OutsideLansing.com - Front Page

U.S. Sentate pushes Health Reform with Public Option

erothoff — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 23:08:00 GMT

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has announced that the Senate Health Reform Bill will have a Public Option that States can opt out of. President Obama believes that the public option is necessary in holding insurance companies accountable through choice and competition. But my question is how much more competition is needed when according to the Congressional Budget Office, insurance companies make less than 3 percent profit from the premiums, and total administrative costs is only 12 %.

***Congressional Budget Office, "Key Issues in Analyzing Major Health Insurance Proposals," December 2008, p. 69.

What we need is competition amoung health care providers not the insurance companies. THAT accounts for 88% of the insurance premiums.

Protest to House Bill 5386 on Oct 20th in Lansing

erothoff — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:39:47 GMT

Doctor's offices are closing down on Oct 20th to join in protest to House Bill 5386 in Lansing, MI. Even if you are not a doctor, but disagree with taxes by profession, or higher health care costs, then come on out. And email, call or stop into your Senator to let them know of your views also. The government may need money, (or they should just cut spending, but that is a debate for another day.) but this is not the way to do it.

Michigan House votes to raise health care costs

erothoff — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:52:17 GMT

The Michigan House has voted for House Bill 5386 which:

"to impose a 3 percent gross revenue tax on doctors. This would be a “Medicaid Quality Assurance Assessment” (MMQAA) tax that is used by the state to collect more federal Medicaid matching funds"

This is a tax on GROSS REVENUE, not just an income tax. And to specifically target one profession? What are they thinking in Lansing?

As for who voted for it:

Angerer (D), Barnet (D), Bauer (D), Bennett (D), Brown, T. (D), Byrnes (D), Byrum (D), Clemente (D), Constan (D), Corriveau (D), Coulouris (D), Cushingberry (D), Dean (D), Dillon (D), Donigan (D), Durhal (D), Ebli (D), Espinoza (D), Geiss (D), Gonzales (D), Gregory (D), Hammel (D), Haugh (D), Jaskson (D), Johnson (D), Jones, Robert (D), Kandrevas (D), Kennedy (D), Lahti (D), Leland (D), Lemmons (D), Lindberg (D), Lipton (D), Mayes (D), McDowell (D), Meadows(D), Melton (D), Miller (D), Nathan (D), Neumann (D), Polidori (D), Schmidt, R. (D), Scott, B. (D), Scripps (D), Sheltrown (D), Simpson (D), Slezak (D), Smith (D), Spade (D), Stanley (D), Switalski (D), Tlaib (D), Valentine (D), Warren (D), Womack (D), Young (D)

Let them know how much you appreciate them increasing your health costs, and contact your Michigan senator to get this bill stopped before it becomes law!

Sexauer Sells: Unusual Politician's Name Draws Photograph from OL Contributor

chetly — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 12:40:45 GMT

Brian Koss, a regular reader in Oakland County, found this priceless jewel in Frasier, Michigan's City Council race. Frasier is Macomb County near Warren.

Lansing Shutdown, OutsideLansing Has new life

chetly — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 04:57:35 GMT

Michigan government is shutdown officially in Lansing, as legislators remain in deadlock.

As many of you know, I work for one of the representatives, and while it was avoidable and many tried to avoid it the outcome was predictable like most forces of nature. I won't get into the post-mortems or blame games here in this post, but just wanted to point out the irony and sadness of the situation.

Well, I used to work for one of the representatives. As of now, at least for now, I'm officially just a volunteer.

Supreme Court to have rare rehearing of Citizen's United "Hillary" Case

chetly — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 12:23:54 GMT

The Los Angelas Times warns us as if "the foundations of our democracy" would crumble in an op-ed today that we need to "watch out" ... "if" the Supreme Court allows corporate contributions and overturns past precedent.

Watch out? For what? The horse left the barn years ago. The train of money has been in politics, and the mere attempt to squeeze it in a couple of obvious places has merely moved it underground ... or slightly below the surface where the most skilled operators and people who can hire them (that's the wealthy, folks) ... still donate as much as they please. Those with less skill ... if they misstep, are threatened with jail or fines, for their speech. Then we have the George Soros and Jon Stryker's of the world (and similar but less financially liberal as well as not as political liberal on the other side) ... they'll always be able to move whatever money they want into their causes.

I like the idea of campaign finance regulation instinctively, even as I understand its First Amendment infringing possibilities. Nothing makes me more excited than regulating public officials (if we only regulated officials once elected, but the regulation of all candidates works to advantage of protecting incumbents because they wrote the rules). But the reality is THERE IS NO GOOD WAY TO DO IT. Nothing is fair, no system can't be beaten, cheated, slinked around, or used to a special interests advantage. I'm in the political industry folks. We have the time to study this stuff ... the average citizen doesn't have the time, let alone large staff teams of lawyers and others.

