Keith_Hays's blog

State backlog takes toll on Health Alliance rating Wed, 02/10/2010 - 9:00am | Debra Pressey

URBANA – An executive of Health Alliance Medical Plans says the downgraded financial outlook given to the company this week by credit rating firm A.M. Best is based on Illinois' financial crisis. A large chunk of Urbana-based Health Alliance's business is providing health coverage for some 78,000 state employees and their dependents, and Illinois is $132 million behind in paying the premiums for those Health Alliance members, according to the insurer's Chief Financial Officer Gordon Salm. Salm said the outstanding debt is for a period between September and December when the state stopped paying. The state resumed monthly payments to Health Alliance in mid-December, he said, but has never caught up on the gap. "They're paying monthly, but they're not catching up," he said. A.M. Best this week revised its financial outlook from "stable" to "negative" for Health Alliance, but also affirmed the B++ and B+ (both good) financial strength ratings of Health Alliance and its affiliate Health Alliance-Midwest Inc. Best also affirmed "bbb" (good) and "bbb-" ratings for the company's credit ratings.

The rest of the story

The State of Illinois deducts the cost of Health Alliance HMO coverage from the employees' paychecks. It isn't the State's money that it is withholding from Health Alliance it is the employees' money. most of it deducted to cover the employee's dependents. When the state reneges on its part of the bargain and uses that money to cover other obligations it is at best a forced interest free loan from the employees to the State of Illinois and at worst an outright embezzlement!

I graduated from Uni High in 1956. Today's News-Gazette carries an article concerning the Uni students fundraising efforts for Haiti relief. The 300 students were challenged to contribute a dollar apiece to relieve the suffering in the stricken Caribbean country, They have gone far beyond that. They have raised more than $12,000.00 to contribute to the Red Cross for Haiti relief efforts. That is an awesome achievement.

I hope that the rest of the community will follow their example and encourage their sense of involvement.

I was thinking about the contrast between my two grandmothers’ kitchens at breakfast time. Grandmother Heath was up before dawn. She stoked up the fire in her cook stove with cobs and a chock of hickory and set the percolator on the back burner. It would burble and sing and the aroma of strong coffee would fill her kitchen and waft through the house calling the family to breakfast. Each perc re-circulated and strengthened the brew. Grandmother Heath’s breakfasts fueled you for the days’ work. The Heaths were farmers and Democrats with a big Capital D.

My Grandmother Hays had a new, modern Dripolator; the forerunner of Mr. Coffee. She would rise at a more convenient hour, usually after her husband had gone down to switch on the electric range and heat the water on the back burner. Grandmother would do her hair, and descend in time to fill the top receptacle of her coffee maker from the kettle. The smell it created as it trickled down through the grounds was as timid and weak as the uniformly insipid brew that it produced. Grandmother Hays’ breakfasts barely assuaged the pangs of morning hunger. The Hays were town dwelling people of business and Republican with an emphasized R.

It struck me that their contrasting approaches to breakfast is much like the contrasting approaches to economic crisis of our two political parties. One produces a barely colored hot beverage, the other a potent brew with strength and the power to lead you to the breakfast table. It is time for breakfast in the American economy.

It is time to advance a Democratic economic stimulus package with a tax cut as its centerpiece but a tax cut to benefit the people who need it most in a faltering economy. Wage earners or self-employed people making $70,000 or less a year each pay the first 15% of each dollar they earn to the Federal government in payroll taxes. Yes, I know that on paper one half of that amount is assessed against the employer, but the economic effect is the same as if the entire tax were deducted from the employees pay. The payroll tax funds Social Security, SSI and Medicare and, when “loaned” to the Federal treasury it funds the operations of government. Rents, royalties, dividends and interest or capital gains income do not bear this tax nor is it assessed against any wage, salary or self-employment income above the $70,000.00 cutoff.

