After Portland taxpayers spent a total of 1.6 million dollars to finally elect a publicly financed candidate, Amanda Fritz ($482,000), she MUST now PROVE that she is beneficially DIFFERENT from the rest. Otherwise we have wasted our money.
If Amanda Fritz goes along to get along to become nothing more than the fifth vote, we have wasted our money.
If Amanda Fritz diddles with diversionary details and fails to fire on five fiefdom fiat government, we have wasted our money.
If Amanda Fritz doesn't lead the charge to expose the back door deal making status quo, we have wasted our money.
We will know on January 7, 2008 whether we made a good or a bad bet on taxpayer financed elections. Here is what our $482,000 city commissioner Amanda Fritz NEEDS to do during her first public appearance to convincingly assure us that she is, in fact, going to be sufficiently and beneficially DIFFERENT from the current insular political culture that darkly envelopes city hall today:
1. In opposition to her colleagues indefensible support for the discredited and abhorrent policy of UNLIMITED neighborhood concentration of public housing, publicly financed city commissioner Amanda Fritz MUST express her support for a policy of equitable distribution of public housing and the public housing statistical data required by such a policy. She MUST actively endorse the request for accountability by the Portsmouth Residents Action Committee, the North Portland Business Association, the Interstate Corridor Urban Renewal Area Advisory Committee, the Lents Neighborhood Association, the Argay Neighborhood Association and the St. Johns American Legion Post #98 for the Housing Authority of Portland's public housing statistical data and promise to make a constant public fuss until HAP provides the data to her and the taxpayers and voters she now represents.
2. In opposition to her colleagues indefensible support for the illegitimate leasing of the John Ball School surplus city property for private use which violated the Portland Public Schools condition of sale requiring continued PUBLIC USE of this public land and overwhelming justified neighborhood opposition - including her own testimony, publicly financed city commissioner Amanda Fritz MUST make her intention known to do everything in her newly acquired power to:
A. Immediately withdraw and nullify any and all contracts and commitments to any and all parties involving the current and future use of the surplus public John Ball School property.
B. or C.
B. Through Due Process determine a PUBLIC USE for the John Ball School site which is acceptable to the PPS board and the owners of this public property, the citizens of Portland.
C. Return the John Ball School property for a full $800,000 refund.
3. In opposition to her colleagues indefensible opposition, publicly financed city commissioner Amanda Fritz MUST support the demand that NO city bureau is permitted to recognize and fund with taxpayer dollars ANY 501(c)(3) Tax Exempt, Taxpayer Funded, Non-Profit Public Benefit With Members Corporation that REFUSES to allow its own members and the elected members of the Portland city council access to its list of eligible voters.
Publicly financed city commissioner Amanda Fritz MUST acknowledge the following:
A. There is nothing more fundamental to the practice of DEMOCRACY as a political system than honest, VERIFIABLE elections.
B. WITHOUT a publicly accessible list of eligible voters it is IMPOSSIBLE for any employee of Portland city government, including and especially the Portland city council, to attest to the VALIDITY of any vote on any matter of a 501(c)(3) Tax Exempt, Taxpayer Funded, Non-Profit Public Benefit With Members Corporation.
4. In opposition to her colleagues indefensible support of a dysfunctional and stealthy undemocratic system of city government, publicly financed city commissioner Amanda Fritz MUST become the honest public policy broker on the city council, beholden to no one, accountable to everyone, bereft of deal making potential by rejecting the management of any city bureau. Amanda Fritz MUST bring sunshine decision making transparency, real public debate and defensible due process to policy making in order to replace the darkness and obscurity of five fiefdom fiat government which has insidiously overtaken our city hall and denied checks and balances democracy Portlanders as Americans expect and deserve.
5. In opposition to her colleagues indefensible neglect of the skyrocketing and unstoppable costs of Portland public employee health insurance premiums which can rise to an outrageous height of $1,246 per month (See #1 below), publicly financed and very, very comfortably health insured doctor's wife, psychiatric nurse and city commissioner Amanda Fritz MUST openly press the council to:
A. instruct the city's Salem lobbyist to support the introduction of the Oregon Community Health Care Bill, which can decrease the city's health care costs by 20%, as a competing model for the future of health care reform in Oregon (See #2 below).
B. Instruct the city's Salem lobbyist to oppose SB329 as too complicated, costly, developed without due process and debate involving the competitive idea of a single payer type model and relies on the failed, for-profit private health insurance industry model (See #3 below).
