Tag Archives: single-payer health care

Neale Lunderville, the shiniest bauble on the public policy tree

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Oh, those darn Democrats. They just can’t seem to resist the dubious charms of former Douglas Administration functionary (and campaign hatchet-man, lest we forget, and I bet Doug Racine hasn’t) Neale Lunderville.

Mmmm, what should I take over next?

Mmmm, what should I take over next?

Back in 2011-12, Lunderville started his run as the Dems’ unlikely go-to guy when he served as Governor Shumlin’s Irene Recovery Czar. This summer, he added another layer of plausible nonpartisanship as Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger’s choice to be interim head of the Burlington Electric Department, tasked with undertaking a “strategic review” of the organization.

Well, unbeknownst to almost everyone outside of the State House inner circle, Lunderville had already scored a public-policy bingo with his appointment to a not-quite-secret committee tasked with nothing less than crafting an overhaul of Vermont’s public education system. VPR’s Peter Hirschfeld got the goods:

The group isn’t a legislative committee per se – not too many people even know it exists. But members of Smith’s education reform group have been getting together since after the close of the 2014 legislative session. And by year’s end, Smith says he hopes they’ll deliver the policy recommendations that will serve as the basis for an overhaul of the state’s education system.

… He says the advance work being done by the group will give lawmakers the early start they need to get a meaningful bill across the finish line.

The committee is dominated by current and former state lawmakers, most of them Democrats, but also including a couple of Republicans, one former Republican turned independent (Oliver Olsen), one Progressive, and Our Man Neale.

Which makes me again raise the question, Can’t the Democrats find anybody else to take on tough policy challenges? Why do they have to depend on a guy who cut his teeth running the dark side of Jim Douglas’ political operation?

And, especially, why in the Blue Hell do they insist on burnishing the credentials of a guy who might very well be the Republican candidate for Governor in 2016 or 2018?

Ulp. Pardon me for a moment…

Screen Shot 2014-10-27 at 9.10.59 AM

Whew. That’s better. Now, where was i?

Oh yes. Aside from Lunderville’s presence, the committee’s almost total secrecy has to be a concern.

The group’s meetings aren’t warned or open to the public, and minutes aren’t recorded. Smith says the off-the-books arrangement is needed to help members of the group feel more “free” to brainstorm different approaches.

So I guess the fact that this isn’t an official committee exempts it from open-meetings and public-records laws — kinda like Dick Cheney’s infamous energy policy committee. But if the group manages to complete its task, it might well be the most powerful committee in the legislature (even if it no longer exists when the legislature comes back to work). It’ll effectively set the school-reform agenda for the lawmakers who actually have to do their business, inconveniently enough, under the public eye.

Three other things you should know:

— According to one member, the committee is focusing on student-to-teacher ratio. Which might mean mandatory minimum class sizes, or even forced school consolidation.

— Lunderville seems to favor centralizing budgetary authority, which he advocates under the guise of allowing local officials to “devote attention where it belongs: student learning.” Their ability to do anything about student learning without the power of the purse would be sharply constrained, of course. Lunderville would like to “go to more of a model like the state has, where there’s one agency, one department on a regional or state level handling those.” Which would be kind of a radical move.

— Finally, as Hirschfeld reports at the top of his story, “public education – not single-payer health care – will be top of mind for House lawmakers.” Not good news for Governor Shumlin, who continues to insist that single-payer is Job One in the new biennium.

Hack’s retreat

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The conservatives really thought they’d gotten hold of a hot one.

They’d suddenly “discovered” a Shumlin Administration plan to “take over” Medicare, and began furiously stoking fear among Vermont seniors. Or at least trying their best to do so. As if they really gave a damn about Medicare, considering that their party is actively trying to kill it for future enrollees. And that their favored candidate, Dan Feliciano, is a Libertarian and presumably doesn’t believe in relying on the gubmint for anything.

It took a few days for the Administration to put together a coherent response, perhaps because they were incredulous that anyone would take this seriously. But their response did come, and it was simple and categorical: There is no such thing.