Workers who do not earn enough to incur the income tax still bear this 15% burden, Wage earners in the lowest income tax bracket bear a real tax burden of 29%. A Democratic economic stimulus package should include a plan to abolish the $70,000.00 Social Security Tax cap on earned income, the $125,000.00 cap on Medicare Taxes and impose the tax equally on all income while cutting the rate in half. It is a policy of tax reform rather than a naked rate cut and one that would benefit those who need relief most, wage earners and small business while funding the extension of Medicare to cover prescription drugs.

A Democratic economic stimulus package should be designed to increase purchasing power and strength at the bottom from which it will percolate up rather than pouring money in at the top to trickle down where it will be absorbed by layer after layer leaving the foundation of the economic structure resting on dry and unstable sand. It is time to come to breakfast.

Originally published on The Ming Report in 2002

I am one of those people who read the whole newspaper, page by page and column by column. Some of the obscure bits of information seem to get stuck in a memory cell and tickle for some time after reading them. That was the case with a paragraph informing the reader that a 19 year old local girl was being deployed to an airbase in the Middle East where she would be supporting “Operations Iraqi and Enduring Freedom.” It was a short paragraph, taken from a DOD press release announcing her name, rank, and the small town where her parents lived and telling us that we were sending her into harm’s way. It has haunted me since I read it.

In October 2001 I was one of those Liberals who thought that President Bush was doing the right thing sending the Marines into Afghanistan after Bin Laden – Dead or Alive. Justice and our national self respect demanded nothing less. With that support came concerns written on the pages of history. Since Alexander led his Macedonians east of Persia to gave his name to Kandahar Afghanistan has been a graveyard of empire. Armies came to take control, bleed, and limp back home again. Britain and Imperial Russia came to play their innings of the Great Game and lost and lost again. The Soviets came and, after a decade of bleeding from a thousand cuts inflicted by a ragged rabble in arms, the Russian Bear retreated to curl up in its den to die. Into that graveyard of armies we were sending the Marines. We prayed and hoped for a swift conclusion.

Now eight years have passed. Eight years of IED along the roads. Eight years of bleeding from a thousand cuts and we are sending a young lady off to war. Eight years – and our Republican Congressman has decided that he can no longer support the war his President commenced. I have to wonder if we are fighting Yesterday’s War when Tomorrow’s Enemy is elsewhere.

Al Qaeda has its safe haven – but it is not in Afghanistan. It lies on either side of the Gulf of Aden, in Yemen and Somalia. It is there and on the seas between that the next Jihadi battles will be fought. Afghanistan will recede into barely remembered history and Kipling’s words. Let the American Empire not be buried there.

A young man is dead. The shot that killed him was fired by Champaign Police Officer Daniel W. Norbits while Champaign Police Chief Robert T. Finney grappled with another young man. Norbits was responding to a Burglary in Progress dispatch. Finney was the first officer on the scene. Norbits was the second. As Norbits reached the southeast corner of the residence he had no view of the rear of the house. He saw only Chief Finney at the northeast corner of the property. Norbits told investigators that he saw Finney draw his gun and heard him shout, “Stop or I will shoot you!” Norbits could not see what it was to which the Chief of Police was responding. He responded by drawing his own weapon.

When investigators asked him 5 days later what was going through his mind at the time the shot was fired, Officer Norbits said, “[Y}ou’ve got your Chief of Police standing there saying, ‘don’t move or I’ll shoot you’ and in my mind he’s seeing something that is, you know, bringing him to that level. Um, we didn’t know if there was other people in the house. I’m worried, is there somebody in there with a gun who’s gonna, who’s gonna come out. Um, and the fact that they simply weren’t complying, I mean, yes, all of those factors definitely played into what happened.”

Illinois Law is specific as to when and under what circumstances a police officer is justified in the use deadly force. In the statements they gave to investigators neither Chief Finney nor Officer Norbits described any facts that would lead them to the belief that the use of a firearm was legally justified. Circumstances that would justify the use of deadly force were not present when Chief Finney drew his weapon and threatened to shoot and not when Officer Norbits fired the shot that killed Kiwane Carrington.

