Of course we should compensate the remaining victims of NC’s sterilization program.  But payment – in whatever amount – will never be enough.  Our state also needs to recognize and remember one of our biggest collective failures so that we can try and make sure it never happens again.  How?  Well, over the years we’ve had some suggestions:

1.  Back in 2007 I proposed the museum exhibit that the state Department of Health and Human Services put together with an excellent and very compact overview of NC’s eugenics sterilization program be given a prominent and permanent home at the NC Museum of History.  It’s great to learn about the Wright Brothers, but there are other aspects to NC’s history we must never forget.  How can we learn from our history if great exhibits like this remained stored away and quickly forgotten?

2.  As Adam Linker has suggested, why tuck a historical marker about the eugenics program on a side street when it could go on the Capitol Square?

Read More…

Chris Fitzsimon detailed the current debate in the General Assembly regarding the major cuts to NC’s Medicaid program made last year.  While legislators try frantically to avoid blame, the lives of real people are on the line.  Real people like Margaret Toman and her mother Lou Longest.  Watch our amazing video of their story:

If you read one thing about how to save $$ and improve care in our health  system this year then read this:

It Costs More, but Is It Worth More?

Federal DHHS report to be released today will show that 2.5 million young adults have gained coverage because of the Affordable Care Act.  One of the first significant provisions of the ACA to go into effect was the requirement of insurance companies that they allow parents to keep children on  parents’ health insurance plans until they turn 26.  This number is double what was previously thought and shows one of the first huge benefits of national health care reform law.

From the NYT Editorial today:

Dr. Donald Berwick, who was blocked by Republicans from serving a full term as the administrator of the agency that runs Medicare and Medicaid, has been speaking out. He makes a compelling case about the harm caused by partisan demagoguery and about the need for health care professionals to take the lead in implementing reforms.

In a recent speech, Dr. Berwick deplored attempts (almost entirely by Republicans) to discredit health care reform by using “outrageous rhetoric” about death panels that went “beyond cruelty” in subjecting older Americans “to groundless fear in the pure service of political agendas.” The real death panels, he suggested, are people who would allow insurers to take away coverage because people become sick and would reduce health benefits and shift costs to the needy who are least able to bear them.  [see more]

GOPers like Rep. Nelson Dollar and Speaker Thom Tillis are scrambling to deflect blame for the hundreds of millions of dollars in Medicaid cuts they made to NC’s health care program for the most vulnerable.  Governor Perdue warned them in this May 27th letter that GOP Medicaid cuts were unrealistic and would result in devastation to critical Medicaid services.  Then on October 27th, DHHS Secretary Lanier Cansler, a former Republican member of the General Assembly, warned GOP leaders in this letter that the cuts GOPers asked for were now going to result in exactly that – elimination of services that will hurt thousands of people.

What does this mean?  Here’s Sarah Gamble, a woman who has more integrity, compassion and dedication than any ten people you care to name.  She also gets help from Medicaid to care for Cameron:

It’s a move only a policy wonk could love, but one that has some implications for NC’s effort to set up a health benefits exchange under the federal health care law.  Remember, the exchange is where individuals and small businesses can go to buy health insurance and get large tax credits to make that insurance affordable starting in 2013.  NC’s effort to start an independent health exchange bogged down last year because NC Blue Cross and other insurers and health interests want to essentially control the state exchange.

Setting a state exchange up costs money and the federal government has substantial grants available to states who are actually moving along in setting up their exchanges.  Originally the last day to apply for grant money was June 1, 2012, but now the deadline is June 29th. Why is this important for NC?  It gives the NC General Assembly another month – almost to the tentative end of the summer legislative session – to work out problems and show NC actually wants to set up an exchange and so qualify for more grant money. Read More…

Two great resources for everyone in NC – one new and one old – are now operating and can help with just about any health insurance question out there.  They both are consumer-oriented and are based in the NC Department of Insurance.

Questions about health insurance in general?  SMARTNC #  877-885-0231

Medicare questions?  Call NC’s excellent SHIIP Medicare consumer help program # 800-443-9354