Category Archives: Health

Well, if you MUST know…

8 Replies

For this post, I should create several new blog categories, such as "Way more than you wanted to know," and "Extreme disclosure" and … oh, I don't know what.

Anyway, some of you asked yesterday where I was ("Where the heck is Brad?" quoth KP). Some of you divined political import in my absence from the blog for a day. Back in the second take of comments on this post — the 41st comment, I believe (16 after you click on "Next") — I answered the question. I'm not going to repeat the explanation, on the grounds that some of you may be possessed of delicate sensibilities. If you're curious enough, you can go look. And after you do, don't ever accuse me of not being in favor of full disclosure.

Perhaps this would be a good time to remind y'all that:

a) I don't actually get paid an additional dime for blogging; and
b) even if I did, I might occasionally get a weekday off, at the very least for medical purposes.

But hey, I appreciate the concern. And everything was fine, by the way.

Columbia’s sin was not knowing

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Did you read Adam Beam's story this morning?

    Columbia is expected to have at least a $10 million shortfall in its general fund for the 2008 budget year — the largest for South Carolina’s capital city, preliminary audit figures show.
    Taxpayers will have to cover the deficit from the city’s rainy day fund — which could have been avoided had the city adjusted its employee health insurance plans two years ago to cover rising costs, Deputy Finance Director Bill Ellis said.
    But two years ago, the city’s finance department was in such disarray that city officials did not realize they were spending millions of dollars more than they had budgeted for health care.
    The city spent $18 million over budget from the fiscal years 2005 to 2007. In 2008, which is still being audited, Ellis estimates the city spent more than $8 million over budget for health insurance.

The sin wasn't spending more than projected on health care. Everybody's had that happen year after year, in the private and public sectors. The sin was NOT KNOWING the city was overspending on health care, and not reflecting that in subsequent budgets, or in terms of requiring a contribution from employees. (And note I didn't say an INCREASE in the contribution from employees — Adam also notes that most employees pay nothing for coverage: "Single employees with no dependents — who make up the majority of the city’s work force — don’t pay for their health insurance.")

Add to this the overview Adam did over the weekend of what we know so far of how messed up the city has been under Charles Austin and under this council. And you may then see why we gave Austin a failing grade on his evaluation (our eval, since the council couldn't seem to get one together), and the council a failing grade on supervising him, and called yet again for a system of government that the voters can hold to account.

I have a hunch something exciting is going to happen in the pork belly market

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That's about all I wanted to say, after I saw this item on thestate.com:

    This recipe is the Bacon Explosion, modestly called by its inventors “the BBQ Sausage Recipe of all Recipes.”
    The instructions for constructing this massive torpedo-shaped
amalgamation of two pounds of bacon woven through and around two pounds
of sausage and slathered in barbecue sauce first appeared last month on
the Web site of a team of Kansas City competition barbecuers. They say
well more than 16,000 Web sites have linked to the recipe, celebrating
or sometimes scolding its excessiveness. A fresh audience could be
ready to discover it on Super Bowl Sunday.

Don't anybody tell Paula Moore over at PETA. Or George the Lobster, either.

Even I might want to pass on this carnivorous extravaganza. Although, on the upside, I'm not allergic to the recipe, which is not something I can often say about junk food…

Pork bellies, of course, are where we get bacon, which you might find in a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich…

Letter II: Writer gets it about DHEC

1 Reply

While I'm at it, allow me to call your attention to another letter on today's page, which makes a good point worth considering about the crying need to restructure government on the state level:

Aughtry big fan of current DHEC setup

I applaud Bo Aughtry’s call for a discussion on the structure of the Department of Health and Environmental Control (“DHEC professionals, board don’t bend to politics,” Sunday).

But it looks as if he doesn’t want to lead it, since all involved in it are very good and adept at what they do. Everyone is doing their best — considering they don’t get paid (as we’re reminded).

But I was wondering: How would the votes fall when developers are wanting to build, build, build, and taxpayers want to attach conditions to building permits to protect their community? The “home builder/developer,” “the attorney in the land business,” the one in “the land business” and the “real estate developer” might be conflicted — it’s only human. (Remember we are not paying them, so why would they hamper the very industry that is providing them a paycheck?)

I could be accused of being cynical, but it seems that lately those in positions of power and responsibility are simply saying, “Mistakes were made, but don’t quote me.” Who can say, “The buck stops here”?

NELIDA CABALLERO
Columbia

Excellent point about the makeup of that board. Allow me to elaborate: The DHEC board could well be as wonderful and public-spirited and as interested in protecting our health and environment as Mr. Aughtry maintains, in spite of the appearances raised by their lines of work.

But we don't know that. Why? Because we don't know them, and had no role in choosing them, much less any chance to vet them. Quick, name the members of the DHEC board. Yeah, some smart-aleck will do so, either by virtue of being an insider or having cheated by going to the Web site. But most of you don't know, and couldn't begin to tell me or anyone else how they have voted on issues or what overall influence each of them has had on policy, for good or ill.

The fix is to put someone we know and have elected in charge. No, that doesn't guarantee that things will be hunky-dory. But it at least gives the electorate a chance to demand results, and have some hope of being heeded.

Change the system? ‘Aw, never mind …’

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By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
JUST IN CASE you were wondering, or knew and had forgotten, this is the way the political culture pushes back against change in South Carolina: Not with a bang, but with an “Aw, never mind.”
    Remember last week’s column, in which I offered, as a rare sign of hope, the gathering consensus that the state Department of Health and Environmental Control should be made more accountable by placing it directly under the elected chief executive? Well, ever since then, there’s been some backtracking.
Actually, it started even before that. While I was writing that column, I heard from my colleague Cindi Scoppe that Manufacturers Alliance chief Lewis Gossett was sending us an op-ed clarifying his position after The State’s Sammy Fretwell had reported that he and S.C. Chamber of Commerce president Otis Rawl were supporting legislative efforts to put DHEC in the governor’s Cabinet.
    Not having received that op-ed (and we still hadn’t received it a week later, when this page was composed), I just wrote around the business leaders, and focused on another Fretwell story that reported that the chairman of the DHEC board, Bo Aughtry, was supportive of the Cabinet idea. “It is worthy of serious consideration because I believe it would take some of the political influence out of decisions that really should not be political,” he had told Sammy.
    This was important because the board Mr. Aughtry chairs would be the very entity that would be surrendering power if the governor were in charge. I thought it reflected very well upon Mr. Aughtry.
On Wednesday, however, I began to worry when someone shared with me a memo that DHEC Commissioner Earl Hunter had sent internally on Friday, Jan. 16, which said in part (you can read it all on my blog):

On another note, several stories have been reported in The State newspaper and other media outlets recently regarding our agency being placed in the Governor’s cabinet. Two business organizations, the SC Chamber of Commerce and the SC Manufacturers Alliance were reported as being supportive. Information I have received from both of those organizations contradicts those storiesæ.æ.æ.æ. In addition, an article this week reported that our board chairman was also supportive. Chairman Aughtry has e-mailed and called me to let me know and let you know that he was misquoted. His statement to the media was simply that he felt that any change that would take politics out of the equation is worthy of consideration. He also let the reporter know that he was 100% supportive of the agency and its staff. As usual, however, that statement wasnt included in the report….

