Representative Barickman - Weekly update 04-09-2011

First weekly email from Jason Barickman:

Scott,

This week's events reminded me of the importance of a State Representative being a voice for your constituents.

On Wednesday night, I was informed that Health Alliance would be eliminated as a state employee health plan.  Approximately 100,000 people will be impacted by this decision, including 32,500 in or around my district in East Central Illinois.  The decision to cut Health Alliance was initially suggested as a cost-savings effort; however, it is much more complicated.  I'm not convinced that any purported cost savings are real - in fact, this move may cost the State more money - and I'm very concerned about whether individuals will receive the same level of service, access and care as they're moved from one plan to another.  What's most frustrating is the process by which some have made this decision, and the failure to acknowledge the dramatic impact this outcome could have on people's lives.  I'll obviously be spending next week on this issue, and hope we can change the result.

Speaking of constituent issues, I'm doing my best to follow up on the many requests made of me, regardless of when, where or how you contact me.  A constituent was introduced to Kristin and me at Original House of Pancakes in Champaign several weeks ago, and he talked to me about a problem with the Mental Health Code.  With the help of the constituent (a psychologist) and the Public Defender's office, I sponsored House Bill 2362, which will allow court appointed psychologists to obtain the records necessary to determine if an individual is fit to stand trial.  The bill passed the House unanimously last week.

I appreciate all the well wishes with Kristin.  She's doing great.  In fact, even though she skipped a fundraiser last night, I came home to home-cooked pork chops, potatoes and carrots.  Yum!

Jason

Email from Jason Barickman

Here's an email I got from Jason Barickman and my response.

Love hearing from you.  Keep me on your list.  You seem to be doing a great job.  I love hearing about your bills that get passed unanimously. 

Personally, I'm not a huge fan of government and my hope is that we can govern things on as local a level as possible.  But, that's just my two sense.

Would love to hear your thoughts and plans for Illinois.

Scott C.

On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 4:27 PM, Jason Barickman <jason@jasonbarickman.com> wrote:

Scott,

As you might suspect, being a State Representative introduces me to a number of interesting people.  Honestly, it's one of the best parts of my job, as I generally enjoy meeting new people and learning more about them.

Often people ask me to keep them up to date on legislative and political issues.  For many, having a direct and open communication line with their State Representative is an important - and often overlooked - component of my job.  Rather than sending glossy newsletters, I opt to send more of a personal e-mail.  I think it's important that you hear from me, and more importantly, that I hear from you.  My e-mails to you will be a mix of politics, legislative issues, and personal anecdotes.  I presume your responses will be similar.

I understand that you may not want to be on my e-mail list.  That's OK, and there's an easy way to unsubscribe at the bottom of all of my e-mails (including this one).  Until then, please look for updates from me from time to time, and please don't ever hesitate to contact me.  I'm proud to serve you, and I hope you're glad to have me in this role.  By the way, feel free to forward this to your friends, and ask them to join us by sending me an email at jason@jasonbarickman.com.

Jason

1990 Oil Pollution Act

I sent the following email to Senator Dick Durbin:

Does the 1990 Oil Pollution Act ring a bell?  How could you vote for something like this?  What section of the constitution gives you that kind of authority, and what line of reasoning made you think it was a good idea?

Evidently, he voted to limit the liability of oil companies back in the 90s. 

http://breakthematrix.com/latest/who-voted-to-limit-the-liability-of-oil-companies/

If he responds, I'll let you know.

David Gill on Health Care

David Gill is running for Illinois' Representative in U.S. congress.  I don't think his stance on health care is fully explained on his website (http://www.gill2010.com/issues/affordable-healthcare/), so I sent him this email.

David Gill,

Your stance on Health Care (http://www.gill2010.com/issues/affordable-healthcare/) seems unfounded and misinformed.  Can you please send me a more detailed explanation on how you came to the conclusions that you have come to?  Also, please explain to me what part of the constitution justifies your plans to create a health care system?  What would you say to the people who believe they have a right to not purchase health insurance? 

I will post your response on my blog (http://governingourselves.blogspot.com/) and share it with my friends and family in order to help you spread your message.

I will post his response if I get one.

UPDATE:  Here is David Gill's surprisingly informative response.  I'm actually very impressed.  This is the first time that I've felt like I could actually rely on someone in politics.

     Thanks for your interest in the campaign.  Your blog seems to indicate that you're a mathematician-- is that right?  I got my degree in math and worked in the actuarial field before going on to Med School.

 

     There are further details regarding my proposed health care plan forthcoming in the next 2-4 weeks-- there will be sections on the need for co-pays for non-emergencies, the need to revise EMTALA (the law which currently allows anyone to come to the E.R. for ANYTHING, including hangnails), and the need for federal malpractice reform (which my opponent opposes-- in fact, he was the only Republican in the House to vote against the GOP version of health care reform, for this very reason).

 

      But the foundation of my plan has been well-established for decades.  I would encourage you to peruse www.pnhp.org, which has a load of information regarding the financial viability of such a plan.  The overriding factor is that we should stop giving 38% of our health care dollars away for NOTHING, which is what we do with the private health insurance cartel.  We should use that money for health care, and economic growth-- a recent study sponsored by the California Nurses Association demonstrated that extending Medicare to all Americans, regardless of age, will create nearly 3 million jobs, by taking back all that money that we currently throw into a black hole.

 

     I'm not talking about "creating" a health care system-- I'm just talking about extending the current Medicare system, which is funded by taxes.  No one would be required to purchase private insurance, though I have no interest in outlawing private insurance, either.

