Sponsor Sue Schafer, D-Wheat Ridge, said that the bill would simply “level the playing field for men and women,” a position backed by the research that went into writing the bill and accepted by the majority of Colorado lawmakers, even in the heated partisan climate that has marked the legislative session this year.

Swalm, who is an insurance broker, sounded a note like a last man on the barricades.

“Members let me tell you why this is not the time to equalize the situation by raising premiums for young men, particularly because of the recession. This fall there was an article in the Wall Street Journal that talked about the jobless gender gap…” Men are suffering higher rates of unemployment than are women, he said. “So here we are raising rates for men when they have been so disproportionately impacted by this economic downturn!”

Schafer said that the National Council of State Legislatures reported that where similar bills had passed in other states there had been no significant increase on premiums for men.

“In fact men stepped up and said we should pay our fair share,” Schafer said. “Through the life span of men and women the premiums equal out. So the bills purpose is to level the playing field. Many male constituents have called me and said this is the right thing to do. The insurance industry has said this is the right thing to do… I do not believe that there will be any unreasonable rate increase on men.”

HB 1008 prohibits insurers in the state from discriminating on the basis of gender in the individual insurance market, where rates can vary dramatically between men and women.

The bill has come a long way. Last summer, as a state health insurance task force examined the issue of gender discrimination, the insurance industry lobbied against any proposed bill that would attack the gender-based ratings differences. State Sen. Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora, told the Colorado Independent that lobbyists “met with lawmakers and were able to convince a handful that the rate discrimination was justified and that its removal would drive up men’s rates.”

The Health Care Task Force, she said, then heard from national experts debunking both myths. Schafer concurred.

“At our hearings, the insurance industry provided no justifiable data or reason for their charging women from 9 percent to 50 percent more for the same policy. Even men who smoke are charged less than women who do not smoke. Just being female is considered a pre-existing condition.”

Today, members of the legislature told personal stories in favor of the bill. Rep. Ed Vigil, D-San Louis Valley, said that, based on her name alone, an insurance company had registered his daughter as male. She called to correct the record. Her name may be unisex but she was a woman, she said. Her rate was doubled.

“You should support this bill because the proof is there,” Vigil said.

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(Photo/Joy of the Mundane, Flickr)

Mike Kempe, who works at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, once again finds himself battling his fellow board members at the state’s largest rural electric association (REA) – the Intermountain Rural Electric Association (IREA) in Sedalia.

The co-op, which provides power to more than 140,000 member-owners in the suburbs east, west and south of Denver, has a long history of bitterly fighting most renewable energy and conservation rebate mandates, arguing such initiatives drive up electricity prices.

Earlier this month six of the seven elected board members approved a resolution (pdf) opposing state Rep. Claire Levy’s REA board election transparency bill (pdf), which requires very basic practices such as informing members of elections in time for candidates to get on the ballot; posting minutes of board meetings online; and allowing members to address the board during meetings.

Kempe voted against the resolution, which passed 6-1.

“The board is elected by the people, or at least it should be elected by the people,” Kempe said. “They’re representatives and they should be going out of their way to communicate what’s going on in a factual and unbiased manner, and that is lacking in our co-op.”

When Levy first announced plans to introduce HB 1098, IREA spokesman and former Republican state Sen. Williams Schroeder said the Boulder lawmaker was merely continuing her personal vendetta against the co-op.

“It’s more on the basis that we’re not supportive of her green-energy direction, and that’s what I’ve noticed coming from her in the past,” Schroeder said in a previous interview. “It’s more, just like it was last year, retaliation for us being very vocal about her trying to direct costs on energy.”

But since then the bill has earned the stamp of approval of the statewide organization representing most of the nonprofit REAs in the state – the Colorado Rural Electric Association (CREA).

One co-op, however, thought the bill was such a no-brainer that the CREA should do more than merely support it, and should actively promote its passage. The Delta Montrose Electric Association dropped out of the CREA over the matter, as well as what board members felt was an ongoing pattern of the CREA failing to endorse or at least advocate for renewable energy and conservation measures.

Kempe felt compelled to respond to the IREA resolution, which makes conspicuous note of his opposition. He posted a lengthy letter on the local blog pinecam.com spelling out what he deems misrepresentations in the resolution.

One of the points of contention in the resolution that was sent out to co-op members – a restriction against co-op publications during election periods – was actually removed from the bill and is not in the current version passed by the House and under consideration by the Senate.

