February 28, 2012 – RI Future

February 28, 2012February 28, 2012

My Pre-Existing Condition: The Price of Being Female

Will I get pregnant one day? I don’t know for sure, but you know who thinks they do . . . health insurance companies? I didn’t think it possible for an insurer to know whether I was going to get pregnant before I did, but remarkably, insurance companies seem to believe they know best. And because of this future and hypothetical baby that I might have, insurance companies are allowed to charge me a higher premium than my male counterparts.

Rhode Island law currently permits insurance companies to charge higher premiums to women over males – a common industry accepted practice known as gender rating. Insurance companies would argue that women are more expensive to cover due to their unique medical needs like mammograms, pap smears, and maternity costs. Yet, women can’t choose to have breasts or ovaries, but driving recklessly, abusing alcohol, and eating unhealthily are all choices that can negatively affect health among both men and women. Even so, women still pay higher premiums in the individual health insurance market (never mind the fact it’s been illegal in the group market for decades).

Still doesn’t make sense, right? Soon, under President Obama’s health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act, this discriminatory practice will be banned federally when most major components of the law go into effect. (Phew!) Yet… what about the next two years during which women of Rhode Island will continue to be charged higher rates? I think Rhode Island can do better – and I’m not the only one.

I suppose if we want to talk about the cost-benefit analysis of covering women who may become pregnant, it would make sense to take steps to prevent unplanned pregnancy and reduce those so-called ancillary costs to insurance providers. Following this logic, the HHS ruling late last month that requires all employers and health insurance plans provide birth control with no co-pays as a basic, preventative health measure really was one giant leap for woman kind to break the cycle of gender rating in insurance coverage.

Just last week, Brown University released a new public poll that found 56.8 percent of Rhode Islanders support birth control coverage with no co-pays. Meanwhile, Rhode Islanders are almost evenly split on Mr. Obama’s recently issued requirement that church-related organizations such as colleges and hospitals to cover birth control in their employee insurance coverage. The survey found 47.5 percent in favor of the policy and 47 opposed. Might this public approval around contraception and empowering women to plan their parenthood, be a strong sway towards equality between genders on issues of health care? One might hope. Eliminating gender rating in health care coverage and providing birth control as preventative, basic health care seems like progress.

The tides are shifting – women’s health care under a bright, if not glaring, national spotlight, and as Rhode Islanders, we have a unique opportunity to show our support. The reality, in terms of insurance premiums, is that each sex has their own unique set of health complications and risk factors – merely being female is not one of them. Just like over 40 years ago when the insurance industry voluntarily abandoned the practice of using race as a rating factor, so too should it abandon gender as a means of determining insurance premiums.

Unfortunately, Rhode Island is behind the curve on this issue. Nearly all of New England, with the exception of CT, has gender rating bans and regulations. We have an opportunity to use the public spotlight that has been placed on women’s health to show that Rhode Island stands for equal rights among women and men. It’s a no brainer. Women in seven surrounding states are already protected from this practice; it’s time for the Ocean State to do the same.

If you want to get involved, and advocate for Rhode Island to erase gender rating right out of RI health insurance, I encourage you to come to the RI State House this Wednesday & Thursday “at the rise” to participate in the following hearings:

Tuesday February 28 at the Rise (around 4:30 pm) Hearing Room 203 – House Committee on Corporations hearing on House Bill 71751, to eliminate gender rating in health insurance, sponsored by Rep. Donna Walsh.

Wednesday February 29 at the Rise (around 4:30pm) Hearing Room 212 – Senate Committee on Health & Human Services hearing on Senate Bill 2208, to eliminate gender rating in health insurance, sponsored by Senator Sue Sosnowski.

February 28, 2012February 28, 2012

Poll: Not looking good for Democrat David Cicilline

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The big story to come out of WPRI’s poll last night is that Republican challenger Brendan Doherty is “crushing” incumbent Democrat David Cicilline in their contest for the right to represent Rhode Island in the 1st Congressional District.

According to the poll that surveyed 250 Rhode Islanders, Doherty would garner 49 percent of the vote while Cicilline would pull in just 34 percent, with 16 percent undecided.*

This should serve as a call to action for both Democrats and progressives. If you can’t support Cicilline, it’s time to start recruiting David Segal to run again for the seat, as well. Or else find a dark horse.

