Care Reform

TOBACCO LOBBY -- Hard hit by report after report on health risks and impending tax increases, the tobacco industry has started to regain its composure and will fight for its life with a march on Washington today.The Tobacco Action Coalition, which claims 17,000 members, including tobacco company employees, farmers and smokers' rights groups, said that it would march to protest the Clinton administration's plan to triple the current 24-cent tax on a pack of cigarettes in order to fund health care.

Blaming the cost to implement health care reform, the state's largest health insurer has proposed eye-popping rate increases to state regulators for individuals and small businesses. CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield wants to raise rates an average of 25 percent on those who buy coverage individually. Chet Burrell, the insurer's CEO, said the increase was needed to cover the cost of more sick people who will be joining the insurance rolls under health care reform. People with pre-existing conditions were denied coverage prior to health care reform, keeping insurance costs down.

For many Americans -- especially the 37 million who have no health insurance coverage -- the crisis in health care is old news. But the wake-up call for politicians didn't get through until November, with Sen. Harris Wofford's stunning upset of former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh in Pennsylvania's Senate race. Now the pressure is on politicians at all levels.Congressional Democrats this week held town meetings around the country on health care, and President Bush promises to outline his plans in his State of the Union speech or soon thereafter.

This week marks the third anniversary of the Affordable Care Act. For Marylanders, that means a health care system that is stronger than it was three years ago, and a future that looks even brighter. Marylanders who have health insurance now have more security, thanks to new insurance market reforms and consumer protections put into place by the law. Preventive services like mammograms and flu shots are newly available for free to 1.5 million people with private insurance plans. About 48,950 Maryland Medicare beneficiaries with the highest prescription drug costs have saved an average of $768 on their medications.

Sarbanes won't face voters Congressman John Sarbanes, you are a coward. I believe you forgot who elected you. In the article ("Debate rages on," Aug. 8), it is pointed out that you are conducting conference calls instead of meeting your voters in person. Heath care reform is a very important issue throughout our country, not only for our representatives, but for every American citizen. Hiding behind your telephone will do this issue no service. I am a concerned citizen, not part of an organized group, and I plan to be at the town hall meeting Senator Benjamin Cardin is conducting on Monday evening.

The Schaefer administration has backed off plans to introduce new health care reform legislation during this year's legislative session.As recently as two weeks ago, aides to the governor were drafting a bill that would have required all Maryland employers to offer their workers health insurance, though not necessarily to pay for it.The measure also would have extended reforms adopted for small businesses last year to individual Marylanders who have difficulty...

WASHINGTON -- Democratic congressional leaders tacitly acknowledged yesterday that it will probably be impossible to achieve President Clinton's goal of sweeping health care reform this year and said that they would settle for only modest improvements.With no consensus in either the House or Senate for a Clinton-style overhaul and with time running out, Democratic leaders appear to be setting the stage for an alternative strategy.Instead of insisting on Mr. Clinton's universal coverage, the leaders are discussing smaller steps to allow the president and Congress to claim some progress -- without the major changes that have aroused opposition among special interests and wariness among voters.

It's difficult to catalogue all the negative impacts of Obamacare in one place. Nevertheless, my readers deserve to know a few of the uglier details as the new year rings in one of the most expensive, convoluted policy experiments in American history. •Lost in the hysteria surrounding Obamacare's 20 new tax increases is the law's surcharge of 0.9 percent on wages and salaries and 3.8 percent on investment income. This is another levy directed at small business owners. You know - the ones who are supposed to ramp up hiring to spark our economic recovery.

Maryland Health and Mental Hygiene Secretary Joshua M. Sharfstein and his co-authors were right on the money in their recent commentary regarding the importance of making health care more affordable as the state goes about implementing federal health reform ("Caring about costs, too," Sept. 27). We at the Maryland Health Care For All! Coalition applaud his vision and embrace the opportunity to transform Maryland's health care system to reduce costs, improve health outcomes and achieve health equity.

By establishing a health benefit exchange and expanding Medicaid coverage, Maryland is on a path to extend access to affordable health care to hundreds of thousands of individuals, families and small businesses. For our progress to be sustainable, however, the growth in health care spending must be slowed and brought into balance. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, health spending in 1999 averaged $3,993 per person in Maryland, about the national average. Over the next decade, however, Maryland's per capita spending rose 88 percent to $7,492 in 2009, outpacing national growth by more than $500 per person.

Next time the more bombastic in Washington rail against government waste, let them include every cent lost to Wednesday's dog and pony show in the House of Representatives, where time that might have been used constructively was frittered away with yet another attack on health care reform. For those who might have accidentally tuned into C-Span shortly before 1:30 p.m., that was not a repeat but an actual live telecast. For the 33 r d time since the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010, the House held a vote to repeal part or all of it. Thirty-three times!

The Supreme Court's recent ruling on federal health care reform may have settled legal concerns, but the heads of Maryland's top insurer and two largest medical institutions said there are still unanswered questions and worries about the law. "There are many unknowns, given the complexities of the act," said Chester "Chet" Burrell, president and CEO of CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield. "There could be surprises and unintended effects because of the complexity. All of the regulations are still not out yet and so it's hard to know how it will work out in the final analysis.

The recent Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Health Care Act surprised many. The reasoning given by the court for allowing the mandate is that it's a tax — and it's constitutional for Congress to pass a tax. While I believe that is a questionable interpretation at best, Americans now must buy health insurance or receive a tax penalty. In 2008, President Barack Obama said, "Health care should never be purchased with tax increases on middle class families. " During the lengthy debate on ACA, he stressed that it was not a tax. It seems that President Obama's promises usually have an expiration date.

Thousands of Howard residents have stepped from the parking lot of the Health Department offices through the glass door to the county's Door to HealthCare program in the past 18 months, using this portion of the innovative Healthy Howard project to search for a doctor and a way to pay for services. The door will remain open for the foreseeable future and will admit more people with the advent of the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2014. Changes are in the offing at Healthy Howard.

Nothing will trigger a conservative conversion experience in your children faster than a look at their first paychecks. When they see how much has been deducted for federal, state and local taxes, they suddenly realize they are against big government, the nanny state and, while they are at it, the filling of potholes. So it is no surprise that the Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act last week restarted the generational conflict over just who is responsible for taking care of whom in the future.