“Especially in areas that are just barely on the outskirts of Denver, people just think that they belong to another [investor-owned] Xcel Energy, but a co-op is different because it’s actually owned by the members and we have a right to know what’s going on in the co-op,” Kempe said. “It’s the responsibility of the co-op management and the board of directors to communicate effectively what’s going on.”

Last April, three so-called “green” candidates lost board election bids, accusing incumbent IREA board members and staff of engaging in unfair campaign practices.

In his letter, Kempe spells out those allegations and makes it clear Levy’s bill would rectify the situation in future elections:

1. Members received no information about the election until after the deadline for candidacy had passed.
2. IREA management spent large sums of co-op money in advertising and for special mailings during the campaign that echoed the campaign messages of incumbent Board members.
3. The general manager personally funded the campaigns of the very board members who set his salary – a practice which in my opinion is patently unethical.
4. Ballots were knowingly enclosed in transparent envelopes, allowing members’ votes to be visible to IREA management.
5. Incumbent candidates were told when ballots would be mailed while challengers were denied this information. Non-incumbent candidates literally did not know when the election would be held.

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Union Carbide's toxic Uravan mill

Ahead of a House Transportation and Energy Committee hearing, various politicians, business owners and agricultural representatives advocated for House Bill 1348 (pdf), the so-called “Uranium Processing Accountability Act.”

The Western Mining Action Project and Energy Minerals Law Center, two groups active in watchdogging uranium mining claims and mill proposals in Southwest Colorado, helped spearhead the legislation, which would put stiff new state regulations in place governing uranium mine and mill cleanup, expansion and out-of-state processing.

Environment Colorado and Cañon City’s Colorado Citizens Against ToxicWaste (CCAT), which formed in 2002 to prevent Cotter Corporation from storing radioactive waste from New Jersey, approached Rep. Buffie McFadyen, D-Pueblo West, about the bill in response to Cotter announcing expansion plans last year.

Cotter has a long and messy history of uranium mining and milling pollution in the Cañon City area dating to the 1950s. The company also owns several mining claims in Montrose County and supports plans by the Canadian company Energy Fuels to open a new mill in the west end of that county.

Residents there and in nearby San Miguel County are worried a new uranium mining boom could lead to more highly toxic EPA Superfund Cleanup sites like the ones that have already cost taxpayers nearly a billion dollars for operations in Colorado alone. Transporting yellowcake uranium and milling materials like acid and other chemicals is another concern.

Proponents of the comparatively carbon-free nuclear power industry, including Colorado Sen. Mark Udall, maintain the state’s toxic past was born of ignorance about the dangers and new technology makes mining and processing much safer. State lawmakers clearly want more concrete assurances.

“Our number one goal as a legislature should be public safety,” Rep. McFadyen said in a release. “This no nonsense legislation ensures toxic waste cleanup and the health of our citizens.”

HB 1348 would require uranium operators to clean up existing problems before applying for expansion permits; allow local governments, the public and other stakeholders to provide input during the Colorado Department of Putlic Health and Environment’s annual reviews of cleanup financing; require uranium companies to notify residents with water wells near groundwater contamination; and require state licensing when companies accept “alternate feed,” or toxic waste from industrial or medical operations.

“Actions have consequences, and uranium companies need to clean up their mess,” said Sen. Ken Kester, R-Las Animas, another sponsor of the bill.

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Indeed, the House-passed reform bill strayed from the Senate proposal on a number of key issues, from children’s coverage to Medicaid payments to the creation of a public health insurance plan. Here’s how the reconciliation bill — which House leaders unveiled today to address what they considered weaknesses in the Senate legislation — would tweak (or not) some of the most contentious provisions in the upper chamber’s bill.

Paying the Freight

A central disagreement between House and Senate Democrats has been over how to pay the substantial costs associated with covering tens of millions of uninsured Americans. The House paid much of the tab with a 5.4 percent tax on the nation’s highest earners — individuals making more than $500,000 per year, and families pulling in more than $1 million. The Senate, meanwhile, passed a 0.5 percent hike on Medicare’s payroll tax for individuals earning more than $200,000 and families earning more than $250,000. But a larger chunk of funding under the Senate bill would come from an 40 percent excise tax on high-cost insurance plans — a provision that’s wildly unpopular among a key Democratic constituency: Organized labor.

The reconciliation bill alters both funding mechanisms. First, it scales back the insurance excise tax by increasing the dollar thresholds from $8,500 to $10,200 for single coverage, and from $23,000 to $27,500 for family coverage. It also delays the application of that tax until 2018. To make up the revenues lost by changes to the excise tax, the reconciliation bill also expands the Medicare tax to include net investment income (i.e. unearned income).