Nothing in Officer Norbits statement or revealed in the investigation leads to a conclusion that the discharge of his weapon was accidental. Norbits does not claim that it was. Rather he claims that he cannot remember firing his gun. The Illinois State Crime lab found that the weapon was in proper operating condition – that it could not be discharged without squeezing the trigger. That Norbits cannot remember doing so is not evidence that the discharge was accidental.
When Chief Finney drew his weapon and threatened to use deadly force he set in motion the series of events that resulted in the death of the young man. Officer Norbits says that it “definitely played into what happened”. That statement suggests strongly that in the confrontation that followed his motivation was guided by the Chief's threat to use deadly force coupled with that which the officer did not and could not know.

I hope that the Champaign Police Department’s promised revision of its policy on the use of force will decisively address the circumstances on which a police officer’s firearm may be deployed and the use of deadly force may be threatened.

Norbits Statement
Finney Statement
Firearms Lab Report

Perhaps it is a less weighty subject than is usual but the first day of December is upon us and Christmas is just over the horizon. In 1843 Charles Dickens wrote his classic Christmas Tale creating Ebeneezer Scrooge and his ghosts. In December 2007 Parkland College Theatre gave new life to the story with an adaptation for the stage by Nick Schneider with music by Tim Schermer. The show has become a Christmas tradition for Parkland with Nick playing Scrooge and Tim directing the music. This years version opens December 4th with a cast of 45 local actors, a blend of veterans of the first two productions and new comers to the troupe.

Here is a sample of what you will see as the story unwinds:

From this morning's News-Gazette:

Among the concerns were policy language regarding Tasers and the use of deadly force involving people who are fleeing or escaping police.

The police department will work on the changes and present them to the city manager and city attorney for review.

Police to Revise Policy on Use of Deadly Force

Today is the 30th day since Kiwane Carrington died. We know little more of the incident that took his life than we knew 30 days ago. We know that the authorities announced that the investigation into his death would be handled by police agencies other than the Champaign Police Department headed up by the Illinois State Police. We know we were told that we should not speculate as to the actions of the police officer who fired the shot that killed him. We were told to wait patiently while the facts were established. Meanwhile here and in letters to the editor others have been speculating freely as to possible acts of Kiwane Carrington that might tend to justify the officer's use of deadly force.

It seemed a simple transaction attended with no great mystery. The identity of the shooter is known. That much has been made public. The shooter is on administrative leave, not detained or held to bond and drawing his full paycheck. Kiwane's body has been examined and we were told he was shot in the chest. Not one fact has been released that would offer a justification for the use of deadly force under Illinois law.

Thirty days have passed and we have been patient.

At last evening's Champaign City Council meeting the News-Gazette reports:

Others called for repeal of a use-of-force policy clause that reportedly allows use of deadly force, if necessary, to prevent escape or resistance.

"Or if you are a young person, resistance can equal death," Chynoweth said.
Read the article

If the use of force policy of the Champaign Police Department provides for the use of deadly force, if necessary, to prevent escape or resistance, as Ms. Chynoweth seems to believe, then that policy is contrary to Illinois Law. A peace officer's use of force in making an arrest is regulated by Section 7-5 of the Illinois Criminal Code. 720 ILCS 5/7-5. A police officer is justified in the use of deadly force to prevent resistance and escape ONLY if he reasonably believes "The person to be arrested has committed or attempted a forceible felony which involves the infliction or threatened infliction of great bodily harm or is attempting to escape by the use of a deadly weapon, or otherwise indicates that he will endanger human life or inflict great bodily harm unless arrested without delay."

No policy adopted by the Champaign Police Department can override Illinois statute. If it is indeed the policy of the Department that an officer may use deadly force in the manner suggested by the News-Gazette article and Ms. Chynoweth then any officer who follows that policy and uses deadly force except under the restrictive circumstances provided by the statute is subject to criminal prosecution.

The policy was apparently revised October 1, 2009. Ms. Chynoweth apparently had access to a copy and has misinterpreted it. The policy, as published by UCIMC, does refer to and use the language of the statute. Unfortunately lawyers often use language in a manner that they understand but is subject to misinterpretation by non-lawyers. That seems to have been the case here and that misinterpretation needs to be addressed. The policy should be re-written stressing the limitations on the use of deadly force instead of merely quoting the statute.

