Doubts About Positive Impact on Kansas Residents in light of Pending Health Care Legislation

Of Kansas’ two senators and four representatives, only Johnson County Democratic Rep. Dennis Moore, who will retire after completing his 11th term in Congress, voted in favor of health care reform. Moore said he supported the House bill “because it addresses the issues of affordability, fiscal responsibility, quality and choice……….This bill will not only dramatically improve the health care system for those who already have insurance they like and want to keep, it benefits those who don’t have insurance now.”

Sen. Pat Roberts said he voted against the Senate bill because he believed it would raise taxes, cut Medicare, do nothing to reduce the cost of health care and fail to ensure that those in need have access to care. “I said before this bill was like an old socialized medicine pickup with a lot of barbed wire wrapped around the axel,” Roberts said in a statement. “Well now the Majority wants to sell it to the American people like a shiny new F-150.”

Throughout the debate, conservatives, largely Republicans, have attacked everything from the cost of the bills, the individual mandates, the impact on small business, a government run alternative to private insurance (included only in the House bill) and the basic notion of the reforms, which they decried as the first step on a slippery slope toward socialized medicine.

And there are some uninsured people who remain wary of the bills and the possibility that they would be required to get insurance. “It feels like they just want to reach inside my pocket,” Mark Barban of Hutchinson said.

Barban works full time for a company which offers insurance to its employees. However, Barban said he hasn’t signed up for it because more than half his paycheck goes to pay child support. He sees it as a choice between eating or having health insurance.
“I spend everything I got, every month,” he said.

He gets his medical care through Prairie Star Health Center, one of the “safety net” clinics that provide a wide range of basic services and prescription drugs at dramatically reduced cost for low-income people. He likes being able to pay for doctors and medicine as he needs them. But he admits that he doesn’t know what he would do if he ever got sick enough that he needed to be hospitalized or have surgery.

Nationwide, in terms of raw numbers, whites made up the largest ethnic group of uninsured (21.3 million), according to the U.S. Census Bureau. But no ethnic group had a higher uninsured rate than the Hispanic population (30.7%).

Income is another major factor in medical insurance. While only 8.2 percent of those with household income of $75,000 or more are uninsured, 24.5 percent of those with household income under $25,000 are uninsured. Twenty-six percent of the unemployed were also uninsured. But having a job was no guarantee, either. Of those who work part-time, 25.4 percent lacked insurance, and 17.2 percent of those employed full time also were uninsured.

In Kansas, the uninsured rate tends to be highest in rural areas and lowest in urban areas. All the counties with 13 percent or fewer uninsured residents were east of a north-south line drawn through Reno County. All 22 counties with 20 percent or more uninsured were west of that line.

Eight western Kansas counties had uninsured rates of more than 25 percent: Cheyenne (29.5 percent), Hamilon (28.3), Stanton (27.0), Haskell (26.8), Gray and Sheridan (25.6) and Greeley and Wichita (25.5).

While the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the House bill would extend medical insurance to 36 million of the uninsured and the Senate bill would pick up 31 million, the Kansas Health Policy Authority estimates that 240,000 of the 338,000 uninsured Kansans would be covered under the House bill and 190,000 would be insured under the Senate bill.

About 1,000 sign up for free clinic in Kansas City

About 1,000 people signed up for health care Wednesday on the opening day of an event billed as one of the nation’s largest free clinics. A similar turnout is expected Thursday as the two-day clinic wraps up at Kansas City’s Bartle Hall. Part of the goal of the Kansas City clinic and similar ones elsewhere is to draw attention to the uninsured as Congress debates health care reform.

“I think it’s extremely sad this is the only option so many people have,” said Cole, who has received little medical care since learning two years ago that the cancer that started in her lungs was in remission. Still without work, she also had thyroid problems but can’t afford the medicine to treat the condition.

Sitting nearby was Kathleen Shaw, who recently moved in with her parents in Kansas City. The 45-year-old hadn’t been to a doctor for two years since she was laid off from her office manager job at a Pasadena, Calif., construction company. Despite two college degrees, she has been unable to find work or health insurance since then.

“People who have health care or money, they forget what it’s like to be locked out of the system,” said Shaw, who learned her cholesterol was high and was waiting for an EKG test after complaining of heart palpitations. “If they have a broken tooth or an ache or a pain, they can just call their doctor. But if you are locked out of the system, you can’t get anything. You have to go around feeling like a charity case all the time.”

A sea of red-clad volunteers, numbering more than 1,600, treated the patients in exam rooms sectioned off with blue curtains. The volunteers, among them doctors, nurses and dental professionals, diagnosed a host of life-threatening conditions, including diabetes. The nonprofit National Association of Free Clinics has put on three other temporary clinics and plans more. A previous one-day-only clinic in Houston drew nearly 1,800 patients, and clinics in New Orleans and Little Rock drew more than 1,000 each.