    Then, on Thursday, we received the op-ed piece from Bo Aughtry that you find on the opposite page. Please read it.
    He writes that “moving the agency into the governor’s Cabinet may be appropriate,” although “this is not my current position.” He does believe that “any move that will make DHEC decisions less subject to political pressures is worthy of consideration. Is this best accomplished by a move to Cabinet status? I do not know, but the objective is sound.”
    If that’s a denial, it’s a mushy one. But he delivers another message that I hear a lot more loudly and clearly: Earl Hunter is a great guy. His staff is very fine, too. The same is true of the folks on the governing board.
    And you know what? I agree. I don’t know all of those people, but I know Earl Hunter, and he is a great guy. He goes to my church. I truly believe he is a sincere advocate for the state’s health and environmental quality.
    But you know what else? This isn’t about how I feel about Earl Hunter. It’s about the fact that we have a system of government in this state that does not allow the public will to be expressed clearly and effectively through this or any other agency that does not report to the elected chief executive.
    Too often, the need for such accountability is expressed in punitive terms: A governor could fire an agency head who isn’t getting the job done. But an agency head who has the governor and his bully pulpit behind him will have a lot more political leverage for doing his job. Which is better: having the unelected board chairman “100% supportive of the agency and its staff,” or having the same support from the governor and his bully pulpit? As things stand, Mr. Hunter has no one at his back with any juice, but he does have to keep his board and 170 legislators happy, which is not a recipe for bold reform; it’s a recipe for caution.
    What I want is a system that gives South Carolinians someone to hold accountable for the fact that we take too much of the nation’s waste and are not as healthy as folks in other states. Such a system would also give the good, dedicated people at DHEC the political leverage to change the political dynamic in this state as it affects their mission.
    We’ve been here before. When this newspaper started pushing hard for a Cabinet system back in 1991, we ran smack into the fact that the then-commissioner of DHEC was also a terrific guy, named Michael Jarrett. He was enormously respected in state government circles, and rightly so. He spoke out strongly against making DHEC a Cabinet agency. He did so as he was fighting cancer, which took his life in 1992. Lawmakers listened, and did not make DHEC a Cabinet agency.
    We don’t need another reform debate based in how lawmakers feel about those serving in the current system, because in South Carolina, the reform argument always loses such debates. Once it becomes about ol’ so-and-so who has the job now, forget about change: Aw, never mind.
    The thing is, if Mr. Hunter and Mr. Aughtry were replaced tomorrow — something I am not advocating — it would not change one bit the fact that voters have no one they can hold responsible for improving our public health and environmental quality.
    Mr. Aughtry was right the first time, and he’s still right: Reform is “worthy of consideration,” because “the objective is sound.”

For more, please go to thestate.com/bradsblog/.

DHEC memo

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Here's the full internal DHEC memo that I referred to in my Sunday column. Commissioner Earl Hunter sent it on Friday, Jan. 16. I got it second or third-hand, and consequently copied and sent it to DHEC spokesman Thom Berry to check its authenticity. Unfortunately, he was traveling and couldn't get to his e-mail. So I read portions of it to him on the phone, and he said he recognized it as a message Mr. Hunter had sent the previous Friday:

Good afternoon, staff.

    Let me begin by saying that I sincerely appreciate the positive way you have handled the budget balancing steps we've had to take to keep our agency afloat. And I especially appreciate the way you've continued to do your jobs with a sense of purpose and an emphasis on customer service. It's a testament to each and every one of you.
    Announcing furloughs just prior to the holidays was one of the most difficult tasks I have faced as Commissioner. I know all the members of the Executive Management Team feel the same way. I heard from many of you. The majority, very positive.  A few, very negative. Please know that I understand and can appreciate both reactions.
    Recently, however, I have learned of several unfounded rumors floating around that I am sure have caused concerns among many of you. One such rumor that I've been made aware of is that "an additional five or ten days of furloughs are forthcoming." I have also been told that some are saying that "the decision was made weeks ago" and that we are just delaying announcing this until the "right time." I ask that you pay no attention to these rumors.  They are just that…rumors…unfounded and untrue. Although allowed by law to implement up to 10 days during the year, no additional plans for furloughs have been or are being discussed.  If no additional budget cuts happen this fiscal year, it is my sincere hope and the current plan of EMT that no additional furloughs will be necessary this fiscal year
    On the budget front, the Board of Economic Advisors (BEA) met yesterday in Columbia.  According to news reports, collections for the months of October and November were actually ahead of revised projections by $30 million. Although $30 million in relation to the overall annual state budget is not a lot of money, it may be a sign that additional revisions downward of collection estimates may not be necessary. We hope that equates to no additional cuts for the remainder of this fiscal year, which ends June 30, 2009. The BEA will meet in February to review collections data for the holiday shopping season.
    On another note, several stories have been reported in The State newspaper and other media outlets recently regarding our agency being placed in the Governor's cabinet. Two business organizations, the SC Chamber of Commerce and the SC Manufacturers Alliance were reported as being supportive. Information I have received from both of those organizations contradicts those stories. Both may be coming out with formal statements of clarification soon. In addition, an article this week reported that our board chairman was also supportive. Chairman Aughtry has e-mailed and called me to let me know and let you know that he was misquoted. His statement to the media was simply that he felt that any change that would take politics out of the equation is worthy of consideration. He also let the reporter know that he was 100% supportive of the agency and its staff.  As usual, however, that statement wasnt included in the report.
    In closing, I ask that you all try to keep a positive attitude during these difficult time, and that you please not allow yourselves to be distracted by the media. We will be appearing before our House Ways and Means Budget Subcommittee next Thursday morning regarding next fiscal years budget, and plan to lay out for the members the effects of all three cuts our agency has taken thus far, as well as what further cuts would do and what our most pressing needs are — both for our agency and the people of this state  I will provide another update once that has concluded. Take care And thank you again for all that you do.

Earl

Earlier DHEC chief also opposed restructuring

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Back when we did our "Power Failure" series about the problems with the way government is structured in South Carolina, one of the most influential opponents of going to a Cabinet system was the late Michael Jarrett, the highly respected commissioner of DHEC.

When the Legislature passed restructuring legislation that put some of the executive branch under control of the elected chief executive, DHEC was one of the larger agencies that lawmakers pointedly left out of the Cabinet.

The following is a story we ran as part of our series, in which Mr. Jarrett presented his arguments against gubernatorial control of his agency.