Kids’ Care

After years of promoting the virtues of the Children’s Health Insurance Program, House Democrats did a strange thing: They proposed to eliminate CHIP altogether, instead moving those kids into either Medicaid or private plans on newly created insurance marketplaces, dubbed exchanges. The Senate bill took a different tack, reauthorizing CHIP through 2019, while funding it through 2015. Despite a more recent White House proposal to provide an extra year of funding (through 2016), the reconciliation bill doesn’t touch the issue, leaving the original Senate provision intact (and kids welfare advocates happy).

Pharma Deal

A behind-the-scenes deal cut last year between Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and the pharmaceutical lobby drew a good deal of attention: The nation’s drug makers, under that agreement, would dedicate $80 billion toward health care reform over the next decade if Democrats would oppose further industry reforms — including a proposal allowing Americans to buy their prescriptions from abroad, and another empowering states to negotiate directly with companies on behalf of their lowest-income seniors.

While the White House endorsed the deal, House Democrats didn’t. Instead, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, included the state negotiation provision as part of the House-passed bill. While the reconciliation bill does tap the drug makers for $28 billion over 10 years ($5 billion more than the original Senate bill), it doesn’t dabble with the other terms of the Pharma deal.

Abortion

Always the hot-button issue, abortion has emerged as the one topic that still really threatens House passage of health care reform. Late last year, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had negotiated a delicate compromise designed to satisfy a number of anti-abortion Democrats — notably Rep. Bart Stupak (Mich.) — who were concerned that the reform bill would allow taxpayer dollars to subsidize abortions. The so-called Stupak amendment would ban exchange plans from offering abortion coverage, forcing women to buy a separate policy covering abortion services. The Senate bill is a bit less strict, allowing abortion coverage on the exchange, but requiring women to write a separate check for those services to ensure that no federal funds go toward them. It’s the Senate provision that’s going to the floor of the House early next week, leaving Stupak and roughly a dozen other House Democrats vowing their opposition.

Anti-Trust Exemption

For 64 years, the health insurance industry has reaped the benefits of a rare exemption to federal anti-trust laws, which allows companies to share cost and coverage information without scrutiny from Washington. And for a number of years, Democrats have had their eyes on repealing it. The House bill would have done just that, but the provision didn’t make the cut in the Senate, due largely to the opposition of Sen. Ben Nelson (Neb.), the moderate Democrat whose close ties to the insurance industry include a stint as CEO of the Omaha-based Central National Insurance Group.

Like many other insurance reforms, this provision is one of those non-budget related items not eligible to move under the reconciliation process. The Democrats, though, are hoping to repeal the exemption later this year through separate legislation. Indeed, the House has already passed such a bill last month.

Medicaid Rates

The headlines today will likely focus on the plan to eliminate the sweetheart Medicaid deal that Senate leaders cut with Nebraska’s Nelson — a deal so unpopular that even Nelson himself claims now to oppose it. But much more significant for purposes of ensuring care is a provision of the reconciliation bill that hikes Medicaid rates to primary care physicians to at least the level of what Medicare pays for those same services. That provision was contained in the House bill, but not the Senate proposal.

The issue isn’t trivial. Medicaid rates are so low that many doctors refuse to see Medicaid patients. Only about 40 percent of physicians accept all new Medicaid patients, versus 58 percent for Medicare patients, according to a September study from the Center for Studying Health System Change, which randomly surveyed more than 4,700 physicians. And that number drops to about 31 percent among family doctors and general practitioners.

For dental care, the numbers are even worse. Only 27 percent of the nation’s dentists will treat Medicaid-insured patients, according to a 2007 survey by the American Dental Association survey. Those trends raise important questions about the value of an insurance program that nobody accepts — and led directly to the Democrats’ decision to hike Medicaid rates.

Closing the Doughnut Hole

Though seniors participating in Medicare’s prescription drug program are generally happy with their benefits, a painful thorn plagues the program: Seniors are forced to pay the full cost of drugs when annual expenses hit $2,700, and the subsidies don’t return until total costs hit $6,154 — a coverage gap known (not endearingly) as the doughnut hole. The Senate bills took steps to reduce the size of that gap, relying mostly on the pharmaceutical companies, who offered a 50 percent discount through the doughnut hole as part of their $80 billion deal with Democrats.

The reconciliation bill expands on that plan, offering seniors an additional $250 rebate in 2010, and closing the doughnut hole entirely by 2020.