The group says its efforts are nonpartisan, but they are seen as a way to pressure moderate Democrats into supporting their party’s efforts to reform health care. MSNBC commentator Keith Olbermann, who has targeted such Democrats — seen as crucial to passage of health care reform — had been urging his viewers to support the association’s free clinics.

BNicole Lamoureux, the Alexandria, Va.-based association’s executive director, said that while the clinics highlight the needs of the uninsured to members of Congress, the goal isn’t to advocate specific legislation. “What is important is that … the people who need the care are the ones that are being looked at and talked about,” she said. “We are giving the care to the people who need it right now.”

Free? That may be misleading unless all the staff was volunteer and the supplies were donated. But that is not very likely at all.

SOURCE: Associated Press

Dennis Moore Vote For House Health Care Bill

Rep Dennis Moore, who represents Kansas’ 3rd Congressional District, which includes Johnson and Wyandotte counties, plus a portion of Douglas County, vote for the legislation to reform our severely flawed health care system. H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act.

He says he voted for this bill because it addresses the issues of affordability, fiscal responsibility, quality and choice. We can no longer afford to do nothing. We must meet this challenge head-on. H.R. 3962 will place limits on insurance companies that indiscriminately drop individuals for pre-existing conditions, allowing the insurer to look only at the last 30 days for a pre-existing condition, instead of the current 6 month standard. Ultimately there will be a complete ban on the practice.

The legislation, he says, will begin to close the Medicare Part D “donut hole” immediately. Effective January 1, 2010, $500 per enrollee from Medicare will be used to shrink the prescription drug donut hole, closing the gap completely in 2019.

Medicare beneficiaries will also have the opportunity to reap the benefits of negotiated rates on name brand prescriptions as a result of these reforms, reducing the overall cost spent on medication every month. I have advocated this reform throughout my service in Congress. There will be NO cuts in benefits for Medicare enrollees.

The age ceiling for dependents would increase to 26, so parents can decide if they would like to extend their coverage to young adults. This is a particularly important provision given the number of young adults who lack health care after they leave college, but before they get a job.

This reform also provides for a “public option”, which extends basic, affordable health care to the 47,000 residents of our district who are uninsured, which ultimately reduces costs for their neighbors who now have insurance. The option will be available in a new health insurance exchange, where the uninsured and small employers will be able to comparison shop for standardized health packages.

He says this plan is fully paid for, so it will not add to our debt. We cannot begin to get the deficit under control without tackling the challenge of health care.

Kansas ranks No. 24 in healthy state study

According to a study compiled by a three-organization health collaboration, they ranked the healthiest states and found Kansas ranks 24th. The health collaboration includes United Health Foundation, the America Public Health Association and Partnership for Prevention. It says the 2009 rankings identify the need to change unhealthy behaviors that contribute to preventable, chronic diseases as the key to improving the nation’s health. Tobacco consumption and obesity are the two priorities that threaten the health of the nation, the study finds.

Kansas ranks No. 22 in the prevalence of smoking and 34 for prevalence of obesity. The study estimates 27 percent of the United States population is obese. Obesity, the study finds, is projected to cost $3.4 billion, or $1,603 per adult, in Kansas health care spending if the state’s obesity rates continue to climb at their current levels. In the past five years, Kansas’ obesity rate has increased 24 percent.

The study also finds that Kansas has a low per capita public health funding at $41 per person, which ranks 45th nationally. The state also has a limited availability of primary care physicians at 101 for every 100,000 people. That ranks 38th nationally.

Health Care Showdown in Shawnee, Kansas on Saturday

Democratic and Republican groups are planning protests Saturday morning in the downtown Shawnee area, both related to a state constitutional “Health Care Freedom” amendment proposed by a local legislator.

The Kansas City Young Democrats announced Thursday they were organizing a “March for Health Care Reform” at 9:45 a.m., beginning in front of Shawnee Town near Johnson Drive and Cody Street and then proceeding east on Johnson Drive to City Hall.
The group say the protest’s purpose is to speak against the “Health Care Freedom” amendment proposed by Sen. Mary Pilcher-Cook, R-Shawnee, and other Kansas Republicans, as well as show support for 3rd Congressional District Rep. Dennis Moore, D-Lenexa, in his intentions to support health care reform.

Pilcher-Cook joined several other Republican state lawmakers who toured around Kansas pushing for the amendment, which would prohibit requiring Kansans to buy health insurance under a government plan.

