Roosevelt Institution

Last Friday, the Roosevelt Institution convened the Rx Summit, focusing on health care and young Americans. At this event I made my first attempt at live-tweeting (thanks to Sarah for compiling my tweets for FM), which you should check out for quotes and some mind-blowing statistics from a number of great speakers including, Sara Rosenbaum, Director of GWU Health Policy Department, Joshua Ulibarri, Lake Research Partners, and Lauren Aronson, Policy Director for the White House Office for Healthcare Reform. I also had a chance to sit down with Melinda Gibson of Health Care for America Now, who was a presenter at the Rx Summit, to ask, 'what's wrong and how do we fix it'? In short, Melinda argues that it's all about consumer choice and that choice is coming this year with or without 60 votes from the Senate. She expects legislation to be introduced this month - yes, April.

FutureMajority: What's wrong with the current health insurance options?

Melinda Gibson, Health Care for America Now: The insurance industry over-bills by 300%. So, we know that insurance companies are fleecing the American government (i.e. MEDICARE Advantage). They have created a system where they’ve watered down [basic] Medicare plans to force people to buy supplemental insurance plans to make up for the deficient basic plans--this is how the insurance industry is over billing the government for billions of dollars.

It's like a la carte health options, which will force struggling families and individuals to make some tough, tough decisions when it comes to their health. (To wit: folks get sick and have to miss work, making it difficult to keep up with mounting health care costs. Repeat until PHIP is passed.)

FM: How are you communicating PHIP to the public, will they see it as socialized medicine like in 2007?

MG: In SCHIP [State's Children's Health Insurance Plan], in 2007, the house bill created a medicare advantage reform, to pay for the [budget] increase. They claimed it was 'socialized medicine'. The notion of 'socialized medicine' doesn’t even resonate with the American people anymore. Now, think about the public health insurance plan. The first thing we need to understand is that this [the private health insurance industry] is not a free market. The insurance companies compete on terms that they have deemed acceptable to them. Their first priority is to make as much money as possible. Americans want a true choice; they want their choice of plans and doctors. We want access to quality baseline benefits, and allow people to choose between public and private plans.

FM: What is reconciliation and why is it important to pass PHIP?

MG: I think 60 votes is possible [the minimum number of votes required to pass PHIP], but at this point in the game it’s very hard. The likelihood of coming out of the Senate with legislation that is truly progressive and affordable…with 60 votes will be very, very difficult. We cannot let this minority of Republican Senators prevent those who are struggling from choosing a health care plan that fits their needs. So, without 60 votes, this is where reconciliation comes in. We want the option of a straight up or down vote on health care this year. Keep in mind that 80 percent of President Obama's ads during the campaign included health care, because he and his staff knew that health care is the issue. Americans are completely uninsured. Every 30 seconds, 1 American goes bankrupt from medical insurance costs.

FM: Will PHIP pass this year?

MG: This is gonna happen; it's coming this year. We talk about how hard it’s gonna be, but this is it. In speaking about health care legislation, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus said, "There's never been a better moment." So it’s not just the President, but leaders of Congress are also behind this legislation."

If you're looking for more nuts and bolts on PHIP, check out Jacob Hacker's new report detailing the idea of the public plan choice. Below is an excerpt from the executive summary.

The debate over health care reform has increasingly centered on the issue of “public plan choice”—whether Americans younger than 65 who lack employment-based coverage should have the choice of enrolling in a new public health insurance plan modeled after Medicare. The central argument for public plan choice is that such a plan, offered as a choice within a new national insurance “exchange,” provides an essential set of security guarantees, ensuring that Americans without insurance from their place of work can find a plan that offers them quality, affordable health care through a broad choice of providers in all parts of the country.
[...]
Public plan choice is rooted in existing precedents that have shown themselves to work, rather than speculative convictions about how a delicately balanced new system will operate. It must be part of any successful reform package. Without public plan choice, Americans without workplace insurance will be put in jeopardy, private insurers will lack an effective check on their actions, and the opportunity to place our crumbling framework of health financing on a secure foundation will be lost.