I had remembered this story and searched for it in our database so I could link to it in my Sunday column, in which I mentioned Mr. Jarrett's opposition to restructuring. I had forgotten the long correction that we later ran, which was in keeping with our archiving procedures attached to the file in our database:

THE STATE
DHEC CHIEF WARNS OF POLITICKING, FRAGMENTATION
Published on: 12/15/1991
Section: IMPACT
Edition: FINAL
Page: 1C
By LEVONA PAGE, Senior Writer
Memo: POWER FAILURE: The Government That Answers to No One

Sixteenth in a series

Correction: WE WERE WRONG, PUBLISHED DEC. 17, 1991, FOLLOWS:

Mike Jarrett, commissioner of the Department of Health and Environmental Control, said Monday his agency was not pressured by the office of former Gov. Dick Riley to deny a permit for the Union Camp paper mill, as he said in a story Sunday in The State. After checking with DHEC staff about his earlier comments, Jarrett said, "I think that was overstated from what I can find out now." He said that after the paper mill permit became controversial, Riley's staff called his agency to be sure that the permitting process was done properly and without haste so that it could not be challenged. "They were just calls expressing concern," Jarrett said. "The staff doesn't remember any undue pressure." Riley said Monday he and his staff strongly supported Union Camp, publicly and privately. "What we always said to DHEC was the governor supports this unless you can come up with a reason not to," Riley said. In a reference in the same story to a contact by the governor's office concerning a permit for a gold mine at Ridgeway, Jarrett said he was referring to the office of Gov. Carroll Campbell, not the Riley administration. DHEC issued the gold mine permit four months after Campbell took office. Campbell spokesman Tucker Eskew said the governor did not take sides in that controversy, but Eskew said, "There's nothing wrong with the governor's office contacting a state agency to express views. Such input at least is coming from an accountable, statewide elected official."

    Mike Jarrett knows state government as well as anybody in it, and he has some serious doubts about the proposed Cabinet.

    His opinion is likely to carry a lot of weight. He's been around since 1964, climbing to his present job as commissioner of the Department of Health and Environmental Control.

    Also, most people who know Jarrett know he's not concerned about protecting his job. A year ago, he learned he has terminal cancer.

    From his unique perspective, Jarrett speaks freely, and he faults the proposed Cabinet system mainly on two points. First, he says it would put more politics into decision making. Second, he says the particular plan being discussed in South Carolina unnecessarily splits up some agencies and diverts their functions to other agencies.

    If the governor is given more power, as a Cabinet system proposes, the chief executive will become more vulnerable to the voters' displeasure when things go wrong. That means state government will be forced to bow to every whim of popular political opinion, Jarrett said.

    "A governor has to be interested in politics and popularity, and agencies can't be run on the basis of popular decisions," he said.

    DHEC has had some experience with political pressure from the governor's office, Jarrett said. He cited two examples, both during former Gov. Dick Riley's administration.

    The first occurred when residents became upset about Union Camp's plans to build a $485 million paper mill near Eastover.

    "We had calls from the governor's staff not to permit," Jarrett said. "But what they (Union Camp) presented to us met the minimum standards of the law, and we permitted it.

    "In retrospect, it has been a good decision, but had we been driven by the governor's office . . . that decision would not have been made the way it was."

    Another example was the dispute over an $81 million gold mine at Ridgeway, which was opposed by some environmentalists.

    "First, the governor's office called. 'What can you do to get the permit through? It's big business, and we need it.' We had a hearing process. While that was taking place, the public got opposed. Then we got a call from the same staff. 'Don't permit it.' But we had no choice. It met the criteria of the law, and we permitted it."

    DHEC was able to shrug off the directives from the governor's office because the agency is governed by an independent board. Although all seven board members are governor's appointees, the terms are staggered, and the board usually is a mix of appointees by more than one governor.

    Environmental permitting actions should be insulated from politics, Jarrett said.

    Aside from the potential for political influence, Jarrett is strongly against the reorganization plan put forth by the governor's Commission on Government Restructuring.

    Under the commission's plan, the major health delivery functions of DHEC would be given to a new Department of Health and Human Services. Those functions include preventive health services, maternal and child health, home health care and migrant services.

    With the health delivery functions stripped away, the new Department of Health and Environmental Control would exist mainly as a regulatory and licensing agency. The department would monitor environmental quality and health care facilities.

    Jarrett said the separation of health and environment is contrary to a recent study of the national Institute of Medicine and would not benefit the public. He said the commission's recommendation is driven by a desire to provide one-stop environmental permitting for industry.

    DHEC is not the only agency whose functions would be split up. Others are the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism and the Department of Highways and Public Transportation.

    Jarrett said he wouldn't u
se his influence to fight a Cabinet system of government if some changes were made in the restructuring commission's plan. "I will be strongly against separating health and environment," he said. "I don't think it is for the benefit of the public. It is for the benefit of industry at the expense of the public."

S.C. voters back increasing cigarette tax to national average — more than ever

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The South Carolina Tobacco Collaborative released its new poll today showing support for increasing the state's lowest-in-the-nation cigarette tax to the national average is higher than ever:

Overwhelming
Majority of

South
Carolina

Voters

Favor Increase in
Cigarette Tax

 

New Poll
Shows Overwhelming Support for Cigarette Tax

To Reduce
Youth Smoking and Address the State’s Healthcare
Needs

 

Columbia
(January 14, 2009) – Nearly
three-quarters of South Carolinians (74 percent) favor a proposal to raise the
state cigarette tax by 93 cents per pack to help fund programs to reduce tobacco
use among kids as well as programs to increase access to health care for South
Carolinians, according to a new poll released today. A majority of voters (60
percent strongly favor the 93-cent
increase.

 

The poll found that there is no
difference in support between a 93-cent and 50-cent increase. Support for both
specific cigarette tax increases is broad-based, and cuts across party, regional
and ideological lines.

Danny
McGoldrick

, Vice President for

Research

at the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids noted,
“From a political standpoint, it’s clearly
‘in for a penny; in for a pound.’ This is because opposition to the cigarette
tax is low and essentially identical at the two levels, while the revenue and
other benefits dramatically increase with the higher
tax.”

 

The survey
of 500 registered

South
Carolina

voters, who are likely to vote, was released
today by the South Carolina Tobacco Collaborative in conjunction with the
Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids and the American Cancer Society. In announcing its results, the
campaign declared the cigarette tax a win-win-win for

South Carolina

. An
increase in the state’s cigarette tax is a win for public health because it will
reduce smoking, particularly among kids; it’s a win for the state’s fiscal
health because it will raise more than $175 million in new annual revenue for
the state; and it’s a win for lawmakers who support it because of overwhelming
voter support.

 

Strong voter
support is evident among virtually every political and demographic subgroup of
voters in the

Palmetto

State

, as large majorities of Democrats
and Republicans, men and women, young and old, and residents of all parts of the
state support the tax. “The cigarette tax is clearly not a partisan issue,” said
McGoldrick. “The proposal has tremendous support across party lines and across
the state.”

 

Tobacco-caused
costs add more than $960 million per year to tax bills in the state – or more
than $560 for each

South
Carolina

household. “By increasing the cigarette tax,

South Carolina


will reduce smoking, save lives and help offset the health care costs caused by
smoking,” said Dr. Anthony Alberg of the Medical University of South
Carolina.

 

“Youth
smoking is an epidemic, and increasing the cigarette tax is a proven strategy to
protect thousands of

South
Carolina

kids from tobacco addiction,” said Alberg.
“

South
Carolina

has the nation’s lowest cigarette tax rate at
just 7 cents per pack and the lowest funding for prevention programs. We have
failed to take this important step to fight the epidemic. Among the options that
are on the table, increasing the cigarette tax is clearly a preferred solution
to making sure the state can balance the budget while funding important
priorities.”

 

 

In this
difficult economic environment, there is no support for any type of tax increase
in

South
Carolina

, with one exception – an increase in the state
cigarette tax. All other spending reductions or tax increases tested fall
flat.

