Probably.

Republican candidate for lieutenant governor Karyn Polito (left), and Republican gubernatorial candidate Charlie Baker (right)

Republican gubernatorial candidate Charlie Baker introduced former state Rep. Karyn Polito as his running mate this morning at a press event in Shrewsbury.

Both candidates dodged questions about Polito’s Tea Party affiliation and anti-LGBT record. During her 10 years in the state House, Polito voted for a constitutional amendment that would have defined civil marriage as exclusively heterosexual, voted against repeal of the law preventing non-resident same-sex couples from marrying in Massachusetts, voted against protecting transgender people under the state’s hate crimes and anti-discrimination laws, co-sponsored an anti-gay “parent’s rights” bill penned by anti-LGBT hate group president Brian Camenker, and filed an official complaint when the Registry of Motor Vehicles began allowing transgender people to change the sex designation on their drivers license without proof of sex reassignment surgery.

Asked by a reporter whether Polito considers herself “under the Tea Party umbrella”, Polito answered in reference to Shrewsbury that “This is my umbrella. This is home. These are the people that support me and this is who I represent.”

Calling herself a fiscal conservative, Polito went on to say that “I believe in small government, lower taxes, less regulation. That’s what my record stands for, that’s what I believe in my core, and that’s the label that I ask you to assign me.”

Whether she also believes in her core that LGBT people should still be discriminated against under the law, as her legislative record indicates, neither she nor Baker would comment.

When a reporter from Boston Herald noted that Polito’s social policies differ greatly from those of Baker’s former running mate, openly-gay state Sen. Richard Tisei, and asked whether that difference was a factor in Baker’s choice of Polito, Baker would only restate the campaign’s apparent tagline, “jobs, schools and communities”.

“Giving the people of Massachusetts a state government that’s as thrifty and hardworking and creative as they are.  That’s the way we’re going to run this race, and that’s what we’re going to talk about,” he said.

There’s a radical-right elephant in the room.  The question is, how long can Polito and Baker pretend it isn’t there?

A couple of weeks ago, in a discussion about urban issues, I made the statement that the state was resettling poor people from Eastern Massachusetts to cities in Western Massachusetts. I don’t think that people actually believed my statement because it seemed so incredible.

The Boston Globe published an article today outlining this phenomenon. The bulk of the article is reserved for Boston.com subscribers, but the key line remains available for everyone to read:

The demand for shelter is so great that the state has been temporarily sending homeless families from Boston to motels in Western Massachusetts, although state officials said many have been relocated back again, closer to home.

In a little less than a year from now, I’ll be joining Republicans in the state and voting to repeal future automatic increases of the gas tax tied to inflation.  These increases were part of the transportation finance package that passed both the House and Senate overwhelmingly this past summer.  (It was, of course, far less ambitious than the one Governor Patrick proposed earlier in the year.  But anyway . . . )

[Sigh.  And sigh.]

Massachusetts Democrats get a bad rap both here in the state and nationally for seeming to support any and all tax increases.  The passage of this perpetually increasing, regressive tax only bolsters that criticism.  When we talk about new tax proposals, we too often talk gleefully about the benefits of new revenue (or even, “new revenue streams”) while altogether ignoring questions about the fairness of these proposals.  The public notices this, and it makes them mad.  The progressives leaders in this state need to think about forging a new way forward that both addresses the state’s revenue challenges and makes its tax system fairer.

Secretary William F. Galvin whose office is able to monitor the number of locally certified ballot signatures through a central data system has announced that both the automatic gas tax and the (special interest/corporate monopoly) casino/slots law have garnered enough signatures for the November 2014 ballot.

Beacon Hill is tone deaf.   Leadership and many elected officials are disconnected from the sentiments of the average citizen in the Commonwealth.  Ballot initiatives take a gargantuan effort that requires passion, time, funding, and organization – as well as a groundswell of collective opinion.

We want solutions, not more of the same.  We want real reform – some see that as curtailing the reach and expense of government and others see reform through a progressive lens that improves efficiency, effectiveness and balances fiscal burdens across the income and wealth spectrum.

