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? ...

My wife Pam and I bought private long term care insurance about twenty years ago. It’s a pretty good deal. For about $100 per month, we will someday – when we need it – be eligible for up to $200 a day toward either home health care or nursing home care. Add it up – it could save us hundreds of thousands of dollars as we age. I’ve been a big supporter of long-term care insurance since I was a Connecticut State Legislator in the 1980s. But to be honest, it’s never quite gotten the traction it should have. One of the reasons is that when people are young and healthy, they aren’t thinking about what their long-term care needs might be thirty or forty years down the road. But that’s when premiums would be most affordable. The bigger problem is that it’s really hard for insurers to predict the costs of long-term care that far in advance, too. The costs of care often far exceed those that are estimated way in advance. As a result, the policies that Pam and I have aren’t even offered anymore...

I never held it against Donald Trump that my son died of a fentanyl overdose in January 2021. Yes, he had been President for four years at that point, and he hadn’t really done anything to stop the wave of drugs coming across our southern border. I just figured it was bad luck for Tim – street drugs laced with fentanyl that happened to be in California but could have been anywhere. But when Kamala Harris recast the border crisis last week as a crisis of human, weapons, and drug trafficking, it made me think. Why hadn’t Trump done more when he had the chance? And why does he keep attacking immigrants as people instead of addressing the real problems that sometime accompany open borders? Maybe – if he weren’t so darn weird, angry, and bigoted all the time – this guy could have done something when he was President to secure the border better and reduce the flow of fentanyl into our country. Or even this year, if he weren’t so self-centered he might not have killed the bipartisan border...

When a politician says he has “concepts of a plan” instead of a plan, there is no plan. And yet, that’s where we are with Donald Trump, nine years after he first launched a political campaign promising to replace Obamacare with something cheaper and better, nearly four years after he had four years to try to do just that. And fail. Doubling down during Tuesday’s debate, he claimed he had “concepts of a plan” to replace Obamacare. Really? He’s got nothing. In fact, he sounds just like Nixon sounded in 1968, when he claimed he had a “secret” plan to get us out of Vietnam. That turned out to be no plan at all (remember “Vietnamization?”) and cost us seven more years there and tens of thousands of lives. The Affordable Care Act, about which I wrote plenty in this blog a decade or more ago, wasn’t perfect. But it was a whole lot better than what we had before it – and anything (save a public option) that has been proposed since. Back then, insurers could deny coverage because of pre-exi...

A political leader from Minnesota arrived on the national scene with a message of joy, hope, and equality. He grew up in the rural Midwest and became a teacher after he moved to Minnesota. Known as the “happy warrior,” he made civil rights, the health and nutrition of school children, and support for the underprivileged centerpieces of his policy work. When our country and the world was staring at the rise of fascism, he was a patriot who volunteered three times for military service. At the beginning of his campaign for national office, he said: “Here we are, just as we ought to be, here we are, the people, here we are the spirit of dedication, here we are the way politics ought to be in America, the politics of happiness, politics of purpose, politics of joy; and that's the way it's going to be, all the way, too, from here on out. We seek an America able to preserve and nurture all the basic rights of free expression, yet able to reach across the divisions that too often sepa...

Wow. Could the mainstream media do anything more to raise our anxiety levels about the 2024 election? And diminish or negate all the recent accomplishments in our country? Over the past three-and-a-half years, our nation’s economy has been the strongest in the world. Unemployment is at record lows, and the stock market is at record highs. NATO – which last came together to defend the United States in the aftermath of 9/11 – is stronger than ever. Border crossings are down. Massive infrastructure improvements are underway in every state. Prescription drug costs are lower. We finally got out of Afghanistan – evacuating more than 100,000 U.S. citizens and supporters – with just a handful of deaths. Inflation – which rose precipitously in the aftermath of the pandemic – has come back down, and prices in many areas have even begun to decline. And yet, all the media commentators can talk about these days – and they are not “reporters” when they are clearly offering opinions to frame the...