 

Support for
a 93-cent increase in the state cigarette tax crosses party and ethnic lines,
with 73 percent of base GOPers, 86 percent of white Democrats, and 72 percent of
African Americans backing an increase in the state cigarette tax. Regionally,
support for a 93-cent cigarette tax increase is also strong across the state.
Support is stronger in the Lowcountry (80 percent favor) and Midlands (78
percent favor), but is also high in the Upstate (71 percent favor) and

Pee Dee

regions (67 percent favor). The
“weakest” subgroups – African American women and

Pee
Dee

voters, still back a cigarette tax increase by more than a 60
percent level.

 

In terms of
the specific cigarette tax increases tested by Public Opinion Strategies,
intensity is stronger for the 93-cent tax increase (60 percent strongly favor)
than for the 50-cent tax increase (54 percent strongly favor). Both proposed
increases receive strong support across party and ideological
lines.

 

The poll
found that a 93-cent cigarette tax increase is politically safe for legislators.
More than half (53 percent) of voters are more likely to support a candidate who
supports a cigarette tax increase, while just 14 percent are less likely.
Support remains high among base GOPers (50 percent more likely) as well as among
very conservative voters (51 percent more likely). Opposition among these groups
is low – just 12 percent of base GOPers are less likely, as are just 14 percent
of very conservative voters.

 

When asked
to choose, a significant majority of voters agree that revenue from a cigarette
tax increase should be used to reduce tobacco use, especially among children,
and to expand access to health care (62 percent), rather than to reduce other
state taxes (34 percent). Fully 83 percent of the electorate say they are
concerned about the problem of smoking and other tobacco use among young people
in South Carolina, with more than half (55 percent) of the electorate very
concerned about this issue.

 

Large bodies
of economic research, numerous expert panels, experience in other states, and
even reports from the tobacco industry have concluded decisively that price
increases effectively reduce smoking, especially among youth. The U.S. Surgeon
General, in the 2000 report, Reducing Tobacco Use, concluded that raising
cigarette taxes is widely regarded as one of the most effective tobacco
prevention strategies and that cigarette tax increases would lead to
“substantial long-run improvements in health.”

 

According to
the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a 93-cent increase in

South Carolina

’s cigarette tax would prevent more than
63,600

South Carolina

kids alive today from
becoming smokers and prompt 33,500 adult smokers to quit, saving 29,200

South Carolinians

from a premature,
smoking-caused death. The additional revenue from 93 cents per pack would
provide the state with an immediate boost of more than $175 million in revenue
in the first year alone.

 

“The
evidence is clear that increasing the price of cigarettes is one of the most
effective ways to reduce smoking, especially among children and pregnant women,”
said Jim Bowie, Executive Director of the South Carolina Tobacco Collaborative.
“Preliminary evidence confirms that every state that has significantly increased
its cigarette tax in recent years has enjoyed substantial increases in revenue,
even while reducing cigarette sales.

South Carolina

has nothing to lose and
everything to gain from raising its cigarette tax.”

 

The South
Carolina Tobacco Collaborative is a coalition of health, education, community,
business and faith organizations dedicated to raising the state excise tax on
cigarettes and other tobacco products to protect our kids. The Collaborative’s
more than 30 member groups, including the American Cancer Society, American
Heart Association, American Lung Association of South Carolina, South Carolina
Cancer

Alliance


and American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, support the 93-cent increase
in the cigarette tax to help prevent kids from starting to smoke and to fund
healthcare programs.

 

The survey
was conducted by Public Opinion Strategies. The statewide poll has a random
sample of 500 registered likely

South
Carolina

voters and was conducted December 9 and 11,
2008.  The poll has a margin of error of
+/- 4.38 percentage points.

So I guess I'm not the only one getting impatient on this.

Meanwhile, we had our lunch with the governor today. This subject came up, and basically he backs the idea of going a third of the way to the national average — if it's offset with a tax cut he wants. If it's NOT offset by the tax cut, he'll veto it again. But you probably knew that without my telling you.

Lunch was nice, by the way. Joel saw to it I had a nice grilled fish fillet with salad, and that the dressing didn't do me in. I appreciate it.

Good news and bad news on health insurance

31 Replies

About the drugs…

I have good news and bad news from my own little private front in the constant battle to afford health care.

You probably don't remember this passage from my Nov. 26, 2007, column ("‘Health care reform?’ Hush! You’ll anger the Insurance Gods!"), so I'll repeat it here:

    Just the other day I went to my allergist’s office to get the
results of my first skin tests in 20 years. I’d been getting allergy
shots based on the old tests all that time, and my allergist, being a
highly trained professional, thought it might be a good idea to see if
I was still allergic to the same stuff. Actually, I can’t tell you for
sure that the shots ever helped. So why get them? Because my insurance pays for allergy shots, but won’t pay any more for me to take Zyrtec, which I know relieved my symptoms. The Insurance Gods say I don’t need Zyrtec.
…    Earlier this year, after surgery worked only briefly to relieve
head-pounding sinus pain, my surgeon gave me a prescription for Allegra.
I started to protest adding yet another drug to the 11 I was already
taking, counting the prednisone he was putting me on, but then he said
it was the generic version, so I said OK. My copay is only like $10 on generics; the Insurance Gods say generics are good.
    Then my pharmacy said my copay for my 30 generic pills would be $81.95. Stunned, I asked why? They shrugged and said no one knew; the Insurance Gods just said so.
I shut up and paid it, even though it meant delaying paying on my
mortgage or my electricity bill or some other frill. I think the pills
helped, but I certainly wasn’t going to get a refill.

Well, two good things have happened since then.

First, at the start of 2008, Zyrtec became available over-the-counter, quickly followed by the cheaper generic version, also available over the counter, so I've been able to supply myself with that for the past year at less than my co-pay would have been had my insurance covered it.

Unfortunately, the Zyrtec hasn't been helping all that much (and "helping" for me, with my extreme allergies, simply means keeping the ever-present symptoms down to a dull roar), even though I take twice the recommended daily adult dose every night (as my allergist told me to do).

So, on a whim, I asked him to write me a scrip for the generic version of Allegra 180, just to see what would happen at the pharmacy now that I have a different health care provider, and lo and behold — it went through, with only a $15 co-pay. So I said "fill it!" I'll tell you the results later, I've only taken it once so far.

That's the good news. Here's the bad…

The reason I was at the allergist yesterday is that I needed some Xopenex vials for my nebulizer to treat my asthma. I've been blessed the last couple of years by being almost completely free of asthma symptoms thanks to a miracle drug called Asmanex, of which I take two puffs nightly — and which, Thank The Lord, my insurance pays for, with a reasonable co-pay.

But the latest stage of this crud that I've had for three weeks is that ever since the weekend (about the time I was finishing the course of Levaquin, for the second stage of the crud, which was bronchitis), my bronchial tubes have been closing up on me even as the more obvious signs of infection subsided. A breathing treatment Tuesday night helped, but I needed refills. Rather than just calling in the refills, the allergist insisted I come in yesterday, and sure enough he told me what I didn't want to hear: I needed to do a course of prednisone.

He had me scarf down 60 mg. there in his office, and told me to take 20 mg more that night. Today, I scaled down to 40 in the a.m., and another 20 tonight. I'll repeat that tomorrow, then step down again the next day, and so on until I'm off it. You don't just go cold turkey off prednisone.