First word actually came from VTDigger’s Anne Galloway, who reported that the pertinent clause in Vermont’s health care reform law had been amended last spring, and that the law no longer mentioned anything like a takeover.

Which, as I predicted, didn’t stop the anti-reform crowd from pushing the idea. Here’s a Twitter exchange between Agitator-in-Chief Darcie “Hack” Johnston and Yours Truly, beginning with a Johnston link to a fear-stoking radio ad produced by the Ethan Allen Institute:

Funny, I didn’t get a response to that last one.

Meanwhile, El Jefe General John McClaughry leaped into the fray with a partial retreat, posted as a Comment under Galloway’s story. In it, he tried to muddy the legal waters before concluding that apparently there would be no Medicare takeover — but instead of admitting the whole hoopla had been pointless, he posited that the Administration was “trying to squirm out” of their alleged intent to take over Medicare. He further congratulated Dan Feliciano, the one who first tried to peddle this bill of goods, for supposedly uncovering the Shumlin plot and forcing the Governor to abandon it.

Like I’ve said before, sometimes I think ol’ Jefe doesn’t really mean the stuff he writes; he’s just trollin’ us.

Later in the day came another VTDigger story, amplifying Galloway’s initial post. This time, Administration officials had joined the chorus.

Robin Lunge, director of Health Care Reform, said unequivocally Monday that it won’t happen.

“Federal law does not permit us to get the cash,” she said.

Reporter Morgan True then explained that the troublesome portion of Act 48, the 2011 health care reform bill, called for the state to pay for all health services “to the extent possible under federal law.” And as Lunge stated, federal law doesn’t permit such a move.

Further, True reported:

That portion of Act 48 is what’s known as session law, or the legislation as passed before it is written into statute.

It provides guidance for writing the statutes, and while it is still law, the portions that don’t make it into statute are often temporary and meant to provide guidance.

“In 2011, we asked the administration to entertain lots of things, but it was in the context of ‘tell us whether you can do this,’” said Rep. Mike Fisher (D-Lincoln), who was on the House Health Care Committee when it drafted Act 48.

And after all that, remember that this year’s Legislature repealed that section of Act 48.

Johnston, of course, was prepared with a fallback position: “if the state is allowed” to set payment rates for medical services “and determine the type of payments, it will be bad for seniors on Medicare.”

Please note the first word: “if”. The whole argument is based on her own assumption.

From there, it’s just a quick hop and a step to the conservatives’ favorite bugaboo: rationing!!!

Scary

It’s a quick, and nearly complete, comedown for Johnston and her ilk. From frightening stories of a Shumlin plot to take control of Medicare and screw around with seniors’ benefits, to a maybe-possibly-perhaps shift in reimbursements. So sad when a good conspiracy theory gets thoroughly blown up by the facts.

The ironic thing about all of this is the notion that hardcore conservatives are suddenly the Protectors of Medicare. Don’t I recall Mr. McClaughry, just a few weeks ago, pining for the good old days before we had all this Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid crap that was draining our independence and sucking the lifeblood out of the private-sector social safety net that somehow, magically, took care of everyone’s needs?

If you’re interested in protecting federal health insurance, I’d advise you that Governor Shumlin is a much better ally than the likes of Darcie Johnston.

How can I miss you when you won’t go away?

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Audio accompaniment to this blogpost:

Well, good ol’ “Bitter Bob” Hartwell, outgoing Republicrat Senator from Bennington, has left his fellow Senators a parting gift: the op-ed equivalent of a flaming bag of poo, entitled “What Senate Democrats Must Do.”

Hartwell’s public statements have shifted to the right in recent months, starting with his infamous skepticism about climate change and continuing through his comments to VTDigger last week that the Democrats have gone too far to the left:

“There’s too much spending, there’s too much social engineering, going on. Our party is getting out of line,” he said.

His opinion piece is more of the same. It reads as though it comes, not from the moderate Democrat he claims to be, but from somewhere to the right of Phil Scott. Indeed, it’s a big fat sloppy wet kiss to the Republican Party, delivered one week before Election Day. I’m sure the timing is coincidental, cough, hack, choke.

Bitter Bob, doing research for his opinion piece.

Bitter Bob, doing research for his opinion piece.

