U.S. Sen. George LeMieux, R-Fla., who was a just another chairman of a major Florida law firm last summer when health care town halls were all the rage, looks to get into the fun Monday when he holds his own in Fort Lauderdale. The event starts at 2:30 p.m. at the Beach Community Center, 3351 NE 33rd Ave.
LeMieux, who Republican state lawmakers hope will bring home a re-up of about $1.2 billion in extra Medicaid money for Florida’s budget hole, has been opposed to President Obama’s suggestions for reducing costs and increasing access to health insurance coverage. From a press release this week:
“This proposal still seeks to cut half a trillion dollars from Medicare. That’s a direct cut in health care benefits for seniors” LeMieux said. ”The proposal fails to achieve its main goal which is to lower the cost of health care for Americans. It takes money from programs, like Medicare, and seeks to create new federal programs. It is clear that the American people do not support this bill.”
U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek held a roundtable with the Capitol press corps this morning and came out swinging at Gov. Charlie Crist.
Meek, a Democrat running for U.S. Senate, slammed Crist, a Republican who’s losing traction in a GOP primary against former House Speaker Marco Rubio, for his turn-around on abortion and his failed health care program that has been ignored by uninsured Floridians.
“Overall I think the governor’s a very nice person,” Meek, a former state legislator who is in his fourth term in Congress, began. “I don’t think he’s prepared to lead this state in the United States Senate. One, he doesn’t like to make a decision. Two, he’s very vague. And three, I believe he’s more politician than leader.”
Backers of President Barack Obama’s health care reforms unleashed a television ad in Orlando, Louisville and Washington pillorying Humana’s scare tactics targeting seniors and the plan’s impact on Medicare.
Americans United for Change, Obama’s campaign organization-turned unofficial presidential PR machine, is running the ad and also staging a protest at Humana headquarters in West Palm Beach today at noon.
Last week, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services launched an investigation into Humana Inc.’s possible misuse of beneficiary information to send anti-health care mailers to its Medicare gap coverage enrollees. The Louisville-based insurer is one of the largest Medicare supplemental insurance providers.
Humana sent mailers to seniors in several states, including Florida, containing what could be misleading information about Obama’s plan, warning of cuts to benefits and increases in costs to the popular government-backed insurance plan for seniors.
According to the AARP’s web site, “None of the health care reform proposals being considered by Congress would cut Medicare benefits or increase your out-of-pocket costs for Medicare services.”
Democratic Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink refused to say whether she supports Congressional Democrats’ government-backed health insurance proposal, known as the “public option,” despite her GOP gubernatorial opponent Attorney General Bill McCollum’s demands.
Attorney General Bill McCollum, the presumptive GOP candidate for governor, pilloried President Barack Obama’s and the Democrats’ public option and challenged Sink state her position on the issue.
Sink, however, maintained her neutrality but hammered on the Medicaid portion of the health care reforms. She said she would not support anything that increased the state’s share of Medicaid payments, something that McCollum, as her campaign pointed out earlier this week, did numerous times during his long tenure in Congress.
Thursday, September 10th, 2009 by Michael C. Bender
Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) shouts Wednesday as President Obama addresses a joint session of Congress. (Getty Images)
U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson’s decision to heckle President Obama during a speech to the joint session of Congress may have been, as Wilson apologized, inappropriate and regrettable. But was what he yelled correct?
Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, the presumptive Democratic gubernatorial candidate, gave her likely GOP opponent Attorney General Bill McCollum a taste of his own medicine by calling him out on his Congressional voting record on health care.
Sink’s campaign issued a press release responding to McCollum’s challenge this morning to join him in opposition to President Barack Obama’s and Congressional Democrats’ health care plan.
“During his twenty years in Congress, McCollum voted eight times to cut Medicare by at least $650 billion, voted to raise the eligibility age for Medicare and Social Security, and voted to make it harder for government to crack down on health care fraud,” Sink’s campaign manager Paul Dunn wrote.
“Bill McCollum is in no position to question anyone else until he answers for his decades-long record undermining Medicare, Social Security, and affordable health care,” Dunn concluded.
Attorney General Bill McCollum bashed the “public option” included in President Barack Obama’s and Congressional Democrats’ proposed health care reforms, saying it would ration health care.
McCollum, the presumptive GOP candidate for governor, held a campaign event this morning in which he trashed the government-backed option to health insurance and challenged his presumptive Democratic opponent Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink to do the same.
McCollum, who served in Congress for more than two decades, announced the creation of a health care advisory board and dragged out a six-year-old report issued by businesses and the insurance industry as a guideline for health care fixes in Florida.
