Aggression at Oregon Town Hall Mirrors National Debate
Representative David Wu held a town hall meeting yesterday in McMinnville where the debate over healthcare got up close and personal. More than 100 people packed the meeting room to pepper Wu with questions, but the action outside – where several hundred gathered – revealed far more about the debate swirling across the country. KBOO Reporter David Rosenfeld reports.
Health Care Charges Under the Knife
Originally at Miller-McCune.com
By David Rosenfeld
If you paid sticker price on the last new car you bought, you might expect to pay about 15 percent more than you would with some negotiating.
If you paid full price on a recent knee surgery, you could pay 500 percent more than market rate. And who knew you could even negotiate?
Such is the nature of health care pricing where charges are determined by hidden costs and who’s paying.
Facing the brunt of reform efforts in Congress, health insurance companies pointed the finger at doctors recently with a survey by America’s Health Insurance Plans, an industry trade group, which detailed a series of exorbitant physician charges. The survey examined out-of-network bills where — as opposed to in-network services — contracts do not exist between the provider and insurer. Also known as full-billed charges, it’s what the uninsured face every time they see a doctor.
In some cases, patients received charges 34 times what Medicare pays for the same procedure in the same location, the AHIP survey found.
…
Out-of-network charges typically represent less than 10 percent of overall health care bills, said Dr. Jeffrey Rice, a former health insurance president who created the Web site Healthcarebluebook.comto help consumers determine average market rates.
“For historical reasons, providers make their billed charges really high because they expect to get paid a reduced amount,” Rice said. “You could even get a lower rate than in-network if you negotiate.”
What would Horatio Alger do?
Thousands of Americans are defying eviction notices and exercising civil disobedience.
BY DAVID ROSENFELD
Horatio Bernard came to the United States from Liberia in 1982 and followed the story of American promise. He went to school for civil engineering, worked hard to support his family and sent his kids to college. His most recent experiences now mirror the American tragedy.
Like millions of others, he took out a subprime mortgage and then lost his home to foreclosure. The bank, he said, refused to reasonably modify his loan despite a federal bailout. And so now, like a growing number of Americans, Horatio Bernard isn’t going anywhere.
“I don’t understand,” Bernard said. “The house will be sitting here for six months or a year. For what? I’m willing to pay for the house. Just adjust the rate. Why can’t they do that? And they got bailed out.”
For the past four months he’s been living — legally speaking — as a squatter in his own home. He doesn’t technically own it anymore, but the keys still unlock the deadbolt and he still pays the utilities. He doesn’t know when, but any day now sheriff’s deputies might arrive to escort him and his ailing mother from the premises.
There’s a lot about Bernard’s story, and the housing crisis in general, that defies logic. Why would the bank rather evict him and take a substantial loss than draw down the principal of the loan? Answers don’t come easy.
Green Recovery: Welcome to SolarWorld
In a nondescript industrial park near Portland, Ore., lies a solar gem that just might save the American Dream.
Posted by Miller-McCune.com
BY DAVID ROSENFELD
It was a typically cloudy day last October when Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski, Rep. David Wu and Sen. Ron Wyden came out to cut the ribbon for the grand opening of the largest solar panel manufacturing plant in North America. Above them, at this 480,000-square-foot facility in Hillsboro — about 20 miles west of Portland — bright yellow-and-blue lettering towered against an overcast sky. “SolarWorld: The sunpowered company.”
The governor has staked much of his legacy in recent years on attracting to Oregon such companies as German-based SolarWorld AG. So far, it’s working. Despite a deepening recession, solar panel makers and other renewable energy businesses are among the few companies expanding right now in a state with some of the highest unemployment in the nation.
In the past two years, seven solar panel manufacturers have launched in Oregon, with at least six more planned for this year. Meanwhile, a Portland-based electricians’ union leads classes on installing solar panels, and more than 200 Oregon companies are involved in some aspect of the solar panel supply chain — all in a state not exactly known for its abundant sunshine.
Could Big Margins Sidetrack Election Reform?
Five ways to safeguard voting rights and how non-controversy could save the election reform movement
From Miller-McCune.com
BY DAVID ROSENFELD
Two weeks before Election Day, county clerk Ruth Johnson — who administers elections in Oakland County, Mich. — reported a problem with the optical scanners used to read the county’s more than 600,000 paper ballots. Johnson was familiar with performance issues in the Model 100 scanners made by Election Systems and Software. But this was different.
