The ACHA Rises Again

I just came back from a meeting with our new Congressman, John Faso, and a group of actual experts in the healthcare field, including Bill Streck, who I had been working with on the impact of the ACHA on Otsego County, and Patricia Kennedy, CEO of Springbrook. It was coincidental that we met on the day that it became widely known that the ACHA had risen from the dead. Our goal was to try and summarize – in 30 minutes! - the harm that moving from the ACA to the ACHA would do to people in the region.

Faso did most of the talking, at it was at a technical level that was beyond me, and some others as well. Bill and Patricia kept up, as did Wayne Mellor, a business consultant with experience in the area. After a while, it seemed like this was a ploy, to avoid talking about wider issues, like how the changes will affect people here in Otsego County and in District 19.

He started the conversation by telling us that the ACHA would take Medicaid from being an entitlement (hasn't “being entitled” always had a negative connotation?) to – well, something else. He also said, right up front, that the reason for ACHA's changes to Medicaid was that the growth in Medicaid spending by the Federal government was “unsustainable.”

And that's where we knew that we lived, as we talked about afterwards, out on the sidewalk, in two different worlds. Congressman Faso made it clear, from the beginning, that this was about money. To us, it was about people.

I didn't get to say much (no one really did) but I did note, at the end, that my only concern was whether my constituents would have better healthcare after the ACHA was passed. The answer was not “Yes, definitely.”

An amendment to the zombie bill that would give the states wide discretion in whether folks with preexisting conditions ended up in high risk pools (which we all know don't solve any problems) and would also give states the choice of whether policies would include essential benefits, is apparently the compromise that is going to get the Freedom Caucus and the Tuesday Morning Group to support the bill. Please forgive me for being partisan, but leave it to the Congressional Republicans to finally agree on a major bill after it is made unimaginably worse.

We shall see.

The Tale of the Sherrif's Son

Well, it's been quite a day for Otsego County online. First the Strategic Plan is posted (see below), and then a confidential issue that the Board, and specifically the Public Safety and Legal Affairs Committee, has been working on since January, appears online as well.

The article is pretty accurate – although there is always a lot that is not objective enough to publish – and the whole incident is pretty frightening. And there's more to come – most importantly, the disposition of the case and the consequences for the individuals involved. Make what you will of it.

I have to make it clear to my constituents that, during the first (of many) extensive executive session during which the Board first heard of this incident, I insisted a number of times that the Superintendents of the school districts that were threatened be notified immediately. I had great confidence that they would use the information wisely and serve as partners in this issue. It is my memory – I did not take notes – that I was assured, as we were adjourning, that one of the investigations that had been discussed would include notification of the schools. This did not happen.

I believe that this was a mistake. One of Oneonta's elementary schools is in my district, another is down the street. Colleagues who I respect and admire work there, and my neighbors send their children there. This was a very specific threat, and a terrible one. The individual was not put under surveillance or supervision; he still had access to his extensive personal armory. The Superintendents deal with this kind of threat occasionally, and are professionals. They are responsible for the safety of their staff and students. To leave them out of the loop was, I believe, misguided.

Strategic Plan Online

The Strategic Plan is finally online.

This is the document that is, theoretically, designed to guide the County Board in its thinking and decision-making for the forseeable future. It was proposed by the IGA Committee a two and a half years ago; it was important that we have it on the shelf when applying for grants. We paid a consultant around $60,000 to put it together, and they arranged dozens of meetings with stakeholders of every sort all around the County. I went to quite a number of those meetings, and they all involved interesting and energetic conversations. The consultants also assembled a wide variety of data regarding all facets of the County and life here, and assembled it all in a document that we got last fall. And finally, today, it's available to everyone.

I am, as you can tell, a little frustrated about the length of time it has taken, and (my opinion) the low level of priority that the Board has assigned it. A committee to implement the Plan was formed, many months after it was received, and I'm on that Committee.

The Strategic Plan Implementation Committee has met each month this year, and discussions there have been more energetic and – dare I say it – hopeful than would be the case in most committee meetings. Opportunities and possibilities abound in the Plan, and once we begin talking about it, we realize that many of them can actually come to pass.

So take a look at it. It's on the Otsego County home page, and it's called the Strategic Prioritization Plan. You might have been at a meeting during it's creation, which means you built it (thanks, by the way, if you're one of those people). Let me know what you think. The actual plan is actually less than 40 pages; the rest is data, and very interesting data about where we live and work. Go take a look.

The People's Government

For the last two years, during the County Board's organizational meeting in January, Kay Stuligross has moved that the time of the full County Board meeting be changed from 10:00 AM on the first Wednesday of each month, to later in the afternoon or evening on that same day. The goal was to increase the number of citizens who could attend the meetings, since they would be after most people were out of work, and not in the middle of the morning on a workday.

Objections to this change never seemed to make sense to me; they seemed incomplete and ineffectual. “Noone will come even if we change the time,” was a leading contender. It was almost as if there were another reason that no one wanted to discuss.

I believe that the reason that no one wanted to discuss was, and is, this: with daytime meetings, only people with flexible schedules can run for Representative. Very few people who work in schools, the professions or in most nine-to-five jobs have schedules flexible enough, whereas small businessmen, farmers and retired people do. The former tend to be Democrats, at least in this county, and the latter Republicans. The cards are stacked against us, on purpose.

I'd like to test the viability of this theory by winning the majority this time and changing the time of the meetings. More people can come to the meetings and have their voices heard, and a wider variety of citizens will be able to run for office. Wouldn't that be interesting? Are you listening, Thomas Jefferson?