Showing posts with label New Mexico. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New Mexico. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Health Care Reform Provides Critical Support for Rural Families

Posted by American Forum at 2:46 PM

NEW MEXICO EDITORIAL FORUM

By Margarita Mercure Hibbs

Living in rural regions supports a lifestyle that many families, small businesses and retirees appreciate. However, securing access to affordable, quality health care -- especially during a recession -- can be a challenge. With roughly one-third of its 2 million residents living in rural areas, New Mexico has an especially severe challenge.

According to studies by the Rural Health Research & Policy Center, the Flex Monitoring Team, and Kaiser, there are 42 hospitals in New Mexico, only 29 of which are located in rural areas, and six of which are critical access hospitals.

What does this mean for rural New Mexicans? These numbers show that although they occupy the largest geographical territory in the state, folks in rural New Mexico only get about half the medical resources. These statistics are devastating to our state and are completely unsustainable.

Adding to the special challenges facing New Mexicans is the fact that our state has some of the highest unemployment and uninsured rates in the nation. The rural-urban disparity in insurance coverage is exacerbated by the fact that incomes are generally lower and fewer rural companies offer private health insurance.

These special challenges are why the changes brought about by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act are so important to New Mexicans. The Act addresses many of the health care issues that so many rural Americans face and ensures that they will now have affordable access to necessary health care that was once unavailable to them.

Historically, rural New Mexicans faced with catastrophic injuries or illnesses have had a greatly diminished chance of survival due to the lack of emergency, urgent care, and first responder resources.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act creates a system that is fair for rural communities -- one that will grow rural health care workforces by making necessary investments in training, recruitment and facilities, so that rural populations have greater access to doctors, nurses, dentists and paramedics.

Health care reform sets important guidelines which address the care of our most vulnerable members of society. Under the Act, people with pre-existing conditions, children and youth, small businesses and seniors will be the first groups to directly benefit.

Beginning in 2104, insurance companies will finally be held accountable and may no longer refuse coverage to a person simply because he or she has a medical history. Until then, a pre-existing condition insurance plan serves as a bridge to meet the needs of those individuals who have already been denied insurance coverage and have been uninsured for at least 6 months.

Children can’t be denied coverage for any reason and family coverage will be extended for young adults through the age of 26.

Seniors, who have fallen into the prescription coverage gap (the “donut hole”) since 2007, will receive assistance with paying for medications, and will also have access to cheaper ones.

Most importantly, everyone will also have greater access to preventive care, which will help avoid expensive and unnecessary treatments later.

Establishing a fair playing field for small and independent businesses is a key component of reform. In New Mexico, agriculture and tourism are cornerstone industries – related small businesses contribute greatly to the economy. But typically, in rural areas, one large insurance company dominates the market, so there is no guarantee of choice or competitive pricing.

To remain viable, these small businesses must be able to attract and keep good employees by being given the opportunity to provide health insurance (large corporate businesses currently pay, on average, 18 percent less for comparable insurance plans). In the past, only 35 percent of small business owners were able to offer health insurance to their employees, but this year, more than 88.9 percent of New Mexico small businesses (24,800) with fewer than 25 employees will be eligible for tax credits to help pay the cost of necessary employee health insurance coverage.

Many New Mexicans are already benefiting from reform. Health Action New Mexico, a statewide health advocacy organization, provides information to folks in order to better explain what the health care plan does and doesn’t do. Access to this information is an important piece of reform, so we strongly encourage you to contact them directly at www.healthactionnm.org or (505) 867-1095.
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Hibbs is a rural advocacy specialist and former first lady of Estancia.
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Copyright (C) 2010 by New Mexico Editorial Forum. 10/10

 

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Thursday, September 9, 2010

Laboring for Justice

Posted by American Forum at 1:31 PM

NEW MEXICO FORUM

By Rev. Gary Kowalski

Americans are more likely barbecuing this Labor Day weekend than singing “Which Side Are You On?” We’ve forgotten the workers who were our own forebears.

My wife’s family, for instance, came from Nanticoke, Pennsylvania. Today it’s an unremarkable crossroads, but a century ago, it saw a titanic contest between labor organizers and the Reading Railroad, which ran the nation’s coal mines. The union wanted an eight hour day and took 100,000 men out on strike. The walk-out finally ended six months later when Teddy Roosevelt established a commission for binding arbitration. In his closing argument to that commission, the railroad CEO testified that “These men don't suffer. Why, hell, half of them don't even speak English.”