He accuses the Democratic Party of becoming “more ideological and, therefore, less effective and more poorly focused on the real issues.” By which he means, the “real issues” that concern Bitter Bob Hartwell.

He then slaps around Democrats and the Shumlin Administration for the “poor rollout of Vermont Health Connect” and says “The Legislature must determine to put an end to the single payer scheme unless it can clearly show significant savings…”

A reminder: There are two goals in advancing single-payer. One is to bend the cost curve, and the other is to provide universal access to health care. If Bob is only interested in the former, well, I’m glad he will no longer represent the Democratic Party in the new biennium.

Then he gets to property taxes and school funding, which “inexcusably, the Legislature has done virtually nothing to control…” Remind me: wasn’t Bob Hartwell in the Legislature himself?

Also, in one badly-written sentence, he appears to endorse Scott Milne’s proposal for a freeze on property taxes.

Then he takes a dump on the Senate Education Committee for “a most unacceptable performance” in failing to address the issue to Hartwell’s satisfaction. He’s talkin’ to you, Dick McCormack, Don Collins, Phil Baruth, Bill Doyle and David Zuckerman.

Somehow I don’t think Bitter Bob was talking to his colleagues this way when the Senate was still in session and his words could have had some impact. Indeed, it’s hard to tell from this essay that Hartwell was a fairly influential member of the Senate majority instead of an innocent bystander.

He then slams “Vermont’s intoxication with large scale renewable energy,” which fits in with his doubts about climate change. It also buttresses his self-congratulatory impulses, as he upbraids the Senate for refusing to pass his bills to create new obstacles in the path of renewable energy.

After that, it’s on to the core Republican talking point: “Vermont continues to spend too much money,” especially on social services programs, and bitches about “throwing money at problems” in a way that’s straight out of the Angry Jack Lindley playbook.

Hmm. Angry Jack and Bitter Bob. The worst Vaudeville act ever.

And then Hartwell rants about something that’s only a major issue in his own mind: the legislature’s failure to repeal the Bottle Bill, which, he says, wastes money, contributes to carbon pollution*, and “shoves businesses… into New Hampshire.” And he takes a gratuitous slap at VPIRG — or, as Hartwell puts it, “one so-called ‘research’ group.”

* Which, according to Bob himself, isn’t really a problem.

The “get off my lawn” ranting continues for several more paragraphs, in which he bemoans the fact that nobody in the Senate is as wise as Bob Hartwell and unleashes a bunch of howlers, including:

— The Senate fails to act “as a team,” and instead pursues “the interests of each committee with little understanding of the effect… on the state as a whole.” Considering his hijacking of the Natural Resources Committee in pursuit of his favored hobbyhorses, that’s pretty rich.

— Vermont should be more like New Hampshire.

— Our economic doldrums have nothing to do with national trends, “but rather by policies internal to Vermont.”

— Dean Corren is a liar.

Yeah, that’s one huge stinking flaming bag of poo. Thanks, Bitter Bob, for giving us a farewell gesture that reminds us all how lucky we are that you’ve decided to get outta Dodge.

Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

This time they’d better get it right

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The latest turn in the saga of Vermont Health Connect came today, with the cancellation of CGI’s contract to develop VHC’s endlessly troublesome website. The move comes seven months after the Obama Administration fired CGI as contractor on the federal website, and four months after Massachusetts did the same.

You can say the Shumlin Administration waited too long; or you can say they tried to stick with CGI as long as they could because the company knew more about the system than a new contractor possibly could. And, as the Freeploid’s Nancy Remsen reports, this disaster had many fathers:

The marketplace… has struggled since its launch Oct. 1. CGI missed many deadlines to complete processes and make fixes, although state officials and independent analysts have noted the unreasonableness of the compressed federal timeline that all states had to meet.

That “compressed federal timeline” was the result of numerous conservative lawsuits against the Affordable Care Act. No serious progress could be made until the Supreme Court had its say, which basically cut half of the preparation time for Obamacare’s launch.