Last Friday, the Roosevelt Institution convened the Rx Summit, focusing on health care and young Americans. At this event I made my first attempt at live-tweeting (thanks to Sarah for compiling my tweets for FM), which you should check out for quotes and some mind-blowing statistics from a number of great speakers including, Sara Rosenbaum, Director of GWU Health Policy Department, Joshua Ulibarri, Lake Research Partners, and Lauren Aronson, Policy Director for the White House Office for Healthcare Reform. I also had a chance to sit down with Melinda Gibson of Health Care for America Now, who was a presenter at the Rx Summit, to ask, 'what's wrong and how do we fix it'? In short, Melinda argues that it's all about consumer choice and that choice is coming this year with or without 60 votes from the Senate. She expects legislation to be introduced this month - yes, April.

FutureMajority: What's wrong with the current health insurance options?

Melinda Gibson, Health Care for America Now: The insurance industry over-bills by 300%. So, we know that insurance companies are fleecing the American government (i.e. MEDICARE Advantage). They have created a system where they’ve watered down [basic] Medicare plans to force people to buy supplemental insurance plans to make up for the deficient basic plans--this is how the insurance industry is over billing the government for billions of dollars.

It's like a la carte health options, which will force struggling families and individuals to make some tough, tough decisions when it comes to their health. (To wit: folks get sick and have to miss work, making it difficult to keep up with mounting health care costs. Repeat until PHIP is passed.)

FM: How are you communicating PHIP to the public, will they see it as socialized medicine like in 2007?

MG: In SCHIP [State's Children's Health Insurance Plan], in 2007, the house bill created a medicare advantage reform, to pay for the [budget] increase. They claimed it was 'socialized medicine'. The notion of 'socialized medicine' doesn’t even resonate with the American people anymore. Now, think about the public health insurance plan. The first thing we need to understand is that this [the private health insurance industry] is not a free market. The insurance companies compete on terms that they have deemed acceptable to them. Their first priority is to make as much money as possible. Americans want a true choice; they want their choice of plans and doctors. We want access to quality baseline benefits, and allow people to choose between public and private plans.

FM: What is reconciliation and why is it important to pass PHIP?

MG: I think 60 votes is possible [the minimum number of votes required to pass PHIP], but at this point in the game it’s very hard. The likelihood of coming out of the Senate with legislation that is truly progressive and affordable…with 60 votes will be very, very difficult. We cannot let this minority of Republican Senators prevent those who are struggling from choosing a health care plan that fits their needs. So, without 60 votes, this is where reconciliation comes in. We want the option of a straight up or down vote on health care this year. Keep in mind that 80 percent of President Obama's ads during the campaign included health care, because he and his staff knew that health care is the issue. Americans are completely uninsured. Every 30 seconds, 1 American goes bankrupt from medical insurance costs.

FM: Will PHIP pass this year?

MG: This is gonna happen; it's coming this year. We talk about how hard it’s gonna be, but this is it. In speaking about health care legislation, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus said, "There's never been a better moment." So it’s not just the President, but leaders of Congress are also behind this legislation."

If you're looking for more nuts and bolts on PHIP, check out Jacob Hacker's new report detailing the idea of the public plan choice. Below is an excerpt from the executive summary.

The debate over health care reform has increasingly centered on the issue of “public plan choice”—whether Americans younger than 65 who lack employment-based coverage should have the choice of enrolling in a new public health insurance plan modeled after Medicare. The central argument for public plan choice is that such a plan, offered as a choice within a new national insurance “exchange,” provides an essential set of security guarantees, ensuring that Americans without insurance from their place of work can find a plan that offers them quality, affordable health care through a broad choice of providers in all parts of the country.
[...]
Public plan choice is rooted in existing precedents that have shown themselves to work, rather than speculative convictions about how a delicately balanced new system will operate. It must be part of any successful reform package. Without public plan choice, Americans without workplace insurance will be put in jeopardy, private insurers will lack an effective check on their actions, and the opportunity to place our crumbling framework of health financing on a secure foundation will be lost.

