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Huge IBC rate increases show need for public health insurance plan

  By Health Care

Independence Blue Cross (IBC) has filed for a rate increase of up to 52% for the three insurance programs it offers to individuals in what the industry calls the “non-group market.” These shocking increases point to the urgency of creating a public health insurance plan to compete with private insurance. Senator Specter is inching toward support of such a plan. Click here to call him in support of a public health insurance plan. Lance Haver and I did a press conference about these rate increases yesterday. You can see an excerpt at http://tinyurl.com/obr7ns. Continue reading

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It's time to rotate ballot position

  By Elections and Voting, Philadelphia

After every judicial election someone makes this obvious point: it’s time to rotate ballot position from ward to ward. Picking a number out of a can should not determine who sits on the bench or who is elected to City Council or the General Assembly. The only unendorsed candidates who managed to win yesterday had the first or second ballot position. Some of them were also very well qualifed candidates who had other sources of support, such as Diane Thompson, and they might have won anyway. But some will be on the bench primarily because of ballot position. One endorsed candidate who deserves to be on the bench, Joyce Eubanks, had the worst conceivable ballot position. A few voters came out of the polls yesterday and told me that they “could not find her.” So you would think that now that the party has shown it’s ability to hang together… Continue reading

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Mark Alan Hughes is gone; Does his policy live on?

  By Libraries, Philadelphia, Taxation

Hughes has left the administration. I’ve not heard why although there is a rumor he is being blamed for Nutter’s political misteps, including the proposal to close libraries and the call for massive increases in the property tax. Closing libraries and raising the property tax to such an extent–and ruling out any increases in wage or business taxes or elimination of the tax abatement–certainly looks to be part of the Hughes strategy I criticized here a few months ago, that is, to focus city services and tax cuts on the happy half million middle class people in the city rather than on the miserable million working class and poor. Unfortunately, raising the sales tax instead of the property tax is just another way of doing the same thing as it is even more regressive than a property tax increase, especially one with a homestead exemption or circuit breaker. If Hughes… Continue reading

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Tell Patrick Murphy to stand up for the public health insurance plan

  By Health Care

It was two steps forward and one step back on health care reform yesterday. That’s why we need you to make a critical phone call to Congressman Patrick Murphy this morning to ask him to reaffirm his support for a public health insurance option in the health care reform legislation being drafted in Congress? You can call toll free at 1-888-436-8427. Yesterday, in a letter to Senators Kennedy and Baucus President Obama reaffirmed his support for giving all Americans “the choice of a public health insurance option operating alongside private plans.” “This will give them,” he wrote, “a better range of choices, make the health care market more competitive, and keep insurance companies honest.” But the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of 51 House Democrats that includes Representative Murphy, said yesterday that the public health insurance plan should only come into effect if it is “triggered” by a failure of… Continue reading

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How to think about tax systems

  By Taxation

There is no tax system that, from every point of view and in every particular case, will always look just. That’s true for two reasons. First, our intuitions about justice are quite varied and what looks just from one point of view might not look just from another. Second, what looks just in the micro case might be impossible to create in an large, complex market based economy. Thus we can’t define rules of justice for a political economy as a whole that looks only at the individual case and does not take into account the broad consequences of one or another set of political and social arrangements. Continue reading

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We Need a Bridge To Health Care

  By Health Care

Published in the Chestnut Hill Local, April 2, 2009 Commentary: We need a strong bridge to adequate health care by Marc Stier The Pennsylvania and New Jersey chapters of Health Care For America Now, a nationwide organization advocating for President Obama’s health care reform program, are holding a march for quality affordable health care at the Benjamin Franklin Bridge on Saturday, April 4 at 1 p.m. There will be rallies at Franklin Square in Philadelphia and near the north walkway of the bridge in Camden. And then the Pennsylvania and New Jersey contingents will march across the bridge and meet in the middle.  Why have we chosen to do this event at the Benjamin Franklin Bridge? Because the path Americans take from hard work to quality affordable health care has become a tightrope over a chasm.  Continue reading

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A three sided budget fight

  By Philadelphia, Philadelphia Budget

Progressive forces won an important victory by building support for the preservation of essential services even if this requires a tax increase. This was a incredibly beautiful and wide ranging struggle with many people playing a role. And Mayor Nutter deserves credit for recognizing that the citizens of this city are willing to bear higher taxes temporarily in order to save services that are so important to us. Now, however, we have to recognize that fight continues on three sides. On one side, we want to make the tax increases as progressive as possible. Many of us have concerns about the regressivity of the sales taxes and the danger that the property tax increase will fall too heavily on the poor and working people if it goes into effect without the implementation of a homestead exemption and a broad based and fair revision of property assessments. On a second side,… Continue reading