September 2008

I confess - one of the reasons I didn’t support Hillary in the primary was the thought of having Bill wandering around the White House with nothing to do. I think Bill was a good president, aside from his zipper problem, but he’s so accustomed to power that it just seemed like it would be too big a job to ‘manage’ him and keep him on the sidelines where he belonged.

Michelle, Cindy and Jill fit our image of a first or second spouse, but Todd is a different kettle of fish. From reports coming out of Anchorage, he sits in on government meetings and he is copied on government policy emails. There’s even a joke in the legislature that comes up when they’re waiting for a decision from the governor’s office - “What would Todd do?”

In the small circle of advisers close to the governor, these people say, Mr. Palin is among the closest, and he plays an unpaid but central role in many aspects of the administration of Ms. Palin, the Republican nominee for vice president. http://www.nytimes.com

So, if Todd is the sort of person who would mess around in government business without being elected to office, and if Sarah is the sort of person who would let him get away with it, we need to look at this as the national security issue that it is. Who is this guy, anyway? Do we want him to have access to classified documents? Do we want him talking to national leaders from other countries? Do we want him influencing one of the most powerful people in the world?

I think the reporters need to go back to Alaska and give this guy a real close look. And McCain needs to tell us, specifically, what measures he’ll take to protect our nation’s secrets from this meddling spouse.

On another note, here’s a take from the Anchorage Daily News, telling us why the McCain campaign is so desperate to keep a lid on the Troopergate investigation:

Why do she and her new handlers in the McCain camp believe there is something in Troopergate that could cost them the election?

The real damage to Palin from Troopergate comes with an injury claim involving trooper Wooten when he hurt his back while in the line of duty.

Independent investigator Steve Branchflower testified recently he believes someone in the governor’s office tried to block Wooten’s workers’ compensation injury benefits….

Here’s why this is all so damaging to the governor. It’s one thing to try to get a trooper fired because you believe he is a danger to the public. But using your considerable power as governor to block the benefits of a former family member you have a long-running dispute with moves this scandal into a new realm.

It becomes about one thing and one thing only, revenge. Not public good, but settling a score.

The following article is by Wick Allison, and appeared on dmagazine.com

THE MORE I LISTEN TO AND READ ABOUT “the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate,” the more I like him. Barack Obama strikes a chord with me like no political figure since Ronald Reagan. To explain why, I need to explain why I am a conservative and what it means to me.

In 1964, at the age of 16, I organized the Dallas County Youth for Goldwater. My senior thesis at the University of Texas was on the conservative intellectual revival in America. Twenty years later, I was invited by William F. Buckley Jr. to join the board of National Review. I later became its publisher.

Conservatism to me is less a political philosophy than a stance, a recognition of the fallibility of man and of man’s institutions. Conservatives respect the past not for its antiquity but because it represents, as G.K. Chesterton said, the democracy of the dead; it gives the benefit of the doubt to customs and laws tried and tested in the crucible of time. Conservatives are skeptical of abstract theories and utopian schemes, doubtful that government is wiser than its citizens, and always ready to test any political program against actual results.

Liberalism always seemed to me to be a system of “oughts.” We ought to do this or that because it’s the right thing to do, regardless of whether it works or not. It is a doctrine based on intentions, not results, on feeling good rather than doing good.

But today it is so-called conservatives who are cemented to political programs when they clearly don’t work. The Bush tax cuts—a solution for which there was no real problem and which he refused to end even when the nation went to war—led to huge deficit spending and a $3 trillion growth in the federal debt. Facing this, John McCain pumps his “conservative” credentials by proposing even bigger tax cuts. Meanwhile, a movement that once fought for limited government has presided over the greatest growth of government in our history. That is not conservatism; it is profligacy using conservatism as a mask.

Today it is conservatives, not liberals, who talk with alarming bellicosity about making the world “safe for democracy.” It is John McCain who says America’s job is to “defeat evil,” a theological expansion of the nation’s mission that would make George Washington cough out his wooden teeth.

