Under The Radar
Posted by John Malloy on 08/09/2009
HEALTH CARE – INDUSTRY EXECUTIVES UNDERMINE INSURANCE LOBBYIST’S PLEDGE FOR REFORM: In an interview with Bloomberg Radio yesterday, Karen Ignagni, president and CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), rebuked congressional criticism of the health care industry. “[People] don’t want to be rejected because of preexisting conditions, and they want to make sure they have continuity of care,” she said. “We’ve committed to that. That’s what our industry is doing. We are one of the first to step up and offer real change that affected our industry.” Despite Ignagni’s assurances, the industry continues to be on the offensive. Talking Points Memo has obtained a leaked e-mail from Express Scripts, a St. Louis-based pharmacy benefit manager, that both condemns the “rush to pass legislation that could fundamentally alter our current system” and calls on its employees to “take action” against health care reform by contacting their elected officials. In 2004, Express Scripts was found guilty of defrauding the state of New York of $100 million and eventually settled by paying a multi-million dollar fine. Additionally, during congressional testimony last June, executives from UnitedHealth Group, Assurant, and Wellpoint unequivocally refused to commit to ending the practice of rescinding coverage after an applicant files a medical claim. A House subcommittee found in an investigation that those three health insurance companies have rescinded policies for nearly 20,000 policyholders and avoided paying over $300 million in medical claims over the past five years. The subcommittee also found a number of underhanded tactics the companies used to rescind coverage to policyholders, including rescissions based on a failure to disclose a medical condition their doctors never told them about and rescissions of coverage for all members of a family based on a failure to disclose a medical condition of only one family member. |
Former Democratic congressman William Jefferson was convicted yesterday on 11 of 16 criminal counts on charges stemming from soliciting bribes in exchange for official acts. “In July 2005, FBI agents filmed Jefferson taking $100,000 in bribes from a government informant. In a subsequent raid, agents found $90,000 in marked money in the freezer of Jefferson’s Virginia home.”
The Obama administration plans to announce an ambitious plan today to “overhaul the much-criticized way the nation detains immigration violators, trying to transform it from a patchwork of jail and prison cells to what its new chief called a ‘truly civil detention system.’” “The plan aims to establish more centralized authority over the system, which holds about 400,000 immigration detainees over the course of a year.”
“Pressed by industry lobbyists, White House officials on Wednesday assured drug makers that the administration stood by a behind-the-scenes deal to block any Congressional effort to extract cost savings from them beyond an agreed-upon $80 billion.” The commitment may “irk some of the administration’s Congressional allies who have an eye on drug companies’ profits as” a way to pay for reform.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said today in Kenya that it was a “great regret” the U.S. has not yet signed on to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. President Clinton signed the treaty which President Bush later rejected. “I think we could have worked out some of the challenges that are raised concerning our membership,” Clinton said. “But that has not yet come to pass.”
The American Psychological Association released a report yesterday saying “that there is little evidence that efforts to change a person’s sexual orientation from gay or lesbian to heterosexual are effective.” The organization’s Council of Representatives also passed a resolution “urging mental health professionals not to recommend to their clients that they can change their sexual orientation.”
The U.S. has asked Israel to freeze West Bank settlements for one year in order ”to prod Arab countries to take steps toward normalizing relations with the Jewish state.” Middle East envoy George Mitchell made the proposal last week during talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel is said to prefer a six-month freeze.
The Obama administration awarded more than $2 billion in grants “for manufacturing advanced batteries and other components for electric cars.” The money comes from stimulus funds and is intended to “help companies bolster large-scale manufacturing lines for modern batteries” while “cutting dependence on petroleum, reducing carbon emissions, [and] creating jobs.”
A bipartisan group of senators introduced the Employment Non-Discrimination Act yesterday, which would “prohibit bias on the basis ofboth sexual orientation and gender identity.” Lead sponsor Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) left open the possibility that the legislation “could be passed by year’s end.”
With the threat of mobs at town hall meetings, lawmakers may be looking for alternatives. A new study by Harvard University suggests that one option for members of Congress may be virtual town halls, where satisfaction levels are “unbelievable.”
