It was a good day for SC voters

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History was made yesterday in the SC House Judiciary Election and Ethics Laws Subcommittee when Chairman Alan Clemmons approved two bills that the SC Progressive Network supported in hearings. These bills, which will make voting more transparent and accountable, are the first Network-promoted bills in 10 years to clear Rep. Clemmons’ committee. (He was the primary sponsor of the photo ID bill that the Network fought for several years.)

The first bill, H-3198, sponsored by Richland Rep. James Smith (D), will put the State Election Commission in charge of elections. The current voting system gives each of the 46 county Election Boards independence from centralized control. The system was designed by the state constitution of 1895 to disenfranchise black citizens by allowing the senator from each county to appoint the board. This was following a decade when the SC House was the only legislative body in the nation that was majority-black.

Rep. Clemmons signed onto the bill, stating that a centralized authority would make for more professional and consistent management of elections.

For years, the Network has advocated giving the State Election Commission authority over the county boards. “The SEC can only advise the county boards, and they often have different interpretations of the laws,” said Network director Brett Bursey. “It’s difficult to explain to people that no one is in charge of elections in South Carolina.”

The second bill, H-4364, was drafted by Bursey and introduced by Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter. He referred to the bill as a “State Section 5 Registry,” filed after the US Supreme Court struck down Section 5 of the federal Voting Rights Act that required states with a history of racial discrimination to “prefile” changes to voting procedures to insure that they did not negatively affect minority voters.

“With the loss of the federal Section 5 registry,” Bursey testified, “there is no public notice of voting changes.” Clemmons agreed with Bursey that citizens deserve to be notified of changes to election laws, and approved H-4364’s requirement that all changes will be reported to the SEC and posted on the its web site.

“This won’t keep bad things from happening,” Bursey said, “but at least voters and advocacy groups will be given notice before they take effect.”

Both bills have rare bipartisan support and a chance of becoming law.vote_clipart

Nullify “Obamacare” Senate debate coming soon

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Our Truthful Tuesday efforts have kept Medicaid Expansion a hot topic in South Carolina. As more people realize our political leaders have been lying about the benefits of the Affordable Care Act, they also grow more skeptical about other extremist propaganda. Like why the state with the lowest individual taxes is too broke to afford to educate its children.

The Truthful Tuesday Coalition has decided to focus our immediate efforts on demanding that SC take our federal tax money back to provide health care for a quarter of a million of our poorest citizens. We will work on other issues, but see the crass immorality of refusing the healthcare funding as the worst symptom of the anti-government, anti-tax madness that is keeping us poor, sick and uneducated.

H-3101, the “Nullify Obamacare” bill that passed the House last year, will be up for debate in the Senate in the next few days. The bill that passed the House is considered, even by some Tea Party Senators, to be an unconstitutional rejection of federal law. We expect the debate to be another opportunity to expose the governor’s and the majority party’s anti-Obama position as political pandering. Their refusal to take the Medicaid expansion money will cause over 1,000 deaths this year. Enough is enough.

We encourage you to join us in lobbying Senators this week and next. The Senate will take up the ethics reform bill on Tuesday, Feb. 18, and may debate it all week. (“Enough” scarves and “Expand Medicaid” signs available at the Network office, 2025 Marion St. Call 803-445-1921 to arrange a pickup.)

As soon as we know when the nullify bill is scheduled for the Senate floor, we will send out a call for a mass turnout.

Gov. Nikki Haley bashes “Obamacare” in 2014 State of the State address

But let us ask a simple question. “Are taxpayers getting the most health for the money they spend on health care?” My answer is no – not by a long shot.

We spend more money for health services per person than any nation on earth. Year after year we devote a larger and larger portion of our paychecks, our payrolls and our state and federal budgets to health care services.

Maybe we wouldn’t worry about all of this spending if our outcomes were better, but they aren’t.

The United States is falling behind the rest of the world in infant mortality and life expectancy – and here in South Carolina we have one of the lowest life expectancies and highest infant mortality rates in the U.S.

With such high costs and such poor outcomes, why would we throw more money at the system without first demanding improved efficiency, quality, and accessibility?

The Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, says expand first and worry about the rest later.