This kind of conservatism, which is not conservative at all, has produced financial mismanagement, the waste of human lives, the loss of moral authority, and the wreckage of our economy that McCain now threatens to make worse.

Barack Obama is not my ideal candidate for president. (In fact, I made the maximum donation to John McCain during the primaries, when there was still hope he might come to his senses.) But I now see that Obama is almost the ideal candidate for this moment in American history. I disagree with him on many issues. But those don’t matter as much as what Obama offers, which is a deeply conservative view of the world. Nobody can read Obama’s books (which, it is worth noting, he wrote himself) or listen to him speak without realizing that this is a thoughtful, pragmatic, and prudent man. It gives me comfort just to think that after eight years of George W. Bush we will have a president who has actually read the Federalist Papers.

Most important, Obama will be a realist. I doubt he will taunt Russia, as McCain has, at the very moment when our national interest requires it as an ally. The crucial distinction in my mind is that, unlike John McCain, I am convinced he will not impulsively take us into another war unless American national interests are directly threatened.

“Every great cause,” Eric Hoffer wrote, “begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” As a cause, conservatism may be dead. But as a stance, as a way of making judgments in a complex and difficult world, I believe it is very much alive in the instincts and predispositions of a liberal named Barack Obama.

Write to wicka@dmagazine.com.

My daughter recently asked me what the Watergate scandal was all about. Unfortunately, I had a senior moment and all I could remember was a botched break in, something about a lawyer, and claims that Nixon was trying to change the course of an election. Sad…

So I bought Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America, by Rick Perlstein, to refresh my memory.

I haven’t got to Watergate yet, but on page 28 I read a passage that feels peculiarly up-to-date. The author is talking about Nixon’s first congressional campaign, in which he ran against a well-loved congressman that many believe was the inspiration for the movie Mr Smith Goes to Washington:

He [Nixon] and Chotiner [Nixon's campaign manager] were chartering the Nixon method. You didn’t have to attack to attack. Better, much better, to give something to the mark: make him feel that he has one up on you . Let him pounce on your “mistake.” That makes him look unduly aggressive. Then you sprang the trap, garnering the pity by making the enemy look like a self-righteous and hyperintellectual enemy of common sense, … inspiring a strange sort of protective love among voters whose wounded resentments grow alongside your performance of being wounded.

Nixon won.

The 2008 incarnation of this method is to just throw out a divisive and patently untrue remark, and let the opposition pounce. You still get the pleasure of watching the opponent being perceived as aggressive and self-righteous. You still garner the protective love of voters who hate to see anyone ‘picked on’, even though you started it. And you still profit from wounded resentments. But you don’t need Nixon’s poker-playing genius to make it work.

Many people are now encouraging Obama to get ‘tough’ and fight back harder. However, that simply plays into the game. Will Obama figure out how to neutralize this strategy? Only time will tell.

I’m a liberal, so I did what I had to do and voted for John Kerry in the last election. But all during the campaign I kept wishing I could be voting for that Obama guy instead. You know - the one who said at the convention that there aren’t any red states or blue states, just the United States?

Now that I actually get my chance to vote for Obama, I admit that this is the first election I’ve been truly excited about since Kennedy ran - and I wasn’t anywhere near old enough to vote in that one.

There were exciting, emotionally-charged changes when Kennedy won, even in the small towns of America where I was still in grade school. Our town is unlikely to have voted for Kennedy (only one family in town was Catholic, and, believe it or not, that was a real issue in 1960), but his vision was bigger than the divisions between left and right.

Our math and science classes suddenly took on more meaning, and our teachers were more enthused. I can remember being pushed out onto the soccer field to kick the ball around because our teachers said that Kennedy wanted America’s children to be fit and healthy. I can remember being taken to our teacher’s house to watch John Glenn’s return to Earth in 1962, an achievement that we associated with Kennedy’s dream to land an American on the moon.

Even school kids were energized and excited by Kennedy’s vision for America. I believed that Obama could bring those days back, when we were encouraged to dream, and serve the greater good.