In announcing his plan for Health Care Reform the President called it “A sweeping new program”. The President described his plan as “One that builds on the strengths of the present system, and one that does not destroy these strengths. One based on partnership, not paternalism.” His plan mandated employer furnished health insurance; for federal subsidized cost for both employers and employees who could not afford it; federally supported rural health clinics; all administered by a network of state agencies charged with setting industry standards; guaranteeing basic insurance coverage and to coordinate insurance coverage for self employed Americans.

The year was 1971 and the President was Richard M. Nixon. He called his plan the National Health Insurance Partnership Act. Senator Kennedy opposed it saying that the President's plan, "It's really a partnership between the administration and insurance companies. It's not a partnership between patients and doctors of this nation." With the re-election campaign over and when no bill reached his desk Nixon tried again. He sent a message to Congress on February 6, 1974 proposing comprehensive health insurance reform. Nixon's 1974 Plan For Health Reform In His Own Words.

President Nixon's health care initiatives seem strikingly similar to those offered by the Obama Administration. Senator Ted Kennedy told a Boston Globe interviewer this spring that he regretted no having supported Nixon's health care proposals saying "We should have jumped on that." Nearly 40 years later the Republicans in Congress, egged on by the conservative echo-chamber, asks, "What is the rush?".

The fact is the astounding increase in the cost of health care insurance coverage described by President Nixon in his 1974 message to Congress has continued unabated and the number of Americans without coverage has increased incrementally. The time for comprehensive reform of the health insurance industry is now. America cannot afford to wait another 40 years!

I find that while I can initiate a thread in my own Blog I am denied access when I attempt to respond to Toldja So in the thread I initiated.

I don't have your e-mail address so I can't address this question privately.

For reasons known only to the Illini Pundit Gods I am again denied access to respond to posts in other threads. I am confident that IP is not censoring my contributions but I am forced to again re-post here Toldja So's contribution of this morning.

On September 10th, 2009 at 05:44 AM, Toldja So (not verified) said:
one who hopes t... said: he's gotten precious little on the strength of his father's or his mother's names (as opposed to Bush II), he's punched the clock and got married to a nice girl and has two daughters
What in this man's history or character is so threatening that you don't want your children exposed to him?

Ok, now you've got me started and I could go on all day answering the question you posed, but I think the point has been made on "What is in this man's history..."

Madam,

You have charged that President Barack Hussein Obama has intentionally hidden "College records, thesis, admissions, submissions to college newspapers, application to the Illinois State Bar, medical records, passports, adoption papers, application to the courts for a legal name change". You allege that these items and others have been "sealed". What evidence have you that an "application to the courts for a legal name change" ever indeed existed, much less that it has been hidden or "sealed"? What evidence have you that "adoption papers" with respect to Barack Hussein Obama ever indeed existed, much less that it has been hidden or "sealed"? What evidence have you that medical records or passports have been hidden or sealed? What evidence have you that President Obama's application for admission to the Illinois State Bar has been hidden or sealed? What evidence have you that "College records, thesis, admissions, submissions to college newspapers" of President Obama have been hidden or sealed? If you have no evidence then upon what whose claims do you base your list that goes on and on and on?

When and where did you personally hear him on the campaign trail make the statement, "I was raised by my mother, so I am Christian."?

I recognize, Madam, that you will probably choose not to answer these questions. You made the charges implicitly alleging that these "hidden" items contain material detrimental or embarrassing to the President. Having made those charges it is incumbent upon you to support them with either evidence or citations to the authorities upon which you base those statements.

For reasons I do not understand I am denied access to the existing threads.