Obamacare’s Effects

A good place to start is to estimate who is affected by the ACA. The New Yorker interviewed MIT economist and health-care expert, Jonathan Gruber. He breaks it down as follows:

80% of Americans will be largely unaffected. They are already covered by employers (or perhaps Medicare.)

14% are uninsured and the A.C.A will give them access to affordable healthcare. They are clear winners.

6% buy their own insurance. Half (about 3%) will have little change. The other 3% will have to buy different plans.

It is tempting, of course, to price insurance by the premiums, but, just as a cheaper car constantly needing expensive repairs may be no bargain, so too insurance with low premiums, high deductibles, high copays, low caps, and stingy claims processing can be more expensive to own than real insurance with reasonable deductibles, copays, and caps. The quality of insurance can matter a lot:  the leading cause of bankruptcy in this country, and bankruptcy happens to people who are on insurance. Crumby insurance.

Oh, and subsidies. Many people are eligible for subsidies.

Grandfathered Plans

We have been hearing two things: The ACA allows healthcare plans to be grandfathered and companies are canceling plans because they are not up to the ACA standards. How could these both be true?

Grandfathered plans do not have to offer free coverage for preventative care or guarantee a right to appeal, but they must do the following:

• End lifetime limits on coverage
• End arbitrary cancellations of health coverage
• Cover adult children up to age 26
• Provide a Summary of Benefits and Coverage (SBC), a short, easy-to-understand summary of what a plan covers and costs
• Hold insurance companies accountable to spend your premiums on health care, not administrative costs and bonuses

Remind me, again, who really needs a health insurance that can be arbitrarily canceled by the insurer? If the insurance company can do that to you, what you have is not really insurance. It’s just a bit of hope you pay premiums on.

At least two of these features, coverage of adult children and ending lifetime limits, were already being phased in beginning in 2010.

Insurance Company Scams

It works like this. You tell your individual subscribers in September that their plans are coming to an end — perhaps due to the ACA. You then tell them that can automatically be enrolled in a newer but more expensive plan. They should do that right away! The idea is that you lock your subscribers in to more expensive plans before the health care exchanges roll out and they wander off to competing insurance companies.

LifeWise in Washington state did something just like that. So did Humana in Kentucky and Colorado.

One Anecdote

Under the title “Policy cancellations, higher premiums add to frustration over Obamacare”, CBS introduces us to Dianna Barrette:

 Last month, she received a letter from Blue Cross Blue Shield informing her as of January 2014, she would lose her current plan. Barrette pays $54 a month. The new plan she’s being offered would run $591 a month — 10 times more than what she currently pays.

Barrette said, “What I have right now is what I am happy with and I just want to know why I can’t keep what I have. Why do I have to be forced into something else?”

Consumer Reports took a look and found

Barrette’s expiring policy is a textbook example of a junk plan that isn’t real health insurance at all. If she had ever tried to use it for anything more than an occasional doctor visit or inexpensive prescription, she would have ended up with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical debt.

…

• The plan pays only the first $50 of doctor visits, leaving Ms. Barrette to pay the rest. Specialist visits can cost several hundred dollars.
• Only the first $15 of a prescription is covered. Some prescriptions can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month
• The plan only pays for hospitalization for “complications of pregnancy,” which are unlikely given Ms. Barrette’s age and in any event only the first $50 is covered.
• It pays $50 for a mammogram that can cost several hundred dollars, and only pays $50 apiece for advanced imaging tests such as MRIs and CT scans and then only when used for osteoporosis screening.

“She’s paying $650 a year to be uninsured,” Karen Pollitz, an insurance expert at the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation, said. “I have to assume that she never really had to make much of a claim under this policy. She would have lost the house she’s sitting in if something serious had happened. I don’t know if she knows that.”

Happy ending.  As more details came out Ms. Barrette became more informed too. Jonathan Cohn at the New Republic: “But as she’s become more aware of her options, she said, she’s no longer aghast at losing her plan—and curious to see what alternatives are available. ‘Maybe,” she told me, “it’s a blessing in disguise.’”