Months ago I started out hopeful and enthused about the opportunity to see the country turned around - the possibility that people might actually have access to health care someday, that we might have a president who thought things through before rushing into wars over oil, and that our economy would get back on the right footing by investing public money into infrastructure and green technology.

I hoped that Obama would keep reminding us that we’re all in this together, and that our individual service to America can bring about the change our children need for the 21st century.

Yet, even with all my enthusiasm for Obama’s vision, I still felt confident that we wouldn’t be all that bad off even if he lost. McCain seemed like an honorable man, someone who really had America’s interest at heart, even though, as a liberal, I disagree with him on most of the major issues. After all, he has that grandfatherly look that seems so harmless.

But the tone of the campaign has changed so much that I no longer feel ‘excited’ so much as drained from a week-long adrenaline rush.

I’m no longer ‘enthused’ - I’m worried that things may actually get worse instead of better. The man at the top of the Republican ticket has already abdicated in favor of his running mate, and Sarah Palin has the same black and white, for us or against us Bush-like worldview that is so dangerous on the world stage.

And the Democratic campaign somehow morphed into a fight against something - against Bush, against Palin. The word “change” doesn’t mean all that much anymore, because it’s come unpinned from the larger vision. The Republican tactic of setting people against each other is working, again.

But I see an opportunity in McCain’s choice of Palin for VP. There is no longer any way that the Republican campaign can belittle Obama’s star quality. That gives Obama the opportunity to skip all the detailed policy talks and go for the big venues - and give those rousing speeches that he does so well.

Barack, forget the “McCain is Bush” strategy. There’s no emotional power in it. Ignore Palin, if possible - she was thrown into the race as a distraction, and the people who are willing to vote for her ‘because she’s just like us’ will never vote for you.

Instead, bring together as many thousands of people as possible, as often as possible, and give them the speeches you gave at the beginning of the campaign. If you can’t remember how invigorating those speeches were, for both you and us, perhaps you need a few days of silent, solitary time to regain your perspective.

The Republicans learned that division wins elections back when Nixon was running, and they’ve been using the same tactics, successfully, ever since.

The only way to win against that kind of engineered cynicism is to go back to your roots - remind us why your vision of America is better. Make it personal - not about you, personally, but about me, personally. Show me how I can help rebuild this nation into the America that we lost back in the riots of 1968. Help us regain the optimism that drained away with the assassinations of America’s finest leaders, and with the polarization of America into ‘us’ against ‘them.’

Ask me to serve - not to serve your campaign, but to serve the country. Ask for sacrifice for the common good, something that candidates have been afraid to do for the last half-century. Remind us of who we are, and that we’re better than the divisive politics that pit soccer moms against welfare moms, and corporate fat cats against the Eastern elite. Those divisions were manufactured for the benefit of powerful men seeking more power - it has never been who we truly are, as a nation.

We’re better than that. You’re very good at reminding us of that. Now it’s time to remind yourself.

Today marks the 7th anniversary of the worst terrorist attack on US soil. The names of 2,974 people were read from the victims list, and relatives of the dead observed a moment of silence. During this hotly contested presidential campaign year, America took a few quiet minutes to remember the past, and pray for a better future.

Someday another memorial will be built, perhaps in Washington DC, to commemorate the American lives that were lost in the Iraq war. During the dedication of that memorial, over 4,000 names will be read. But the brave American men and women who lost their lives in Iraq were not the victims of religious zealots with a grudge against the United States; instead, they sacrificed their lives fighting an unnecessary war.