The best way to fix health care maladies in the Sunshine State, according to McCollum: more tort reform.
Medical malpractice premiums are the main cause for the state’s escalating health care costs, he said.
He asked Sink to join him in opposing the health care reforms now being considered by Congress if the plan includes:
- the public option or any government-run insurance;
- a $500 billion reduction in Medicare that would be passed on to the states;
- any expansion of Medicaid.
McCollum also asked her to reject the plan if it does not include significant tort reform.
McCollum showed more tolerance towards Obama’s speech to schoolchildren, which Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer has publicly pounded on national television.
“I have no problem with the president addressing schoolchildren,” he said when asked about it. McCollum also said he would allow his own children to watch it if they were school-age.
Florida Agriculture and Consumer Services Commissioner Charles Bronson last week asked folks to stop giving pork a bad rap by calling the H1N1 virus “swine flu” because of the devastating impact it’s having on the pork industry.
But the threat of spreading the virus between pigs and people is a real threat, according to yesterday’s New York Times.
Not in the way most might think, however.
Vets fear that humans will spread the virus to the animals and are instituting precautions at state fairs and other places where the porcine creatures come into contact with those higher up on the food chain.
“When the Oregon State Fair opens next week, the pigs will be kept behind an elaborate configuration of plastic and ribbon barriers, taller-than-usual fences and off-limits walkways. The state veterinarian is also urging visitors to stay six feet away.
The worry? The spread of swine flu, but with a twist: state officials hope to insulate the pigs from sick people.
‘Help us protect the piggies,’ signs at the fair will read in pink,” the story begins.
“The whole idea of the animals getting sick from people is a foreign concept to people, but that’s what we’re looking at here,” said Iowa state veterinarian David E. Marshall said in the story.
The organization’s website Actblue.com claims to have raised nearly $250,000 from more than 4,000 supporters for Democrats.
“Democratic members of Congress need to understand that a healthcare reform bill with a Public Option is simply not an option– it’s a requirement. The congressmembers on this list have said in no uncertain terms that they will not vote for a bill without a public option all the way through Conference. That takes courage, and we need to show them how much we appreciate them for doing so,” the website urges.
Worries about President Obama’s health-care proposals have contributed to his plummeting popularity among Floridians, according to poll results released Thursday, leaving him in a virtual tie between those who approve and disapprove of his performance.
Obama’s 47-percent approval rating among likely Florida voters was the lowest in the nation of any poll conducted by Quinnipiac University. The president’s approval rating in Florida dropped 11 points since June, the poll found.
In Thursday’s results, 48 percent of likely Florida voters disapproved of Obama’s performance. The survey had a margin of error of 3 percent.
The poll also found that nearly three out of four Floridians don’t trust Obama to keep his promise to reform health care without increasing the federal budget deficit.
On the other hand, the poll found that a majority of voters — 58 to 36 percent — support creating a government-backed health insurance plan to compete with private insurers, despite protests from opponents who liken the concept to socialism.
Something’s going on when organizers of a health care forum on a summer weekday wonder if they’ll have enough room in the 500-seat South County Civic Center.
U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Tequesta, will host a health care forum in Stuart on Tuesday with a lineup of physicians, hospital administrators and local business leaders.
Rooney opposes the option of a government-run insurance plan and other key aspects of Democratic health care plans.
The forum will be from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. in the Wolf High Technology Center at the Stuart campus of Indian River State College at 2400 SE Salerno Road.
Bring “hard questions” — and some non-perishable food.
That’s the advice from one group encouraging opponents of Democratic health care overhaul efforts to show up at a Coalition of Boynton West Residential Associations meeting next week where U.S. Rep. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton, is scheduled to speak.
But those hoping to grill Klein may be disappointed. COBWRA President Ken Lassiter says visitors and their non-perishable food donations are indeed welcome at his group’s meeting, but questions from non-COBWRA members won’t be allowed.
In the heated debate over health care reform, groups on the left and right are alerting their members to public appearances by members of Congress during the August recess. Some of the events are town hall gatherings focused on health care. Others, including Klein’s COBWRA appearance, turn out to be something else.
Supporters and opponents of a Democratic health care overhaul bill and at least one member of Palm Beach County’s congressional delegation will converge next week for a public forum sponsored by a labor-backed retiree group.
U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Boca Raton, plans to attend the Aug. 20 event at 1 p.m. at the South County Civic Center west of Delray Beach. The event is sponsored by the Florida Alliance for Retired Americans, which is affiliated with the AFL-CIO and supports the Democratic bill.