My daughter Larissa died of Metastatic Breast Cancer five years ago, in May of 2018.  She had only two wishes at the end. One was that we plant a tree for her. We did - in a Middletown CT city park - and it has grown straight and tall. The other was that she not be forgotten. Larissa's family and friends took pains to reassure that she could not be forgotten. If you were fortunate enough to know Larissa, you would know why. Still, I wondered how I might celebrate her a little more now that some years have passed, while sharing some of her memorable spirit with others (some who knew her and others who did not), while reminding us why she was such an extraordinary woman. In early 2017, Larissa started a blog called Metastatically Speaking, through which she chronicled her life with MBC. Unfortunately - and through no one's fault - her blog disappeared some time after her death. So, if you search for it now, you can't find it.  However, I was fortunate enough to see and retain...

My daughter Larissa died of Metastatic Breast Cancer five years ago, in May of 2018.  She had only two wishes at the end. One was that we plant a tree for her. We did - in a Middletown CT city park - and it has grown straight and tall. The other was that she not be forgotten. Larissa's family and friends took pains to reassure that she could not be forgotten. If you were fortunate enough to know Larissa, you would know why. Still, I wondered how I might celebrate her a little more now that some years have passed, while sharing some of her memorable spirit with others (some who knew her and others who did not), while reminding us why she was such an extraordinary woman. In early 2017, Larissa started a blog called Metastatically Speaking, through which she chronicled her life with MBC. Unfortunately - and through no one's fault - her blog disappeared some time after her death. So, if you search for it now, you can't find it.  However, I was fortunate enough to see and retain...

Ironic. I was not as nervous as you would think on April 23 rd .  Martin, my mother and I drove up to Dana Farber.  All weekend I wanted plan for Poland, Barbados and Florida, as we brainstormed ideas of what could be attainable or possible. I started to realize I looked pregnant… but that couldn’t be. When the appointment began I noticed it felt like a routine visit. Everything went smoothly, but what were we focusing on? It was this: if I did nothing the outlook for me was living three weeks to a few months longer. So, is that my only option, I wanted to know?   No, I was told we can try a low dose chemo and see how it works.   Since it is low dose, they said, it won’t do much harm, but we truly don’t know how it will work. It’s not a treatment we have used a lot at low dose and technically you are in liver failure, leaving you with limited options.   Of course, the goal would still be to get you to be stable; however, this is a blind treatment. We don’t...

Ironic. I was not as nervous as you would think on April 23 rd .  Martin, my mother and I drove up to Dana Farber.  All weekend I wanted plan for Poland, Barbados and Florida, as we brainstormed ideas of what could be attainable or possible. I started to realize I looked pregnant… but that couldn’t be. When the appointment began I noticed it felt like a routine visit. Everything went smoothly, but what were we focusing on? It was this: if I did nothing the outlook for me was living three weeks to a few months longer. So, is that my only option, I wanted to know?   No, I was told we can try a low dose chemo and see how it works.   Since it is low dose, they said, it won’t do much harm, but we truly don’t know how it will work. It’s not a treatment we have used a lot at low dose and technically you are in liver failure, leaving you with limited options.   Of course, the goal would still be to get you to be stable; however, this is a blind treatment. We don’t...

Wow, this past week has been emotional and unreal.  For the past several months I have noticed that thrivers would become quiet on social media, then someone would post news on their passing.  I always wondered how so soon?  But on Wednesday, April 17th 2018, I went for scans and an already scheduled doctor’s appointment.  What I wasn’t expecting to hear is this: “We should start planning end of life discussions.”  The nurse practitioner looked at me and realized how shocked I was for those words to pass her mouth.  End of life? Well, yes, I haven’t been having the easiest time lately.  It has been an extremely bumpy road between my recent hospital visit and other moments where I was seeing brighter days.  The APRN looked at me and said “you still look as though you have more fight in you.”  I said of course, but how do you process this?  She said that on Monday, when your doctor returns, we will discuss all the options. She said there...