In the five years since the Bush White House sent the first troops and planes to fight in Iraq, a mountain of evidence has been presented to congress and to the American people. Read the rest of this entry »

By Jonni Good

I worked for five years for the customer service department at one of the largest health insurance companies in the northwest.  I spoke to many people who discovered they were not eligible for affordable health insurance because of pre-existing conditions. I spoke to many other people who thought, incorrectly, that their insurance policies would protect them from financial ruin. Who are these people and how do our presidential candidates promise to help them? Let’s take a look:

Coverage for high-risk patients:

I talked to a young veteran who returned to our state after serving in Iraq with the National Guard. He and his wife had no health insurance, but they couldn’t buy an individual policy from our company because the wife was pregnant. Our company denied individual policies to pregnant women and their husbands because of the possible cost of a high-risk delivery, and because the baby would be automatically eligible for coverage without going through underwriting after it was born. (Some states have mandated that potential members cannot be denied coverage due to pregnancy).

Our CEO liked to tell us that our company and all our policy-holders were like a community, with all of us looking out for each other. However, our ‘community’ excluded membership to individuals who were most in need of help.

The rationale for denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions is that the company cannot maintain their profitability if they sell policies to people who are already sick. However, group policies sold through employers include both sick and healthy people, and the insurance companies have been providing these policies quite profitably for many years.

John McCain’s website says he will work with states to create a Guaranteed Access Plan (GAP) to assure that people with pre-existing conditions can get insurance.

Here in Oregon we already have a GAP – it’s called the Oregon Medical Insurance Pool, (OMIP). It was created by the Oregon Legislature in 1987, so this is hardly a new idea. Anyone who is turned down for an individual plan by a commercial health insurance company in Oregon qualifies for an OMIP policy. At least 31 other states have already implemented a high-risk insurance pool for their citizens.

Because OMIP only covers high-risk people, the rates are much higher than other individual or group policies – which make them unaffordable to many people. Our returning Iraq veteran and his wife would have paid $552 a month for coverage under OMIP, and when the baby was born the premium would go up to $755/month. The premium rates are based on age, so older Oregonians pay much more. For the first six months of coverage any claims for a pre-existing condition (her pregnancy, for instance), would not be paid under this high-risk plan. This means that our returning Iraq veteran and his wife needed to apply for OMIP coverage within three months of conception to make sure the delivery was covered, assuming the baby didn’t come early. Her prenatal care would not be covered.

Pre-existing conditions:

Most individual policies and many employer-provided group policies contain a pre-existing condition clause. Under this clause, claims are not paid for a specific period of time for any illness if the insurance company can prove that the policyholder had that condition before the policy began. This means that your claims may not be paid even if you do manage to find a policy to cover you and your family.

Many people take jobs specifically because the employer offers health insurance benefits. They fail to read the fine print of their policies and find out about the pre-existing exclusion clause only when they receive a large bill from their health care provider.

As mentioned earlier, our state’s high-risk medical pool also includes a pre-existing condition clause. The high-risk insurance is very expensive, and you only qualify if you already have a pre-existing condition - but claims for that condition will not be paid until you’ve been on the policy for six months. During that first six months, you pay your insurance premiums and your hospital and doctor bills.

One particularly wrenching illustration of this problem came during my last year working for the health insurance company. A young woman took a low-paying job with a child-care provider that had contracted with our company to provide group health insurance to their employees. The employer did not pay the employee’s insurance premium - the full amount of the premium was deducted from the employees’ wages. The policy had a six-month pre-existing condition clause, which this poorly educated woman did not understand.

Since the job paid close to minimum wage, a large portion of her wages went towards her health insurance premium.

I received an email from this young woman’s mother after she had already called our company many times for help. In her email she explained that her daughter had been diagnosed with bone cancer several months after she started her job, and had amassed over $100,000 in bills for surgery and cancer treatment. Every claim had been denied.

Our company’s lawyers found out that she had gone to an emergency room for back pain before she was covered under our policy. The emergency room doctor gave the woman pain medication and sent her home. She was not diagnosed with any illness at the time, and received no real treatment.

Our lawyers claimed that the emergency room visit proved that the bone cancer began before the policy started, and, therefore, our company was not responsible for any claims related to that illness. In spite of paying a large portion of her small wages to our company for her health insurance policy, she was, for all intents and purposes, uninsured. I did my best to argue her case with our company’s lawyers, but in the end I had to tell her mother that the claims would not be paid.