Illegal Immigrants

While both the Senate and House bills would prohibit illegal immigrants from receiving federal subsidies on the exchanges, the Senate took the restriction a long step further by preventing those folks from buying insurance from the exchanges at all — even if they paid the full price of coverage using their own money. (The House bill would allow such unsubsidized purchases.) Although some members of the House Hispanic caucus have advocated for the House language in the reconciliation bill, it didn’t make its way in.

Public Option

The House bill included the creation of a government-backed insurance plan to compete with private companies on a national exchange, while the Senate bill contained no such thing. Despite a late push from liberal groups to include the House provision in the reconciliation bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) declined, citing a lack of support in the Senate.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said today that the lower chamber hopes to vote on the reconciliation bill Sunday afternoon.

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Watch Broun deliver the speech, though, and see the wry smile that accompanies the bombastic metaphor. GOP “visceral voters” may take up the language as legitimate, but Broun knows he was actually comparing his own wing-nut overstretched rhetoric on health reform to the wing-nut rhetoric of his forebears, the Old South defenders of the “peculiar institution” who saw the Civil War as the act of an overreaching president trampling on state’s rights, defiling the Constitution and destroying Southern marketplace plantation capitalism and god’s natural order. Broun seems to sardonically acknowledge what side of history he’s coming down on and accepts his fate as part of a long Southern tradition!

Here’ Broun on Capitol Hill waving his rebel flag:

“If ObamaCare passes, that free insurance card that’s in people’s pockets is gonna be as worthless as a Confederate dollar after the War Between The States — the Great War of Yankee Aggression.”

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The piece breaks the undecideds into three categories: The Retirees, The Nail-Biters, The Besieged, The Misfits. Politico places Colorado Rep. Betsy Markey, even though she confirmed Thursday she would vote yay on the bill, into The Besieged bracket.

Besieged Betsy

Here’s an example of the pressures [The Besieged] face on the health care vote: When Rep. Betsy Markey (D-Colo.) revealed Thursday that she would vote yes on the measure, she was immediately greeted by the National Republican Congressional Committee with a derisive press release referring to her as “Betsy Margolies-Mezvinsky” — a reference to Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, the freshman congresswoman from Pennsylvania who her lost her seat in 1994 after biting the bullet for her party and casting an especially tough vote in favor of President Bill Clinton’s budget.

Here’s the intro, laying out the story:

While the varying whip counts remain inexact and the outcome unknown, one thing is certain as the health care reform drama hurtles toward its conclusion: The last two dozen or so votes for the bill will come at considerable cost to the undecided House members who cast them.

Some of those currently uncommitted lawmakers have serious philosophical and moral concerns about the measure. But for many — almost none of whom can admit it publicly — the political calculus is undeniably playing a role in their decision-making process.

The trick, then, to understanding where these members will end up is to understand where they are coming from, because their malleability in the final hours will almost certainly be proportional to the precariousness of their political situation.

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“Over the past few days, the massive quantities of signatures that poured in just amazed us,” said Gualberto Garcia-Jones, co-sponsor of the initiative. “That means that we collected over 2,600 signatures each day, about 2 signatures per minute.”

Earlier this month, the Secretary of State declared that the 79,648 signatures submitted by the campaign were not enough, that according to a preliminary review, too many would be thrown out as invalid. The group had 15 days to replace augment their petition by roughly 15,000 new signatures. Thousands of initiative petition signatures are tossed for a variety of technical reasons for all initiatives, which is why proponents should always turn in thousands of extras.

According to a Personhood release, more than 700 volunteers worked to gather signatures this month. Tuesday’s Republican primary caucus meetings provided one rich venue.

Keith Mason, co-founder of Personhood USA, said he was confident.

“We knew we could do it, because when you are working on such a critical, life and death issue, volunteers are passionate.” 

Critics of the initiative have charged that a personhood law would end in-vitro fertilization in the state, halt embryonic research, and compromise pregnant women’s rights.

Initiative supporters admit to wanting to end embryonic research and some fertilization techniques but they say the rhetoric on potential limits on women’s rights is overblown.

Former Planned Parenthood attorney Kevin C. Paul told The Colorado Independent that the Personhood people don’t know the ramifications because the law would cut a new path into the state statutes. Fact is, any new rights granted to fertilized eggs would jockey with existing women’s rights.

“Constitutional jurisprudence is all about weighing interests. If you’re creating a new interest, one that hadn’t existed previously, then that interest is going to have to be weighed against [those of] anybody else. And if you take the position that an unborn fetus is to be legally treated just the same as a woman, then those two interests clash.”