Another Anecdote

One famous anecdote was provided by Edie Sundby, a survivor of stage 4 gallbladder cancer who wrote an oped for the Wall Street Journal. She reports that the five-year survival rate for her kind of cancer is 2% after diagnosis. She is lucky to be alive. She writes:

My affordable, lifesaving medical insurance policy has been canceled effective Dec. 31.

My choice is to get coverage through the government health exchange and lose access to my cancer doctors, or pay much more for insurance outside the exchange (the quotes average 40% to 50% more) for the privilege of starting over with an unfamiliar insurance company and impaired benefits.

She attributes her survival to doctors at a wide number of locations: University of California in San Diego, Stanford University, and a center in Houston. (“Stanford has kept me alive—but UCSD has provided emergency and local treatment support during wretched periods of this disease.”) All this was provided through her United Healthcare PPO which has spent $1.2 million on her care.

ThinkProgress points out

But Sundby shouldn’t blame reform — United Healthcare dropped her coverage because they’ve struggled to compete in California’s individual health care market for years and didn’t want to pay for sicker patients like Sundby.

The company, which only had 8,000 individual policy holders in California out of the two million who participate in the market, announced (along with a second insurer, Aetna) that it would be pulling out of the individual market in May. The company could not compete with Anthem Blue Cross, Blue Shield of California and Kaiser Permanente, who control more than 80 percent of the individual market. “Over the years, it has become more difficult to administer these plans in a cost-effective way for our members,” UnitedHealth spokeswoman Cheryl Randolph explained. “We will continue to keep a major presence in California, focusing instead on large and small employers.”

United Healthcare also fears that early enrollees will demonstrate adverse selection. Their CEO expects “first enrollees will have a ‘pent-up appetite’ for medical care.”

It’s difficult, too, to generalize from Ms. Sundby’s rather atypical circumstance and experience. It is, in fact, unknowable whether Stanford was or was not essential to her surviving stage 4 cancer. Would she have survived without their support? Not impossible.

In any case, there’s some evidence that Blue Shield of California’s Gold 80 PPO plan would cover her just fine.

Happy Thanksgiving.

The turkey is stuffed and the potatoes are peeled.

Today I get to enjoy a feast with the people I love.

Some will give food to those in need, others will give their time.  Some will just go about their day.

We will catch-up, laugh, share stories of Thanksgivings gone by, play football in the yard, create new memories, and probably have an argument or two.  We will eat until we could pop and then bring out the pie.  We will remember those who have passed and contemplate on what is to come.

Today I sit across from my Tea Party uncle, a few seats down is my conservative aunt.  I will sit next to my liberal cousin and my “just tell me how to vote” sister.  I will agree with some and strongly disagree with others, but I am thrilled to have them all at my table.  They are the ones I love and politics will never change that.

The day will end and everyone will head their separate ways.  I will see some everyday, some again at Christmas, and others I probably won’t see until next Thanksgiving, but today we are all together.  Today I cherish.

I hope you enjoy your day as much I enjoy mine.

That’s Yvonne Abraham in the Globe a couple days back talking, of course, about the Governor’s Council.  As you may know, decades ago the Governor’s Council’s perpetual penchant for shenanigans resulted in the passage of legislation that stripped it of almost all of its powers.  Just about the only thing left is, regrettably, the power to confirm judges.  Because that’s in the state Constitution, a constitutional amendment would be required to change it, and nobody can agree on where the confirmation power should go.

Anyway, this inevitably results in period flare-ups from the State House’s clown car Council chamber.  The latest, as you may have heard, concerns a well-qualified judicial nominee, Joseph Berman, who has been raked over the coals because … wait for it … he was on the board of the New England chapter of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

You probably recall what this is about: several years back, the ADL embarrassed itself by firing Andrew Tarsy, the ADL’s regional director, over whether to recognize the Armenian genocide (the ADL had refused to do so; Tarsy spoke out, and was fired for it).  An outcry ensued, and ultimately, the national ADL backed down and changed its position.

