Massaging The Message

I was lying face down on a massage table in the Beachwood Mall Comfort Zone. My lower back was giving me grief and this was the place to go. The place was packed. Every table and massage chair was filled. The shop does a good business, but there is normally one or two employees standing on the lease line asking for people to come in. Not today. Could this many people also have old basketball injuries? Exertion? Stress? Who knows?

Face down. My mind started to wander as he started to work his fingers into my shoulders. It certainly has been a stressful week. We were transfixed to our televisions as over a dozen bombs were mailed to a past-president and other government officials. Then there were the two elderly Black people executed at a grocery store in Kentucky. And then there was the horrific assault at the synagogue in Pittsburgh. I have been in that synagogue. Since it occurred on a Saturday morning, I was in a synagogue when the attack occurred. And if all of that wasn’t enough, we are less than two weeks from an election so the commercial breaks inserted between these terrible news stories were negative political ads.

Is he trying to pull my spine apart?

I thought about all of those ads. It seems like every candidate is claiming to be the number one champion of those of us with preexisting conditions. Every one of them. If that is the case, how come we’re so concerned? This is a good time to do the fire department test. Do you worry about the fire department coming out if your house was burning? Of course not! It is a given. Coverage for preexisting conditions is not a given. Our health insurance system prior to The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) offered little protection for those with chronic illnesses. Those guarantees are only five years old, not long enough to forget the way it was.

Is that his elbow in my back?

There are people running for reelection who have voted to repeal Obamacare over 60 times. That, in of itself, does not mean that they were unconcerned about preexisting conditions had they had a viable replacement. An actual repeal with an immediate replacement would have opened the door for a discussion on the merits of their proposal. But there wasn’t a replacement, a real, viable plan, was missing throughout the fight. From 2011 through 2016 we had grandstanding and campaign fundraising and votes, lots of votes, but no plans. Repealing Obamacare meant returning to a process that provided little to no security.

Repealing the PPACA wasn’t just the focus of the Republican controlled Congress. The governors and attorney generals from a number of red states attempted to have the courts declare the law unconstitutional. One case made it to the Supreme Court where Chief Justice Roberts was the deciding vote. Our current attorney general/ gubernatorial candidate Mike DeWine joined a lawsuit in 2011 to gut the law. This blog noted the current suit in Texas, supported by the Trump administration, designed to eliminate the coverage for preexisting conditions. Some of the litigants are running in their respective states as if their lawsuit didn’t exist!

Man that hurts! Deep Yoga breaths.

So how can many of our politicians claim to have any interest in protecting our access to care? The only possible answer is the 2017 American Health Care Act (AHCA). If you don’t feel like reading the entire bill, the link to the summary is here. Most people remember the AHCA because of the beer celebration at the White House after the bill passed the House and the late night votes by Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Susan Collins (R-ME), and John McCain (R-AZ) that saved the country from this disastrous legislation. Did the AHCA provide coverage for preexisting conditions? Sort of. An amendment was included to “allow states to seek a limited waiver to allow the insurance companies to charge higher premiums for a person with a health condition only if they do not maintain continuous coverage”. How much? 30%! That and other holes would have doomed the law had there been the normal process with public hearings and amendments that we expect with any legislation, much less a bill that would impact 20% of our economy and our access to health care. But this bill was still better than nothing.

My half hour was over and it was time to pay and return to the real world. My back felt better but I couldn’t say whether it was due to the massage therapist’s efforts or 30 minutes without TV, Facebook, and the trouble we seem to be in as a country. One thing for sure, the therapist was certainly better at massaging my back then the politicians are at massaging their message.

DAVE

www.cunixinsurance.com

Picture – We all need a little Chutzpah – David L. Cunix

 

 

 

 

Hide And Seek

November 4, 1995 was a warm fall day in Northeast Ohio. I was driving to Kidron to talk to some Amish craftsmen about a dining room table. I remember the day because that was when the news broke that Art Modell was moving the Browns to Baltimore. That next day, when I chaperoned a group of Cub Scouts to the game, was my last as a Browns fan. We have heard any number of reasons why The Move was necessary. But one excuse, briefly floated, was that the move would be good for the City of Cleveland, too.

We are witness to any number of self-serving actions that are sold to us as being good for everyone, perhaps even better for us than the obvious beneficiary. These actions might have financial benefits. These actions might have political benefits. Of course, sometimes the benefits are strictly entertainment, such as watching some politicians now trying to weasel out of their actions and votes over the last eight years.

Turn on the TV and marvel at the advertisements from Republican candidates for both State of Ohio offices and seats in Congress. Sure, they were voting to eliminate the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) last year with its guarantee of coverage for preexisting conditions. And no, there were never any alternatives that provided the same assurance that insurance, our method of accessing and paying for health care, would be available to anyone, regardless of health. But that is ancient history. Every one of them now supports coverage for preexisting conditions. Honest. Just don’t ask how.

This dissembling starts at the top. It was, after all, President Trump who said, “I will always fight for, and always protect, patients with pre-existing conditions” as his Attorney General Jeff Sessions argues that rules mandating the insuring of people with preexisting conditions and the guaranteed access to coverage are not constitutional. The cynicism of the last eight years has been taken to its illogical extreme.

Congressmen who were campaigning and fundraising last year on their personal mission to eliminate Obamacare are now running as the champions of the chronically ill and infirmed. I won’t link you to the commercials. And this is not an Ohio phenomenon. You can find this level of hypocrisy across the country. Some of the very same Attorney Generals mentioned in my last blog, Deep In The Heart(less) Of Texas, are campaigning on their concern for those with preexisting conditions.

It is important to remember that Mike DeWine and his cohorts really don’t want to throw sick people off insurance. They certainly don’t want to bar the poor and unhealthy from access to medical care. They don’t. They just don’t give a damn about how it gets done. They are sure that everything will work itself out. Meanwhile, being anti-Obamacare has been a terrific issue, a cash cow for fundraising, and gold at the polls on elections day. The very people who have benefited the most have, at times, been the most hostile to the law.

The Republicans have been playing Hide and Seek with preexisting conditions. And now, months before the 2018 mid-term elections, they have found the issue. But preexisting conditions have always been right here, in the middle of the entire health care / health insurance debate. It wasn’t that the issue was hiding. The Republicans simply weren’t looking.

DAVE

www.cunixinsurance.com

Picture – David L Cunix – Hiding in plain sight