C. Instruct the city's Washington D.C. lobbyist to support the Single Payer Universal Health Care Plan embodied in HR 676 (http://www.hr676.org).
Publicly financed city commissioner Amanda Fritz has had a long time to think about all of these things. She will have ample opportunity during the course of Citizen Communication - she can discuss and debate these issues with Richard Ellmyer who will be addressing the council - and throughout the council meeting to confront each and every one of these matters. Time is of the essence. There is no reason nor excuse for her to procrastinate. Judgement awaits at the closing gavel.
If publicly financed city commissioner Amanda Fritz fails to step forward on ALL of these issues on January 7, 2008 she will have demonstrated that she is, in fact, just more of the same old, same old and there will be evidence that we have wasted our money.
Publicly financed city commissioner Amanda Fritz needs to be BOLD and demonstrably beneficially DIFFERENT because there's a 1.6 million dollar public gamble riding on her performance.
I wish Amanda Fritz well and hope for the best. But, my bet says she won't be able to prove to voters that she brings a significantly beneficial DIFFERENCE to city government from those who got their campaign money the old fashioned way and so neither she nor taxpayer funded elections in Portland will have been worth the price.
Richard Ellmyer
#1***************************************************************
FYI - A Sampling Of Maximum Current Public Employer Contributions To Public Employee Health Insurance Benefits
Dollar figures are for individual paychecks per month.
Metro Regional Government - $ 1321
Multnomah County - $ 1,282
City of Eugene - $ 1,256
City of Portland - $ 1,246
Portland Public Schools - $ 1,217
Oregon State University - $1,188
Portland State University - $ 1,129
City of Gresham - $1,120
University of Oregon - $ 1,084
State of Oregon - $ 1,006
Beaverton School District - $ 921
Multnomah County ESD - $ 768
Lane ESD - $ 750
#2*****************************************************
A -The Oregon Community Health Care Bill Which involves No New Taxes, will reduce public institutional expenditures for health insurance by 20% and provides equality of health care for public employees and citizens without relying on the failed private health insurance industry and virtually no physician paperwork.
B - March 12, 2007
Dear House Speaker Merkley and Senate President Courtney:
The current legislative debate over health care reform in our state does not include our view that the profit oriented private health insurance industry must not be the model upon which a solution to Oregon's moral and economic health care crisis should be based and that Oregon elected officials - public employees - voters and taxpayers must have equal access to the same level of health care not a perpetuation of our current multitiered health insurance class system.
We request that you find a place holder bill in each chamber which would substitute in its entirety the language of the Oregon Community Health Care Bill (see attached) so that an alternative choice may be discussed and debated this session. The Oregon Community Health Care Bill is the only current fully formed piece of proposed legislation which supports our vision of health care reform. We would welcome others that also meet our requirements.
Thank you for your attention.
Sincerely,
Richard Ellmyer - Oregon Community Health Care Bill author
Sam Adams - Portland City Council
Jeff Cogen - Multnomah County Commissioner
Edwars "Chip" Enbody - Hubbard City Council
Darrell Flood - Mayor of Lafayette
Bill Hall - Lincoln County Commissioner
Jim Needham - Mollala City Council
Michelle Ripple - Wilsonville City Council
Mary Schamehorn - Mayor of Bandon
Pete Sorenson - Lane County Commissioner
[Since this letter was published the following have added their support:
John Frohnmayer - Former candidate for US Senate
Tim Grimes - Staton City Council
David P. Trott - Mayor City of Umatilla
Bill Dwyer - Lane County Commissioner
Dan K. Cummings - Ontario City Council President]
C - The Doctors' Revolt
Doctors, the traditional advocates for the medical status quo, are increasingly in favor of major reforms to the U.S. health-care system.
ROGER BYBEE | July 1, 2008
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_doctors_revolt
Physicians like heart surgeon Dr. Dudley Johnson, a renowned pioneer in open-heart surgery, have concluded that only a single-payer system can restore patient care rather than profit as the core of the health-care system.
A poll published recently in the Annals of Health Research shows that 59 percent of U.S. doctors support a "single payer" plan that essentially eliminates the central role of private insurers.
Increasingly, doctors seem to be showing support for a single-payer system that would essentially eliminate for-profit insurers and curb the power of big provider chains.