After the fact, such concerns might seem unwarranted. There were no major disruptions on Election Day involving magnifying glasses or a constitutional crisis. That’s partly because so many races were decided by large enough margins for problems not to take on national import and because concerns were identified and challenged in court by an army of election defense attorneys ahead of time.
Despite the ease with which the presidential election was decided, there is still much to be desired about the U.S. election system. Not to be forgotten were the deluge of court cases in which Republican-affiliated attorneys lost in their arguments to remove voters from the rolls or shut down early voting sites.
There were fights in states to restore voters already removed, several of which were successful; a Republican-led campaign of confusing mailers; attacks against groups that register voters; and misinformation to college students. Election Day also saw unacceptably long lines and thousands of cases of people finding they were not registered to vote.
“I would dispute that things ran smoothly on Election Day,” said Elizabeth Westfall, an attorney with the civil rights-oriented Advancement Project. “My blood went up when I saw the potential for challenges under the HAVA (Help America Vote Act), if that had not been undone in Ohio,” said Westfall, referring to the U.S. Supreme Court decision shortly before Election Day that threw out a Republican-led challenge of 200,000 voters based on mismatched Social Security records. “Had they been successful, it would have been an absolute disaster.”
Republicans lose key cases to block vote
From Miller-McCune.com
BY DAVID ROSENFELD
Ongoing efforts to limit the number of voters in Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin and Nevada – all predicated on the fear of voter fraud and all launched by Republicans — suffered major setbacks this week.
The decisions, either by judges or secretaries of state, bring to a close several of the legal battles detailed in the latest compendium of swing-state disputes Miller-McCune.com reported earlier this week, and focus on the right to vote trumping the fear of fraud.
It May Be Harder to Vote in Swing States
From Miller-McCune.com
With fewer than two weeks before Election Day, lawyers for both parties are in the courtroom sparring over voting rights.
BY DAVID ROSENFELD
Here’s a rundown of various issues that could limit voter access in 10 swing states:
The Dirty Details of Voter Purges
From Miller-McCune.com
Secretive, error-riddled methods for cleaning up the voter rolls and how the Help America Vote Act isn’t helping.
BY DAVID ROSENFELD
Thousands of Americans will likely show up to the polls on Nov. 4 to find they are no longer registered to vote. That’s an estimate based on past elections and the findings of two leading research groups that found state-sanctioned voter purges are widely inaccurate.
Both the Brennan Center for Justice and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group have independently called into question the methods states use to clean up their voter rolls and the integrity of the information those purges are based on. Roughly 13 million names were purged from the rolls in 2005 and 2006, and while most of the removals were legitimate, that still leaves thousands likely disenfranchised, they say.
Misleading Mailers Descend on Swing States
From Miller-McCune.com
Short on detail or just plain wrong, mailings with GOP return addresses are sowing confusion on voting status with fewer than two months before the big day.
BY DAVID ROSENFELD
Mass-mailers sent to more than 1 million voters in at least eight likely swing states are sowing confusion — and in some cases could disenfranchise voters — across the political spectrum.
Republican mailers sent out in the past two weeks contained either applications for absentee ballots or requests for updated voter registration records. In most cases, the mailers contained missing or confusing information, which could cause voters to believe they would receive an absentee ballot in the mail or be properly registered when they in fact would not.
Full story here at Miller-McCune.com.
Ohio Removes Vote-Caging Possibility
Originally posted by Miller-McCune.com
Re-posted by HuffingtonPost.com, and Truthout.org both without the update.
UPDATE: Ohio removes vote-caging possibility
FRIDAY VERSION: Nearly 600,000 subject to possible caging in Ohio
BY DAVID ROSENFELD
O hio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner took decisive action on Friday to clarify and amend the state’s voter challenge law with particular aim at a contentious statewide mailer, which Miller-McCune.com reported Friday, the same day the notices went out and Brunner issued her directive. (The original Miller-McCune.com story, which appeared under the headline “Nearly 600,000 Subject to Possible Caging in Ohio,” appears below.)
In the Sept. 5 directive to county boards of elections, Brunner said that no voter shall lose the right to vote based solely on the state’s 60-day non-forwarded notice having returned to election officials as non-deliverable. Voter rights advocates worry that the returned notices would give Republicans the means to level mass challenges against thousands of Ohio voters similar to what occurred in 2004.
