GAZETTE COLUMN: WOMEN - KNOW YOUR GOVERNOR, KNOW YOUR MORTAL ENEMY by John P. Flannery

Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell (R) doesn’t respect your constitutional right of privacy as an individual, not if you’re a woman.

Governor McDonnell seeks to zero out any medical advice you might get and any abortion you might seek to have in your first trimester – if it’s from any of the 20 affordable clinics in Virginia.

He also wants to prevent any woman from paying for any health insurance coverage rider on the state insurance exchange that would cover an abortion in the first trimester.

This is nothing new to women who have known men all their lives who try to tell them what to do and who treat them like they’re property – consistent with the “original intent” of our flawed constitution before its belated amendment in 1920.

The Governor insists in sonorous incantations, at the drop of a political leaflet, that women should be grateful that he has interfered with their health choices, first, by imposing new stringent and unnecessary health regulations that shall operate to bar first trimester abortions in any of the 20 clinics that already follow unassailable medical procedures, and second, by banning private insurance coverage riders for abortion care on the state insurance exchange.

The Governor forces on women his factually unsupported religious belief that a fetus is a person in the first trimester.  No matter that the constitution says otherwise as a matter of law.

McDonnell disclosed his eccentric projection of the ideal “American Family” in a 1989 graduate thesis at Pat Robertson’s “university.”   Bob later said he didn’t really mean what he wrote, but his public actions since have confirmed that he really did.

O’Donnell said in his thesis that birth control and abortion had “reduced birth rate below that which is required to replenish the current population” (at p. 6).  Our 2010 census, however, demonstrates that this nation was 4.6% of the global population in 2000, at 282 million people, and has enlarged its footprint, at 4.9% of the global population, with 310 million people.

Bob said he believed the “trend of working women and feminists” encourages the “non-parental primary nurture of children” (at p. 40).  In other words, Bob wants women pregnant and bare foot, and not working -- so they may “nurture.”  “Feminism,” Bob wrote, lest you have any doubts about his chauvinism, is among the “real enemies of the traditional family” (at p. 65).

“Blue law” Bob also decried “the perverted notion of liberty that each individual should be able to live out his sexual life in any way he chooses without interference from the state” (at p. 9).

To preserve and protect the family, Bob said the government “has the right to legitimately discriminate in support of this goal” (at p. 34).  O’Donnell explained that the way he’d do that would be to “chip away at the fringes” of the law that allows for a woman’s constitutional right of choice (at p. 54).  Obviously, precluding health care and insurance coverage fit his stratagem.

Like the indifferent play-acting Monty Python physicians, in “The Meaning of Life;” Bob is telling women who believe that they have the right to control their own bodies, to think again, “you are not qualified.”

GAZETTE COLUMN: DENIED HEALTH INSURANCE COVERAGE BECAUSE YOU WERE SICK? THAT’S WRONG! by John P. Flannery

You may have health insurance now but can you keep it and can you be insured if you change jobs or, worse, become unemployed?

One of the significant bars to getting “new” insurance is a “pre-existing health condition?” 

According to the Department of Health and Human Services, anywhere from 50 million to 129 million non-elderly Americans have “pre-existing health conditions.”

It could be acne, hemorrhoids, toenail fungus, allergies, tonsillitis, bunions, but also chronic conditions including heart disease (affecting every third adult), cancer (affecting about 11 million Americans), diabetes, asthma, hay fever, lung disease, or a sports injuries; domestic violence is a pre-existing condition (in nine states).  It can even be a disease you’ve never had.  For example, if you have hay fever, you could have respiratory system diseases including bronchitis or pneumonia, and this possible affliction is treated as “pre-existing.”

Health Insurance companies in Virginia may discriminate against you if you have a pre-existing condition and seek to buy insurance in the individual insurance market.  This is particularly important when job-based health insurance group policies are declining, when those who separate from their employer can’t always afford the job-related insurance available under COBRA, and when we still have high unemployment.

Pre-existing conditions prompt insurers to charge higher premiums, demand larger deductibles, require bigger co-pays, set life-time benefit limits, and bar coverage entirely.

One 45-year old real estate agent had a kidney transplant and, afterwards, lost his insurance because he overlooked to complete a health questionnaire.  He couldn’t get new health insurance coverage to pay for the critical immunosuppressant medication required to guard against his body’s rejection of the new kidney; he had to pay $2,000 a month out of pocket.