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Denver Post reporter Mike McPhee was discussing the bizarre case of Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, 31, of Leadville – arrested in Ireland in a plot to kill a Swedish cartoonist for depicting the Prophet Muhammad on the body of a dog – when he referred to Leadville as a “dirtball town” and “nothing to write home about.”

Leadville: FOX smeared

That prompted an apology from McPhee in the Leadville Herald Democrat and an invite from state lawmakers Rep. Christine Scanlan, D-Dillon, and Sen. Mark Scheffel, R-Parker, who represent Leadville, to join them for “A Day in a Dirtball Town” tour of the mining town-turned tourist spot.

“I feel terrible about it,” McPhee told the paper. “I grew up near Leadville. I wrote a book about the railroads’ race to serve Leadville. I’ve ridden my bike there, stayed at the Delaware Hotel, shopped at the antique stores.”

He went on to explain that the dirtball comment was a reference to the tailings piles scattered around town from Leadville’s mining past – a potential source of tourism that are their own wellspring of controversy. Former Colorado Independent reporter and Leadville resident Katie Redding was all over that story.

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Dayspring doesn’t mis-attribute the study to the New England Journal of Medicine, but I think Peter Lipson at Forbes does a good job unspooling the unscientific Medicus poll that’s at issue here.

When asked, “How do you think the passage of health reform WITHOUT a public option would affect your professional/practice plans, if at all?” 70% of respondents said, “no change.” It is not reported in this data, but apparently primary care physicians, who made up about a third of respondents, were more likely to say that they would leave medical practice.

I have no doubt that there are unsatisfied physicians out there. This data, gathered unscientifically, hyped by the survey company, and widely picked up by partisan media, is not a reliable measure of doctors’ responses to health care reform.

If the bill passes, I wonder if this sort of hyperbole will be remembered the way Republican claims that Bill Clinton’s 1993 budget would bring about a massive recession are remembered.

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Gardner took a familiar tactic among Republicans opposed to the legislation by claiming that Markey was “not listening” to her constituents. A Research 2000 Colorado poll however suggests Markey is the one listening to the majority of the residents of the Fourth District and that Gardner is listening to a minority.

Markey, who has been the target this week of a major pro-health reform campaign, said in a release that she was swayed by key changes in the legislation:

After closely studying the compromise health care reform bill and the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office’s fiscal analysis of it, I have decided to support it. In November, I made clear that I wanted to see a bill that meets the goals of affordability and coverage, improved access, and that is also fiscally sustainable in the long-term. This bill does all those things and more. It contains a series of tough cost containment provisions beyond those in the bill passed by the House, designed to bring down the skyrocketing costs of health care and reduce the deficit. In fact, this is the biggest deficit reduction bill to come before Congress in over a decade.

This isn’t about politics. This is about bringing down health care costs and doing what’s right for the people of Colorado, and I’m proud to support this historic bill.

Gardner said in a dueling release that he knew what Markey’s constituents wanted and he pledged to work to repeal the legislation should it pass:

“The residents of the 4th Congressional District have sent a clear message to Congresswoman Markey: do not vote for the healthcare legislation,” said Gardner. “She has decided not to listen to her district. When I am elected in November I will listen to the wishes of the 4th District. I will work and vote to repeal the healthcare legislation.”

Added Gardner: “If this legislation passes, taxes will go up,” continued Gardner. “This bill will inevitably lead to fewer choices in healthcare, fewer jobs and sweeping cuts to Medicare to the direct detriment of our and senior citizens.”

The exchange mirrors a face off between U.S. Senator Michael Bennet and GOP challenger Jane Norton last month. Norton said that in supporting health reform and a public option, Bennet was “demonstrating a disconnect with Coloradans on the issue of healthcare” and “crossing the line into outright contempt for their wishes.”

The data suggests Norton and Gardner are wrong.. Markey and Bennet are perhaps disconnected on the issue from the crowds that gather at the Tea Party events where Norton and Gardner are campaigning, but the Research 2000 poll, which randomly tapped 600 statewide likely 2010 general election voters, reports that clear Colorado majorities support reform.

In the Fourth District, for example, at least 57 percent of respondents were not just supportive of health reform but also of the public option and of strong Democratic leadership on the issue.

The poll was commissioned by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee along with Democracy for America, and Credo Action on January 30 and 31.

Here’s one of the relevant questions asked by the Research 2000 pollsters:

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