How Libby, Montana, Got Medicare for All

In 2009 when the Washington beltway was tied up with the health care reform tussle, Montana Democratic Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the all-powerful Senate Finance Committee, said everything was on the table--except for single payer.

When doctors, nurses and others rose in his hearing to insist that single payer be included in the debate, Baucus had them arrested. As more stood up, Baucus could be heard on his open microphone saying, “We need more police.”

Yet when Senator Baucus needed a solution to a catastrophic health disaster in Libby, Montana, and surrounding Lincoln County, he turned to the nation’s single payer healthcare system, Medicare, to solve the problem.

Baucus’ problem was caused by a vermiculite mine that had spread deadly airborne asbestos killing hundreds and sickening thousands in Libby and northwest Montana. The W. R. Grace Company that owned the mine denied its connection to the massive levels of mesothelioma and asbestosis and dodged responsibility for this environmental and health disaster. When all law suits and legal avenues failed, Baucus turned to our country’s single payer plan, Medicare.

The single payer plan that Baucus kept off the table is now very much on the table in Libby. Unknown to most of the public, Baucus inserted a section into the health reform bill that covers the suffering people of Libby, Montana, not just the former miners but the whole community—all covered by Medicare.

They don’t have to be 65 years old or more.
They don’t have to wait until 2014 for the state exchanges.
No ten year roll out—it’s immediate.
They don’t have to purchase a plan—this is not a buy-in to Medicare—it’s free.
They don’t have to be disabled for two years before they apply.
They don’t have to go without care for three years until Medicaid expands.
They don’t have to meet income tests.
They don’t have to apply for a subsidy.
They don’t have to pay a fine for failure to buy insurance.
They don’t have to hope that the market will make a plan affordable.
They don’t have to hide their pre-existing conditions.
They don’t have to find a job that provides coverage.

Baucus inserted a clause in the Affordable Care Act to make special arrangements for them in Medicare, and he didn’t wait for any Congressional Budget Office scoring to do it.

Less than two months after the passage of the health reform bill on March 23, 2010, Nancy Berryhill of the Social Security Administration in Denver joined personally in setting up an office in Libby to sign up these newly eligible people. “This is a new thing,” Berryhill told the Missoulian. “No other group like this has ever been selected to receive Medicare.”

Berryhill issued a nationwide alert to inform anyone who had lived or stayed in Lincoln County of their eligibility. She opened a storefront in Libby at the old downtown city hall where she signed up 60 people on the first day. She plastered the towns of Whitefish and Eureka with pamphlets explaining the program and added three new staffers to the office in Kalispell.

Berryhill said she did not know how much the care would cost. That kind of analysis was beyond her directive to sign the people up. There have been no reports of competition from the private for-profit Medicare Advantage plans. The sick are not profitable.

No one should begrudge the people of Lincoln County. The mine wastes were used as soil additives, home insulation, and even spread on the running tracks at local schools. Miners brought the carcinogens home on their clothes. The W. R. Grace Company dumped much of the cleanup costs onto the federal government. A June 17, 2009, order by the Environmental Protection Agency, the first of its kind, declared Lincoln County a public health disaster. The Libby Medicare provision in the health reform law is based on the area covered by that EPA order.

Baucus gave his reasons to the New York Times for its only story on this unique benefit: “The People of Libby have been poisoned and have been dying for a decade. New residents continue to get sick all the time.Public health tragedies like this could happen in any town in America. We need this type of mechanism to help people when they need it most.”

Health tragedies are happening in every town. Over 51 million have no insurance. Over 45,000 uninsured people die needlessly each year.

Employers are cutting coverage and dropping plans. States in economic crisis are slashing both Medicaid and their employees’ plans. Nothing in last year’s reform law will mitigate the skyrocketing costs. Most insurance is threadbare and doesn’t cover. More than 50% of us now go without necessary care. As Baucus said of Medicare, “We need this mechanism to help people when they need it most.” We all need it now.

Bill Clinton recently stated that the U. S. could give coverage to all for one trillion dollars a year less than we now pay if we adopted the system of any other advanced nation. (Unfortunately, he did not say this when it would have mattered most during the 1993 and 2009 health care reform debates.)

Other industrialized countries have found that to cover everyone for less they must remove the profit-making insurance companies. Congressman John Conyers has reintroduced HR 676, the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, which does exactly that. There are 60 cosponsors. It would cover all medically necessary care for everyone including dental and drugs by cutting out the 30% waste and profits caused by the private insurers.

So as the Ryan Republicans try to destroy Medicare and far too many Democrats use the deficit excuse to suggest cuts in its benefits, let us counter with the Libby prescription to clean up the whole mess. Only a single payer, improved Medicare for All, can save and protect Medicare, rein in the costs, and give us universal coverage.

Medicare will celebrate its 46th birthday on July 30, 2011, and all are invited to join in the festivities. Medicare was passed in 1965 and implemented within less than a year. When we pass HR 676, this single payer bill, we can all be enrolled in the twinkling of an eye.

Written by Kay Tillow

Israel Myths Exposed

Miko Peled, author of "General's Son, and Israeli peace activist exposes the 3 myths of Israeli history. Peled represents and speaks for the best of the Jewish people in speaking the truth, calling for justice, and condemning the cancer that is Zionism.