Berman was one of the good guys in this dust-up: he used his position within the ADL to vigorously work for change, and he succeeded.

Jeffrey S. Robbins, the chair of the board of the New England Anti-Defamation League, was among those who testified in support of Berman at his nomination hearing last week.

“The assault on Joe Berman is particularly egregious” because Berman was one of the most vocal and effective voices within the organization urging it to acknowledge the massacre as a genocide, Robbins said.

“That’s the kind of courage and principle that should be rewarded, and not penalized,” he said.

But, according to Councillor Marilyn “curling iron” Devaney, that’s not good enough.  She thinks he should have resigned, thereby almost certainly accomplishing nothing.  And because of that, he might not be confirmed.  This is so idiotic that it has even stirred the normally completely non-political Massachusetts Real Estate Law Blog to venturing into politics, with a pointed and well-written blog post urging Berman’s confirmation, even including a sample email to send to the misguided Councillors, complete with their email addresses.

And let’s not even get into the utter stupidity of Councillor Jennie Caissie questioning whether Berman should have done pro bono work for a Guantanamo inmate.

The Globe, the Herald, Mass. Lawyers Weekly, and everyone else in the state with a modicum of sense thinks Berman should be confirmed easily, and thinks that the Council is bringing disgrace upon itself by doing what it’s doing.  If Berman’s nomination goes down, let’s hope that the silver lining is that the Council finally goes down with him.

With the Legislature ending its formal session for the year last week, it’s exciting to see the progressive victories that have happened over the past few months, and the momentum that is building in large part due to the work of liberal legislators, advocates and activists across Massachusetts. It’s important to remember and reflect upon these victories over the holidays, in order to prepare for upcoming legislation (gun control, unemployment insurance “reform,” election reform). When the Legislature returns to formal sessions in January, here are a few to consider:

• Removing anti-immigrant language from the Affordable Housing Bond bill. 

While on its face this may seem like a small victory, I would argue that the Affordable Housing Bond bill that passed the Legislature was significant because it did not include anti-immigrant language pushed by Republican legislators that prohibited immigrants with different legal statuses from living in public housing. Sadly, over the past five years various anti-immigrant amendments have been inserted into different bills before the Legislature.

Today, I met with a group of men and women who work out at the airport. They clean the planes, serve as wheelchair attendants – do many of the jobs that we often take for granted.

But despite their hard work and long hours, many of them still fall below the poverty line. One worker, Milka, is a mother of three. She has worked full-time for the last six years cleaning planes, and said every day is a struggle just to put food on the table. She told me she constantly worries about giving her kids a chance at a better life.

That is because Milka is one of the thousands of minimum wage workers across the Commonwealth.

I believe the time to act is now. The Legislature should make raising the minimum wage their first order of business when they return in January.

Barnstable County Superior Court Judge Christopher Muse, an actual, existing, sitting judge with real power over real people’s lives, has declared wind turbines cause dental injuries:

Neil and Elizabeth Andersen, who live about a quarter of a mile from the turbines, said they caused “continuous insomnia, headaches, psychological disturbances, dental injuries, and other forms of malaise” they had not suffered prior to the turbines’ construction.

“The court finds the Andersens claims that they did not experience such symptoms prior to the construction and operation of the turbines, and that that each day of operation produces further injury, to be credible,” the judge wrote.

Continued operation of the turbines at previous levels put residents at risk of “irreparable physical and psychological harm,” he judge wrote.

Let’s break down the ways Judge Muse is ignoring reality:

The Lawrence recount is over. Dan Rivera’s 58 vote lead increased to 81! Of course, Lantigua refuses still to concede. No matter. There is a new day in Lawrence…finally. Congratulations to Dan Rivera’s campaign team that believed they could make it happen and put the work in to make it a reality. Good work by Rivera’s recount team led by Dennis Newman…good group of volunteers from across the county. Thanks to the counters and tally people who were brought in from other communities to give an impartial reading of every single vote.

Democracy works most of the time…and today was one of those times.

Congratulations to the people of Lawrence and good luck, Mayor Rivera!!!