Connecticut expanded early under Obamacare and just reported a $190 million Medicaid deficit – in spite of subjecting their citizens to a massive tax increase.

California just raised taxes in part to cover their Medicaid deficit and yet needs $350 million more to pay for Obamacare next year.

That’s not us. That’s not South Carolina.

The federal government likes to wave around a nine-dollar match like it is some silver bullet, some extraordinary benefit that we cannot pass up.

But what good do the nine dollars do us when we can’t come up with the one?

And what good are any dollars when they come through a program that doesn’t allow us the flexibility to make the decisions that are in the best interest of the people of South Carolina?

In the end, I cannot support this expansion for a very simple reason: it avoids addressing our health system’s high costs and poor outcomes.

As long as I am governor, South Carolina will not implement the public policy disaster that is Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion.

Instead, we need to improve health care value. And we will.

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Rally Jan. 14, the first day of the legislative session. Among the demands was that lawmakers accept the federal grant to expand Medicaid, a move that would save an estimated 1,400 South Carolina lives. Join the Truthful Tuesday movement! Details at TruthfulTuesday.net.

Family doctor can “no longer stand idly by”

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David F. Keely, M.D.
Family Medicine and Public Health, Rock Hill, SC

Remarks made at the Truthful Tuesday Coalition’s Enough is Enough rally Jan. 14.

On behalf of Healthcare For All – South Carolina, our state’s chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program, it gives me great pleasure to welcome everyone today for this important message about health care, present and future, in our state.

As a family physician with additional training and experience in public health, I have come to the point in my career of 35+ years in South Carolina where I can no longer stand idly by.

The term “health justice” is not heard often enough or loudly enough nowadays. Today we have already heard the disturbing information about the number of individuals who die unnecessarily every year in our state because they lack access to affordable, basic health care services – where is the justice in that?

Affordable and accessible quality health care for all should be the end goal in our country – and the Affordable Care Act [ACA] is a step in that direction.
In our current U.S. healthcare “system”, over 1,000 insurance companies offer a complex array of coverage plans; disgruntled physicians struggle daily with all the different private insurance “rules”; and, the administrative overhead of it all costs us as citizens about $400 BILLION each year! That’s enough “wasted money” to provide ongoing, accessible, affordable, quality healthcare (both preventive and sick care) for ALL 48 million Americans who are currently uninsured.

Over the past year, HFA-SC has reached out to community organizations, the faith-based community, and young physicians – newly-trained nurse practitioners. The ongoing debate in South Carolina about ACA-related Medicaid expansion has helped energize HFA-SC’s grassroots advocacy efforts. Yes, clearly the “new Medicaid” in South Carolina under the ACA brings essential health benefits that are not part of “existing SC Medicaid” – and what is at stake? — the current health and future welfare, educability, and productivity of South Carolina’s people all over the state! And I am here to say that our state’s physicians really need to speak out on this.

Officially, the South Carolina Medical Association’s Board of Trustees is staying neutral, despite our important grassroots voices gaining steam on the “new Medicaid” expansion issue in our state. From the SCMA website last legislative session, where it addressed the Affordable Care Act’s “new Medicaid” expansion, I quote: The SCMA’s Position The SCMA agrees with finding solutions to provide health care to all South Carolinians. However, we are concerned that the Medicaid expansion is a temporary and unsustainable fix that is not the solution for the long term health issues facing South Carolina.

This statement came across to me as the SCMA backing Governor Haley — I have to wonder though that that is not the true voice of physicians practicing in this state – and so I am glad that we are having this rally today to shed further light on that.

As a family physician (and small businessman), sure, I see existing South Carolina Medicaid insurance as needing to be more efficient — but HHS Director Tony Keck is already making good progress on this front, so existing SC Medicaid inefficiency is NOT a reason for refusing the “new Medicaid” expansion opportunity. Saving the lives of needy and deserving South Carolinians is what this debate needs to be about, first & foremost! That indeed is a smart investment!

As a family physician (who is active in the faith-based community in Rock Hill), I shudder and bleed compassion when I have to look into the face of medical bankruptcy and then also the ravages of totally preventable, advanced chronic disease in both rural and urban areas of our state.