Now, I don't know if you've every had 80 mg. of prednisone rattling around in your skull, but that's just about enough right there to give you brief "Band of Brothers" hallucinations. And that's not the whole story.

Between the prednisone (which ought to have dealt with the worst of the asthma by tomorrow) and the Allegra, I forgot to get my Xopenex refill. I used my next-to-last dose last night, and called the doc back today, and they called it in.

But not so fast. They called me back minutes later, and said my insurance won't cover Xopenex. They had to go with the older, cruder drug, generic albuterol.

Now that's fine, except for one thing. Even when not taking prednisone, a dose of albuterol, administered via nebulizer machine, causes my heart to pound like I just ran about a mile. (If you take albuterol via the simple inhaler, it doesn't do that — but then, it does nothing for my asthma, either.) But I can live with that, because it opens me up. The only trouble is, if it's the middle of the night, I've got to sit up an hour or two until I calm down, because the pounding of my pulse through my throat and head against my pillow makes sleep impossible — pretty much the same as if I HAD just run about the block.

The nice thing about Xopenex is it has the therapeutic effect without the heart-pounding, so I can go to sleep within minutes after a treatment.

I asked my druggist, and he says Xopenex costs about twice as much. And of course, if my doctor and I jumped through a few more hoops and demonstrated that yes, we've tried albuterol, and yes, my doctor does have a legitimate reason to prefer that I use Xopenex because he is a trained medico and not a complete idiot (nor am I, but I doubt I could get them to believe that), they'd probably spring for the name brand. But of course, the business model of private, for-profit health insurance is to make you jump through enough hoops that you give up, and I had already spent WAY more time than I had time to spend on all this being-sick garbage this week. I've got work to do.

So I paid my $15 co-pay, took my albuterol and my nebulizer machine back to the office, and did a treatment sitting at my desk while reading The Economist. I started breathing a lot easier, and the only ill effect was that when I was proofing Robert Ariail's cartoon for tomorrow, I noticed my hand was shaking à la Tom Hanks in "Saving Private Ryan." But I could still lead my company up the beach.

Here's the thing about all this: If the insurance simply demanded double the co-pay for me to get Xopenex (the way they do with Asmanex), I'd probably just say the heck with it, give me the albuterol, and put up with the heart-pounding. I AM cost-conscious. (In fact, I tried to talk my primary-care doc into giving me the much-cheaper tetracycline for the bronchitis, but he insisted it wouldn't work but Levaquin would — my allergist agreed yesterday when I asked him the same question. I'm VERY cost-conscious, and am always asking about these things.)

But they don't do that. They get all "we-know-more-than-your-doctor" on me, and assume that I don't care about cost, and so they have to tell me what I can have and what I can't have. And frankly, that ticks me off. I've had asthma for 55 years, and I know what I need and what I don't need.

I know what you're thinking: If we had a single-payer National Health plan the way I want, the gummint might also tell me I can't have Xopenex. Maybe. Then again, if the gummint was the sole provider of coverage, the drug company would be MUCH more likely to figure out a way to offer it at a lower cost, since they wouldn't be able to play all these difference consumer groups with different payment rules against each other. If the gummint wouldn't allow it, they wouldn't sell ANY Xopenex.

Of course, if they COULDN'T sell it cheaper, we'd all have to take albuterol. But that wouldn't be the end of the world, either. It gets the job done — ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom…

Anyway, I think that explains the drug reference earlier. All perfectly legit, I assure you.

My kryptonite

25 Replies

Just so you know that despite all the critical things I say, I believe the governor and his people are good and decent folk, gently reared, I share the following exchange.

Next week, I'm to be the governor's guest at the annual pre-State of the State briefing luncheon. Cindi and Warren will be there too, along with editorial types from elsewhere in SC. It's a standing ritual. So Joel Sawyer writes to ask me:

Hey, Brad…saw you'd RSVP'd for the lunch next week. Can you remind me again on your food allergies? Thanks.

Joel Sawyer
Communications Director
Office of Gov. Mark Sanford

So I wrote back as follows:

First, please don't bother. It's more trouble than it's worth. I have a lifelong habit of just grabbing a bite later.

But in answer to your question, my main allergies are to:
milk — anything with even a trace of dairy products, from butter to cheese to ice cream
eggs — which means no mayo, and other things that may not be immediately obvious
wheat — which bars anything from a bakery, and less obvious things such as gravy thickened with flour (or cream, of course)
chicken — and no, I don't know which came first, this or the egg allergy
nuts — especially pecans.

See what I mean? I'm more trouble than I'm worth. Always have been, unfortunately.

Why, you may wonder, did I not just stick with the "Don't bother," and not go on? Because it's so blasted awkward. At a public occasion like that, I don't care it there's nothing I can eat (really; I'm used to it, and I'd rather not take risks on ingesting a hidden fatal allergen inserted by a well-meaning cook who thinks cream means quality). But I find it often bothers my host more than it bothers me that I don't eat. Also, others who don't know the score will see me pushing my food around or ignoring it entirely and think I'm being petulant or intentionally rude or something. Really. It happens. If I can avoid that by having at least something I can eat while pushing everything else around on the plate, that's all to the good. I don't mean to overdramatize, but my systemic weirdness does make dining in public more awkward for me than for most folks. (It has had larger consequences, such as keeping me from serving in the military — I could never have survived on K rations or MREs. It sounds stupid to people who don't live like this, but it's my reality.) I grew up not wanting to draw any attention at table, but knowing that the only way to avoid such attention is to let my host put himself out in my behalf, which is another kind of awkwardness. Then there's always the possibility that the host WILL put himself out for me, but fail in the effort (I can generally tell at a glance if I can't eat it), which is twice as awkward. But what am I supposed to do?

Of course, I could stay away from the luncheon, but it is a useful occasion. And if I don't go, what does that say? Anyway, I look forward to seeing the gov. I don't think we've spoken since this event last year. (Or maybe the one before; I forget.)

This post is just to let you know that I have no problem with putting my life into the governor's hands — or the hands of his staff. And that's something I wouldn't do if I had as low an opinion of the governor as some of y'all think I do.

Now Blagojevich — I'd never eat anything he put on the table.

Love in the Time of Stomach Crud, by Gabriel Garcia Warthen

6 Replies

Miss me? Well, I can hardly blame you; I miss myself. I've taken a sort of time out from time the last couple of days.

It started over the weekend. My wife stayed up almost all of Saturday night coping with what she initially assumed to be food poisoning — on top of a bad cold that had plagued her all week. So on Sunday morning, I headed to Mass alone. This was, ironically, the Sunday that my column about taking care of my twin granddaughters ran. On my way to St. Peter's, my daughter calls me and says she and her husband were stricken by the same crud, so could I come help with the babies?

So I dropped by the church to tell them someone would have to sub for me as eucharistic minister, and went and got the twins and took them to my house again — I figured they were better off in a big house with one sick person than a small house with two.

We kept them overnight, and I returned them to their parents Monday morning before spending the day at work.

I took off Tuesday and Wednesday as planned. But instead of spending them Christmas shopping and/or going out to cut a tree and/or helping my son-in-law with the remodeling project, I spent the two days in a timeless fog, watching one old movie on the boob tube after another. This may seem like a total waste, but I actually accomplished something remarkable: I slowed down time.

