Medical Insurance Competition in Ohio

Health Care for America Now, (HCAN), published a report showing the state of health insurance competition in America. Basically, to cut to the chase, it sucks, and Ohio is no different.

According to the report, 58% of the health insurance market in Ohio is controlled by two companies. These companies are Wellpoint, which is run by Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield and Medical Mutual.

The report notes that from 2000 to 2007:

1. The cost of health insurance premiums for Ohio working families has gone up 76%;

2. The average annual combined premium for employers and employees went from $6596 to $11636;

3.Employers saw their portion of annual premiums go up by 75% while employees saw their share increase by 80%; but

4. The median earnings of Ohio workers increased by 9%, from $25017 to $27255.

(You can read the full report here.)

One of the favorite talking points for Republicans is that somehow Obama's plan for a public option for health insurance will "destroy" the marketplace. Well, guess what, in a lot of states, including Ohio, there is not much of a marketplace left to destroy.

Maybe what we need is some good, old-fashioned, Teddy Roosevelt-style, trust busting. Maybe its time, in fact, past time, to unleash the Justice Department's anti-trust division on some health insurance providers.

Plain Dealer Article on Dem Gains in Ohio

The Cleveland Plain Dealer ran an interesting article last week on November 10, 2008 about Dem gains and GOP gains in the Ohio presidential election. As you can see from the map, McCain only gained on Bush's performance in 11 counties while Obama did better than Kerry in 77 counties. You can read the article here.

College Grads & 2008 Presidential Voting

Below is a ranking of the fifty states by the percentage of four-year college graduates in their populations. The ranking includes the District of Columbia and was prepared by the United States Census Bureau.

A review of the rankings shows that Obama carried all of the top ten states, and carried 17 out of the top 20. Conversely, McCain carried nine of the bottom ten, with only Nevada in that group going for Obama. Of the bottom 20, McCain carried 16 while Obama carried four. (Ohio, by the way, falls into the bottom 20 at 21.9%. Ohio's ranking is highlighted.)

It would be interesting to know if this voting pattern carried down into the county level of the states that Obama carried, including Ohio. If it did, then one way that local Democratic candidates might target voters is by trying to find out which voters have a four-year degree.

Rank State Percent
0 United States 25.9
1 D.C. 42.5
2 Massachusetts 35.5
3 Colorado 33.5
4 Maryland 33.1
5 Connecticut 32.9
6 Virginia 31.7
7 New Jersey 31.6
8 Vermont 30.8
9 New Hampshire 30.2
10 Minnesota 29.8
11 Washington 29.7
12 New York 29.3
13 California 28.5
14 Illinois 28.1
15 Alaska 28
16 Hawaii 27.9
17 Utah 27.3
18 Kansas 26.7
18 Rhode Island 26.7
20 New Mexico 25.9
20 Oregon 25.9
22 Delaware 25.1
23 Montana 24.8
23 Nebraska 24.8
25 Texas 24.5
26 Georgia 24.4
27 Florida 24.1
28 Maine 24
29 Missouri 23.9
30 North Dakota 23.8
31 Michigan 23.6
31 Pennsylvania 23.6
31 South Dakota 23.6
34 North Carolina 23.4
34 Wyoming 23.4
36 Arizona 23.2
36 Wisconsin 23.2
38 South Carolina 22.7
39 Idaho 22.6
40 Iowa 22.2
41 Ohio 21.9
42 Tennessee 21
43 Oklahoma 20.7
44 Alabama 20.6
44 Indiana 20.6
46 Louisiana 20.4
47 Arkansas 19.7
48 Kentucky 18.8
49 Nevada 18.6
50 Mississippi 17.7
51 West Virginia 16.1

Bush Asks Justice Department to Look at New Ohio Voters

The Washington Post and the Cleveland Plain Dealer are both reporting that President Bush asked Attorney General Mukasey to review concerns raised by the GOP over approximately 200,000 new voter registrations. This action was taken as a result of a letter that Bush received from the House Minority Leader, John Boehner. Boehner first asked Attorney General Mukasey to take action, but didn't receive a response to that request. He then sent his letter to Bush.

This action may explain why a GOP donor dismissed his lawsuit against Brunner that he had filed in the Ohio Supreme Court. That lawsuit was subject to possible dismissal because he wouldn't have standing to bring such an action against Brunner.
One of the arguments that Secretary of State Brunner raised in Federal Court is that a private person or entity doesn't have standing to raise claims under the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). The U.S. Supreme Court apparently agreed with her since it cited cases in its opinion that deal with that issue and since it voted 9-0 not to hear the case. The same argument wouldn't apply to a lawsuit brought against Brunner by the Federal Government.

The issue between Brunner and the GOP deals with the approximately 200,000 voter registrations where the information in the voter database doesn't match the information in databases maintained by the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles or the Social Security Administration. The GOP sees this as evidence of voter fraud. It cites as evidence reports of problems with registrations obtained by ACORN workers. Brunner counters that most discrepancies are caused by typographical errors and other errors made by clerical workers at local Boards of Elections.