This brings up a related issue that needs to be addressed - the disparity between the charges that are paid by insurance companies and the much higher charges paid by the uninsured. In the case of our young lady with bone cancer, after her death her mother was presented a bill that may have been up to four times higher than the same providers would have happily accepted if her daughter’s illness had been covered by her policy.

Charging different people different amounts for the same services is perfectly legal. In this case, the people who are least able to afford the higher charges are the ones who get the biggest bills.

Health problems and bankruptcy:

You often see articles that give statistics showing the number of people who declare bankruptcy because they got sick and couldn’t pay the hospitals and doctor bills. This doesn’t put a real face on the problem.

First, many people look at bankruptcy as a somewhat unsavory legal maneuver that people use to get out of paying their debts. Second, most people assume that you can get treated in any hospital emergency room even if you can’t pay the bill, and the hospital will simply write it off. It is also assumed that people should take some personal responsibility and buy a health insurance policy before they actually get sick, even though the current system often makes this impossible.

Hospitals do write off many expenses when they treat indigent patients, but if the patient has any assets, such as a house or savings, they’ll go after those assets rather than provide ‘charity’ care. The statistics we need to see are the number of people who have lost their homes because they were uninsured. In the case of the young lady with bone cancer, her bills would have gone to her estate, and her mother may have lost her home, if she owned one. This issue needs to be seen as a very real personal tragedy instead of a dry statistic.

Putting a real face on the problem:

Since the McCain campaign has made this is the year of the veteran, I would like to see statistics showing the number of US war veterans and their families who are unable to buy health insurance due to pre-existing conditions, and who cannot afford the high cost of the high-risk medical pools that McCain supports as the answer to this problem. I would also like to see some real people (including vets), who have lost everything they own because they were uninsured or underinsured - not because they didn’t try to buy a policy, but because they were denied coverage, or they couldn’t afford the high-risk medical pool policy, or they got caught by their group policy’s pre-existing condition clause.

Obama’s Plan to Cover Uninsured Americans: (taken from the Obama website), that specifically address this issue:

Obama will make available a new national health plan to all Americans, including the self-employed and small businesses, to buy affordable health coverage that is similar to the plan available to members of Congress. The Obama plan will have the following features:

• Guaranteed eligibility. No American will be turned away from any insurance plan because of illness or pre-existing conditions.

• Comprehensive benefits. The benefit package will be similar to that offered through Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP), the plan members of Congress have. The plan will cover all essential medical services, including preventive, maternity and mental health care. (See my note, below).

• Affordable premiums, co-pays and deductibles.

• Subsidies. Individuals and families who do not qualify for Medicaid or SCHIP but still need financial assistance will receive an income-related federal subsidy to buy into the new public plan or purchase a private health care plan.

• Simplified paperwork and reined in health costs.

• Easy enrollment. The new public plan will be simple to enroll in and provide ready access to coverage.

• Portability and choice. Participants in the new public plan and the National Health Insurance Exchange (see below) will be able to move from job to job without changing or jeopardizing their health care coverage.

• Quality and efficiency. Participating insurance companies in the new public program will be required to report data to ensure that standards for quality, health information technology and administration are being met.

Author’s note: In Oregon, there are two available plans under FEHBP. The HMO plan has no deductible, and covered services are provided with either a $15 or $20 copay. The other available plan has a $2000 deductible and the member pays 10% of the allowable provider fees, with a total out-of-pocket cost per year of $3,000. Both plans include the following statement in the policy:

We will not refuse to cover the treatment of a condition that you had before you enrolled in this Plan solely because you had the condition before you enrolled.

Contrasts with the McCain plan:

I am no expert on either the Obama or McCain plans, but the following conclusions can be gathered from their websites:

McCain:

• McCain will rely on the states’ high-risk pools to provide coverage for people with pre-existing conditions. His website does not mention the pre-existing condition clause that caused such grief to the young woman with bone cancer. Under Oregon’s OMIP plan, her claims would have been denied if coverage began after that visit to the emergency room.