When I was young, time passed slowly. I can vaguely remember the days when I was paid on an hourly basis, and I would keep looking at the clock and marveling at how slowly the hands moved. Starting in my early 20s — as work got more interesting, as children came along and grew up at light speed, followed by grandchildren, life was on fast-forward. On Tuesday and Wednesday, it crawled again. There's nothing like fever, pain and nausea, combined with helplessly waiting for one old movie to end and another one to come on (because you feel too weak to put in a DVD), to make life seem longer than it is. I could have sworn that one of those old movies on Wednesday lasted about a week.

I seem to recall that one of the characters in Catch-22 — Dunbar, I believe — cultivated boredom and misery as a way of making life seem longer. It may not be worth it, but I'm here to testify that it works.

Anyway, I came back in to work this morning, and I wrote an editorial for tomorrow's paper which I'm probably not going to want to save as one of my most stellar literary moments, but hey, I got it done — and that's saying something when I haven't had a meal since Monday, and frankly can't ever imagine WANTING one again. Yesterday, I had a little Jello, and a handful or so of dry cereal — and regretted it. Today, just a small serving of Jello, which I don't think did me any good. (Speaking of which, do you have any idea how many commercials on television have to do with food? Way, WAY too many, that's how many.) Since then, I've just been drinking water, which does NOT leave me hungry for more, no matter what Nicholas Kristof said in his column today.

I'm going to see if I can make some progress on a Sunday column, and then head back home, and hope and pray I can muster the strength to come in and do what MUST be done on Friday. Looming over me is the fact that everyone is off next week in the editorial department except me and our part-timer who handles letters. Cindi and Warren are leaving behind a week's worth of copy, but there are a certain number of things that have to be done each day for these pages to come out, and I'll be doing all of them. So I need to recover some strength for that.

Consider this your heads-up that I won't be posting all that much in the coming days.

I missed my chance, Jerry!

4 Replies

Last week, I meant to react to this news …

About 20 DHEC and EPA agents raided the city’s sewer plant at 8 a.m.
Thursday, armed with a search warrant, weapons and wearing bulletproof
vests — just as parents were dropping off their children at nearby
Heathwood Hall Episcopal School.

… by saying that if it had been ME raiding that place, I don’t think I’d have worried about bulletproof. Bullets wouldn’t have been my main concern. I’d have gone for a hazmat suit. But that’s me.

But forgetting to say that until now at least gave me the excuse of using that headline about "missing my chance."

Now that we’ve had fun, I’ll raise the serious question: First the police department messes. Then the inability to close out the fiscal year because no one knew how. (Or was it the other way around?) Y’all know I like ol’ Mayor Bob, but one begins to wonder if there’s anything the city knows how to do right. I guess I’ll just use it as another excuse to push for the strong-mayor system that would at least give Columbia voters someone to hold accountable.

DHEC response to news series

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Someone just today brought my attention to the Web page full of material that DHEC posted in response to the series that Sammy Fretwell and John Monk down in our newsroom recently did.

The very first item, written by board chairman "Bo" Aughtry, says it "was submitted to the newspaper’s editorial offices Nov. 20." This is the first I’ve heard about it. I’m worried that they might have sent it to Cindi, who is off this week. And here it is 6:23 p.m. on the night before Thanksgiving.

I’m going to try to reach the appropriate people to see whether they had meant to submit it for publication, although I don’t know how much luck I’m likely to have tonight — or any time before Monday. We’ll see.

In the meantime, here’s the full text of that item:

Imagine.
That’s the word The State used to begin its eight-day assault on the Department of Health and  Environmental Control.  So let’s imagine.

Imagine a newspaper that reports  only select facts they decide are important.

Imagine a series with misleading conclusions arrived at through
innuendos, dredging up stories from more than 20 years ago, most of
which have been refuted, and reporting them inaccurately again.

Imagine a newspaper whose reporters have traded objective reporting
for “gotcha’” journalism and half-truth mudslinging, while at the same
time so enamored with itself that it takes three paragraphs to pat its
reporters and photographer on the backs.

Imagine no more. That publication  exists as The State and
there are others who obviously work in conjunction with them on
misrepresentation of fact after fact in an effort to make an agency,
its employees, commissioner and board look bad, in an attempt to
advance its own political agenda or to seek some journalism award.

If anyone  knew all the facts in any of The State’s stories, it would take a very good imagination  to accept their conclusions.

Based on my experience and observations, I find these attacks not
only misleading but unjust. Since I became chairman of DHEC’s governing
board in 2006, I have been continually impressed with the diligence,
commitment and dedication of those employees, certainly including
Commissioner Earl Hunter, with whom I have dealt. Is the agency
perfect? I know of no organization made up of 4,200 employees that can
boast perfection but this one is very good.

Do not misunderstand, I fully believe that DHEC, like any public
body, is accountable to the citizens it serves. Accordingly, it is
subject to responsible, accurate criticism if it fails our citizens.
Yet, for The State to criticize this agency with articles
that are portrayed as complete fact but which are based only on a part
of the story, is, in my opinion, quite irresponsible.

The fact of the matter is that The  State and most of
those quoted in their series, need DHEC. They have decided that this
agency is the villain and they are the self-anointed righteous
vindicators protecting the public. Truth is they’re more interested in
protecting their bottom line, billable hours or such political clout as
they think they may possess, seemingly caring not a whit for the truth,
only for what advances their own motives.

This newspaper, like others, imposes word count restrictions on any
external responses to their reporting whether it be my response here or
a letter to the editor. Because of those constraints, refuting the many
accusations in this series would require more space than what is
readily available here. For our perspective on this series and the
subsequent editorials that I’m sure will appear, I invite you to our
Web site at www.scdhec.gov.

Now here’s a fact you don’t have to imagine. In the midst of state
budget reductions and fewer staff doing more work, we’ll spend taxpayer
dollars laying to rest these ridiculous and self-serving allegations.
Trust me when I tell you the taxpayers of this great state have paid
quite the tab in the last eight months as staff have had to stop what
they were doing to respond to question after question, some of which
were asked multiple times in a thinly-veiled attempt to get an answer
the reporters wanted, not the full facts of the matter. The  State’s
reporters spent some four hours with Commissioner Earl Hunter in
face-to-face interviews, only to have things misrepresented to the
majority of readers who never make it past the headline and first three
paragraphs. 

Imagine? No. I believe this newspaper is doing a disservice to its
readers in casting as fact what is actually subjection, to DHEC
employees and their families through the creation of undeserved public
doubt, and to the taxpayers of South Carolina in wasting tax dollars
through unnecessarily protracted interrogation.

Paul “Bo” Aughtry is chair of  the S.C. Board of Health and Environmental Control

South Carolina’s No. 1! Again!

13 Replies

This just in, from the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids:

National Report Ranks South Carolina Last in Protecting Kids from Tobacco

Ten Years After Tobacco Settlement, States Falling Short in Funding Tobacco Prevention

Washington, DC (November 18, 2008) – Ten years after the November 1998 state tobacco settlement, South Carolina ranks worst in the nation in funding programs to protect kids from tobacco, according to a national report released today by a coalition of public health organizations.