When there is no good way to do something ... don't do it. Campaign finance restrictions create advantages for one side or the other. The campaign world would be better off with no limit than it is with our current hodgepodge (unless someone can propose a truly consistent system, I'm all ears).

This is not to say reporting of contributions is not a good idea (again, incumbents should bear at least a higher burden of reporting, as they are more susceptible as the decision-maker, rather than mere candidate, to influence). But why put limits on speech? Limits are a sham. We all know Jon Stryker will invest millions this year in his candidates - he'll use a variety of 527 committees. Why not just let him write the check and let everyone see it with his name on it?

Michigan Tea Parties draw close to 10,000

chetly — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 11:33:18 GMT

I knew it was going to be a big number in Troy when someone text messaged that 4000 annoying (Brighton is the city that tried to ban annoying behavior) tea partiers showed up in Brighton. Fox reports 10K plus for the "whole day" - with verifying numbers to that text I mentioned for Brighton and slightly smaller number in Troy.

The MSM though for the most part underplayed the number while still being as technically accurate through vagueness as possible. WDIV and the Detroit News report the number only headlines - "Thousands attend."

VIDEO: Gary Peters Townhall Now Fully Online courtesy OaklandPolitics.com

chetly — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 00:53:44 GMT

Here are three links to the three roughly 40 minute chapters of the the 2 hour Gary Peters townhall. It's all there except for a small snippet between the chapters for a plugin change necessitated by the movement other members of the media in the media area.

Chapter 1 - Beginning, first 46 min.
Chapter 2 - Middle 41 min.
Chapter 3 - Final 33 minutes.

This RSS from Yahoo will also update when any Zarko Research video is approved or new videos posted to Yahoo, a medium which gives us more flexibility than YouTube in length. We will continue to use YouTube for shorter clips, so tune in there too. Please give us a rating if you view the videos and we appreciate comments.

Also note we've had a number of stories over the past week on Peters there, and both this site and OaklandPolitics.com will try to resume a normal schedule. I've had a personally busy August and will get back to a normal workload shortly.

VOTE Today if your community has an election.

chetly — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 12:31:50 GMT

VOTE today if your community has a primary scheduled (it may or may not).

Andy Dillon Might be getting something Right - MEA/MESSA Blast him, new insurance proposal

chetly — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 11:22:02 GMT

I thought Andy Dillon joined the Republican Party yesterday when I heard the news. But as I thought it about, his remarkable proposal to group all Michigan state employees, including local municipal and teachers, into one insurance pool with the same insurance choices, could rationally fit into several political paradigms - liberal or conservative. Regardless, Andy Dillon stepped out on to a political ledge - and the MEA (Michigan Education Association) is trying to blast him off.

Peter Luke covers the basics of the story here, although we don't have alot of details (the devil is in the details, and this isn't a full endorsement of the Dillon idea until he does more than show us press releases). But when the MEA criticizes an idea as a "government expansion," you know something mighty odd is going on.

The Michigan Education Association blasted the proposal. The union's insurance arm, the Michigan Education Special Services Association, which covers more than half of the teachers in Michigan, would have to compete with other insurers in a new health care program administered in Lansing.
"This is a massive expansion of government at a time when we can't even get the budget balanced," said MEA spokesman Doug Pratt. "These savings aren't here and the taxpayers shouldn't fall for it. Why would public school employees trust the health of their families to a state bureaucracy in Lansing?"

Dang. The MEA and MESSA almost sound like Republicans there, and its in that comment that one can hoist the entire "national health care movement" on its own petards. Imagine if the MEA had spent its millions last year attacking national health care because it didn't "trust the health of ..." anyone to the bureaucracy. There's a contradiction brewing up in there somewhere. Maybe the MEA wants teachers to have better health care than, say, firefighters, or certainly the police officers that Granholm wants to whack. But if you're a true egalitarian, why would teachers deserve better care than anyone. Its in this context that Democrats should abandon the MEA on their own philosophical grounds - despites the odds being against so many of them biting the benefactor's hand that lavishly feeds them.

But conservatives can get behind a public health care pooling, too. It makes fiscal sense. Once you accept the notion that government is an employer - at least for necessary government (obviously there's much work to be done there) - and that employers should and do competitively offer insurance (of course, why should they offer any in the future Obama-care potentiality?) - then doing it in the most efficient way seems logical. And common-sense tells you that a larger pool gets you a better price - with few or no "losers". Conservatives and conservative groups have been proposing similar ideas for school insurance for a long-time - altough none that are perhaps as expansive to all public employees as Dillon's idea. Why should teachers be upset if they are getting reasonable insurance and the state is saving a buck? Of course, their union leaders might not like it because MESSA is a source of private economic and political power, and its profits grease a whole bunch of chains.

Chains that a Democrat - Andy Dillion - might actually break if he can survive the beating he's about to take. And for that, he'll get a rare applause from this corner.