoric sometimes pushes disturbed, paranoid people over the edge.   If we dial back the rhetoric and keep a closer eye on disturbed, paranoid people, we’ll all be okay. But there’s a more important question we’re forgetting to ask that leads to a far different answer. Who points a gun at an innocent nine year old and coldly pulls the trigger? Tim and Mayor Paul Gionfriddo, Middletown CT Sidewalk Sale 1990, c. Hartford Courant  The answer to the question doesn’t fit easily i

House Speaker John Boehner said recently that Congressional Republicans will have to face raising the debt ceiling as “adults,” echoing his March, 2010 comment that they needed to behave like “grown-ups” when health reform passed.   The passage of health insurance reform in 2010 did not solve all of our health policy problems, but passing a meaningless repeal measure in the House in January isn’t the best way for members of Congress to start putting their grown-up pants on.   What might an actual adult health policy agenda look like in 2011? First, federal and state officials would put more resources into public health.   Like computer anti-virus programs, public health programs work in the background, taking care of us even when we fail to take care of ourselves.   They make sure our water is pure, our neighborhoods clean, our hazardous wastes are disposed of properly, and our children are immunized.   People can argue over whether various prevention initiatives cost more or less than