Category: Health Care

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Help get health care moving in Harrisburg

  By Health Care

The members of the Pennsylvanian’s United for Affordable Health Care and the Pennsylvania Health Access Network met with policy staff of the Rendell Administration and the policy chair of the Democratic caucus, Todd Eachus last week. From what we heard, the administration and the caucus are working together to forge a bill to extend health insurance to most of those with out it. The bill has a chance of being passed by the House of Representatives this year—that’s right, before the session ends on December 19. What that bill will look like in detail is still up in the air. In broad outline in will follow the Cover All Pennsylvanian’s part of Governor Rendell’s Prescription for Pennsylvania. (Another part of the RxPA, which will regulate the insurance industry so as to reduce inflation in health care costs, is in HB 2005, which was recently passed by the Insurance Committee of… Continue reading

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From RxPA to single payer

  By Health Care

This is the third of four posts on the health care issue. For an overview of the various posts click here. Supporters of single payer health insurance have been arguing that enacting RxPA will delay the enactment of single payer health insurance in Pennsylvania. Since I think that single payer health insurance is a good idea and most likely to be enacted at the federal level, I’m not so concerned about this. But I do want to respond to one of the arguments that single payer advocates have been making and then show how we might move from RxPA to single payer. Continue reading

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Problems with single payer in PA

  By Health Care, Pennsylvania

This is the second of four posts on the health care issue. For an overview of the various posts click here. There are two basic problems with enacting a single payer system in Pennsylvania. The first is that it is pretty much politically impossible this year. The second is that for constitutional and other reasons, a single payer system enacted in Pennsylvania won’t be as progressive as we would like it to be. Let me start with the first problem, briefly sketch the second one, and then come back to the first. Continue reading

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The progressive debate about health care reform in PA

  By Health Care, Pennsylvania

To the extent that people with progressives inclinations are focused on the health insurance issue in Pennsylvania—and, right now, too many of us are not focused enough on it—they find themselves torn between two different plans. One is Governor Rendell’s Prescription for Pennsylvania (RxPA). The other is a single payer plan, put forward by the Health Care for All coalition. It is a strange debate. For one thing, most of us, on both sides of the debate, would like to ultimately move to some kind of single payer system with the costs of health care provided by progressive taxation, not by employer sponsored plans paid for by employers and employees. We differ only about whether it makes sense to push for a single payer system in Pennsylvania right now. It is strange, also, in that the proponents of single payer seem to be focusing more on denouncing those who support… Continue reading

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My new gig

  By Health Care, Pennsylvania

For the past nine years I have been a citizen-activist while holding down a full time job as a teacher at Temple University. But no more. Now I’m a paid political organizer. I recently took my first ever job doing politics, as the Health Care Campaign Manager for the State Council of SEIU. I’m really excited to be working with SEIU. Over the years, I’ve worked closely with both SEIU Local 32BJ and more recently SEIU Local 1199p on a number of projects: The Pennsylvania Transit Coalition, the Raise the Minimum Wage Coalition, the Philadelphia Campaign for Housing Justice and most recently, the Philadelphia Health Care Coalition. SEIU locally has been at the forefront of almost every progressive effort. And at the state and national level, SEIU has been leading the way to both health care reform and a reinvigoration of the labor movement. My primary aim at SEIU will… Continue reading

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It's time to bring down the curtain on the transfer follies

  By Health Care

The transfer issue is becoming crazier and crazier. After the revelation at the end of the last week that SEPTA had not been following the Federal Transportation Administration’s requirement of studying the impact of its fare structure on racial minorities and the poor, I thought we had all the surprises we were going to have and we were just waiting for Judge DiVito to receive final briefs on Thursday and make his decision known by Monday or so. But the surprises have not stopped. Continue reading

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The transit crisis continues and your help is beeded to end it

  By Health Care

After a holiday weekend, the morning trip back to work is always hard. Now imagine your trip costing substantially more than it costs today for we are facing an 11% increase in SEPTA fares in July and a total increase of 30% by September. -The cash fare will go up from $2.00 to $2.50, an increase of 25% -Transfers will be eliminated so a token and transfer will go up from $1.90 to $2.80, an increase of 47% -A weekly transpass wil go up from $18.75 to $25.00, an increase of 33% -A monthly transpass will go up from $70 to $105, an increase of 57% -Zones 1 and 2 on the regional rail will be merged. A monthly combined zone 1 / 2 regional rail pass will go up from $70 (zone 1) or $106 (zone 2) to $143.50, an increase of 105 and 35 respectively. And, whether you… Continue reading

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I want the best service: How to save hundreds of lives by fixing emergency service

  By Health Care, My 2007 Campaign, Philadelphia

I wrote this with Daniel Hunter during my campaign for City Council in 2007. If you are shot——or have a heart attack—where would you rather be, New York City or Philadelphia?  If you want to stay alive, the unfortunate answer is New York City. Why? New York City has invested resources in emergency medical services. And they don’t hamstringing their paramedics, fire fighters, and police with unreasonable rules. Here’s one example: New York City has far more ambulances per person than Philadelphia. They have so many ambulances, in fact, that they don’t have enough stations for all of them. That’s why you see many parked on street corners waiting for a call. In Philadelphia the situation is the opposite.  We have too few ambulances.  So when police rush onto the scene after someone is shot, they often arrive long before an ambulance.  As a result, they have to put gunshot… Continue reading

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Can anyone make sense of Wilson Goode, Jr?

  By Health Care

Over the last week, Councilman Goode has 1. Defended his original campaign finance bill that guts our campaign finance laws by defining a candidate in a way that creates, as I have explained below, massive loopholes in the contribution limits. 2. Said both publicly and privately, that he would put forward an amendment that would define a candidate as anyone who is raising money for a political campaign. This was a major improvement although not quite as good as it might have been. 3. Failed to introduce the amendment at Council Continue reading