Three years after the strike, a government report found thousands of children still picking chunks of coal by hand from the mountains of slag. And this was my wife’s hometown. Her great-grandfather Balliet died of black lung, as did great uncle Ellis. Grandmother Jeanette told stories of her brother Evan, who was so small when he trudged off to the pit that his lunch bucket dragged the ground; he perished in an accident at age 14. So the history of labor in this country is our family history. It’s a story whose repercussions are still felt.

Labor Day started long ago, but the financial panic of 1893 was eerily similar to the current economic meltdown. Then, robber barons accumulated vast fortunes through speculative investments. Waves of bankruptcies ensued as gambles went bad. Banks went belly-up, wiping out the savings of folks who then couldn’t make their mortgage payments. With balance sheets plummeting, companies slashed payroll, leading to revolts like the one in Nanticoke and the Pullman strike of 1894, where federal troops were dispatched to smash the union. Facing re-election that year, President Cleveland declared a “Labor Day,” to mollify the workers whose dreams he’d destroyed. He lost. But it took years, not until FDR, before reforms addressed the boom-bust cycle that left so many in distress.

This brings us to now. Many New Deal regulations have been de-regulated and the gap between rich and poor has never been greater. True, most Americans consider themselves “middle-class,” not working class. But that’s because they’ve gone deeper into debt for that college degree and for homes their actual earnings no longer justify. Forced to borrow beyond their means, many defaulted on loans they couldn’t repay and, as in 1893, banks went bust while ordinary stiffs got evicted and saw nest eggs evaporate. But now as then, Goldman Sachs did all right, disbursing billions in bonuses. Perhaps the biggest difference between 2010 and a century ago is that instead of a Populist or Progressive movement, we have the Tea Party.

I believe in the dignity of labor. I’ve hauled cable and washed dishes; I’ve never felt anything demeaning in hard work. I was taught to be self-sufficient, but I’m well-educated enough to realize I’m not self-made. Whatever advantages I enjoy come from living in a land that other people helped build -- people who deserve a share of the riches they worked to create such as farm workers, child care providers, and nurse’s aides who do jobs that are absolutely necessary and ought to pay a living wage but don’t. They deserve more. We deserve more. And it’s about time we achieve it.

So in regard to that old song, “Which side are you on,” I’m not on the side of trickle down, but on the side of acting up. I’m not on the side of a rising tide lifts all boats, but on the side of a rising demand for justice.
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Kowalski is new interim minister at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Santa Fe.
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Copyright (C) 2010 by the New Mexico Editorial Forum 9/10

 

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Monday, December 14, 2009

States Should Have Flexibility to Develop Own Health Reform Plans

Posted by American Forum at 9:12 AM


NEW MEXICO EDITORIAL FORUM

By Max Bartlett and Jose Aguilar

One issue has generated little discussion during the heated health care reform debate: whether states should have the right to develop their own approaches to universal coverage.

The Health Security for New Mexicans Campaign wants to see language included in the national proposal that gives states flexibility to develop their own approaches to solving rising health care costs and growing numbers of uninsured.
The focus of current health care reform proposals is to create “insurance market exchanges.” These one-stop-shopping insurance exchanges must offer consumers -- primarily the uninsured -- choices of different insurance products, including some type of public option. A less than robust public option is in the proposal passed by the House of Representatives. The Senate is in the process of negotiating an alternative to the House version.

Unfortunately, the health care reform debate has skirted the issue of whether states can take a different path that reaches the same goals. States always have been laboratories for innovation. Women’s suffrage, civil rights, child labor and minimum-wage laws were developed in the states first and then became federal law. Why shouldn’t states be allowed to continue that role in health care reform?

If a state can develop an approach that is not based on the insurance market exchange model, an approach that still provides comprehensive health coverage for its residents and contains rising health care costs, why shouldn’t it be encouraged to do so?

The recently passed House bill contains no language enabling states to develop anything other than an insurance market exchange. The merged Senate bill now under consideration mandates that by 2014, states must set up an insurance market exchange and experiment with it for three years before requesting any waivers.

Why should states be forced to go through a long, expensive, complex and time-consuming process when they already may be working on approaches more appropriate to their circumstances?

In New Mexico, the Health Security Act offers a different solution from that based on an insurance market exchange. It is a “home-grown” solution that has earned enormous public support -- 146 diverse organizations are part of our coalition, and 32 New Mexico counties and municipalities have passed resolutions endorsing it.

The Health Security Act would enable New Mexico to set up its own health care plan that automatically covers most New Mexicans, provides comprehensive benefits and guarantees freedom of choice of doctor even across state lines.