First the vote, now the advocacy. Student Association for Voter Empowerment (S.A.V.E.), Mobilize.org and the Roosevelt Institution have partnered together to launch 80 Million Strong, a youth-driven coalition to secure quality jobs for young Americans. Citing the growing age disparity in the American workforce, 80 Million Strong seeks to build off the momentum of high youth engagement in the 2008 elections, when the young voter turnout rate increased for a record third consecutive presidential election. The youth unemployment rate--the highest among all age groups--has climbed to 15.5 percent, fully double that of adults 25 and older. Going deeper, the 20.8 percent unemployment rate among 16 to 19 year olds hasn't been this high since 1975. What's more troubling is that young Americans are hurting in other areas, too, namely health insurance and college debt. The 80 Million Strong website goes further, noting:

Educated but unemployed, nearly 87 percent of the Millennial generation holds a high school diploma and nearly 30 percent holds a bachelor's degree or higher. It's still not enough. With tens of thousands of dollars in debt from student loans and credit cards, young people need jobs, yet in times like these the newly graduated are forced to compete with more experienced workers for even the most entry-level positions.

But it's not just the statistics driving this coalition. "Young people have been relatively excluded from the dialogue," says Matt Segal, Executive Director of S.A.V.E., in reference to news stories not covering the alarmingly high youth unemployment rate. Segal believes that young people have to be part of the solution to this economic crisis, "I felt there needed to be an advocacy side to propose solutions that tap the talents of our generation, and to embrace things like social entrepreneurship." Caitlin Howarth, National Policy Director at the Roosevelt Institution, adds that Millennials feel a great responsibility and it's not just about me, but we: "We have to give back to our families. They need our support, because they don't have the luxury that we do: time to rebuild."

With quality jobs as a goal, the coalition was created upon a foundation of citizen-centered involvement, transparency and inclusiveness. 80 Million Strong will not advocate for any one particular youth sub-demographic, whether that be by ideology, education, income or geographic location. "We do know the problem--jobs, health insurance, debt--, but we don't know the solutions and that's what we're asking from our generation--to innovate," saysMobilize.org CEO Maya Enista. In very Millennial fashion, the coalition will convene a summit to identify a diverse set of issues facing all Millennials, and then propose and advocate for legislation to solve these issues. Already, there is interest from the House and Education Labor Committee to hold a hearing on the proposal coming out of the summit.

To ensure a diversity in ideas and perspectives, the coalition is already reaching out to other youth-focused organizations around the country to get involved. The summit will be held in Washington, DC, and the coalition is hoping to have travel scholarships available for low-income youth and those that reside well outside of the beltway.

"There is no clear [policy] agenda just yet, and that's a good thing," says Segal. "It [not having a pre-planned policy agenda] means we're really keeping this process open to all voices; the summit is where that process begins."

More details are to come on the summit, but you can take the first step towards winning quality jobs for young Americans by visiting 80 Million Strong today. See you at the summit!

The Roosevelt Institution is recruiting for their summer academy:

The Roosevelt Summer Academy combines a full-time internship with a training curriculum and weekly networking events as part of an integrated program of leadership development. Our objective is to bring new, diverse, and progressive voices into the political process. The program runs for ten weeks, from June 9 to August 15. Contact Kurston Cook (kurston.cook [at] rooseveltinstitution.org) for more information.

Looking to get more involved in 2009? Here are some opportunities:

• Roosevelt Institution: America's student think tank is looking for interns to help with communications, field work, policy and development.
• The Young Democrats: YDA is looking or full-time or 20-hour-per-week interns and is willing to pay a stipend. There are no links yet to a job description. If you are interested, contact me and I'll pass you on to the appropriate person.
• The American Prospect: It's not a youth group, but this excellent progressive magazine is looking to hire interns and junior staff. Details here.
• Center for Progressive Leadership: This excellent leadership development org is now accepting applications for its 2009 paid summer internship positions.

I'm not entirely sure what to write about the conference so far. Policy and issue work is not my usual bag, and this conference feels quite different from the kind I'm used to attending. There are congressmen here and non profit heads. Great activists like Deepak Barghava, and Democratic Names like Simon Rosenberg and Mike Lux are in attendance, as are the usual crazy progressives who bring all their personal baggage to these types of events and use their time at the mic to harangue the panelists. There are also a lot of really smart college and grad students asking complex questions about policy.

