Koch's Comments: Too big to jail

On October 12, the insurance companies released a report they had commissioned on the impact of the Baucus Senate bill expanding health coverage, which will be voted on today, October 13.

According to The New York Times, the report, prepared by Price-Waterhouse Coopers, states that "premiums would climb sharply with the passage of comprehensive health legislation." The report also stated that "selected provisions of a bill from the Senate Finance Committee could increase premiums 18 percent more than they would otherwise rise in the next decade, to an average of nearly $26,000 for families and $9,700 for individuals in 2019." 

Under the Baucus bill, the insurance companies retain control over the premiums they charge customers, except that they may not discriminate on the basis of preexisting conditions. Take the insurance companies at their word. They will raise those premiums by those amounts. They have given Congress the best reason to include in the legislation a government option to compete with them. Such an option should have to compete fairly with no additional government subsidies or funding not provided to private sector insurance companies. The government option's ability to compete and provide lower prices would be dependent on its elimination of the profit now included by the insurance companies, which would undoubtedly increase with the addition of millions of additional customers after new universal health coverage legislation takes effect.  

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Last July at a forum in Kansas City, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke acknowledged the validity of the axiom that a company can be "too big to fail." As he responded to questions from the audience, Bernanke said the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department would be looking for ways to eliminate that approach. I wish him luck, but I doubt it will happen. Bernanke was referring to the financial giants like Citibank, Goldman Sachs and AIG which were saved by billions in loans provided by the Congress, the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury Department.

All around us, the federal government is making deals with powerful special interest groups.  It can be seen most blatantly in the drafting of the Obama-Baucus health care bill in the US Senate and at the White House. The single most blatant anti-public act taken by the Senate Finance Committee, with the support of President Obama, involves an agreement prohibiting Medicare from seeking volume discount pricing when purchasing prescription drugs. A volume discount of 30 percent on more than $378 billion in drugs procured annually by Medicare would produce approximately $114 billion a year in cost savings to the government. 

According to a New York Times article from October 11, "The White House and the panel's chairman, Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, reached an agreement with the drug industry for its companies to contribute a total of $80 billion - but not more - over 10 years in reductions to their government payments." That's $8 billion annually.

That makes no sense and is a sellout to the drug industry. I suspect that he caved in to the drug companies in exchange for their agreement to support the Democratic comprehensive health care bill and to pay for television advertising to sell it to the American public. What's in it for the members of Congress? The obvious. Campaign contributions to the House and Senate members, which will run into the multi-millions.

The Times points out: "Many Democrats would like to see the government negotiate far lower prices for the Medicare drugs it buys. But drug industry lobbyists say - and the debate on the finance bill appears to confirm - that Mr. Baucus's agreement to limit the industry's costs excludes such price negotiations."

The outrageous deal negotiated by the Federal Drug Administration with Pfizer is another example of the administration's favoring the interest of the big companies. Pfizer engaged in repeated violations of federal law when it illegally urged doctors to prescribe its drug Bextra for medical uses not approved by the F.D.A., which put many people's lives and health at risk. The F.D.A. did not pursue criminal action against the officers and directors of the recidivist company. Instead, it imposed a $2.3 billion civil fine, which it touted as the largest such fine ever imposed. What the F.D.A. did not say in its release, as the Times pointed out in one of its articles on the subject, is that "the $2.3 billion fine amounts to less than three weeks of Pfizer's sales." We can add to the axiom, "too big to fail," a new and additional government protocol - "too big to jail."

When will the citizens of our great country go to the nearest window and shout, "We're not going to take it anymore," and hold their representatives in Congress and in the White House accountable?

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President Obama spoke at a fund-raising dinner for the Human Rights Campaign on October 10 in Washington, DC.  The organization is the largest and most successful gay, lesbian and transgender advocacy group in the nation. According to the Times of October 11, the President "renewed his vow to allow gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military, but failed to offer a timetable for doing so." 

I don't know if the ban on gays and lesbians openly serving in the military can be repealed by executive order or will require Congress to change the existing protocol. If the latter, the president should press Congress to do it and to do it now, and not defer the issue to some future date. If he has the power to unilaterally change the protocol, he should do so without further delay.

Also crying out for repeal is the Defense of Marriage Act which, reports the Times, "allows states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages in other states." The president has said he opposes that law, even though he does not support same-sex marriage but does support domestic partnerships. At the Human Rights dinner he said, "We as a nation [must] finally recognize [that] relationships between two men or two women are just as real and admirable as relationships between a man and a woman." I support government recognition of same-sex marriages. New York, where the Assembly recently passed a bill permitting such marriages will, I am hopeful, soon join the six states that allow such unions.

Congress is moving in the direction of equality and recognizing the prejudices to which gays and lesbians are subject. That was demonstrated by the House enacting by a wide margin certain changes to the existing hate crime legislation, including the addition of sexual orientation to those categories of people covered by the legislation who will benefit from the increase of criminal penalties for hate crime attacks.

During the first month of my mayoralty, in January 1978, I issued an executive order prohibiting discrimination against anyone based on their sexual orientation by the government in the areas of employment, housing and education.  In 1986 I was able to get the City Council to pass a law providing similar protections to everyone in the private sector residing or working in New York City. Regrettably, according to Wikipedia, comparable laws exist in only 21 states, the District of Columbia and about 140 cities in the US. I believe the most pressing need and protection for the gay community is an equivalent federal law. In l974 Bella Abzug and I, along with two other members of Congress, introduced legislation to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation. Regrettably, the legislation has not advanced.  

Justice and equality for the gay and lesbian communities should not be put on the back burner.  It is long overdue and deserves to be a priority.