Reform Watch: Healthcare, Energy, Finance, Immigration & Gay Rights

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20 October 2009 :: J.E. Robertson

Healthcare reform

Comprehensive healthcare reform legislation is pending in both houses of Congress, and Speaker Pelosi and Senate majority leader Reid have pledged to bring the legislation to a vote this month. There is a massive spending campaign underway to derail the reforms and enable the insurance industry to maintain a status quo in which its pricing mechanisms determine medical outcomes and dominate all other strategic planning within the system.

By next week, it’s expected $400 million will have been spent by insurers and their lobby to erode support for the reforms. A significant portion of that money, in fact nearly the entire amount, has been spent to spread distortions and false claims, or to predict a fictional “socialist takeover” of the health industry and the United States generally.

Insurers’ attacks on the Senate finance committee’s health reform proposal, the only one of 5 that did not include a public option for low-cost full-coverage health insurance —attacks which included a pledge to raise premiums by 40% over just a few years—, have moved some moderate senators toward support for the public option, now seen as more necessary to effect meaningful competitive cost reductions.

Energy & emissions reform

Congress has spent a significant amount of time this year debating language that will go into a major climate bill. In an historic vote, the House of Representatives passed its version, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, in June, by a narrow 219 to 212 margin. That bill would require that the nation derive at least 15% of its overall electricity consumption from renewable resources by 2020.

Wind and solar power have seen a boom in private and public investment in 2009. $8 billion has been set aside for automakers developing new battery technologies for electric vehicles (EV), and Texas is poised to reach 50,000 megawatts of wind-generating capacity when current projects are built and operational. New Jersey’s aggressive funding for solar panels makes it the second state nationwide in solar generating capacity.

While the Waxman-Markey bill in the House aims to achieve 17% reductions from 2005 levels by 2020, with an 80% reduction by 2050, the Senate’s Boxer-Kerry bill calls for a 20% reduction below 2005 levels by 2020. These targets are weak, given the estimated required reductions given by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to prevent a 2°C rise above preindustrial levels —40% emissions reduction below 1990 levels by 2020—, but the Senate bill would give the EPA expanded authority to regulate emissions.

Financial regulatory reform

There is a renewed push for major financial regulatory reforms, even as prosecutors begin looking into what could be a rash of persistent, systematic insider trading at some hedge funds. Financial fraud investigators in the FBI and the SEC say they need more funding and larger regular staffs to be able to adequately police the most complex and pervasive financial crimes.

The Federal Reserve Bank has been given expanded authority to lend to businesses directly in an effort to both restore confidence in the credit system and establish standards for lending that commercial lenders will have to follow. The Fed also seeks expanded oversight powers that would allow it to track how financial institutions handle and back-up certain types of investments.

The proposed financial regulatory reforms, at the urging of Pres. Barack Obama, will establish a Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA), designed to ensure consumers are not subjected to misleading or even predatory lending practices. This watchdog agency is considered the key to effective financial regulatory reform and a primary means of guaranteeing that financial crimes against ordinary people will be caught or prevented.

Immigration reform

Immigration reform legislation will likely not come until next year, as the emotional issue of undocumented immigrants, which involves tax policy, basic human rights, and the human-trafficking cartels, cannot be permitted to interfere with the process of comprehensive healthcare reform. Republican opponents of both have consistently tried to link them as part of a reckless plan to transfer the nation’s wealth to “illegal aliens”.

But a national day of action and awareness on immigration reform has renewed the political pressure to move forward. Immigration reform actually impacts other major reform plans, because undocumented workers who are unable to earn money through the official economy are also unable to register for income and social security taxes, or acquire bank accounts, establish reliable addresses, set up savings or investment plans of any kind or buy health insurance.

Each of these disadvantages for the individual worker may cost the overall economy in opportunity costs — wealth not generated, businesses not started, health issues untreated, which can ultimately cost far more to treat. From an economic standpoint, it is not clear that anything less than regularizing the status of undocumented but employed immigrants would help close important revenue gaps for federal spending.

Gay rights reform

Just over a week ago, a coalition of major gay rights groups, including many heterosexuals opposed to anti-gay discrimination, marched on Washington. Upwards of 200,000 people are reported to have participated in the march, making it the single largest gathering on the National Mall since the 2 million who attended Pres. Obama’s inauguration in January.

They are demanding equal civil marriage rights for same-sex couples, i.e. not “separate but equal” but fully equal, an end to the military’s discriminatory “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, and more robust hate-crimes protection against violence based on sexual orientation. There is serious opposition among Republicans even to that hate-crimes legislation, with House minority leader Boehner (R-OH) saying it would criminalize “what people might be thinking” when they commit acts of violence against gay Americans.

But Pres. Obama has pledged he will reverse the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and seeks equal Constitutional protections against discrimination for gays. Major reforms are not likely until sometime in 2010 or after the 2010 elections, and the preferred course for legalization of same-sex marriage is to leave the decision to the states, either their legislatures or their court systems. The matter has not yet been defined by any US Supreme Court case.