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History of the Association
My name is Duff.
I founded Livelode.org.
And here’s why.
I'll begin by telling you a little about me; trained as a generalist at Middlebury College, later pursuing graduate work at Tulane University including public health policy, and then a masters in social work from the University of New Hampshire; I’ve spent the last 20 plus years in social services where I’ve essentially held line jobs, for the most part as a teacher, at the employ of two, large, Massachusetts-domiciled private not-for-profits. I’ve never drawn a paycheck directly from the Commonwealth. Most social workers do not. Althought I readily admit that I work for the state. I say as much only for its significance, for being germane to Livelode.org’s genesis.
I suspect you recall the Supreme Court's ruling on Obamacare taxation a decade ago. I've been calling on small business owners the last five years, and to most this event made an enduring impression; largely because the ruling didn’t meet expectation, I believe. Even if the winner was pegged accurately (the liberal wing of the bench), a great many thought it’d be Justice Kennedy that’d “swing” the majority to the left ---not Chief Justice Roberts.
Roberts ruled that the individual mandate penalty "can be reasonably characterized as a tax," and as such Congress has authority to levy (it).
Well, for us Bay Staters the story that is Obamacare actually began several years earlier, in Massachusetts, as Romneycare ---we’ll label it in the interest of consistency/simplicity. And what
we’ve come to know, in part for being further along this learning curve, is that when you legislate that everyone participate (individual mandate), that nobody can be excluded for pre-existing
conditions, and that everybody essentially pays the same rate (community rating), healthcare becomes a public plan, in spite of being operated or, better, administered, by the private sector; and,
moreover, for being a public plan, it really isn't a stretch to define the entirety of the plan's cost itself a tax. A tax, yes. And we contend, notably,
no longer insurance ---insurance as we know it.
It's really something else.
Sure; technically it remains insurance, this for constituting a transfer of risk ----from the individual to the State; but for insuring the entirety of the body public it's no longer appropriate to
represent it as insurance ---to individuals.
It's not insurance. It is something else.
Just as the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services is administered by private, albeit not-for-profit, entities, so is Massachusetts health care.
All that infighting inside the Beltway over the insertion of a “public option” now being superfluous, or worse.
Because it is a public plan.
We think
it not an overstatement to call this particular legislation a disgrace. The legislative process, that is ---or was; and is consistent with the general population's disconnect from the Federal
government ---public disapproval of the job Congress is doing at an all-time high ---90%.
Although an aside, misrepresentation may be the most reasonable basis for repeal. Even if it amounts to a mere re-vote on what we now know Obamacare to be ---a public
plan.
But this is an agenda for others to pursue.
Livelode.org is interested in the quality of legislation; the process, not the content/outcome of legislation; and to sustain productive discourse, particularly when politicians, in the interests of
a legislative victory, appeal to and exploit public emotion at the expense of productive discourse. We've also a prototype upgrade in production that's designed to enhance Obamacare, this for its in,
or under, attention to healthcare inflation.
Livelode is an old, long dormant, word for livelihood. We are, after all, what we do, less what we say.
Thanks for your attention.
Duff
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