Brunner's attorneys point out that the HAVA mandates that no voter can be removed from the voting rolls within 60 days of an election due to computer database mismatches. They could, however, be required to vote provisional ballots. Brunner believes that requiring provisional ballots in such cases carries the potential of such votes not being counted. Additionally, there is the possibility that many Ohioans who registered this year may not vote if they think that their votes won't be counted. One suspects that depressing the turnout is what is behind Bo

Given the track record of Bush's Department of Justice on supposed voter fraud issues, this is not a good thing. One of the many scandals that has rocked the Bush Administration is the firing of nine U.S. Attorneys because they wouldn't bring bogus criminal prosecutions for supposed voter fraud. We don't know whether any of the political appointees who were behind the firing of the U.S. Attorneys are still in office under Mukasey.

On the other hand, we don't know if Mukasey is as much of a political partisan as Gonzales. We don't know if he wants to further sully the reputation of the Department of Justice by ordering the possible disenfranchisment of up to 200,000 voters. We don't know if he wants to be preceived as a partisan hack on his way out the door.

Washington Post-ABC News Poll Has Obama Up 6 in Ohio

Read the Post article.

Bad News for Ohio GOP & McCain

This was the headline on an article on Cleveland.com that also appeared in the print edition of the Cleveland Plain Dealer:



It gets worse. This guy is no longer Ohio Secretary of State:














Instead of the GOP's man Kenny, the McCain campaign will have to deal with her:









Let's see how they like them apples.

The Cost to Ohio of its Four Nuclear Reactors

A reader sent us a link to an article that was posted on a website called www.freepress.org out of Columbus. The article is titled How Swing State Ohio Got Nuked. The theme of the article is that the cost of the state's four nuclear reactors is hurting Ohio economically. This is a quote from the article:

The state suffers some of the nation's highest and most unpredictable electric costs for four simple reasons: the Davis-Besse, Perry, Zimmer and Beaver Valley 2 nuclear plants.

Davis-Besse, near Toledo, is world-famous for a leak of boric acid that ate through a six-inch stainless steel reactor pressure vessel, bringing northern Ohio to the brink of a Chernobyl-scale catastrophe. Perry, east of Cleveland, suffered billions in construction cost over-runs, and is the only US nuke to have been damaged by an earthquake. Zimmer, on the Ohio River, was allegedly more than 95% complete when massive design and construction flaws forced its hugely expensive 1980s conversion to coal. Beaver Valley 2, near Pittsburgh, has run up even more in overages.

To recoup their radioactive losses, Ohio utilities rammed a 1999 "deregulation" bill through the legislature that has thus far cost ratepayers at least $10 billion, and counting. The vast bulk of the money has gone to repay "stranded costs," corporate code for sunk debt reactor owners don't want to eat. Had that money gone to increased efficiency and renewable technologies, Ohio’s economy would be on a very different footing.

The article points out that Ohio has lost business opportunities as a result of our electric rate structure. Here is a quote from the article:

On Friday, February 22, a powerful group of international steel investors announced they were pulling Ohio out of the running for a new high-tech production plant. Some 500 jobs will now go elsewhere. The investors blamed unstable power prices. "If you had to rank from clarity on the utility situation, Ohio would not rank very high," said one.

Check out the article and draw your own conclusions. We think you will find it interesting.

Thanks to reader Phyllis Bernel for sending us this article.

Strickland Takes on Bush over Guard Use

Governor Ted Strickland was interviewed today on National Public Radio about Bush's plans to call up reserve units from several states, including Ohio. Strickland pointed out that he doesn't think that Ohio's Guard units have been given proper equipment and training to do the job they are being called upon to do. He lays this problem right at the feet of the Bushies, you know, the armchair warriors who send other people's children to fight their wars. Click on the link in this entry's title to hear the interview.

SPAN Ohio Works for Universal Health Care

SPAN Ohio is an organization that is working to establish a single payer health insurance system in Ohio. (SPAN stands for Single Payer Action Network). This organization is sponsoring a conference in Columbus on April 21, 2007 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. If you click on this entry's title, you can read about SPAN, what it does, and what will be happening at the conference. If you are interested in health care reform, you should be aware of SPAN and its activities. Check it out, we think you will find it interesting.

Religious Conservatives in Iowa's GOP are Searching for a President

One of the pillars of the Iowa Republican Party has been white evangelicals. According to this article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer they are feeling like they don't have a candidate in the 2008 presidential race. They find Giuliani too socially liberal, they don't trust McCain, Romney is a Mormon, Brownback and Huckabee are long-shots. If this was to hold up until the GOP nomination, it could lead to religious conservatives sitting out the 2008 election. That would have huge consequences for Republicans up and down the ballot.

People get in trouble in politics when they start believing their own bs. Since 2004 white evangelicals in the Republican Party have bragged about their power over their party. That has led to those voters who don't share their beliefs getting worried and becoming more active themselves. In the Ohio 2006 election the Republican Party learned that a candidate who just appeals to part of a political party's base gets beat. If you don't believe us, just look at the totals in the Strickland-Blackwell campaign for governor.

It will be interesting to see what the reaction of the religious right is to the fact that Romney is now leading in the "money" primary and Giuliani is leading in the polls. Will they redouble their efforts to try and come up with a person they see as more acceptable? Will they suck it up and back one of the three front-runners? Or will they take their marbles and go home? The 2008 election chances for the GOP may depend on their choice.