But either way you slice it, the time had come for “a fresh perspective,” as health care reform czar Lawrence Miller put it. Whether CGI was truly at fault or not, a ritual sacrifice was called for. Its replacement, Optum, had already been hired to address a backlog of stalled “change of circumstance” requests.

It must also be noted, disapprovingly, that Miller and Mark Larson of the Department of Health Care Access were left to announce CGI’s departure in what looks, in media photos, to be a dreary and hastily-arranged encounter with the media. No sign of Governor Shumlin who, according to his official schedule, is in Montpelier today but couldn’t manage to join his long-suffering functionaries. He’ll be in public all over the place the rest of this week, wherever there’s good news to be announced; but not today. Sorry.

Those of us who support health care reform with single-payer as the ultimate goal have been frustrated by the continued delays and setbacks at VHC. And by the repeated (and routinely unfulfilled) assurances from the Shumlin team.

Well, now is the time to get it right. Good thing the Governor doesn’t face a signficant electoral challenge this year — although the longer this goes on, the more likely the Democrats are to lose seats in the Legislature. And with moderate Dems already doubtful about single-payer, Shumlin really can’t afford to lose any votes.

But beyond that, if VHC’s troubles continue into next winter, it’s hard to see the Legislature seriously considering a single-payer plan. Miller has accurately noted that single-payer will actually be a lot less complicated than the health care exchange — a bigger machine, but with far fewer moving parts. Still, why should the legislature go ahead with single-payer while VHC is still unproven?

This is a critical time for health care reform. There’s better damn well be measurable, actual progress before Election Day.

Corren meets the Dems

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The Democratic Party State Committee met Saturday in Montpelier, and gave its endorsement to the Party’s expected slate with one exception: Dean Corren, Progressive candidate for Lieutenant Governor. He did not actually seek an official endorsement from the state committee, but he did address the gathering and asked for their support in getting people to write in his name in the August primary.

“I got into this race on one issue,” he said, “Single payer health care.” He described this as a critical time for the issue, and said “We need a Lieutenant Governor working shoulder to shoulder with Governor Shumlin. I would be a good partner in this fight.”

(He didn’t say, but I will, that the Lieutenant Governor casts tie-breaking votes in the Senate. If Corren’s there, passing single-payer becomes easier than if Phil Scott wields the gavel. That, in itself, is a powerful incentive for Democrats, Progressives and liberals to unite behind Corren, no matter how much of a nice guy Scott may be.)

He also emphasized his common ground with the Democrats on two key issues: campaign finance reform and renewable energy. Since he qualified for public financing, you could say he has struck a real blow on the issue of money in politics. On energy, he pointed to his own professional involvement in climate change and green energy.

He also addressed the past (and for some, present) tensions between Democrats and Progressives. “We are more interested in progress than in bashing anyone.”

There was a lot of favorable reaction in the room. Corren took several questions, and all were supportive.Longtime committee member Bill Sander recalled past times when the party actively considered endorsing Republican challengers to then-Congressman Bernie Sanders, on the theory that they could get rid of Bernie and then beat the Republican two years later. Now, Sander said, “Our goal is to further the policies we believe in,” and that includes working alongside Bernie instead of trying to undercut him.

Some committee members obviously wanted to go ahead with an endorsement, but it wasn’t on the agenda. John Wilmerding of Windham County posited an endorsement via the transitive property: the state committee had previously endorsed then-candidate John Bauer; since then, Bauer has endorsed Corren; and if A equals B and B equals C, then maybe the committee has already, kinda-sorta, endorsed Corren. No one argued the point, but it remained in the unofficial realm.

After his presentation, Corren had a brief media scrum in the hallway. He pronounced himself “extremely” encouraged by the committee’s reaction. “It was wonderful. I couldn’t be more pleased.”

He was asked if he’d run into any Dem/Prog tensions in his contacts with party officials. “Actually, I haven’t,” he said. “My calls to state committee members and county chairs and so forth have all been incredibly positive.”

After this week’s anti-Prog comments from a few state senators, it was good to see the Democratic hierarchy taking a more positive view of Corren. Maybe the “Dems for Phil Scott” idea is mostly a creation of the Senate’s clubby, cloistered atmosphere.

I certainly hope so.