The proposed amendment will be introduced during the legislative session that starts in January. It would have to be approved by two thirds of the House and Senate before it could go to the voters for consideration in November 2010.

“Through a multi-pronged approach, a variety of local activists have teamed up to ensure that Sen. Pilcher-Cook knows that her constituents will not be fooled into supporting a misleadingly worded amendment with the intention of denying Kansans the true choice of a public insurance option and more affordable care,” the Young Democrats said in a media release. “The citizens of Kansas deserve real health care reform, not empty rhetoric intended to benefit the health insurance industry.”

Americans for Prosperity, a group that opposes government expansion of health care and funded the Oct. 27 tour in support of the amendment, quickly organized a counter-protest. The organization sent out a request for those joining the counter-protest to meet at 9:30 a.m. at City Hall, 11110 Johnson Drive. “This legislation is designed to protect the right of Kansans to make healthcare decisions with their doctors without letting the government in the examination room,” the Americans for Prosperity announcement reads. “… We urge you to take some time this Saturday to come and support our legislators working to protect your healthcare choices

SOURCE: Shawnee Dispatcher

If The US Supreme Court Had to Decide for Kansas: Can They Over-rule the Fed?

If Congress passes federal health care reform legislation that includes a mandate requiring individuals to purchase health care insurance and then Kansans approve a state constitutional amendment countermanding the mandate, who would win?

Two constitutional law professors say could be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court and have far-reaching effects.

“The primary point of conflict would be the individual mandates in the health care initiative that the Obama administration is pushing,” said Kris Kobach, University of Missouri-Kansas City. “The (state) amendment (Sen. Mary Pilcher-) Cook and others are supporting would basically create a Kansan’s right not to be forced into the health insurance market, preserving the individual’s right to stay out of the market if she or he wants to. “There’s where the conflict would occur and it would set up a court case, assuming that both things pass.”

Tom Stacy, University of Kansas, said the question is whether Congress has the constitutional authority to require individuals to have health insurance. The U.S. Constitution’s Commerce Clause gives Congress the authority to regulate commerce among the states and he said that has been broadly interpreted by the High Court since President Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1940s. “A key question for purposes of evaluating whether an individual mandate would be within Congress’ constitutional authority to act would be whether the purchase of health insurance is a commercial activity,” Stacy said. “And I would think it would be.”

Kobach said Kansas could prevail. “There’s a long, long line of cases in the commerce power area,” Kobach said. “But the interesting thing about this is that the federal government never before has tried to force private Americans to purchase something; that’s why this would be an unprecedented use of the commerce power and I think it would be difficult for the administration to win in court.”

Stacy said he thinks the U.S. Supreme Court would uphold Congress’ authority to mandate individuals to purchase health insurance under the Supremacy Law in the U.S. Constitution that allows federal statutes to prevail against state laws. “If Congress commands the state to do something and Congress is within its power to do so, then the states have to follow suit,” Stacy said. “So under the Supremacy Law, Kansas can adopt a constitutional amendment, but it’s symbolic only and it wouldn’t have any legal effect.”

Elderberry juice touted as immune system booster

Several local storeowners say bottles of elderberry juice concentrate have been selling quickly, and many of their customers are looking for an immune system boost from the juice.

“We had a number of people ask us for it,” said Jeff Dankenbring, owner of Dank’s Broadway Market in Marysville. “It’s been selling well. We’ve sold a couple of cases and had to make another order.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says elderberries were considered a valuable healing plant in many folk medicine traditions. Elderberries have been traditionally used to cure an array of illnesses ranging from congestion to kidney infections to rheumatism, according to an article from the department.

Elderberries are naturally very high in vitamin C, which is commonly known to help boost the immune system, according to the USDA article. They also contain flavonoids and rutin, another two properties believed to improve immune function, the article said. All parts of the plant, including its leaves and flowers, have been used for healing, the article said.

The flowers, which contain tannins, have traditionally been used to reduce bleeding, diarrhea and congestion, the article said, and flowers steeped into a tea have been used to break dry fevers and ease headaches, rheumatism, colds, influenza and more. Also, it said, the leaves have traditionally been made into a wash for wounds and bruises.

SOURCE: Marysville Advocate

Amendment Would Let Kansas Opt Out of Potential Health Reforms

Kansas Senator Mary Pilcher-Cook of Shawnee, along with colleagues in the Kansas House from Wichita and Emporia, is planning an attempt to amend the Kansas Constitution, should Congress pass health reforms that mandate everyone carry health insurance. The amendment would allow the state to basically opt-out of such legislation. The amendment would need the support of two-thirds of lawmakers, and then a thumbs up from the Kansas people on the 2010 ballot.