Stories abound, as my colleagues gathered here today can well attest – economically-struggling, hard-working South Carolina adults with a poverty-level income, without dependent children, and thus no access to affordable health care due to the refusal of our state to extend the “new Medicaid” under the ACA to them.

In his guest op-ed in The State last year, Dr. Jeb Hallett (a seasoned surgeon practicing in Charleston), put into words very well what I believe so many physicians can no longer tolerate… I quote: “It is helpful to have an image of what rejecting Medicaid expansion will really look like. Forget the green Medicaid dollars that are the focus of too many lawmakers’ conversations; for them, this is all about a news conference where they politicize their loyalty to fiscal restraint.

As a health-care provider, I imagine the limbs of diabetics that will be amputated; I envision the twisted faces of those who forever will be changed by disabling strokes. Yes, leaving the most vulnerable citizens in our state uncovered results in greater expense for us all – as the uninsured often go without preventive care and proper ongoing treatment, that leads to emergency situations where much higher costs to treat are passed on to insurance companies – and then ultimately to policy holders as higher premiums. We all lose.

You should know that current South Carolina Medical Association President, Dr. Bruce Snyder, a vascular surgeon in Greenville, issued a call for “community action” to all SC physicians in April 2013 – it is published on the SCMA website.

I quote: “I challenge the physicians in South Carolina to be the leaders in their communities and in the state that I know they can be… Every physician in South Carolina knows an issue that is important to them which would have a positive impact on our state. Individually and collectively we should make sure our voices are heard on every subject, yes, every subject that has an impact on the health of South Carolinians.”

As concerned citizens, we need to echo this call loudly in our local communities. Yes, all of you, talk to your primary care and specialty physicians – now is the time!

So, in closing, please join HFA-SC and help us get the “silent” physicians around our state to speak up! Thank you!


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Navigators latest target in Right’s war on “Obamacare”

The SC Progressive Network‘s Charleston Navigators are featured briefly in this MSNBC piece on the right wing’s latest war on “Obamacare.”

We anticipate legislation in January that will require Navigators to be licensed by the state Dept. of Insurance. ALEC-crafted bills requiring licensing requirements to make it almost impossible for anyone other than an insurance agent or broker to serve have passed in a number of “refusnick” states, and are expected here soon.

A bill to make it illegal for the City of Charleston (local governments) to offer space to Navigators, or help in anyway to implement the ACA, passed the SC House last session. The “Nullify Obamacare” bill is number two on the Senate’s agenda when it reconvenes Jan. 14.

You’re invited to celebrate the late, great Modjeska Simkins at a birthday party Dec. 5

Since moving its offices into 2025 Marion St., the historic home of Modjeska Simkins, the SC Progressive Network has thrown a party in her honor on her birthday, Dec. 5. Modjeska lived in the home for 60 years, where she entertained friends such as Thurgood Marshall and others not welcome in the white-only motels of the day.

Modjeska was the larger-than-life matriarch of South Carolina’s progressive movement. She spent her long life (1899-1992) acting on her belief that civil rights were just part of a larger human rights struggle. She was ahead of her time, often the only black woman at the table, and was never shy about speaking her mind.

The public is invited to a casual drop-in on Thursday, Dec. 5, between 5:30 and 7:30pm. The event is free and open to all. Light hors d’oeuvres and refreshments; cash bar. Friends, family and colleagues will be invited to share their stories of Modjeska.

See photos from last year’s gathering.

At last year’s party James Felder read a passage about Modjeska from his book Civil Rights in South Carolina: From Peaceful Protest to Groundbreaking Rulings.

To preserve the fighting spirit of Modjeska Monteith Simkins, the SC Progressive Network is establishing a school to teach a new generation of activists the skills to be effective leaders in their communities and in their government. The school will launch in early 2014. To follow the school’s progress, join us on Facebook.

Donations for the project are always welcome, as are your ideas. Contact the Network at 803-808-3384 or network@scpronet.com.