Other local members of Congress were invited but it wasn’t immediately clear today whether any others would attend.
Opponents of the legislation plan to show up as well.
“We’ll be there with signs but, more importantly, we’ll be there with questions,” said Everett Wilkinson, the state coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots group.
Don’t expect any YouTubed confrontations when U.S. Rep. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton, hosts a town hall meeting later this month to discuss the 1,018-page House Democratic health care bill.
Klein is planning a “telephone town hall” that he says will reach far more constituents than an in-the-flesh event.
West
Republican challenger Allen West says Klein’s a chicken.
“The unwillingness to stand in front of your constituents can only be called cowardice,” said West.
Klein dismissed West’s claim. He said the teleconference has been planned for weeks and was not a reaction to the recent transformation of town hall events from soporific C-SPAN affairs to shout-fests that go viral on the Internet.
Here’s one of many video clips available on the Internet from Thursday night’s shout-and-shovefest on health care in Tampa, which was originally billed as a town hall meeting hosted by U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Tampa….
In Palm Beach County, U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Boca Raton, has scheduled a town hall meeting on health care for Aug. 20 at 1 p.m. at the South County Civic Center west of Delray Beach.
U.S. Rep. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton, is planning a “telephone town hall” later this month, but hasn’t set a date. (Here’s an account of a Wednesday health care dustup between protesters and Klein’s staff.)
U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Tequesta, has no town hall meetings scheduled. Plans for U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Miramar, were not immediately available.
WEST PALM BEACH — As nationally orchestrated expressions of local sentiment go, it was no Tea Party.
About 50 people showed up in the afternoon heat today outside Sen. Bill Nelson’s local office to demand health care reform. The event was put together by Organizing For America, the post-election version of the 2008 Obama campaign. There were eight such events around the state.
Members of the anti-tax Tea Party movement, who drew 1,000 or more people to an April rally in West Palm Beach, are planning a “No Government Health Care” rally on Saturday in Boca Raton
The Democratic National Committee is airing this ad in Florida and seven other states (AR, IN, LA, ME, ND, NE & OH) as the White House makes its push for health care reform.
Republicans say campaign is an attempt to “bulldoze” Democrats like Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, whose support is critical for President Obama’s plan.
But it also touches on a hot issue in Florida’s U.S. Senate race.
Today, the likely Republican candidate Gov. Charlie Crist said he’d like to see “more private sector involvement” in the White House health care plan and suggested Democrats look to Florida as they massage the proposal.
“What we’ve done in Florida can be a pretty good model,” Crist said. “I mean, the real concern here is to make sure people have access to health care that’s affordable. Through our Cover Florida program we’ve shown a way to do it, where you don’t have to increase taxes.”
Lisa Smith of Lake Worth is featured in this video from President Obama’s Organizing for America, the latest in the group’s “Faces of Health Care Reform” video press release series.
In the video, Smith says she lost her job and her insurance and then was denied coverage by private insurers because of a preexisting condition. Smith has hydrocephalus, or water on the brain, and monthly prescriptions that cost about $800.
Obama’s team says that with regular checkups, it’s easier to control her condition. But without those visits, Lisa is “forced to wait until her situation is dire enough to warrant a trip to the emergency room.”
Organizing for America Director Mitch Stewart doesn’t say exactly how the government should help Smith, just that it should.
“Unfortunately, her story is indicative of what’s wrong with our broken system – we must reform our system to lower costs, increase access and protect patient choice,” Stewart said in a release.
Some advocates of health-care reform have become concerned that President Obama’s proposals are running into stiff head winds, including the recent cost estimates from the Congressional Budget Office and the debate about whether the legislation should include a government-sponsored “public” plan as one option available to consumers.
But supporters of reform say the cause is more urgent than ever.
And in an interview with Palm Beach Post health reporter Stacey Singer, U.S. Rep. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton, says he’s optimistic that reform will pass:
“I think it absolutely stands a chance. There are many people in Washington, just like there are many people in South Florida, who are committed to reform which will improve the quality of health care, bring costs down and preserve choice and competition. The rising cost of health care is impacting our local businesses and their bottom lines. Every year, business owners are seeing premiums rise, forcing them to cut benefits, slash hiring or absorb the cost. That is why we are seeing so many different groups of people come to the table to talk about reform.
“Certainly, passing health care reform is a difficult task, otherwise it would have been done already. But families, small and large business owners and South Floridians from all walks of life are calling for reform, and we will make sure their voices are heard.”
Florida Agriculture and Consumer Services Commissioner Charles Bronson last week asked folks to 
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