South Carolina this year is scheduled to spend $1 million on tobacco prevention programs, which is 1.6 percent of the $62.2 million recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).  All of this funding is from a federal grant. South Carolina is the only state that is spending no state funds on tobacco prevention this year.

Other key findings for South Carolina include:

  • The tobacco companies spend more than $280 million a year on marketing in South Carolina. This is more than 280 times what the state spends on tobacco prevention.
  • South Carolina this year will collect $114 million from the tobacco settlement and tobacco taxes, but will spend less than 1 percent of it on tobacco prevention.

The annual report on states’ funding of tobacco prevention programs, titled “A Decade of Broken Promises,” was released by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, American Heart Association, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, American Lung Association and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

South Carolina continues to lag behind other states in its efforts to protect kids from the dangers of tobacco. In addition to years of inadequate tobacco prevention funding, the state has the lowest cigarette tax in the nation at 7 cents per pack, compared to the national average of $1.19 per pack. The state has not increased its cigarette tax in two decades despite widespread support for an increase among South Carolinians. In contrast, 44 states and the District of Columbia have increased cigarette taxes since Jan. 1, 2002, many more than once.
    “South Carolina is the most disappointing state in the nation when it comes to funding programs to protect kids from tobacco,” said Matthew L. Myers, President of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. “On this 10th anniversary of the tobacco settlement, we call on South Carolina leaders to raise the state’s lowest-in-the-nation cigarette tax and use some of the revenue to increase funding for tobacco prevention. Tobacco prevention is a smart investment that reduces smoking, saves lives and saves money by reducing tobacco-related health care costs.”
    On Nov. 23, 1998, 46 states settled their lawsuits against the nation’s major tobacco companies to recover tobacco-related health care costs, joining four states (Mississippi, Texas, Florida and Minnesota) that had reached earlier settlements. These settlements require the tobacco companies to make annual payments to the states in perpetuity, with total payments estimated at $246 billion over the first 25 years.  The states also collect billions of dollars each year in tobacco taxes.
    The new report finds that most states have broken their promise to use a significant portion of their tobacco money to fund programs to prevent kids from smoking and help smokers quit.
    According to the report, the states in the last 10 years have received $203.5 billion in revenue from the tobacco settlement and tobacco taxes.  But they have spent only 3.2 percent of this tobacco money – $6.5 billion – on tobacco prevention and cessation programs.
     Other findings of the report include:

  • In the current year, no state is funding tobacco prevention at CDC-recommended levels, and only nine states fund their programs at even half of the CDC recommendation.
  • 41 states and the District of Columbia are funding tobacco prevention programs at less than half the CDC-recommended amount. These include 27 states that are providing less than a quarter of the recommended funding.
  • Total state funding for tobacco prevention this year, $718.1 million, amounts to less than three percent of the $24.6 billion the states will collect from the tobacco settlement and tobacco taxes. It would take just 15 percent of this tobacco revenue to fund tobacco prevention programs in every state at CDC-recommended levels.

    The report warns that the nation faces two immediate challenges in the fight against tobacco use: complacency and looming state budget shortfalls. First, while the nation has made significant progress over the past decade in reducing smoking, progress has slowed and further progress is at risk without aggressive efforts at all levels of government. Second, the states are expected to face budget shortfalls in the coming year as a result of the weak economy. The last time the states faced significant budget shortfalls, they cut funding for tobacco prevention programs by 28 percent between 2002 and 2005. The cutbacks are a major reason why smoking declines subsequently stalled, and states should not make the same mistake again.
    The report found that there is more evidence than ever that tobacco prevention programs work to reduce smoking, save lives and save money by reducing tobacco-related health care costs. Washington State, which has been a national leader in funding tobacco prevention, has reduced smoking by 60 percent among sixth graders and by 43 percent among 12th graders since the late 1990s. A recent study found that California’s tobacco control program saved $86 billion in health care costs in its first 15 years, compared to $1.8 billion spent on the program, for a return on investment of nearly 50:1.
    In South Carolina, 17.8 percent of high school students smoke, and 6,300 more kids become regular smokers every year. Each year, tobacco claims 5,900 lives and costs the state $1.1 billion in health care bills.
     More information, including the full report and state-specific information, can be obtained at www.tobaccofreekids.org/reports/settlements.
    
(NOTE: The CDC recently updated its recommended funding for state tobacco prevention programs, taking into account new science, population increases, inflation and other cost factors.  In most cases, the new recommendations are higher than previous ones.  This report is the first to assess the states based on these new recommendations.)

Obama should back single-payer again, and do it NOW

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Assuming we’re all agreed that Barack Obama is going to be the president, there’s one thing I wish he’d go ahead and do right now: Return to his onetime support for a single-payer health care system.

As you know, I came to two conclusions awhile back:

  1. That only a single-payer plan would solve our country’s problems paying for health care. Anything short of that just further complicates the problem. We miss the mark by talking all the time about the "uninsured." It’s the majority of us who ARE covered, but increasingly can’t afford our health care bills anyway, who are the much greater problem. We need to eliminate the for-profit middlemen in the equation.
  2. The only way we’ll get single-payer is for someone to RUN for president on that platform and win convincingly. If Obama (or, to stretch a point, McCain) announced AFTER getting elected that he wanted a single-payer system, Congress would tell him to go fly a kite. The private insurance industry — folks like my old friend Joel Wood — have WAY too much juice on the Hill for a president to make than happen unless he has a clear electoral mandate to do it.

As I wrote in December of last year:

    And the operative word is “bold.” Why? Because unless we start the conversation there, all we might hope for is that a few more of the one out of seven Americans who don’t have insurance will be in the “system” with the rest of us — if that, after the inevitable watering-down by Congress. And that’s not “reform.” Actual reform would rescue all of us from a “system” that neither American workers nor American employers can afford to keep propping up.

A lot of people have high hopes for Obama changing this country for the better. There is no more dramatic way he could do so than to win after coming out for a REAL health care solution.

No, he’s not going to do that. He’s way too cautious, far too deliberate. He sticks to his game plan. He’s not going to rock that boat now. If I thought I could convince him — and thought he could win — I’d urge McCain to do it. As we know, he’s far more willing to throw the dice (can you say, "Sarah Palin"?). But he’s never shown any interest in single-payer. But as Hillary Clinton pointed out back before the S.C. primary, Obama used to be for it, before he was against it.

But I wish he would. I think he’d still win, and then he could do some real good on this, our most important domestic issue.

Stop feeding off me! Give blood

6 Replies

OK, I’m just kidding with the headline — chalk it up to my having put "Cool Hand Luke" into my DVD player after Paul Newman died. That is, I’m sort of kidding.

The fact is that those of us who do give blood regularly could use a little help from those who could, but don’t.

Night before last, my cell phone rang just before 9 p.m., when I was about to watch the presidential debate. It was a staffer at the local Red Cross, saying that there was a dire need, even greater than usual, for my blood type (O positive, the universal donor — anybody can use my corpuscles), and they needed me to come down right away. "Tonight?" I asked, which didn’t seem ridiculous given his urgent tone. No, he said with a chuckle — Wednesday would do.