Public invited to join SC progressives for a weekend of politics, strategy and fellowship

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The timing couldn’t be better for the SC Progressive Network’s annual fall retreat at historic Penn Center Oct. 19-20, as political gridlock in DC and the mess over South Carolina’s refusal to participate in “Obamacare” has underscored how dysfunctional our political system had become. People are angry and looking for action.

“Our registration is already double what it usually is, and we are looking forward to a spirited and productive weekend,” said Network Director Brett Bursey. “Since the Network was founded, we have been organizing to build a progressive movement in South Carolina that can effectively represent the interests of working families. The dire predictions we have been forecasting have become real. This is no longer just an ideological discussion.”

South Carolina has been at the mercy of anti-government politicians who don’t believe in taxes and who claim that our state is too broke to meet the responsibilities of a civilized society. The truth is, that while South Carolina has the nation’s lowest combined state and federal taxes, and gives away more in special-interest tax breaks than it collects, our leaders claim we are too broke to fund our schools and government at mandated levels. Their refusal to participate in the Affordable Care Act means over 300,000 of our citizens will not get health care.

“We’re not broke; our leadership is morally bankrupt,” Bursey said. “We will take our fight to a new level in 2014, and we’ll be making plans to do that at Penn.”

Months before the threat of government shutdown, Network Cochair Donna Dewitt met US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and invited him to Penn Center. He accepted, hoping to find answers to a question he’d been pondering: why working people in states like ours keep voting against their own interests.

In the past weeks, Sen. Sanders, has emerged as a leading voice of reason in the ideological war raging in Washington. On Saturday at Penn, the public is invited to hear him discuss the shutdown and other matters facing a country in crisis. Registration begins at 9am; the senator will speak at 10, followed by Q&A. This portion of the program is free, but all are welcome to stay for the rest of the day’s program and for the evening’s fish fry.Among the most progressive members of Congress, Sen. Sanders recently introduced the “Democracy is for People” bill for a constitutional amendment to establish that corporations are not people and money is not speech. He’s promoted progressive interests on the Hill since 1991, including Social Security, universal health care and workers’ rights.

Participants who don’t need accommodations or meals can register for $10. The Saturday night fish fry and entertainment is $15.The weekend package is $125, and includes conference materials, all meals, and accommodations in one of Penn’s refurbished dorms. It also covers Saturday night’s fish fry with all the trimmings and entertainment by singer/organizer Jane Sapp and satirist Dave Lippman.

Sapp recorded Carry It On, an album of movement songs, with Pete Seeger. She was a civil rights movement leader, former director of Highlander Center and established the first museum at Penn Center in 1971. She now heads the cultural committee of the Southern Partners Fund. She will be joined on stage Saturday by songster Lippman, who “afflicts the complacent, takes the air out of windbags, and updates worn-out songs with parody.”

The public is invited to come for the whole weekend, a day, or just part of the program. Call 803-808-3384 for details, or see www.scpronet.com.

Progressive Network helps South Carolinians navigate new healthcare insurance marketplace

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The SC Progressive Network is among the nonprofit organizations in South Carolina to receive a grant from the US Dept. of Health and Human Services to train and manage insurance marketplace navigators.

The Network’s navigators  are helping people understand their health insurance options, and purchase an individual, family, or small business plan as required by the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The Network is providing this service because the SC legislature refused to set up a state-run exchange.

People who make between $11,500 and $46,000 are eligible for reduced price policies. But 280,000 South Carolinians who make less than $11,500 will have to pay full price for insurance. The ACA was designed to expand Medicaid to provide free health care to those in poverty.

South Carolina’s Republican leadership refused to take the $1.4 billion federal grant to expand Medicaid and provide healthcare for the poor. Gov. Nikki Haley led opposition to “Obamacare,” claiming that South Carolina couldn’t afford the 10% matching funds ($140 million) it would have to pay beginning in 2020.

We’d remind folks that eliminating just one of the state’s 80 sales tax exemptions could cover the cost of expanding Medicaid. Raising the $300 sales tax cap on luxury cars, yachts and private planes to the regional average would raise $160 million next year. That’s just one of the exemptions that leaves more than $2.4 billion in revenue out of our budget.

For information or help in applying for insurance through the federal health exchange, call the Network Navigators at 803-445-1921 or email navigator@scpronet.com.