I am therefore posting TOLJA's comment on the original How Dare the President,,, thread so that I can respond:

On September 8th, 2009 at 06:47 AM, Toldja So (not verified) said:
Anon and Keith, still no substantial rebuttal. If you feel my 4:01p post contained anything untrue address it. PR, from what I read in reports from across the country, the parents primary concern was the address be optional due to the self promotional nature in the "classroom aids" distributed a week prior and lack of information on exactly what was going to be said.

I do agree it is now a non-issue. But I do wonder who is advising the administration on what looks to be a series of "mis-steps" and what are they thinking? Are they really that out of touch with the people or do they just not care?

It may come as a surprise to you to learn that when President George H. W. Bush spoke to the school children in 1991 his Secretary of Education, Lamar Alexander, sent a similar mailing to school adminiatrators across the country urging that students watch the speech.

On November 14, 1988 President Ronald Reagan addressed middle school students, answered their questions, and the recorded video was later played in schools across the nation. On Tuesday September 8, 2009 President Barack Obama will make an address to middle school students with the message that they should stay in school, work hard, and take responsibility for their own educational progress. All over the country the wingnut blogasphere and talk show demagogs have fomented a campaign to silence the President claiming that he was intending to "indoctrinate the children"; to recruit them into "Obama's Army"

Unlike the speech planned for this President, Ronald Reagan speech was overtly political. Here is what he said.

In response to the wingnut campaign many school district administrators have knuckled under and instructed teachers not to let their students listen to the president.

In the summer of 2002 writer Ron Suskind met with a senior adviser in the Bush White House. The unnamed senior advisor, probably Karl Rove, said that guys like Suskind were part of “the reality based community”. The senior advisor said that people like him believed that “solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." According to the aide the world doesn’t work that way anymore. “We create our own reality and while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out.”
It was a prophetic remark. For the next six years the Bush administration created its own “realities” based firmly on the proposition that reality was created not by facts but by articles of political faith. The Administration had faith that it had won the war in Afghanistan – something that had eluded invaders from Alexander the Great to Imperial Britain to Communist Russia – and all that was left was to mop up. The Administration had faith that the War in Iraq was a walk in the park that would pay for itself. The Administration had faith that it could wage two wars and maintain the level of domestic spending while drastically cutting income taxes on the haves and have mores and never have to pay the piper for the dance. That was, they thought, the reality that they created out of whole cloth.

To be fair to President Bush and his advisors the ideas they espoused were not new. The proposition that in the face of massive deficits we could spend more while taxing less was the center piece of the Reagan Revolution – the proposition that George H. W. Bush so aptly called “Voodoo Economics”. That new reality based on political faith and not facts brought us the recession, a bursting real estate bubble, and the home loan banking bailout that brought Bill Clinton to the White House. When George W. Bush continued to base policy on political faith rather than troublesome facts America experienced the same result – recession; bursting of the real estate bubble; and the continuing collapse of the banking system.
In the face of facts conservative Republicans refuse to let go of the discredited policies of faith that have twice in thirty years brought us to the same economic nadir. They are still convinced that they can ignore facts and create a new reality that vindicates their refusal to see things as they are. Nowhere is that more evident than in the debate over reforming the system by which we pay for health care. A recent poll demonstrates that unreasoning belief overwhelms any judicious examination of reality.

61 percent of Republicans believe that House Bill 3200, the Health Insurance Reform Bill would allow the use of taxpayer dollars for abortions. The bill does not change the long standing statutory ban on the use of federal tax dollars to pay for abortions. That is the reality but reality is not of interest for it is the belief that counts. They believe that the bill would spend money on abortions so it must be so.

70 percent of Republicans believe that House Bill 3200, the Health Insurance Reform Bill would allow the government to make decisions about when to stop providing medical care to the elderly. That there is nothing in the bill that would permit any government agency to determine what care an elderly patient should receive does not dissuade them from that firmly held belief. It does provide that if a patient wants to consult with a doctor about end of life treatment options; living wills; advance treatment directives; and durable powers of attorney for health care then the patient’s health care insurance must cover the expense. No one will decide when to pull the plug on Grandma except Grandma or the surrogate she appointed to make that decision in the event that she can’t.

