From today’s Globe:
Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly yesterday appointed three members to the state’s new Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Board, which will implement the healthcare law requiring all residents to have insurance by July 2007. Reilly appointed Charles Joffe-Halpern, president of the board of directors of Health Care For All, a patient advocacy group that worked for passage of the law; Louis Malzone, executive director of the Massachusetts Coalition of Taft-Hartley Funds, a group of multi-employer health plans; and Celia Wcislo, assistant division director of SEIU Local 1199 United Healthcare Workers East, the largest healthcare union on the East Coast.
SEIU Local 1199 … gosh … that rings a bell…
Please share widely!
it’s a savvy detail that will likely play to Reilly’s base supporters, and Patrick has left himself vulnerable, as we’ve discussed on this board before.
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Reilly is throwing Patrick an anvil, exactly as he should.
After spending post after post defending Deval against Ameriquest/Arnall mishigas, you insinuate accusations of favoritism Reilly’s way. Look at the words immediately following the words you bolded:
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Celia Wcislo, assistant division director of SEIU Local 1199 United Healthcare Workers East, the largest healthcare union on the East Coast.
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Yeah, appointing someone from the largest healthcare union on the East Coast to a health insurance board is really sketchy!
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Gimme a break!
I knew this would piss you off. Yes, I sometimes post just to be annoyingly provocative. Get used to it!
I’m not a Reilly supporter, but come on – you can’t decry MA Dems for divisive primaries and then contribute to the divisiveness with ridiculous insinuations and accusations.
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Bill O’Reilly and Geraldo like to be annoyingly provocative, too…
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Step it up, play like a champ, you’re better than this, and so on.
If a blogger can’t have a little fun now and then, what’s the point?
And bloggers can have plenty of fun. Your April 1st Cheney resigns post was terrific.
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Post a joke that Reilly is dropping out of the Governor’s race so that he can run for Lt. Gov., once he gets his college loans and income and excise taxes all paid off, since he knows now how embarrassing it is to run for Lt. Gov. with outstanding debt.
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But don’t post misleading claims about Reilly appointing someone to a board for dubious reasons right after (rightfully) threatening to delete any posts that wrongly tie Deval/Arnall to Swift Boats without supporting evidence.
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It sends a mixed message and undermines the value of blogging.
it was I, as you’ll recall, who just called upon Patrick to resign from the Ameriquest board – even before the very same SEIU 1199 issued the same call.
The SEIU has no business on that board.
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The actual workers in the healthcare system have nothing to do with this. The SEIU’s only agenda is to push policy towards creating more hourly work for their members, regardless of whether it’s a good idea for the healthcare system or not.
What, the people who do the actual work of health care shouldn’t have a say in the system? don’t you think that their perspective might just be a little relevant? Sure, they want fair pay, but it’s actually nurses and other health care workers who’ve done some of the most important patient care advocacy in recent years. Check their legislative platform before you start making declarations about their “only agenda.”
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Sorry if this sounds peeved, but your post sounds like you don’t trust either the motives or the intelligence of health care workers. And that’s not what I’d expect on this board, to say the least.
Does 1199’s opposition to the war in Iraq count as part of their “only agenda”? Their immigrant rights work? I could go on…
the workers are the first people we should be listening to, b/c they administer the very programs we talk about. They see, firsthand, what works and what doesn’t. And of course they push for better livings for all of their workers, the same way corporate CEOs push for more money for themselves.
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that’s about as smart as when Romney lambastes the very teachers who educate our children. something tells me Romney has no idea what he’s talking about.
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who would you trust to tell you what’s wrong with a patient, the nurse or the CEO?
But I’d trust the CEO to tell me how to save money on the whole system. Unless he was a lousy CEO, in which case he should be replaced.
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Look, I have no problem with unions and workers’ rights, but I’m not gonna be dogmatic about it. There’s good and bad when it comes to unions, and many unions of government and non-profit workers are basically taking money out of people’s paychecks for negligible return to the worker, IMO.
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This particular union being at this particular table smells of deal-making.
As most know, I am hardly a Reilly supporter. But fair is fair.
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There is absolutely nothing impropritous about these appointments.
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This sort of thing does nothing but to degrade the discussion and detract from the real issues – regardless of which candidate you support.
SEIU 1199 is a good group to be represented on that board. Their members are exactly the sorts of people that a lot of the new health care law is intended to help, and they have a lot of the health care workers who have practical experience in how health insurance changes affect people. It makes perfect sense.
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Did Reilly also want to reward them for supporting him? Or strengthen his ties with a group that has been supportive of him and may be again in the future? Or is this the sort of thing he does, and part of the reason they support him? Probably a little bit of some or all of those. Nothing wrong with that IMO. If it didn’t make so much sense on the merits, then maybe there’d be something wrong.
I have no problem with this level of mutual back-scratching, especially when the action itself is totally justifiable.
Cos got it about right, as I see it (as he often does). I’m a big Patrick supporter, but I don’t think Reilly deserves a rap for this. He was basically following the instructions of the statute, and since he is required to appoint a representative of labor, why not appoint a health care advocate, who, as Cos points out, just happens to be a friend? He should appoint his enemies?
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Here is the relevant part of the statute:
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(b) There shall be a board, with duties and powers established by this chapter, that shall govern the connector. The connector board shall consist of 11 members: the secretary for administration and finance, ex officio, who shall serve as chairperson; the director of Medicaid, ex officio; the commissioner of insurance, ex officio; the executive director of the group insurance commission; 3 members appointed by the governor, 1 of whom shall be a member in good standing of the American Academy of Actuaries, 1 of whom shall be a health economist, and 1 of whom shall represent the interests of small businesses; and 3 members appointed by the attorney general, 1 of whom shall be an employee health benefits plan specialist, 1 of whom shall be a representative of a health consumer organization, and 1 of whom shall be a representative of organized labor. No appointee may be an employee of any licensed carrier authorized to do business in the commonwealth. All appointments shall serve a term of 3 years, but a person appointed to fill a vacancy shall serve only for the unexpired term. An appointed member of the board shall be eligible for reappointment. The board shall annually elect 1 of its members to serve as vice-chairperson. Each member of the board serving ex officio may appoint a designee under section 6A of chapter 30.