A remarkable 64 percent of the Minnesota doctors surveyed in 2006 expressed support for a Canadian-style single-payer system that would drive insurers from their commanding role in the health system, reported Minnesota Medicine. The Minnesota poll aligned closely with a Massachusetts survey of doctors in 2004, which reflected 61 percent backing for single-payer, according to the Archives of Internal Medicine. Doctors' views seem to be coming into closer alignment with those of the general public, of which 67 percent explicitly support a system like Canada's or Britain's.
Where only 18 percent of AMA members favored single-payer reform in 1992, the figure had soared to 42 percent by 2004.
Single-payer proved more popular than more modest measures like public programs to cover the uninsured, an individual mandate to purchase insurance, or an employer mandate, according to the AMA's 2004 Advocacy Agenda Setting Survey. Among some subgroups of the AMA, support for single-payer was even stronger, reaching 58 percent among psychiatrists. (Pediatric cardiologists showed a 70 percent level of support for single-payer in a 2003 poll of physicians published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.)
Members of the American College of Physicians -- the nation's second-largest doctors' organization with 124,000 internal-medicine physicians and related specialists -- voted in December 2007 to endorse the single-payer idea.
Ironically, the commanding role of for-profit insurers and other corporate players has produced all the dire effects that doctors were warned about as the products of "socialized medicine," delivered instead by a system that generates immense profits. "When doctors were worried about the government looking over their shoulder, now they actually have insurers second-guessing everything we do," says Dr. Deborah Richter, past president of Physicians for a National Health Program.
Doctors' perceptions of the for-profit insurance industry -- which ranks about as low as Big Tobacco in the general public's eyes -- have declined as premiums soar, bureaucratic problems multiply, and the ranks of the uninsured grow.
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has noted, "Between 2000 and 2005, the number of Americans with private health insurance coverage fell by 1 percent. But over the same period, employment at health insurance companies rose a remarkable 32 percent. What are all those extra employees doing? ... They are working harder than ever at identifying people who really need medical care, and ensuring that they don't get it."
#3***********************************************************
Senate Bill 329 Which, according to Representative Mitch Greenlick, will cost an additional Billion dollars in taxes and relies on the failed private health insurance industry model assuring continued unsustainable escalation of public institutional health insurance contributions. The complexity of this bill will assure that health care professionals will be spending even more time with paperwork than patients.
Excerpt from John Frohnmayer's statement on health care policy in Oregon during his recent campaign for US Senator. (John Frohnmayer is the former head of the National Endowment For The Arts, an attorney with experience in health care litigation and a university professor.)Now let’s look at the state of Oregon and the work of the 2007 legislature. Its members, led by Jeff Merkley, passed Senate Bill 329. It again uses the discredited, inefficient, and expensive private insurance model. If they had bothered to fund it, it would cost Oregon taxpayers one billion dollars. It is so complex, it requires an accountant, an actuary, and a seer to understand what is intended.
But what is most disturbing about Senate Bill 329 is that while it purports to embrace public input, Speaker Merkley failed even to respond to a letter from elected officials representing over a million Oregonians requesting that the legislature consider the Oregon Community Health Care Bill that is essentially a single payer system on the state level. That March 12, 2007 letter is available for your perusal (See #2 above). Speaker Merkley did not favor these Oregon leaders with a reply, nor did the legislature consider this sensible approach.
What are the problems with Senate Bill 329 beyond its complexity and vagueness? First, we can’t control the cost of private insurance. I support union efforts to cover workers, and yet the cost of private health insurance has so skyrocketed that Multnomah County pays as much as $1,282 per month to many of its employees. We taxpayers can’t afford this, the Counties can’t afford it, and the workers certainly can’t shoulder those costs themselves. The result is more and more employers, both public and private are opting out of insurance. Senate Bill 329 will not fix this.
Senate Bill 329, with its private health insurance model, will not encourage preventive care that we need to promote healthy lives, and pre-existing conditions are left to be negotiated, so thousands can be denied.
We must demand that the Oregon legislature respond to its citizens‘ concerns. Here’s what I implore the Oregon legislature to do: First, consider the recommendations of the Oregon Community Health Care Plan (the letter that Speaker Merkley refused to acknowledge). It is not based on a private health insurance model - the state would be the administrator; it emphasizes preventive care, it would save all public institutions and government employers 20% per year in premiums; it would provide uniform benefits for both public employees and private citizens, with no pre-existing exclusions. The legislature has an obligation to pursue the best, most efficient model for all Oregonians.