Instead of creating a system of competing insurance plans, each with different provider networks, this proposal would shift the role of private insurance companies to provide supplementary coverage – as they do with the original Medicare program. Any individual, employer or group wishing to purchase additional coverage could do so. A non-governmental, geographically representative citizens’ board would be in charge of the plan.

Two separate studies have concluded that if such a health plan were established in New Mexico, health care costs would be reduced by hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars within five years.

Why is this so? Because this approach simplifies a very complex private insurance system with its hundreds of policies, different benefits, co-pays and deductibles, all of which affect administrative overhead of doctors, hospitals and clinics – and which, in turn, negatively affect health care costs.

In a state such as ours, with a small population, it makes economic sense for most residents to be covered under one health risk pool.

Coalitions in other states -- California, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Oregon, to name a few -- have been working on proposals that are not based on an insurance market exchange and are adapted to the particular needs of those states.

Acknowledging these developments, the National Conference of State Legislators recently passed a resolution containing a provision asking that states be allowed to create solutions that go beyond any federal requirements. New Mexico was counted as one of the resolution’s supporters.

In addition, New Mexico State Sen. Dede Feldman and others from the House and Senate sent a letter to our five-member congressional delegation, which included a request that states be given flexibility to develop their own comprehensive plans.

Health care reform should clearly encourage state experimentation. Aside from the need for state flexibility language in the national legislation, the Health Security for New Mexican Campaign believes states deciding to develop their own health plans also should have the right to access the same federal dollars as those states choosing to set up their own insurance market exchanges.

At this critical juncture, Congress needs to tackle this issue.

 

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Monday, November 9, 2009

A Tale of Two Cities

Posted by American Forum at 11:56 AM

NEW MEXICO EDITORIAL FORUM
By Rev. Dr. Holly Beaumont

As I follow the outrageous rumors and disturbing behavior surrounding health care reform I am reminded of an earlier health crisis in this country. The outbreak of the AIDS virus in the 1980s created similar behavior among those who listened to the fear-mongers exploiting the crisis to advance their political and ideological agendas.

One of the victims of that hysteria was a young boy from Kokomo, Indiana named Ryan White. He acquired the AIDS virus through a blood transfusion he received to treat his hemophilia. When his diagnosis was made public Ryan and his family were shunned, vilified and threatened. Classmates refused to attend the same school. Customers dropped his newspaper route. The White family fled their home in Kokomo after someone so filled with hate and fear fired a bullet through their living room window.

Young Ryan and his family moved to the town of Cicero, just 50 miles south of Kokomo. On his first day of school the principal, superintendent of schools, and a number of students greeted Ryan with outstretched hands. It was a powerful gesture of reason and compassion. The news swept the country and began to calm the hysteria.

What made the difference between these two communities that look the same in every other way? Instead of listening to rumors based on ignorance and fueled by fear, the people of Cicero turned to credible sources for reliable information on the AIDS virus, including the Centers for Disease Control and the New England Journal of Medicine. They took the responsibility to educate themselves. They learned the facts, and they realized that many of the rumors about the disease were false. By the time young Ryan arrived they were prepared to welcome him, rather than repeat the shameful mistakes of their neighbors to the north in Kokomo.

Twenty years later, we find ourselves in a similar situation with a similar opportunity. Will we allow profiteers, who will spend whatever it takes to protect their Golden Parachutes, manipulate us? Or will we seek out and listen to credible, reliable voices that have a proven record of serving rather than exploiting the people of this country?

Are you listening to Rush Limbaugh, who signed a new contract in 2008 worth $400 million? According to the LA Times, “Limbaugh's annual salary is more than the combined annual salaries of the four best paid news anchors on network television.” Do you believe Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who made the false statement at a recent town hall meeting that “You have every right to fear…a government-run plan to decide when to pull the plug on grandma?” Grassley accepts huge contributions from the very industries that are spending millions to shut down reasoned debate on health care reform to protect their obscene profits.

If you are searching for credible, reliable voices supporting health care reform, the list is long. I would refer you to Faithful Reform, the national interfaith coalition that includes the United Methodist Church, United Church of Christ, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Union for Reform Judaism, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, American Muslim Health Professionals and Buddhist Peace Fellowship. Other groups working for health care reform include the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Nursing, the Children’s Defense Fund, YWCA, NAACP, AARP and the AFL-CIO. I urge you to visit their web sites.

The polls show that over 70 percent of Americans recognize the need for health care reform and support a quality health care system that serves people rather than profits.

