Healthcare

I’m wrapping up my term as Governor here in Montana, and we’ve had a great run -- eight years of record budget surpluses, huge investments in education, tax cuts for most everyone, the largest increase in college graduation rates in America, and one of the lowest jobless rates in the country. We’ve brought this about by doing the opposite of what the U.S. Congress does: thinking out of the box, challenging expenses small and large, and driving hard bargains for whatever the government must purchase.

When CODEPINK, MoveOn and representatives of other organizations marched into Senator Harry Reid’s D.C. office on Tuesday, December 18, they wanted a simple answer to a simple question: Does the Senator support a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity clips, such as the legislation proposed by Senator Dianne Feinstein and supported by President Obama and Vice President Biden? It would seem like a no-brainer for the Senate majority leader to fall in line with the leadership of his party in backing a modest bill that would ban the sale of weapons that are only good for mass murder. Unfortunately, Reid’s senior policy advisor Kasey Gillette was unable to give an answer.

Have you noticed the pattern?  A private company cuts corners on risk control; a terrible disaster occurs; and then politicians and the public blame . . . the U.S. regulatory system.

The latest example: a Massachusetts drug compounding pharmacy that contaminated vials of steroids and caused hundreds of cases of fungal meningitis, including dozens of deaths. Even while the Food and Drug Administration was still responding to the serious public health threat, the FDA Commissioner had to answer angry questions from members of Congress. Representative Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) told Commissioner Margaret Hamburg that the meningitis outbreak “was a complete and utter failure on the part of your agency.”

The federal government will soon close the public comment period for an important new healthcare regulatory ruling.

A key element of the President's 2010 health bill is the establishment of "essential health benefits" (EHB) for all insurance plans sold on the new state-level exchanges. In order for private insurance companies to participate in the exchanges, the plans they offer will have to include coverage for a predetermined set of drugs and medical services, at a minimum.

Numbers are a big deal in Congress right now. Strategies are being planned and compromise is being attempted, but it all comes down to whether the numbers add up to a budget framework that will avoid the fiscal cliff. Some big dollar figures can be attributed to Medicare and Medicaid. However, nursing homes only make up a small sliver of each of those programs’ spending and yet, over recent years, have been dealt billions of dollars in cuts. So, as Congress begins examining its budget sheets and crunching the figures, they should consider some new numbers.

We don’t know if soda, beer, wine, or liquor will be on hand when Democratic and Republican negotiators meet to decide how to avoid letting the economy drop over the fiscal cliff. But taxes on those products definitely should be on the table.

As far back as 1776, Adam Smith, the “father of free market economics,” wrote that “sugar, rum, and tobacco are commodities which are nowhere necessaries of life, which [have] become objects of almost universal consumption, and which are therefore extremely proper subjects of taxation.”  Smith’s sentiment is echoed today by the Bipartisan Policy Commission, the Economic Policy Institute, the American Medical Association, and dozens of groups interested in health and government revenue. The Congressional Budget Office includes these taxes in its catalogue of revenue options.

It seems to me that the best way to help the psychologically ill before they do harm to themselves or others is to make it easier and less obtrusive for family members to seek close-to-home and less formalized treatment when they become aware of possible problems.

On Friday I had five grandsons in three schools within 30 miles of Newtown in Fairfield County, Connecticut. I am also a veteran with many years of experience with firearms, and really do not see the need for assault weapons to be in the hands of ordinary citizens. Gun control is an important part of the solution to curbing violence.

Just over a month ago, Americans went to the polls and rejected an extreme agenda that would have blocked women from getting cancer screenings, family planning, and basic health care.
 
This election had the largest gender gap ever recorded, according to Gallup, and the message voters sent couldn’t have been clearer: stop playing politics with women’s health.
 
Somehow, there are politicians who still haven’t gotten the message.

There is a frequent misconception that tuberculosis (TB) is a disease of the past, or is only a problem for those living in developing countries. In reality, TB is the second leading cause of death due to infectious disease worldwide; taking approximately 1.4 million lives in 2011 alone. It is the third leading cause of death among women of reproductive age and orphaned nearly 10 million children around the world in 2010.

I want to start by extending my deepest sympathies to the families of the victims of Friday’s massacre, and to the whole community, and to thank the first responders and all those who are helping in the aftermath of this darkest of tragedies.
 
Three days after the horrors of Newtown, we’re all still reeling from what happened. Any time there’s a shooting like this we’re crushed with sorrow, but there’s no escaping the fact that the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary stands out for its awfulness. The murder of so many little children and the adults who tried to save them doesn’t just break our hearts, it shatters them.
 
The last few days have been searing for all of us, and the days ahead will be too.