PSN In The News

With two landmark health care reform bills now on her desk, Gov. M. Jodi Rell has to decide whose side she is on -- small businesses and families struggling under the weight of high health care costs, or the state's health insurance industry, which has a big stake in preserving the costly status quo. Will she allow precedent-setting health care reforms to proceed, or will she, for the second year in a row, be the "Governor of No"?

A state senator who was in the nation's capital this week to lobby for health care reform says it's time for a "competitive public product" to give Americans a more affordable alternative to private health insurance.

Senator Joe Bolkcom, a Democrat from Iowa City, was among a small group of state legislators who met with White House officials on Wednesday.

WASHINGTON – State legislators urged Congress and the White House on Wednesday to enact comprehensive health care legislation that includes a public health insurance component by year's end.

Members of the Progressive States Network, a state government coalition, met with Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to lobby for a public insurance option. They said that would answer Americans' call to provide health care coverage for all.

Would you buy a health-insurance policy sold by the U.S. government? What if it offered good coverage, affordable rates and were available anywhere in the country?

Pushing back against Republican attacks on President Obama's vision of a public-health plan, a nationwide coalition of state lawmakers, small-business owners, physicians, community groups and others Wednesday launched a public-relations campaign aimed at building support for an option they believe is essential for meaningful health reform.

Wednesday’s lobbying push starts at the top: Former Senate Majority Leaders Tom Daschle, Bob Dole and Howard Baker announce recommendations at a noon ET press conference in Washington, as organized by the Bipartisan Policy Center.

And it moves down to the state level, with the Progressive States Network fanning out on the Hill and to the White House to make the case.

Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, has his own event, releasing a letter from more than 600 state legislators urging Congress and the administration to enact health care reform by the end of the year. The letter calls for any reform to include a public health option, something Mr. Harkin firmly backs himself.

Both Sebelius and Nancy-Ann DeParle, White House director of health care reform, were set to meet Wednesday afternoon with a group of state legislators called the Progressive States Network who support a public option as part of any overhaul plan. The lawmakers said at a press conference that they will bring along a letter signed by 700 legislators calling for a public health insurance plan as part of comprehensive health reform.

State Sen. Karen Keiser is headed to the Washington, D.C., for the second time in a little over a month. This time she is adding her voice to other state lawmakers calling for health care reform.

The Kent Democrat says she will is joining a group at the White House Wednesday for a meeting with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Keiser also is attending a related press event with Democratic U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa.

The state lawmakers want passage of health care reform by year's end, and they want a public-insurance option.

Now more than ever, we need a rational and respectful dialogue about how to fix our country’s broken immigration system. But comments like Texas Representative Betty Brown’s recent assertion that legal Chinese American immigrants should adopt Anglophone names that are “easier for Americans to deal with” represents precisely the kind of divisive rhetoric that will keep us from such a levelheaded debate.

Brown’s callous suggestion that Chinese American citizens are not American is symptomatic of the veiled bigotry that underlies much of the immigration debate across the nation. It also begs the question of why state legislators across the country would want to associate with the organization that Brown helped found to propagate racially divisive policies.

In order to comply with new transparency requirements under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, state governments across the country are scrambling to report to the public how they spend recovery dollars. Unfortunately, no existing state government Web sites that are accounting for the recovery funds report the number of jobs created by private contractors. Without such data, the sites are close to meaningless.

Fortunately, Oregon is leading an effort to require contractors to report the number of jobs they create, as well as the hours worked and wages received by their employees. These proposed requirements would ensure Oregonians' tax money actually goes toward creating quality jobs.