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A Refreshing Start on What Truly Made America Great

The challenges are great. Eighteen million Americans, 6% of all Americans, are enrolled in marketplace plans. The impact of market instability is real and painful to Americans across the country. Proposed premium rates for 2018 in Tennessee include 21-42% increases because of uncertainty regarding ongoing reimbursement to insurance companies to offset the discounts provided to the lowest income individuals for out-of-pocket costs, including copayments and deductibles. These reimbursements paid by the federal government, called Cost-Sharing Reductions (CSRs) are not bail-outs as they have been characterized by President Trump. These are justifiable reimbursements to insurance companies for discounts for the poorest marketplace enrollees. If federal CSR payments are stopped, the insurance companies will recoup the cost by increasing premiums for other enrollees. This is not sustainable.

Another sign of distress is the decline in the number of marketplace plan per counties across the U.S. Senator Alexander reported that initially only 4% of counties had just one insurer. This number is now 50%. Time is another major challenge. The HELP committee must forge and pass a legislative solution and this policy solution must be approved by Congress by September 27, 2017, to stabilize the individual markets for 2018 as annual enrollment begins. Americans can do extraordinary things when they have the will and work together.

You can watch live HELP committee hearings via https://www.help.senate.gov/hearings. Hearings will be held September 7 at 9 am EDT and September 12 and 14 at 10 am EDT.

Photo credit: Library of Congress

September 6, 2017

author: Editorial Staff

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The challenges are great. Eighteen million Americans,

Health, Narrative

Compassion, Poetry and DACA

“There is nothing compassionate about the failure to enforce immigration laws,” attorney general Jeff Sessions said yesterday, in a surreal usurpation of the word compassion. In announcing the end of the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program, he made 800,000 young adults brought to this country illegally as children vulnerable for deportation as soon as March of next year.

Compassion literally means “to suffer with.” But like me you may be blocked from this suffering by a bout of compassion fatigue, brought on from the relentless assault of terrible news. Others have called it outrage fatigue or resistance fatigue. But because Sessions bastardized compassion, I think it’s important to reclaim that concept.

To suffer with: I am not vulnerable for deportation, yet I want to cultivate the ability to understand what this policy change means for people who are. I’m also overwhelmed; I’m afraid of the responsibility I bear in our culture; I want to hide from it.

And so I turn to poetry.

Sherman Alexie’s new poem, “Hymn,” is an incantatory series of rhyming couplets through which we can, along with the poet, declaim: “I will sing for people who might not sing for me. / I will sing for people who are not my family.”

Claudia D. Hernandez crossed the Rio Grande/ Rio Bravo with her family when she was 10 years old. “The River Never Happened to Us (ii.)” ends with this startling image: “Yet we continued to trickle / shards of mud, as if the river had never happen to us.” Hernandez’s poem is part of an online collection featuring nine undocumented poets, curated by Christopher Soto and published by Southern Humanities Review.

Li-Young Lee describes his writing of his poem “Immigrant Blues,” which begins with a line his father told him as a boy: “People have been trying to kill me since I was born…” Click the audio link to hear him read the poem, and then listen again.

Eduardo C. Corral provides the poetic perspective of a child of an undocumented immigrant. “In Colorado My Father Scoured and Stacked Dishes” presents a series of heartbreaking images, told in a heartbroken voice: “Once, borracho, at breakfast, / he said: The heart can only be broken // once, like a window.”

Guatemala-born poet Alex Alpharaoh performed “WET: A DACAmented Journey” in Los Angeles in August. “Soon the witch-hunt will begin,” he chants. “Which one of you brought the matches?” In an interview posted yesterday, he said of people who deny the importance of immigrants to America’s culture: “They’re not paying attention, and they’re not really looking at their history.”

Let’s pay attention. Let’s look at our history. Tell me what you’re reading.

Image source: Rio Grande/Rio Bravo, J. Stephen Conn, flick

September 6, 2017

author: Editorial Staff

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“There is nothing compassionate about the failure

Affordable Care Act, Policy

Trump cuts budget to inform people of ACA open enrollment by 90%. Social media responds #SaveACA

Andy Slavitt, former President Obama’s former head of Medicare and Medicaid, used Twitter to respond to President Trump’s actions to cut 90% of the ObamaCare enrollment outreach program. The funding will be cut from $100 million last year to $10 million this year impacting the ad and in-person assistance program.

Slavitt’s first Tweet re the cuts said, “this does not save taxpayers one penny. This is generally money paid out of user fees from insurers being cut. Pure undermining.”

Later that morning he sent this Tweet:

The response by his followers was swift. Today, he posted this Tweet:

This campaign is growing as others take to social media to get the word out. Can the public’s social media response fill the void this dramatic cut to the ObamaCare enrollment and reach those in need? Stay tuned. We’ll keep you posted.