76 percent of Republicans believe that House Bill 3200 will lead to a government takeover of the health care system. The reality is that the bill doesn’t affect the health care delivery system at all. It does nothing to change the relationship of patients with their doctors, hospitals or other health care providers. What it does do is to reform and regulate the way that the health insurance industry does business in America.

Town meetings called to facilitate rational discussion of the facts deteriorate into scenes more comparable to the irrational fervor of a Pentecostal camp meeting. Shouted slogans of mistaken belief drown out reasonable consideration of solutions to the crisis in access to medical care with which the nation is confronted. The true believers come armed citing the 2nd Amendment in an unspoken but vivid threat of insurrection while they call for the fertilization of the Tree of Liberty by this generation. It is to this depth that political discourse had descended in America. In such an atmosphere the very life of freedom is at hazard.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Last week the City of Champaign properly decided that it was prevented by the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution from making a financial contribution to the ministry of Restoration Urban Ministry, a church organization that has maintained a program and shelter for homeless and distressed citizens in a former hotel on Champaign’s Northwest side. The program has always been on the edge of financial disaster. An unpaid power bill and the lack of funds to catch it up threatened to close the facility. It turned to the City Council to ask for help. Public funding of religious activities has been held to violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause and the Restoration Ministries program required residents to participate in religious instruction and functions. The Council properly refused to provide funds. Most controversies under the First Amendment involve the use of public money for religious purposes banned by the Establishment Clause.

But there is more to the religious freedom provisions of the First Amendment Government may not interfere unnecessarily with the exercise of religious freedom. This week Father Tom Royer wrote to the mayor and city council to advise that St. Mary’s Catholic Church would host the Safe Haven tent community on Church property for a period of thirty days. "God calls each of us to shelter our neighbors, for in doing so we are sheltering God.", Royer said in his letter.
The City’s reaction was predictable. Kevin Phillips, the City’s Zoning administrator announced that tent cities are in violation of the city's zoning ordinance, and that the city would take enforcement action against St. Mary’s. The conflict between the Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment and City efforts to prevent St. Mary’s fulfilling its religious obligation to shelter the homeless set the stage for the next act in the continuing saga of Safe Haven.

Statement on the Current Health Care Debate

We must step up and engage in this most crucial debate. Nationalizing our health care system is a point of no return for government interference in the lives of its citizens. If we go down this path, there will be no turning back. Ronald Reagan once wrote, “Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.” Let’s stop and think and make our voices heard before it’s too late.

- Sarah Palin

Perhaps the ex-governor of Alaska should heed her own plea to the media and stop making things up. America’s most famous Quitter demonstrates again her infinite capacity for confabulation much in evidence during her campaign for the Vice-Presidency. When asked what Ms. Palin was referring to when she made the “death panel” claim her spokesperson, Meghan Stapleton referred the press to HR3200 p. 425 see 'Advance Care Planning Consultation'."

The bill at page 425 does mandate coverage for an Advance Care Planning Consultation between a patient and a medical professional every five years in which the patient is advised as to the mechanisms by which the patient can control medical choices to include an “explanation by the practitioner of advance care planning, including key questions and considerations, important steps, and suggested people to talk to,” an “explanation by the practitioner of advance directives, including living wills and durable powers of attorney, and their uses,” and an “explanation by the practitioner of the role and responsibilities of a health care proxy.”

Transmogrifying an advance planning consultation into a “Death Panel” is more than political hyperbole. It is either evidence of her abysmal ignorance or of her willingness to engage in outright deception.

See Cartoons by Cartoon by Mike Lane - Courtesy of Politicalcartoons.com - Email this Cartoon

Well, the courageous No Name has invited me to leave. My offense is apparently that I express an opinion contrary to his too often and with too much vigor. He invites me to find my own place where I no one disagrees with me, no one expresses a contrary opinion on any subject, where all is an heterogenious oleo of bland agreement.

What a sterile environment he would assign me to. I would not wish that for even the courageous No Name who would send me there.

I shan't be leaving any time soon.

3 Score + 10

Keith Hays