Category Archives: MA Politics

For multiple reasons, Mike Capuano is my favorite Congressman

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Here’s one of the little reasons I like him (from his weekly e-newsletter received yesterday – emphasis mine):

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) just announced that it would consider allowing cell phone use during flights. The FCC will review the matter at its December 12th meeting. I have concerns about this. If cell phone use is allowed, will airlines then begin charging passengers, either to sit in cell phone free rows or in rows that allow calls? An airplane is a confined space with no ability to move into another compartment or switch seats if someone is talking loudly and at length. Unlike trains, airlines cannot offer “quiet cabins”. We’ve all been in the presence of someone who is not considerate of others when engaging in conversation on a cell phone. That situation is significantly more challenging in a confined space. No one wants to be stuck sitting next to someone talking loudly on their phone for an hour or more when they have nowhere to go for some quiet.I will be expressing my concerns to the FCC.  

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The future of the Democratic party

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Rep. Ed Markey defeated Gabriel Gomez in yesterday’s special election to fill the Senate seat vacated by John Kerry.  I voted for Markey.  (Big surprise, I know.)  I did so without enthusiasm.  Based on his resume and his rhetoric I feel that I should be more enthusiastic but…  no.   I think this piece by Jim Sullivan on boston.com captures Markey pretty well.  An excerpt:

For the Malden Democrat, who has carved out a profile as a policy wonk during his 37 years in the House, there are opportunities and warning signs. In policy areas where major debate is expected in the coming years, such as telecommunications and energy, Markey has distinguished himself as a go-to member in the House, a role he could reprise in the Senate. Congress will probably grapple with how to distribute broadband spectrum and how to manage the nation’s burgeoning natural gas and clean energy industries.

“There may be some opportunities to legislate there and create supermajorities,” said Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, who praised as “masterful” Markey’s work on House passage of cap-and-trade legislation.

That’s maybe the origin of my lack of enthusiasm in a nutshell.  “Masterful work on cap-and-trade legislation.”  Is that not an oxymoron?  Continue reading →

Please support Gov. Patrick’s Transportation Plan

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Long story short:  Gov. Patrick has proposed a 10 year Transportation Plan.  It’s a very good plan – lots of long overdue infrastructure investment and the funding necessary to support a quality public transportation system:

The MBTA would run until 2 a.m. on weekends, replacements for 1960s and ’70s subway cars would be assembled in Massachusetts production plants, and passenger trains would run regularly to Springfield and the Berkshires, if the Patrick administration wins support for the transportation plan the governor unveiled this week…

Administration officials have taken pains to stress that most of the money would go to badly needed maintenance and to clear debt and annual deficits that have bogged down the transportation system for years.

Summary of the plan can be found here.  Details are here.  Unfortunately, it has opposition.

What’s the issue?  Gov. Patrick’s plan would run $1.9B next year.  There’s an alternative plan supported by Speaker Deleo.  Funding for that plan is nominally $500M.  (Although if you read below, $300M may be closer to the mark.)  This is a case of “You get what you pay for.”  Gov. Patrick has threatened to veto DeLeo’s plan but whether DeLeo can round up enough votes to override Patrick’s veto remains to be seen.

Why additional revenues are needed and what they’ll be used for:

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What can you do to help get the Patrick plan passed?

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“Handing out health insurance cards is a less challenging task than bringing down the price of health-care services.”

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I’ve read a number of Sarah Kliff’s pieces on health care economics and legislation over at Wonkblog in recent weeks.  Good columns.  (The title of this post is taken from one of them.)  She recognizes that it’s not sufficient to pass legislation and hope for the best.  If health care costs need to be brought down then you need to have a plan for reducing them.  For example, several weeks ago she wrote about Oregon’s plan to reduce health care cost growth.  It sounds like Oregon has a plausible plan.  If it succeeds – great.  If not, then there will be lessons learned moving forward.  Whether or not it succeeds, it’s a serious effort to achieve necessary ends.  There needs to more of that the federal, state, and local levels.  With that in mind, here’s Ms. Kliff on health care spending MA:

Danger ahead? Massachusetts health costs are rising – fast.  by Sarah Kliff (emphasis mine):

Massachusetts has been at the forefront of experimenting with new ways to keep health-care spending down after decades of sharp increases. Last year, it passed a law that put health costs under a global budget: They cannot grow faster than the rest of the Bay State economy.

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Public Housing Authorities

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Boston Globe, Governor Patrick plans ambitious overhaul of state’s troubled public housing:

Governor Deval Patrick on Thursday will propose eliminating the state’s troubled patchwork of 240 public housing authorities and replacing them with six regional agencies in an effort to eliminate waste and corruption from the housing program for low-income and elderly people, state officials say.

Points to Gov. Patrick for this ‘good government’ initiative.  It is long overdue – “long” as in “decades”.  The Globe article details some of the more egregious local mismanagement and corruption cases.

 

ACA Implementation Issues

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UC-Berkeley economist Brad DeLong asks the a tough question re ACA implementation:

I understand that [Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services] has absolutely no desire to encourage more cream-skimming, and every desire and internal incentive to make sure that those who treat more difficult patient populations are not financially penalized by doing so.

I understand that as a country we are spending twice as much as western European countries while lagging 2 years behind them in life expectancy and 20% behind them in treatment coverage. I understand that the hope is that it will be cheaper and quicker to treat your 32 million new Medicaid and exchange-based insured now that they are showing up regularly with insurance rather than showing up in severe crisis only.

But Massachusetts has been walking down this exchange-and-public-program-expansion road for six years now, since Mitt Romney signed RomneyCare. Massachusetts has been vacuuming up doctors and nurses from Costa Rica and elsewhere and still has been finding that the cost of treating your state population is higher when 97% are insured than it was when 88% were insured. And there aren’t enough loose doctors and nurses in the rest of the world for the ACA to vacuum up enough of them to meet the needs of not 1 state but 50 states.

The investments in medical infrastructure and workforce–less than $30 billion for 32 million newly insured, less than $1000 for newly insured–seem an order of magnitude low.

What is your guess as to what will happen if the ACA works for access, works for quality, works for coverage–but the extra health-care workforce needed isn’t there, and the lines start to get longer?

A few thoughts related to Brad’s question:
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