More on what a three-way race might look like below…

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I held off on taking another look at David Cicilline in the primary until WPRI’s poll numbers were out (I distrust Brown polling). Well, here they are. True to form, WPRI shows a slightly different situation than Brown’s, even where all of Rhode Island was asked. Brown put Mr. Cicilline’s approval rating at 14.8%. The WPRI poll shows Mr. Cicilline at 19.6%, which is slightly better.

I think the WPRI poll is superior for those attempting to divine the future, if only because it actually puts head-to-head match-ups between Republican Brendan Doherty and Mr. Cicilline, along with potential Democratic challenger Anthony Gemma. While Mr. Gemma appears that he would handily lose in a race between him and Mr. Doherty (although not enough people know either, so there are a lot of not sures), Mr. Cicilline at least has a base of support to build from; the 18-39 year olds and members of the Democratic Party. Interestingly, union members are more pro-Doherty than pro-Cicilline (who’s better off with non-union voters), probably a sign that Cicilline’s last-minute deal with the Providence Fire Fighter’s IAFF Local 799 before his campaign hasn’t boosted his union credentials, nor has his service to the Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Last time I evaluated this, I said that a primary could shape up into essentially one of five choices: Mr. Gemma runs again and loses, Mr. Cicilline collapses, Mr. Cicilline defeats a centrist, either David Segal or Mr. Gemma triumphs in a three-way race against Mr. Cicilline, or a three-way race is a boon to Mr. Cicilline. The basic thought was that it’s more likely for Mr. Cicilline to win in a primary. Indeed, that still seems likely. For one thing, the Democratic Party has circled its wagons around Mr. Cicilline, and Mr. Gemma, an independent before 2010, is unlikely to excite Democratic partisans, and is unlikely to be able to get figures in the state Democratic Party to abandon Mr. Cicilline. Is there anyone capable of defeating the incumbent Representative in a Democratic Primary?

Scott MacKay appears to be wondering the same thing. Things haven’t improved for Mr. Cicilline since the last time WRNI did a poll in May of 2011. Having failed to address the issue last year, the campaign is likely to be a referendum on Mr. Cicilline, when it should be a referendum on the U.S. Congress. If Mr. Segal decides to run, or Mr. Gemma, both will have to be radically different candidates, and will face a name recognition problem much as Mr. Doherty has faced. They’ll also be facing the fact that their potential donor pools are the same as Mr. Cicilline’s, making it harder to raise money against him.

While Mr. Cicilline does have a sizable war chest, the question is if that money will matter in a general election. Where it will matter is in a primary election; but unfortunately for Mr. Gemma, his inclusion in the polling undercuts the notion that he might be more electable than Mr. Cicilline. One of the interesting things about small races like these is how polls can influence perceptions of electability, and candidates largely need to operate between infrequent polling to make their mark. A single poll can show the emperor has no clothes; and bad polls can cause serious damage. For the time being, Mr. Cicilline appears to have nothing to shield himself with. A non-Cicilline or Gemma candidate looking to jump in might start now while the pollsters are napping.

This might also be the void that either an independent or a Moderate could step into. Lincoln Chafee eked out a close win by appealing to progressives and the base of support he had built up during his tenure in the U.S. Senate. It’s not inconceivable that an independent could avoid the trouble of a Democratic primary while utilizing an aggressive media strategy to get their name in the news. This might also be the race that the Moderate Party could attempt to take on, but no candidates seem to be forthcoming, indeed, the Moderate Party has not even deigned to issue attacks on either candidate. There might be some advantages for an independent or Moderate candidate, since both national parties have damaged their brands severely over the last few years.

That’s ultimately the issue. We’re looking for a candidate who can be stronger than Mr. Cicilline and can overcome a large gap in name recognition relatively quickly. Providence Mayor Angel Taveras and State Treasurer Gina Raimondo leap to mind, but I think Mr. Taveras is dedicated to fixing Providence (such a run would open him up to the same criticisms as Mr. Cicilline) and that Ms. Raimondo has bigger offices she might be aiming for. Furthermore, neither seem likely to anger any of Mr. Cicilline’s Democratic backers, especially since Mr. Taveras is largely surrounded by them.