The health insurance reform legislation passed by the U.S. Congress in 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, HR 3590, signed into law by President Barack Obama, prevents insurance companies from refusing insurance because of your medical history or health risk.  Insurers also have to renew your policy provided you pay the premium, and they may not deny renewal or dilute coverage because you got sick.  But the rub is that this reform does not go into effect until January 10, 2014. 

Meantime, insurance companies, their lobbyists and our compliant public officials, are demanding this health reform be repealed.

One principal argument they make is that this health reform requires those who can afford health insurance to pay for insurance policies. 

The reason is that those who are healthy, if not required to buy insurance, could otherwise stay out of the insurance pool until they are sick and then free load on this reform granting them insurance coverage for any pre-existing condition. 

This program will only work if the insured pool is large, encompassing both those with relatively few claims (mostly the young and healthy), as well as those with serious medical challenges; in other words, only if the fund’s paid in premiums exceed the medical insurance claims that we file.

We need a law mandating insurance coverage for those with pre-existing conditions; a mandate that those who can afford health coverage get health coverage, and we have to resist those who would repeal this critical protection.

Speaker Boehner cries again - but soon it will be our turn

Rep. John Boehner, the tan-faced 53rd speaker of the House, pledged "to give government back to the people" earlier today. 

As usual, he was a tad vague about which "people" he meant.

Unable to control himself, at the faintest sign of approval by his party cronies, he cried at his investiture - pushing his "George Hamilton" tan into a large white handkerchief. 

I don't know about you but I really think he should check his meds or something. 

Imagine what these hardy Republican "mad men" would have said if Speaker Pelosi shed a single tear for anything.

You may remember what people thought when Senator Hillary Clinton had a moment of empathy on the campaign trail?

The difference I believe is that Speaker Pelosi, Senator Clinton, and many other Dems, men and women who have fought for the middle class their whole life long, and for the poor, really do care to make a difference for all the people.

Boehner is a manipulative power hungry hypocrite, at the service of high funded contributors.

Consider his own advertising and how it stands up.

He claims to come from the poorest people in Ohio, but he has set a course to roll back the health care for his poorest and oldest constituents, for children, and for those with pre-existing medical conditions, and it's the first thing he's set out to do.

Sounds like he's more concerned about the insurance industry that has buyer's remorse after agreeing to the health care proposal.

What's remarkable is Boehner will fight like mad to roll back healthcare, while enjoying the privileges of doctors and medical care on call at any time of the day or night as a member of the House of Representatives.  I've seen members run to get meds and attention for the common call when I was a Hill rate.  How often do us common folk do anything like that?

Boehner has not made it a secret that he wants to take "a hard look" at social security and medicare. 

As a member of Congress, Speaker Boehner's retirement is secure - even without his chamber of commerce handlers.  But what about those people in Boehner's old neighborhood or the rest of America.

Those of you who have been paying into this social security system your whole life, grab the banister or something to hang onto, because Boehner and his band of merry men want to pull the rug from beneath your feet at an age when you can't run the 440 quite as fast as you once could. 

They want to raise the retirement age, reduce benefits, make them based on your income, and encourage 401ks - and we all know how much better a 401k is to the certain benefit you expected from social security; oh yes, forget about that COLA as well.

Today is Wednesday, what will Congress do next - after some of them hear the Constitution read aloud?

No mystery there. 

The new Republican Congress, headed up by his tearful majesty, shall push through a series of roll backs on health care, perhaps even a bill privatizing social security, and whatever other hair-brained legislation they believe will please their crazed base of latter day self-described t-party revolutionaries.

Next, the Senate will have to review their hellish handiwork, and we can expect the Senate will stop this wrong-headed series of initiatives dead, either with a filibuster that drags on painfully, or a series of short and sweet no votes (if McConnell can suppress his inner child), and, however that happens, with much sturm und drang, or more pacificistically.  In either case, that means it means that President Obama won't have to veto any of this "just say no" legislation.

Some of you may remember when Pinocchio Boehner said the election was about jobs. 

This from the guy who opposed unemployment insurance, funds for teachers and students, and a lot more.

The fact is this election was never about jobs for the middle class for Rep. Boehner. 

And its not about giving the government back to all the people.

It was what it's always been about for Speaker Boehner and that's about securing the levers of power for the large financial interests including the insurance industry that underwrite and manipulate Boehner and his henchmen. 

Boehner cried today, faux tears in my opinion, but we'll all be rubbing our eyes and crying for real if this nation doesn't demand that our congress govern instead of campaign for 2012.

John P. Flannery
JonFlan@aol.com