Health care reform is the most critical issue we face as a nation. If this democracy is going to survive and thrive each of us must take the responsibility to seek reasonable and reliable sources, learn the facts, and then let our voices be heard. The choice is ours. Are we Kokomo or Cicero?
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Beaumont is a legislative advocate for the New Mexico Conference of Churches.
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Copyright (C) 2009 by the American Forum. 11/09

 

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Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Nonprofits are Good for New Mexico

Posted by American Forum at 3:49 PM

NEW MEXICO EDITORIAL FORUM
By Ona Porter

Following the close of the 2008 legislative session, and in preparation for a special legislative session on health care, New Mexico Youth Organized (NMYO) and Southwest Organizing Project (SWOP) distributed mailers to the constituents of six legislators. The mailers informed constituents about how their legislators were voting on critical issues and provided information about the source of contributions their legislators were receiving from special interests. Believing this to be political campaign intervention, Secretary Mary Herrera, acting on the advice of Attorney General Gary King, ordered the nonprofits to register as political action committees (PACs). A lawsuit disputing the claim quickly followed.

Recently, Judge Judith Herrera issued an important federal court decision in this closely watched case. In her decision, Judge Herrera sided with decades of legal precedent, and the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Free speech is a value that all of us hold sacred. The implications of having nonprofits, whose primary purpose is not the election or defeat of candidates, register as PACs for simply speaking out about an issue are chilling. If nonprofits were forced to register as PACs, it would severely restrict the ability of thousands of organizations across New Mexico to serve their communities. Perhaps most importantly, it would leave critical voices unheard.

Most people are familiar with the services that nonprofit organizations provide to vulnerable people throughout our state. But the work of nonprofits often goes beyond service provision and extends to advocacy. If a family is homeless, it’s important to provide that family with shelter. At the same time, we must address the causes of homelessness if there is any hope for an America where decent affordable housing is available in all of our communities. That work is advocacy. Similarly, if someone contracts cancer due to exposure to second-hand smoke, providing that person with treatment and perhaps hospice care is essential. But getting to the root of the problem at a policy level will help save lives. That takes advocacy.

Another crucial component of nonprofit advocacy is accountability. Holding our public officials accountable to the needs of their constituents is a core function for nonprofit organizations. Stopping short of criticizing an elected official, simply because that official will stand for election at some point in the future, undermines the essence of our democratic process.

Our elected leaders should be working for all of us, vulnerable communities included. When they do not, nonprofits have a responsibility to point it out. Can you imagine a policy debate in which only corporate interests get to provide input? New Mexicans across the state would get the short end of the stick if they did not have nonprofits working to make sure their voices are heard and their interests accounted for.

Nonprofit organizations also meet with elected leaders to share the complex information, research and experience that is critical to public policy decisionmaking. Issues that affect our communities, like affordable housing, poverty, health care, and education are given greater attention because of the hard work of nonprofits. Absent that role effectively executed, communities that have a huge stake in the outcomes would lose a voice in the policy making process.

In a study of just 14 nonprofits in New Mexico that was completed by the National Committee For Responsible Philanthropy late last year, the researchers documented that the total dollar amount of benefits accruing to the groups’ constituencies and the broader public in the five-year period studied was more than $2.6 billion. Additionally, they found that for every $1 invested in the 14 groups for advocacy and organizing ($16.6 million total), the groups garnered more than $157 in benefits for New Mexico communities. Thus, the return on investment and economic stimulus of organizing and advocacy by nonprofits in New Mexico is inarguably significant to our state's wellbeing.

In a state where money and resources are scarce, it is absolutely critical that we not tie the hands of those who are working hard to build their communities. In addition to the hundreds of millions of dollars nonprofits bring to our state's economy, they provide critical services, empower communities, and advocate on behalf of those same communities in order to solve social and economic problems. Some elected officials continue to look for ways to silence nonprofits. This must stop. Instead, we hope those who have actively worked to undermine the work of New Mexico’s nonprofits will accept the clear reasoning in Judge Herrera’s legal decision, and acknowledge and support all of the good the nonprofit sector brings to our state.
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Porter is the executive director for Community Action New Mexico.
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Copyright © 2009 by the New Mexico Editorial Forum. 10/09

 

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Friday, October 23, 2009

PBS program asks doctors about health care reform

Posted by American Forum at 12:05 PM

KRWG - Newsmakers in Las Cruces, New Mexico recently aired a program about the multitudes of doctors that are speaking out about healthcare reform. They interviewed New Mexico Editorial Forum author Dr. Sandra Penn, who recently penned an op-ed "Stop Negotiating Away the Public Health Insurance Model" about her views that Congress is letting real reform slip away. You can see her interview for yourself, which occurs at the 5 minute mark.

 

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