So I showed up for my 6:45 p.m. appointment. During the extensive private interview in the little room ("Have you, since 1980, had sex with a little green woman from Mars known to inject drugs into her antennae?" "No… wait, you did say after 1980, right?"), I mentioned the late night call, and my interviewer didn’t understand why I was called so late. But they certainly needed my blood. They always do. The Midlands area regularly has to import from other regions, because folks here just don’t give enough to meet the need.

The guy who called Tuesday night said something else I hadn’t been asked before — he urged me to bring a friend. Well, I started to, right after I got off the phone. But my wife is a cancer survivor who still undergoes regular treatments, and my daughter is nursing twins. There were no other adults in the house. The next day at work, I thought about sending out a global e-mail, but I was unsure whether it was kosher for a vice president to ask fellow employees for their blood. I briefly thought of going downstairs to check with HR (they have a list of dos and don’ts that are not always intuitive), but got busy and forgot.

But I have no reservations about urging y’all to go give blood, so you can "stop feeding off me!" Just kidding. Kinda.

Michael Koska, S.C. House District 77

1 Reply

Koskamichael_021

Sept. 11, 11 a.m. — When he first came to see us during the primaries, Michael Koska made a good impression — an especially good impression given that he was a newcomer to electoral politics. He had made himself expert on the issues that had gotten him involved — especially Richland County road needs — and showed a passion for learning about more.

He made an even better impression this time, and here’s one of the reasons why: As he said himself a couple of times in the interview, he’s learned and grown on the campaign trail. For instance, he expressed a tendency toward supporting vouchers. But it was fairly obvious at the time that he hadn’t really thought the issue through. Now, he doesn’t see himself supporting either vouchers or tax credits (last time he didn’t know the difference between them) "in the foreseeable future." He believes that our first priority should be fixing the public schools that need fixing.

Mr. Koska is the Republican nominee in a district that has long been strongly Democratic. But his views are not inconsistent with those of moderate South Carolina Democrats, and he goes out of his way to praise such Democrats as Joel Lourie and Anton Gunn (regarding a recent op-ed by Mr. Gunn in our paper, he said "ditto.") He maintains that if voters elect him instead of opponent Joe McEachern, he will be more likely to get things done, being a member of the majority party in the Legislature.

About the only other time he said anything about his party affiliation was when he expressed enthusiasm for his party’s vice presidential nominee. Much as Democrats have spoken of an Obama Effect this year, he predicted that Sarah Palin would do a lot of good for down-ticket Republicans such as himself.

But mostly he talked about his passion for better roads and affordable health care. His advocacy for fixing Hard Scrabble Road had won him a position on the citizen’s panel on transportation that recommended the sales tax hike, and he feels betrayed that County Council (led by Mr. McEachern) didn’t put the issue to a referendum. He said he believes the $550,000 spent on the study, not to mention the "valuable time, time spent away from their families" by the volunteers like himself, to have been cavalierly wasted. He is also critical of Mr. McEachern and the council for having bungled the county’s representation on the Council of Governments that doles out what road money there is in the area, allowing Lexington County to get the lion’s share of the funding for the next 10 years.

The council’s decision to borrow $50 million for new parks (including one in his area), and to do so without a referendum, while people are still dying on Hard Scrabble is to him an outrage.

He has a small business owner’s perspective on health care. His own personal experience and that of his acquaintances convinces him that the state must act now to make health care more affordable (he has no patience for waiting for the feds to do anything). It was like deja vu when he told about his daughter’s recent $1,800 x-ray, which sounded an awful lot like the x-rays for MY daughter, the one that ate my "economic stimulus check," if you’re recall. He was particularly incensed that when he asked the folks at the hospital in advance what the x-rays would cost, no one had any idea. Speaking of outrages, he thinks (as do I) that the stimulus checks were "the stupidest thing." If only, he says, that money had been devoted to upgrading the nation’s infrastructure…

Energy is another area where he has no interest in waiting on the federal government to act. He says the state should push to have natural gas filling stations built around the state. Natural gas, he maintains, is "probably going to be our bridge off foreign oil," but you can’t get anywhere without the retail infrastructure.

Michael Koska is a good example of what you get when a regular citizen not only gets worked up about an issue, but goes out of his way to get informed and try to do something about it. That’s why we endorsed him in the spring. Of course, we also endorsed his general election opponent, so that makes this race particularly interesting to us.

Loving me some planet

4 Replies

Pooge_002

Ya gotta love this: So I’m going through my snail mail IN tray, something I do every month or so whether I need it or not (please, please don’t send me anything urgent or important via snail mail), and I run across this tabloid-sized publication called Environment & Climate News, and of course my usual move with anything unsolicited that is printed on something like newsprint is to toss it in the newsprint recycling bin.

But I can’t, because IT’S WRAPPED IN PLASTIC.

So who in the world who’s so interested in the environment be so utterly clueless as to send something so grotesquely incongruous to a crack, trained observer such as myself?

Well, once you know the answer you say "of course:" It’s our old friends Joseph L. Bast and his Heartland Institute, which is an organization that, like our governor, would never ever want gummint to do anything about climate change or anything like that.

Oh, and you say the picture above is hard to read on account of the glare? Well, that’s because IT’S WRAPPED IN PLASTIC!

But before you walk away chuckling, I should point out something that probably would never have struck me if not for my habit of saving up the mail to go through all at once: A few minutes before, I had dispensed with (by which I mean I had passed it on to Cindi because I noticed there was an item related to S.C. state policy) a publication called Health Care News, which as it happens is also put out by The Heartland Institute. Three guesses as to what the Institute wants us to do about health care. You got it: Nothing. (Mainly because the concept of "us" is anathema to such groups.)

This organization now has my attention. Ubiquity will do that. This group may be better funded, and operating on more fronts, than its spiritual brother Howard Rich.

Amazing the amount of money people will spend rather than pay taxes, isn’t it?

Pooge

Smoking ban: Just don’t DELAY it again

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As we continue to wait for Columbia’s smoking ban to take effect at long last, Mayor Bob says the fine for violating it may have to be lowered in keeping with a Supreme Court ruling.

Fine. Whatever. Just don’t delay the ban for another minute. We’ve waited far too long already.

The penalty isn’t important — at least, not to me. I don’t want to punish anybody; I just want clean air.

We wuz robbed! Pass me the potato chips…

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Can’t South Carolina be first at anything? Now I see that we’re only fifth in the country when it comes to obesity,something I could have sworn we could do better than anybody:

Washington, D.C. August 19, 2008 – South Carolina was named the 5th most obese state in America according to the fifth annual F as in Fat: How Obesity Policies Are Failing in America, 2008 report from the Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF).  The state’s adult obesity rate is 29.2 percent, an increase for the third year in a row.
     Nationally, adult obesity rates rose in 37 states in the past year. Rates rose for a second consecutive year in 24 states and for a third consecutive year in 19 states. No state saw a decrease.  Though many promising policies have emerged to promote physical activity and good nutrition in communities, the report concludes that they are not being adopted or implemented at levels needed to turn around this health crisis….

Now I suppose we could get all petulant about this and demand a recount, but that would show a poor attitude. There’s nothing to do but to pass the potato chips and try harder…

OK, yes, I know — this is a deadly serious manner. It’s just that we hear so much bad news, and we seem to do so little to make things better, even when we know better, that one lapses into irony out of sheer frustration, to keep from going mad. Or from going madder, anyway.