A dream candidate for Democrats would be someone capable of rallying Rhode Islanders with a hopeful message while being relatively unconnected to Providence’s financial woes. This would shift the referendum on Mr. Cicilline into the primary and would allow for a general election to focus on national issues, which should favor Democrats slightly as Tea Party Republicans have caused serious problems for their party’s favorability. The major issue here is that Mr. Doherty has yet to take any serious positions, meaning that he is largely the anti-Cicilline in the race. Republican voices were largely condemning Mr. Doherty as a Democrat in Republican clothing during the primary before John Loughlin dropped out. If Mr. Doherty is a Republican in the Chafee mode, he may be less objectionable to voters.

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*Update: Nicole Kayner of Mr. Cicilline’s campaign has given us the following statement about the poll:

“People are struggling right now and they are not satisfied with the response they are getting from Congress. David understands that. He is working hard every day to do what he can in this tough economy. Last year, his district office has helped over 700 Rhode Islanders solve problems like navigating the Veterans Administration and tracking down Social Security checks and Medicare payments. Most recently, he held a housing fair where hundreds of Rhode Island families who were either facing foreclosure or are having trouble making their payments were able to receive assistance from lenders and housing agencies. David remains focused on doing everything possible to help middle-class Rhode Islanders get back on their feet.”

February 28, 2012February 28, 2012

Lecture on new era of ‘Jim Crow’ at Brown tonight

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Author and civil rights attorney Michelle Alexander will be giving a lecture at Brown University tonight at 6 p.m. in the Martinos Auditorium on her new book.

The book, “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness,” is about the disproportionately high number of young black people who turn to crime and how society has failed to address this issue. According to the book’s website

MichelleAlexander1 — Author Michelle Alexander will give a lecture on her book "The New Jim Crown" tonight at Brown University. (photo courtesy of Brown)

“The New Jim Crow is a stunning account of the rebirth of a caste-like system in the United States, one that has resulted in millions of African Americans locked behind bars and then relegated to a permanent second-class status—denied the very rights supposedly won in the Civil Rights Movement.

“As the United States celebrates its ‘triumph over race’ with the election of Barack Obama, the majority of black men in major urban areas are under correctional control or saddled with criminal records for life. Jim Crow laws were wiped off the books decades ago, but today an extraordinary percentage of the African American community is warehoused in prisons or trapped in a parallel social universe, denied basic civil and human rights…”

According to Brown, “Alexander is widely know for her work advocating for civil rights. In recent years, she has taught at a number of universities, including Stanford Law School, where she was an associate professor of law and directed the Civil Rights Clinics. In 2005, she was awarded a Soros Justice Fellowship, and that same year she accepted a joint appointment at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity and the Moritz College of Law at The Ohio State University.”

She’ll be signing her book after her lecture.

February 28, 2012February 27, 2012

Occupy’s Rocky Road

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Over at Salon, Arun Gupta has a long discussion of all the various strains on Occupy Wall Street; lack of authority/legitimacy from the General Assemblies, the presence of the homeless and finally the presence of so-called “violence advocates” or black bloc protestors.

All of these happen(ed) in the microcosm of Occupy Providence, and all present their own interesting takes. First, I want to make it clear: I have not been involved in any Occupy Providence actions or meetings since December 10th. So, I’m a distant observer. What I do get to read is the online discussion group, which is often informative, but a very small portion of what must be going on.

As far as legitimacy/authority of the General Assemblies, this is something I can’t really speak to, but of those I went to, it often seemed to me that one of the things the General Assembly was becoming when I left is what I like to refer to as a “shit-screen”. These are pretty useful tools for keeping dissent somewhere else. Student government is a common one. Basically, it’s where you go to complain to someone who has an apparent power but in actuality has very little authority over the situation. I’ll never forget the discussion I had with an Industrial Areas Foundation organizer who said that understanding where power is located was a very important thing. “We don’t want to waste our time protesting at a city council meeting only to discover the decision was made somewhere else by someone who isn’t even in government,” he said.