Roadmap

For any Jew,
for any of us honest enough
to admit it
Israel is our dream
turned to nightmare

I remember as a child
the dream trees planted
in a desert made lush
That dreamland of the imagination
where all were Jews
in the absence of
the taunting hatreds
and stones thrown with
the stinging recriminations
I knew too well

A dreamland of traditions
where only wisdom and love
would fill the air
where justice walked with mercy
where we could all be
free to live
and heal

A beautiful dream that,
if somewhat misguided,
ran aground on the
stony shore of reality

For any Jew
honest enough to
see clearly
and admit it
Israel
has become our
ultimate nightmare

A place of hatreds
and thrown stones
of epithets and oppression
our own hands turning
to monsters
the poison of nationalism
and hubris that stalked us
for a millennium of bloody nights
we now claim as our own

Justice and mercy
discarded,
who have we become?

How many mikvahs
will cleanse us now?
Can we ever heal and become
who we were who


we should be?
How long must we
wander bent
in rent rags
and ashes How long
a shiva
for each vile act?
for each murder?

How can we begin
to heal what we have
injured lest
the seeds of hate planted
in that desert
bloom into a future
that will entangle us
for generations

Where do we begin
or is it
already
too late?

-- Al Markowitz

Revolution Awakens Spain

By CONCHA MATEOS

Madrid.

Something that looked impossible is happening.

Not a miracle: there is no God acting, no divine intervention. Only human will and the crowd.

Thousands of people were there, with the same ideas, the same objectives, the same desire for change. They lived in different places and cities and countries, but they were in reality at the same Puerta del Sol, although none of them did know.

One day of May 2011 they happened to gather together driven by the same and only cause.

Have you ever taken a decision together with thousands of people in which each person’s opinion is heard and treated equally?

Thousands of people were there, in the same ideas, in the same objectives, in the same need of changes, in the same Puerta del Sol, but they didn´t know it. The unknowed companions have meet together. Have you ever taken a decision with thousands of people considering them all the same?

The square, whatever square, has become a school in democracy – pure, radical, real, and effective democracy. (Democracia real ya – real democracy now – is the name of one of the groups making up the movement.) While corporations try everyday to captivate audiences sat in front of the TV, swallowing garbage TV entertainments, the protest is in the form of an acampada (camp) in the squares. There you have people listening to each other sitting on the ground taking and sharing the floor. The sun assembly shines every night at Puerta del Sol.

We build agreement where politicians want rivalry. We look for solutions where politicians want oppression. We don’t fight: we resist, we protest creatively. Consent, participation, respect (for one another, for animals, for the environment), dialogue are our methodology. We raise our hands and shout: these are our weapons. And work hard and patiently to reach agreement.

After thousands of years of human civilization, one system of production has appeared in the last period and managed to oppress more people and destroy more resources than ever before.

Beyond its plastic face, capitalism has brought ruin to the way of life of millions of human beings, as well as those regarded as sub- human, the immigrants trying to survive within the sub-democracy, without rights, a place to live or the entitlement to vote, living on a pittance, a dishonor for them but a cause of shame for the rest of us.

The welfare state is being destroyed, huge areas of the planet are condemned never to become part of it.

Another system is possible. Stop lying with your corporate media.

This Spanish revolution is a revolution because people have been changed in the process. That is the first and the main step forward in any protest, the transformation it brings about within the individual.

We were angry at the beginning. Capitalism has wasted four centuries spreading out reasons for the protest, barriers we have climb over to get a job, to get a house, to get an education, to get healthcare, to win political, social and cultural rights, real rights, to defend our dignity.

Corruption, privilege, politicians paid by corporations to manipulate the economic system, putty in corporate hands, TV entertainment offered us instead of participation. Capitalism planted the seeds of the anger of the indignados. But outrage is not our goal. We are not doing this to remain angry.

The indignation we felt was identified a long time ago. But who were “we”? Nobody knew. But we do now. We discovered this “we” in Puerta del Sol on 15th May, 15th, we discovered that our indignation is wide spread, we are thousands of people, a booming process of collective conscience.

A new political subject has emerged. We are the first to be transformed. That is because this is a revolution.

We have rescued that word from TV and cultural theory. We are giving back its meaning to the people, ordinary people throughout Madrid’s various neighborhoods made their voices heard in meetings held last Saturday (May 28). Hundreds of local assemblies held throughout Spain, with women, men, mothers, grandfathers, students, professors, workers, immigrants, real people living a real democracy taking shape in their local areas for the first time in their lives.

Indignation became joy. And now that joy is seeing us through to organizing.

Anger plus joy produces strength. Strength plus organization is the start of structural change.

Yes, we camp. We have camped and we will camp into the future.

The Puerta del Sol camp is not going to fade away; it is going to explode, to set up camp deep in the thinking of people. No police force or government can remove it from the mind of the new political subject that has burst onto the stage shouting Democracia real ya.

Remove the current electoral system, get rid of the economic privileges the political class has allowed itself, make the corporations responsible for the crisis pay for the crisis, stop the economic reforms dictated by international economic power, and let our reason govern our world, not the capitalist reason. Claim, support and defend all this through democratic meetings, horizontally, and peacefully. It is happening, and it is not a miracle. It is something more powerful, a lot of people have experienced the pleasure of recovering the political sense of our lives. Debate and decide in assembly.

We held two general assemblies yesterday, May 29. The assembly of local committees in the morning and the general one at night, lasting more than four hours each. The need and the plan and the dream of restructuring the camp at Puerta del Sol, a camp that is a symbol and reference point for so many people. We connected live with companions in Athens and Paris. We condemned the police actions against them.

Have you ever taken a decision with thousands of people in a public square? Have you ever experienced the energy of that collective will and responsibility?

It is hard work. To turn anger into joy, and joy into agreement for action. Truly hard labor, but the only one that can give us back our dignity.

Concha Mateos has a Ph D. in Social Communication and is on the faculty at one public university in Madrid.