 

Thanks,

David Gill, M.D.
www.gill2010.com

Vince LaMie and Shane Cultra

Vince LaMie is running for State Representative in Illinois.  I sent him an email asking him for a detailed plan of what he plans to do.  I will post his response if I get one.

Vince LaMie,

Can you give me a detailed plan of what you plan to do if elected as State Representative?  I'll post your response on my blog (http://governingourselves.blogspot.com/) and share it with my friends to help you get your message out. 

To be fair, I'm sending a similar message to Representative Shane Cultra:

Representative Cultra,

Can you give me a detailed plan of what you plan to do if re-elected as State Representative?  I'll post your response on my blog (http://governingourselves.blogspot.com/) and share it with my friends to help you get your message out. 

I think these are the only two guys who are running for the 105th district.  Surely there's a democrat out there some where.  Anyone know who it is?

Shane Cultra seems to be doing a fine job, so I'll probably vote for him again.  However, Vince is a fellow mathematician and I like to think that mathematicians have a logically way of looking at things and solving problems.  But hopefully, who ever wins will be more in the business of letting us solve our own problems and keeping the government out of the picture as much as possible.

UPDATE:  Below is Vince LaMie's very helpful response.  When I have some time, I'll send him a follow up email and post it as well.

I visited your blog. It is good that you expect detailed explanations to positions taken by politicians and don't seem to accept vague general comments. So, could you provide some detailed explanation to your statement that my opponent "seems to be doing a fine job, so I'll probably vote for him again." He has never had an opponent in the general election, so you haven't had the opportunity to vote for another candidate in the general election. Do you know the details of where his campaign contributions have come from, or what committees he is on?
I am sending a copy of my announcement for you and your followers to get an idea of where I stand.
The corruption in IL is so entrenched throughout the system that the only persons that have not been bought by the system can fight against it. And the system needs to be fixed before we can expect to make any real and sustainable progress. The IL Reform Commission wrote a report that contains many recommendations that would go a long way toward making our system more responsive to the people of IL and reduce the amount of corruption that is an embarrassment to our state. That report contains details of corruption that most of us were unaware. I recommend that everyone in IL get a copy.
I will check your blog for a while to see what type of responses come up.
The Other Guy,
Vince

Closed Door Meetings on Healthcare

Evidently, the democrats are having meetings on health care that are closed to the republicans and to the public. I sent an email to Dick Durbin and Roland Burris asking them why. I will post their meaningless responses when I get them.

My email to Roland Burris and Dick Durbin:

Why are you having secret meetings on health care behind closed doors where the public can't see what's being discussed?

More thoughts on Health Insurance

So we're trying to solve a lot of problems at once with all the health care debate. One of them seems to be that people can't find affordable health care. I should have done this a long time ago, but just this morning, I shopped around for health insurance for the first time. A site called ehealthinsurance came up and I no longer believe that it's not possible for people to find affordable health insurance.

Before you disagree with me, let me define a few things. By health insurance, I mean partial coverage for future, uncertain, catastrophic events. In my opinion, this is what insurance was created to do and when we try to use it for something other than it's intended purpose, we will obviously run into some problems.

Insurance wasn't designed to cover events that have already happened. You can't buy home insurance on a burning house and expect them to fix it. And you can't expect us to manage pre-exsisting conditions in the same way that we manage future, uncertain, catastrophic events.

My point is, there are a lot of issues out there and we need to look at each them individually in order to find the best solution.

I'm going to attempt to list out the separate issues that seem to be lumped together when discussing health care reform.

Increased costs
1. Increased costs due to inflation
2. Increased costs due to lifestyle
3. Increased costs due to increased coverage
4. Increased costs due to better care
5. Increased costs due to medical malpractice
6. Increased costs due to medical malpractice insurance
7. Increased costs due to doctor fraud
8. Increased costs due to patient fraud
9. Increased costs due to an increased number marginally decreasingly effective medical procedures
10. Increased costs due to uninsured patients' care
11. Increased costs due to uninsured patients' use of emergency room care
12. Increased costs due to aging and the correlated increased risk of illness
13. Increased costs due to increased out-of-pocket expenses during prolonged illnesses.
14. Increased costs due to a lower risk group subsidizing a higher risk group
15. Increased costs due to increased risk of future, uncertain, catastrophic events
16. Increased costs due to increased cost of future, certain, catastrophic events
17. Increased costs due to increased cost of future, uncertain, normal events
18. Increased costs due to increased cost of future, certain, normal events

Uninsured
1. Uninsured because they don't want insurance
2. Uninsured because of a preexisting condition
3. Uninsured because of the high cost of the desired insurance plan
4. Uninsured because they don't want a cheaper plan with less coverage
5. Uninsured because a cheaper plan with less coverage is not available
6. Uninsured because of citizenship
7. Uninsured because of loss of employment
8. Uninsured because they are no longer covered on their parents plan
9. Uninsured because their policy was canceled
10. Uninsured because their policy was not renewed when it expired

Limits
1. Limits on maximum annual payments
2. Limits on maximum lifetime payments
3. Limits on approved medical tests
4. Limits on covered events
5. Limits on out-of-pocket expenses

I don't think I've listed out every aspect of health insurance, but my point is there is no silver bullet that is going to address each of these issues. Mainly, I'm just frustrated that politicians don't approach the topic of health care in any sort of deliberate or well-thought out way.

None of their proposed solutions are linked back to the problems they are attempting to correct. And none of the politicians give an objective and intelligent analysis of the proposed solution's effect on the issues at hand. If there is a politician that is doing this, please point me in the right direction.