And finally: Fox News host Trace Gallagher faced a tough guest in Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) earlier this week, when Stabenow tore apart his arguments against the “Cash for Clunkers” program. Looking for a lifeline, Gallagher then ended the interview to turn to important “breaking “news” — a story about Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. Watch the segmenthere. |
SUPREME COURT
The Road Ahead
Today, the Senate is expected to affirm what was obvious the moment that President Obama introduced Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the American people: Sotomayor’s brilliant intellect, compelling life story, and 17-year record of fidelity to the law prepare her well for the Supreme Court. She will make an outstanding justice. Yet even as she ascends to the pinnacle of the legal profession, Sotomayor joins a Court controlled by conservatives loyal to an ideology that consistently places powerful interest groups ahead of the law.
STORMS ON THE HORIZON: Two major First Amendment cases await Sotomayor when she steps into her new chambers at the Supreme Court. The first is Citizens United v. FEC, a campaign finance case. Although Citizens United was originally scheduled to be decided this summer, the Court ominously ordered the parties to brief whether a landmark precedent limiting the influence of corporate money in politics should be overruled. Sotomayor’s record strongly suggests that she will support robust campaign finance regulation, but her five conservative colleagues appear poised to declare longstanding bans on corporate money in politics unconstitutional. Should the conservatives get their way inCitizens United, it could be the end of meaningful campaign finance regulation. Similarly, the Supreme Court has teed up an important church-state separation case that could free the Roy Moores of the world to fill America’s landscape with taxpayer-funded monuments to their personal religious beliefs. In Salazar v. Buono, the justices will consider whether a cross erected in the middle of a federal land preserve can be challenged under the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. For years, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was the key fifth vote upholding the Constitution’s ban on government endorsements of religion. With her gone, it is likely that this ban will be whittled away into non-existence.
THE BACK BENCH: Although Obama found an exceptional nominee for the Supreme Court, future presidents’ ability to do so will depend on the judges Obama is able to confirm to the lower courts. Every single one of the Supreme Court’s current members was seasoned by his or her prior appointment to a lower federal court, and conservatives have long understood the need to appoint young, up-and-coming attorneys to the courts in order to create a deep bench of future Supreme Court nominees. So far, however, Obama has not charted the same course. The average age of his nominees is 55 – five years older, on average, than the men and women given lifetime appointments by President Bush. Most of the names on Bush’s “short list” of potential Surpeme Court nominees were nominated by President Reagan or President George H.W. Bush when they were in their 30s or early 40s. (Sotomayor was 37 when she was first appointed to the federal bench.) Moreover, the need to fill the courts with young lawyers who share Sotomayor’s brilliance and fidelity to the law is especially acute in light of the advantage right-wing judges currently hold on the federal bench. During the Clinton administration, then-Senate Judiciary Chair Orrin Hatch (R-UT)systematically kept President Clinton’s nominees off the bench by allowing a single home-state senator to veto a nominee. Wielding this authority,segregationist Republican senator Jesse Helms blocked every single one of Clinton’s nominees from North Carolina. When Bush came into office, however, this rule suddenly vanished. The result is a judiciary which conservatives will continue to dominate unless Obama is just as aggressive in appointing brilliant young lawyers to the federal bench as Bush was.
REPAIRING THE LAW: In just the past few years, the Court’s conservatives have consistently placed employers’ interests ahead of laws forbidding employment discrimination; they have ignored the plain meaning oflaws protecting the environment; and they have repeatedly seized opportunities toimmunize corporate interests from the law. Thankfully, there is no evidence that Sotomayor will join the Court’s conservatives in this crusade. But so long as the right-wing majority sits, Congress must carry the burden of pushing back against the Court’s worst decisions. This year’s Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was a good start; and recently introduced bills that would overrule two Supreme Court decisions limiting ordinary Americans’ access to courts are also promising signs. Ultimately, however, Congress must be far more aggressive in order to undo the damage caused by decades of conservative decisions eating away at the lawsworkers, seniors, the environment and the insured depend on to protect them against discrimination, abuse and fraud. The American people elected this Congress to turn away from the Roberts Court’s right-wing values: It’s time for Congress to step up to the plate.
Posted by
John Malloy
on 08/09/2009. Filed under
International.
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