Los Angeles Times: Healing Medi-Cal

Source:FreeState Now 

A lot of states are swamped in deficit and debt thanks to high unemployment. With a lot less people working and paying taxes as we had four years ago. And instead of working and paying taxes, they are instead consuming more public services. Paid for by less tax revenue, California being a perfect example of this. Medicaid was already set up in the 1960s as an unfunded mandate that has to come out of general revenue. 

Unfunded mandates makes it even harder to pay for Medicaid. And when we have less people working and more poor people in the country Medicaid or Medi-Cal as its called in California becomes even harder to pay for, especially with the Federal Government Continuing to pass down regulations without the funds to pay for them. The way to fix Medicaid not just for California, but every other state, there are a few of ways.  

One let each State have Medicaid to run. Each State would have its own version of Medicaid. Which would help make Medicaid self-financed, that would be paid for by its consumers and their employees. Unemployed workers would get a tax credit provided by the Federal Government to cover their health care costs and employers would get a tax credit from the Feds to cover their Medicaid costs. 

Two instead of even having the states run Medicaid, convert each Medicaid into a semi-private non-profit self-financed health insurer that provides health insurance for low-income people.  And let the States, Feds and locals regulate these health insurers instead. 

Medicaid wasn’t set up to be efficient or cost-effective. But to provide health insurance for people who couldn’t get it any other way. Which it has done for the most part, but it needs to be reformed. To make it cost-effective, especially when budgets are tight for everyone.

Los Angeles Times: David Dreier: Can We Make Congress Move?

Source:The New Democrat 

With all due respect to Representative David Dreier who served in the House of Representatives from 1981-2013 and has and inside view of Congress at least the House, "it is worst than it looks". To paraphrase a title of a book from Tom Mann and Norm Ornstein in their 2006 book about Congress. The public is obviously not always right and because of that I'm one of the last people who would ever advocate for a pure majoritarian social democratic form of government. But back in 2006 Congress's approval rating was somewhere around fifteen-percent and now it is ten-percent on a good day.

And if you just look all of the available evidence about Congress both the House and Senate, Congress is clearly broken. And then if you look at how the House and Senate deal with each other, which in a lot of cases is not at all and how representatives and senators talk about the other chamber, it is even worst. Forget about liking each other the Republican House and Democratic Senate do not even respect each other. The American people voted for a divided Congress in the last two elections and that is exactly what they have. And Congress as a result is so divided that it can't get it's basic work done like a highway bill.

When Congress actually does come together and does some work. It generally starts with the Senate because House Republicans have this take it or leave it approach over there. "Pass our Republican bill, or we'll pass nothing". Which gets blocked by Senate Leader Reid because Democrats are in the majority and get to decide what comes to the floor in the Senate. Senate Democrats will then try to write their own bill that gets blocked by Senate Republicans because Senate Democrats don't have the sixty votes for cloture which is how debate ends.

And then when cooler heads prevail which is how the Senate is supposed to operate anyway, practical Senate Democrats and Republicans come together and write a compromise. Which passes unless a group of very partisan Democratic and Republican Senators are able to block it, or get an amendment to the bill that makes the bill unpopular on both sides. But even when the Senate gets a compromise passed it is dead on arrival in the House because it is not a House Republican bill. And the bill at best is a temporary fix to a long-term problem. Which that line right there is all you need to know about why Congress doesn't work. Temporary solutions to long-term problems.

If you think that is as bad as Congress can get, stay tuned because there is plenty more that will be written in the future. And no I don't have a solution in how to fix Congress in one post. Because it is a bicameral legislature with both chambers needing fixing. I'm not sure I could write one post about how to fix the House or Senate that could cover all of the issues in one post. And anyone including Representative David Dreier still wondering why Congress doesn't work?

Los Angeles Times: A New Way to Attack Social Programs

Source:The New Democrat

Here’s an area where the public sector can work with the private sector and it is in the area of self-improvement for convicted inmates. So they can build up their lives and have a real shot at succeeding on the outside making a good living legally. And never needing to go back to jail or prison. It is pretty clear that locking up prison inmates and simply just keeping them there until their sentence is over, or just simply releasing them on the outside expecting to fit back into civilized society on their own, does not work. And that we need a new approach and this is where a public/private partnership could work.

If you want to talk about what happens to ex-inmates once they get out of prison as far as empowering them to build a successful life for themselves, we should say that all ex-inmates upon release from prison would then have to serve at a halfway house at their expense. Which would be like an apartment building or hotel for ex-offenders where they would stay and get help finding a job. And whatever rehabilitation service they may need as well so they can function successfully in society. Where they would have an outside job while still staying at the halfway house. Plus having a job inside the halfway house to help keep the place running.

The way this would work would be pretty simple. A prison releases inmates and then finds a halfway house for those inmates based on applications these places send to prisons. And then they get rewarded with the contracts to manage these ex-inmates in their houses. Until they are completely ready to be independent and live completely on their own. And the beauty of this approach is that the ex-inmates would pay for these services themselves. With money they get paid from their jobs outside of these homes.

Los Angeles Times: Dying for Relief: More People Dying From Prescription Drugs Overdoses Then Cocaine or Heroin

And yet prescription drugs are legal in America. Just more evidence of how stupid the War on Drugs is.