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Putting the brakes on health insurers
Los Angeles Times
October 19, 2010
Obama should forbid premium hikes until the companies comply with pricing provisions of the new federal law.
by Jamie Court and Carmen Balber
Health insurance companies have declared war on President Obama's healthcare plan.
They are sending letters to policyholders announcing big premium increases and pointing the finger at the federal healthcare overhaul. Some insurers are refusing to sell individual policies for children because of rules requiring them to take all comers, not just those in perfect health. They are lobbying on Capitol Hill and in statehouses to undermine or eliminate the law's provisions.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius answered insurers' scare tactics by saying she would have "zero tolerance" for such behavior, but the administration's response so far has been limited to words.
It's time the president uses his clout and fights back...
Read the full article here.
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Obama's Victory Lap At Rush Hour Gridlocks Middle Class LA To Raise $1 Million For Congress
The Huffington Post
Jamie Court
August 17, 2010
It took my wife an hour and half to make the two mile commute home Monday, after the secret service closed some of LA's busiest streets at rush hour to shuttle the president from his Beverly Hills hotel to a fundraiser for Congress hosted by the producer of The West Wing.
As the White House tweeted about Potus meeting the Hollywood West Wingers, LA's usually-snarled Westside traffic stood still. Moms and dads couldn't get home. Child care providers raked in the after-hour penalties. The liberals once flooded with hope had nothing but road rage for their inconsiderate president, as they tuned in their car radio to find he was keeping them from their families to raise big bucks for a Congress, which has an approval rating only slightly north of Al Qaeda
The Los Angeles Times headline says it all: "Obama raises a quick million -- and some LA commuters ire."
"I was an Obama supporter, but ... was stopped by police from crossing Olympic to get home ... during my daily dog walk," Amy Christine said. "I've lost all belief in his judgment. Can he really think he's more important than the tens of thousands of people trying to get home to their families?"
Cut to the clueless president at the home of John Wells, the West Wing creator: "What a spectacular evening. Let's just hang out."
The Westside gridlock was a mighty metaphor for the how narcissistic and out-of-touch this White House has grown when it comes to the priorities of the middle class. "We need jobs" signs were seen lining the president's route. Road rage will soon turn to political rage if Obama doesn't shake up his west wing and start campaigning for working Americans rather than posing with Hollywood's heavy weights.
Obama touted his green job and solar powered agenda Monday, but what middle America cares about is the high price of their gas, the low value of its wages and new government burdens backed by Obama, which will become all too clear as the post-Labor day campaign advertising machine cranks up. Case in point the mandatory requirement that all Americans have to buy health insurance by 2014, but the failure of government to regulate health insurance premiums.
In my new book, The Progessive's Guide To Raising Hell: How To Win Grassroots Campaigns, Pass Ballot Box Laws And Get The Change We Voted For, I show how the Obama-backed mandate, a reversal of the president's campaign pledge, is much like the mandatory auto insurance laws in the late 1980s that sparked voter revolts.
If you think road rage was bad in LA, wait til the middle class learns that, by 2014, it will face tax penalties if it doesn't shell out big bucks to health insurance companies, whose public standing is in the same cellar as Congress's. The ballot initiative process gave the public a chance to answer back on mandatory auto insurance in the late 80s, but politicians paid a big price for their obeisance to industry rather than the public.
Next stop for Potus is Seattle, where the insurance company lobbyists are railroading consumer advocates on the details of Obamacare at the National Association of Insurance Commissioners meeting. Congress and the president punted to this industry captive organization of insurance commissioners to make the rules of fairness in the health insurance market. Not surprisingly insurers are close to winning huge, unfair tax breaks for themselves, accounting tricks to count overheads as "medical care" in order to pump up the amount of profits they can collect, and other big concessions that will bite the middle class in the butt.
Obama's not riding to the rescue of consumers in Seattle, but going to take another victory lap at rush hour. Let's hope the president reads the Los Angeles Times this morning and alters his course, or at least his route.
Gridlock is one thing in Washington, but in this unending recession voters can only stand so much in their own back yard. Obama's Los Angeles trip cost his party a lot more than it raised. It's yet another sign that the real west wing needs to understand that Obama is not simply playing president on television and twitter, but representing an anxious and increasingly impatient nation that wants to get home and hopes for a president to lead it.
Follow Jamie Court on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RaisingHellNow
Read the whole article here.
There's No Privacy in Third World America
The Huffington Post
Jamie Court
August 10, 2010
A big New York foundation once told me years ago that privacy is the last thing people in the developing world have to worry about. It was a nice way of saying no to funding for my consumer group's privacy project, but the line rang out to me again this week as new reporting at the Wall Street Journal brings into focus the great privacy betrayals of America's giant tech companies and Third World America makes its debut.
As a one-time homeless advocate, I know the housing, health care or economic crisis can hit a family like a tornado and take away everything in an instant. It's a more and more common scenario for two of every ten Americans, likely to be hit with a foreclosure, a bankruptcy brought on by medical bills, or a job loss. When you have your eye on your job, your health care or your adjustable rate mortgage, it's hard to keep track of anything else, let alone your online privacy, or how Google defines "net neutrality."
America's big tech companies know this too and they are taking advantage of the crisis to rewrite the rules of an open and free Internet, and our privacy rights.
Virtually overnight Google -- the "don't be evil" guys -- did an about-face on treating the Internet as a freeway, "net neutrality," and decided to turn it into a toll road for big bidders and the ever expanding wireless world.
Google says our data won't get caught in the slow lane, but it's hard to believe any of the Internet Goliath's claims after reading the Wall Street Journal's latest installment of its excellent series on the loss of online privacy. The Journal nails Google with internal documents showing how each of its services tracks users' personal information online and the brainstorming inside Googleplex about what can be done with the data. One great idea is to potentially charge Google users for the right not to have their personal information shared with advertisers.
Google's not the only offender, the WSJ found documents at Microsoft as it went through the same type of internal debate about how to monetize our online lives. But Google was supposed to be different, not evil.
Some of the leading progressive groups in America were even shocked at Google's thinly disguised net-neutrality reversal, but it's consistent with the tech giant's rapid expansion and focus on economic growth at the expense of principle. That's why Consumer Watchdog launched Inside Google this Spring to report on such troubling developments at the company as the it veers from the principles it was founded upon.
It shouldn't be hard to believe large corporations would take advantage of a crisis to betray Americans' trust. But the tech sector was supposed to different, one of the most visible enduring symbols of the American dream, now that home ownership, college education and job security don't hold up. It's called high tech, after all, not big tech. The executives must be getting high at Googleplex, though, if they don't understand that they have handed the American political establishment a huge opportunity to cut the Silicon Valley down to size.
A showdown in Washington, DC is inevitable. A recent Consumer Watchdog poll found that more than 8 in 10 Americans support strong online privacy protections, such as a "make me anonymous" button and a "do not track me" list. Make no mistake, privacy and net neutrality are next up on the Capitol stage. Americans will either win freedoms they have taken for granted back, or curse yet another big industry that uses its economic might and the rationale that all reform is a "job killer" to protect itself at Americans' expense. Such is the plight of the middle class today.
Privacy and net neutrality are nearly perfect issues for the middle class to strike back at big tech for its latest betrayals because of the overwhelming support of public opinion for online privacy and net neutrality rights. A good start is signing a petition to the FCC to use its power to stop the latest Google betrayal in its tracks and keep the Internet a freeway. If there's one thing middle class America needs now, it's a quick and solid victory. Online rights are an opportunity for Washington to give us all a little piece of the American dream back.
Read the whole article here.
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