Our Health Policy Matters

It is hard to imagine a political strategy less likely to achieve its intended outcome while simultaneously harming the economy than shutting down the government to prevent the implementation of Obamacare. But that probably won’t stop Senator Ted Cruz from trying .  And unless cooler Congressional heads prevail this week, while he will do no real harm to Obamacare, he may well do harm to the economy. Obamacare is the law, shutdown or not.  And no matter what, on Tuesday you will still be able to go to any hospital in the country and get treated, your doctor’s office will still be open, and your insurance company will still expect you to pay your premium. But when the government is shut down, the stock market suffers.  And a few points on the downside in our stock market that are attributable to a single event may be more significant than you think. Let’s go back to 1995.  The Newt Gingrich-led House shut down the government twice – on November 14, 1995 for a w

The latest Obamacare navigator “compromise” may calm one small battle in Florida.  But it won’t end the war on Obamacare being waged by hypocritical public officials around the country. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the Congressional effort to undermine the Obamacare navigation program in its entirety.  A House Committee has ordered nonprofits winning navigation grants to produce reams of material, and promises to punish those that have failed to comply.  Source: US Census Bureau Navigators will assist people in applying for public or private insurance to pay for their health care.   Navigators are not a new concept, created by Obamacare.  They are as old as Marco Rubio, and Obamacare is not the first federal initiative ever to fund them.  In fact, I implemented the policy of the Nixon Administration as a VISTA paralegal 35 years ago, navigating underinsured elders to the Medicaid program. So we know that navigators can be trusted to do their jobs. But

In 2009, there were 36,891 suicides in the United States, according to the CDC .  This translates to a rate of 11.9 for every 100,000 people. And rates among certain groups were even higher.  For example, the suicide rate among veterans, according to the Veterans Administration, was three times higher – or 35.9 per 100,000 veterans. Suicide is a problem that ought to command our attention. And it does.  For many years we have used suicide data as surrogates for documenting the consequences of serious mental illness.  We all know that the “danger to self” standard we use for determining when people with mental illness qualify for emergency care is, in effect, a “suicide may be imminent” standard. As a result, for many years community mental health organizations have also been asked to track suicides as a measure of the effectiveness of their programming.  But there are reasons why focusing on suicide rates too closely leads to inadequate public policy. Su

In the nervous run-up to a possible military strike in Syria, fifteen members of Congress last week took time from their busy vacations to sign a letter demanding more information from governmental contractors.  But the targets of their attention were not the defense contractors who received $161 billion for their services.   They were universities, legal aid organizations, and small nonprofits who will share $67 million to help citizens apply for health insurance beginning in October. The Congressional Gang of 15 included Fred Upton from Michigan, Pete Olson, Joe Barton and Michael Burgess from Texas, Tim Murphy and Joseph Pitts from Pennsylvania, Marsha Blackburn from Tennessee, Phil Gingrey from Georgia, Steve Scalise from Louisiana, Gregg Harper from Mississippi, Corey Gardner from Colorado, Morgan Griffith from Virginia, Bill Johnson from Ohio, Billy Long from Missouri, and Renee Ellmers from North Carolina. They sprang into action after the grants were awarded in