• The McCain plan will attempt to disconnect health insurance from employment by taxing health insurance benefits provided by employers, and providing a tax credit to individuals who buy their own coverage. This means that fewer people will be covered under group policies, forcing more people into the expensive state high risk pools because of pre-existing conditions.

• McCain proposes a government subsidy for individual policies, regardless of income. After receiving the proposed government subsidy of $5000 a year, our returning Iraq veteran and his young family would still pay $339 a month for their high-risk insurance policy, which would be administered by the state. It is unlikely that they would be able to find an employer who would provide a group insurance policy, under the McCain administration. If they did find employer-supported health benefits, those health benefits would be taxed.

Obama:

• The Obama plan would make it illegal for insurance carriers to deny coverage to people based on their current health, putting individual policies on the same footing as group policies. Individuals would no longer need to provide health records proving they were healthy to be eligible for a new policy. Under this plan, our Iraq veteran and his wife would be able to buy a policy of their choice from the company I worked for.

• The national health care plan Obama proposes would have similar benefits to the policies offered to public employees – in Oregon, the public employee plans do not exclude coverage for pre-existing conditions. With no pre-existing condition clause, the claims for our young woman with bone cancer would have been paid. Our returning Iraq war veteran’s wife’s prenatal care would have been covered, and their baby would be automatically added to their policy when it was born.

• Those who cannot afford an individual policy would receive a government subsidy, based on their ability to pay. Giving a subsidy only to those who need it would save taxpayers money. And by pooling everyone into one large group instead of segregating sick people, the premiums would be lower than the premiums of our current state high-risk pools.

To become more informed about this important issue, see the policy statements on the candidates’ websites:

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/healthcare/

http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/19ba2f1c-c03f-4ac2-8cd5-5cf2edb527cf.htm

OK, let me get this straight:

1. It’s OK for Sarah Palin to support the passage of laws that would force you or me to give birth to a baby we don’t want, even if the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest…

And it’s OK for Palin to point to her own Down Syndrome baby as an example of her pro-life credentials.

But if we wonder why she left her premature, special needs baby with caretakers just three days after he was born, we’re sexist.

2. It’s OK for Sarah Palin to oppose teaching biologically-based sex education in the schools. (She must have something against biology in general, since she thinks all high-school biology classes should also teach the ancient Jewish story about Adam and Eve along with evolution, so teenagers can choose for themselves which theory is more scientific.)

But if we ask any questions about her own daughter’s pregnancy, and wonder if it may be a result of her abstinance-only training, we’re sexist.

I can see why McCain picked a woman - he watched Clinton score points every time she yelled ’sexist’ when the votes didn’t go her way. Now McCain has a VP candidate whose idology would allow her to make life-changing choices for every American family, but her own family is ‘private.’

Give me a break.

Among the various disclosures about Sarah Palin, the GOP VP choice, was the fact that she was once a member of the Alaskan Independence Party. If she once agreed with the main policy ideas of this organization, it will help voters know what they may be getting if they choose the McCain/Palin ticket in November.

Here is a short list of what Palin may support, given her brief association with the AIP. These quotes are taken directly from the AIP website (see link above):

1. In order to keep costs down the AIP believes we should privatize as much government services as possible.

2. It is a jurors right and responsibility to vote to acquitt if they feel the law is unjust.

3.Many in the AIP support INDEPENDENCE. Some support COMMONWEALTH and others support STATEHOOD.

It is the AIPs wish to get a true plebecite (vote) according to international law, only legal Alaskan citizens, it is in the language of the people, federal military and their dependants are not legal citizens and will not be allowed to vote in this plebecite.

4. The AIP opposes with rare exception, any secret activities or expenditures of funds of any government agency, state, federal or international.