Ostensibly, General Assemblies were created to empower people and to provide some level of governance (however much you might despise that word) over those who joined Occupy. People discussed their grievances with the system, which was necessary to see what issues we should be focusing on, but if you’ve ever stood for three hours in the cold listening to people complain about government, you realize that a coffee shop is a nicer setting and you can also go to City Hall or the State House and cuss out an elected official or a bureaucrat and feel much more satisfied (in no way am I suggesting you do this, many of them have terrible jobs already). General Assemblies often took so long to get things done that we’d quit for a night without really having said much more than we had yesterday.

The homeless were always an issue, but to Occupy Providence’s credit, despite some lofty rhetoric attempting to link the movement to the Arab Spring, veterans of the Tent Cities taken apart by then-Mayor David Ciciline were always present and were probably the most pulled together about the real nitty-gritty of the “occupation”. This lines up almost perfectly with what Barbara Ehrenreich wrote about the true roots of Occupy Wall Street; that it drew more from historical US encampments (the Bonus Army, the Poor People’s Campaign, and most importantly the Tent Cities) than from any Arab Spring Movement. I think that’s about right. America isn’t a dictatorship, it’s a democracy, so we are always going up against a system that has institutions in place to deal with dissent or allow it to be victorious. I always thought we should’ve looked to Chile for our model. Regardless, tent city participants were and continue to be great resources for street-based movements. It should, however, be noted that not a single American encampment movement has yet succeeded.

That argument about what kind of system are we facing leads right into the euphemistically-described “diversity of tactics” discussion, which make no mistake, is going on in Occupies around the country. This was inaugurated with the now infamous attack on black blocs published by journalist Chris Hedges in Truth-Out. Reporter Susie Cagle responded in Truth-Out, along with David Graeber of n+1. Ms. Cagle criticized Mr. Hedges for failing to be there before making his criticisms. Mr. Graeber largely criticized Mr. Hedges for his rhetoric and lack of understanding of the movement, while faultily relying on Gandhi to support his position of allowing violence. My favorite dissection of the debate is this one from MyFiredoglake member danps. Finally, Professor Erica Chenoweth weighed in by providing data showing that non-violent campaigns during the 20th and early 21st centuries were more likely to succeed than violent ones (they get more successful over time).

In no way do I support those advocating for violence, but let’s be clear, majorities of Americans dislike Occupy Wall Street’s tactics. They were against the shutdowns and they are against the encampments. They might support what they perceive to be the goals, but the tactics have been a turnoff. When I was there, there were discussions about shutting down Kennedy Plaza via protest. I never understood that, since you rarely find the 1% riding the bus (they can afford cars and chauffeurs). The people most harmed by a Kennedy Plaza shutdown would’ve been people like me, students, and the poor. If you’ve ever taken public transportation to an appointment, you know the sort of panicky feeling you get as time ticks down. Now imagine that a massive demonstration walks in front of you. I would not be very supportive of whatever they were protesting. That they were protesting economic inequality would probably incense me. Luckily, parts of Kennedy Plaza were only briefly shutdown during the two marches I attended.

I’ve said before that Occupy needs a Valley Forge moment, and I stand by that. In no way should we disparage those who have done the hard work of encamping and protesting for these many months. But many have drifted away. And the remnants have now built an organizational structure they’re fine with, but which is highly confusing for new people. The bar to participation is high, and what I think we’ll find is that more organizations will temporarily ally themselves with their local Occupies rather than join. That’s alright.

What I’d like to see from the various groups that seem destined to arise out of Occupy’s splintering (I believe it will splinter in the absence of a cohesive force, and I believe that splintering is already going on) is one with a bit more discipline. One of the things I love best about the Civil Rights Movement was the Sunday best people wore. People tended to be well-dressed when they went to protest, and this both enhanced their respectability while underscoring the brutality they faced from police. Too often, Occupy members were derided as hippies, and many were. But some of the most powerful images are of those who were dressed in uniform (airline pilots marching on Wall Street). It’s a lot harder to beat down the well-dressed than it is to beat a bunch of hoodies.

I’ve said before that this is far bigger than Occupy, that the ideas being raised must be taken up by a wider movement willing to allow new groups to the fore. If we simply say, “oh, that’s Occupy’s beat” then we’ve allowed ourselves to fall prey to stand-byerism. If Occupy fails, or if it splinters, then it must be a learning experience for those of my generation for whom this is our first outing into the street and into protest. We can’t go “tried protest, it didn’t work.” It simply can’t be the end of things.