Wow, this past week has been emotional and unreal.  For the past several months I have noticed that thrivers would become quiet on social media, then someone would post news on their passing.  I always wondered how so soon?  But on Wednesday, April 17th 2018, I went for scans and an already scheduled doctor’s appointment.  What I wasn’t expecting to hear is this: “We should start planning end of life discussions.”  The nurse practitioner looked at me and realized how shocked I was for those words to pass her mouth.  End of life? Well, yes, I haven’t been having the easiest time lately.  It has been an extremely bumpy road between my recent hospital visit and other moments where I was seeing brighter days.  The APRN looked at me and said “you still look as though you have more fight in you.”  I said of course, but how do you process this?  She said that on Monday, when your doctor returns, we will discuss all the options. She said there...

How are you? The question I’m asked over and over again, each and every day. I don’t mind answering how I’m feeling, its a completely normal thing to ask, but let me explain what okay actually means. How are you? Me “Better” Better can mean so many different things. This past week I went from a 10 to a 8. Yeah I feel better but far from the better we all associate with the word better. We spend so much time sometimes trying to explain how we are feeling when to be honest its no easy task. Am I ever okay? No. I have cancer. But I am okay because when I’m feeling up to it I choose to be OKAY. Man is this hard to explain. This is where positivity and determination tend to get mushed into one meaning. Am I the super positive wonder woman? Or am I a 6 on the scale and I just want to make the most of it because someday I’ll be a 10 again. I was dreading Tuesday because I thought that I might be developing a reaction to my chemo, but Monday came and so did the pain. We don’...

How are you? The question I’m asked over and over again, each and every day. I don’t mind answering how I’m feeling, its a completely normal thing to ask, but let me explain what okay actually means. How are you? Me “Better” Better can mean so many different things. This past week I went from a 10 to a 8. Yeah I feel better but far from the better we all associate with the word better. We spend so much time sometimes trying to explain how we are feeling when to be honest its no easy task. Am I ever okay? No. I have cancer. But I am okay because when I’m feeling up to it I choose to be OKAY. Man is this hard to explain. This is where positivity and determination tend to get mushed into one meaning. Am I the super positive wonder woman? Or am I a 6 on the scale and I just want to make the most of it because someday I’ll be a 10 again. I was dreading Tuesday because I thought that I might be developing a reaction to my chemo, but Monday came and so did the pain. We don’...

  ‘I Can Do It:’ When I was in college I had to take an anger management course. It was mandatory for everyone with my major. It turned out to be a life-changer for me and it helped me become who I am today. I’m not saying run to your nearest Barnes & Noble or Amazon.com for the self-help section, or anything like that. The first day of class my professor went over the syllabus with us and told us we would need to read one self-help book. Here’s the thing: I HATE READING. I do it if I have to but I don’t read for fun. I’m a slow reader and it sometimes it isn’t easy for me to process information that way. Later that night I went to the self-help area of a bookstore and looked at several books. “Too long … the words are too big … I don’t understand this …” and on and on, until I came across Lewis Hays’ book “ I Can Do It. ” It was short, the words weren’t too big and -- drum roll please -- it came with a DVD! I thought I had hit the jackpot, and it would turn out that I did...

  ‘I Can Do It:’ When I was in college I had to take an anger management course. It was mandatory for everyone with my major. It turned out to be a life-changer for me and it helped me become who I am today. I’m not saying run to your nearest Barnes & Noble or Amazon.com for the self-help section, or anything like that. The first day of class my professor went over the syllabus with us and told us we would need to read one self-help book. Here’s the thing: I HATE READING. I do it if I have to but I don’t read for fun. I’m a slow reader and it sometimes it isn’t easy for me to process information that way. Later that night I went to the self-help area of a bookstore and looked at several books. “Too long … the words are too big … I don’t understand this …” and on and on, until I came across Lewis Hays’ book “ I Can Do It. ” It was short, the words weren’t too big and -- drum roll please -- it came with a DVD! I thought I had hit the jackpot, and it would turn out that I did...