There’s more, of course, but these seem to be the issues of most concern to the general population of the US at large. Some folks are saying that Palin should be disqualified from the VP office because the AIP supports the secession of Alaska from the US. That’s not how I read the policy issues on their website - they appear to be saying that Alaska citizens should have been given the right to vote for statehood, but were denied that opportunity. Is that true? I’m not up on the history, so I have to pass on that one.

The AIP has libertarian leanings. They don’t approve of the government borrowing money for anything other than capital expenses, they don’t approve of government bankruptcy, and they think parents should get to educate their kids any way they want. But they also think that a juror, not the state of US Supreme Court, should decide if a law is just or not.

I’m a Democrat, so I won’t be voting for the McCain/Palin ticket - but there isn’t anything on the AIP website that seems all that scary to me. Alaskans are an independent bunch. (There are many people who would like Washington, Oregon and northern California to have the opportunity to create their own independent nation, called Cascadia - maybe Palin would support our right to vote on that issue, too…)

The blogosphere has been churning in the last few days with questions about Sarah Palin’s fifth baby. Daily Kos picked up the Alaskan rumor that Sarah’s newest son, a Down’s baby, is actually her 17-year old daughter’s.

OK, it was an interesting question, brought on by Palin’s somewhat strange behavior after her water broke in Texas, but the question is now laid to rest. The campaign announced that Bristol, the daughter in question, has been pregnant for 5 months. Trig, the baby, was born 4 months ago, so it can’t possibly be Bristol’s son.

But this is all beside the point. Gossip is fun, of course, but the real issue is about abortion rights. Palin is using little Trig to prove her Christian Right credentials.

A sitting governor chose to have a disabled child, instead of choosing an abortion. The socially conservative wing of the Republican party is excited to have a VP candidate who has proved herself to be pro-life by having the baby in spite of the fact that he will need life-long care.

Palin and her husband made a personal choice, and no reasonable person would question their right to do so.

However, she didn’t just make a personal choice. She would make that choice for everyone else in similar circumstances, if she had the chance.

The McCain/Palin presidency would put at least one and possibly two new anti-choice judges on the Supreme Court. Roe v. Wade would be history.

Of course, Palin could afford to make the choice she did. Since she went back to work just three days after delivering a premature, special-needs baby, she obviously can afford high-quality child care for the baby (and the rest of her large brood).

However, her political views on abortion, informed by her religious beliefs, would force all pregnant women to bring their babies to term whether or not they had health insurance, whether or not they were married, and even whether or not the pregnancy was the result of rape or incest. This is ‘compassionate conservatism’ at it’s worst.

As a long-time employee of one of the largest health insurance companies in the Northwest, I know that a pregnant woman without health insurance is disqualified from buying an individual plan. In fact, a pregnant woman’s husband is also disqualified, because the newborn baby would be eligible for insurance without going through underwriting. Big insurance companies make their profits by minimizing their risks, and this isn’t a risk they’re willing to take. In Oregon, a newly pregnant woman must immediately apply for the State’s high-risk pool, in order to get coverage in time so the policy’s pre-existing condition clause can run out before the baby is born.

If there’s no insurance, a high-risk pregnancy and special-needs child could easily put a young family into bankruptcy - something Palin didn’t have to face. Even if a pregnant woman does have insurance, she may not have a husband who can support her, or a job that will allow her to take the many days off work that could be required by a sick baby. These are not problems that Palin had to face, but it could be a problem for thousands of women if Palin’s pro-life politics become public law.

So, the Palin baby rumor, interesting as it was for a few short days, simply misses the point. The important question is not “whose baby is it”? What we need to be asking ourselves is whether or not we want Palin and a conservative Supreme Court to make our own personal choices for us.

And one more thought on this issue - McCain, the ‘maverick’ of his party, evidently preferred Lieberman as his running mate. Unfortunately, he caved in to the demands of the far-right wing of his party and chose a pro-life candidate instead. He claims that Palin’s record mimicks his own maverick credentials, but the choice itself, made under pressure, shows that McCain will do almost anything to win - even if it goes against his own best judgement. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a president who is actually in charge, for a change?