Superficially, I'm woefully underdressed (though that's not unusual at these things) and stick out like a sore thumb. More substantively, I just attended a panel on the New Deal called "The Intellectual Underpinning of a Renegotiated Social Contract," featuring the afformentioned Mike Lux, Simon Rosenberg, Deepak Barghava, and Tim Fertik, a Roosevelt Institution fellow. The content was interesting. Deepak noted that the incrementalist, technocratic progressive approach for last 40 years has failed against a values driven, movement and ideas approach of the conservatives, and any attempt to revitalize or create a New New Deal will have to reckon with both that failure as well as the structural racism that was embedded in our society in part by Roosevelt's programs.

Mike Lux made the point that, from a political perspective, reviving the "old" New Deal is not a good framework for achieving a "new" New Deal. Americans are looking to the future, according to Lux, and 2008 is a debate between future vs. the past. Likewise, our rhetoric must be about the future. Deepak's suggestion is that the idea of a shared fate and common destiny for all Americans might be the messaging Rosetta Stone to translate our policy priorities into reality.

These are all well and good (and necessary), and the Roosevelt Fellows that are sitting on panels alongside some of the bigger names in the progressive movement are more than keeping pace. But I can't help but feel a bizarre culture clash at this conference, and its about more than the fact that I'm in jeans while everyone else is in suits.

Most conferences I go to are very much geared towards action - winning elections, defeating conservatives, winning legislative battles, exchanging best practices. This is much more like an academic conference. Everyone is talking about policy, but it's not a vigorous debate. There will be no new policy working its way out of this conference. Rather, it's a gathering of the policy tribes in which everyone is affirming core progressive policy principles. It's a lecture and most people in the room already agree with the thesis.

I have very little understanding of how the progressive policy world works, as a hierarchy/career path to climb or as a machine whose goal is the creation and passage of policy. So I don't have a good idea as to how a conference like this fits into that machine.

With regard to the generational gap here, Margaret Simms, President of the National Academy of Social Insurance had something very informative to say earlier this morning. She said that achieving a New New Deal needs to be a generational partnership, and we cannot pursue a course that set the generations at odds with each other. At the very least, this conference does seem to be a networking opportunity to forge those bonds between the older and younger generations of progressive policy types. That alone is probably worthwhile.

I've just arrived down in DC for the Roosevelt Institution's conference, Towards a New New Deal: FDR's Liberalism and the Future of American Democracy. It's an interesting crowd. Probably 40% of the crowd are young people involved with Roosevelt - aspiring policy makers. The other 60% seem to be older folks, many of whom probably are policy makers (in the sense that they work at policy oriented institutions). This strikes me as a good thing. In the best case scenario, it means that the Roosevelt Institution isn't ghettoized at a "kids's table" that lacks any connection to the real progressive policy world. We'll see if that observation bears out throughout the day.

We're on a ten minute break now before the first panel. Once things get going I'll pop in every couple of hours with my thoughts on how it is going. In the meantime, mtvU's Editorial Board held it's session with Speaker Nancy Pelosi yesterday. I still haven't had time to watch the clips, but I put them here without comment for your own information/enjoyment.

I know the clips look the same, but they are all different. If you're more for text than video, Ben Adler has the rundown on the forum at the Politico.

Two opportunities are available for those looking to get their feet wet in the world of progressive public policy.

First, DMI Scholars, the summer training program created by the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy is now accepting applications for its summer 2008 program. DMI is one of the premier progressive policy shops, doing really innovative work, especially around the middle class. This is the second year their youth training program is in operation, and spots are limited, so I'd get cracking now. For info on the program and last year's crop of trainees, check out the video below.

Second, the Roosevelt Institution, the nation's only progressive, student-run think tank is now accepting submission for its 2008 policy journal. You can find guidelines for submissions here.

This is a guest post from Nate Lowenthiel, the Executive Director of The Roosevelt Institution, a national, student-run think tank.

Judging from PowerShift ’07, the hippies are back. While panelists are discussing green-collar job growth, messaging and the role of corporate America in combating global warming, attendees are circling up on the grass quads, tossing Frisbees and bemoaning the lack of activism on campus.

As I write this, George Lakoff is running late for my third panel session of the day. With the stage open, a corporate CEO trainer steps up and begins exhorting us to use courage and conviction in our battle for the environment. The room is led deep into meditation, our eyes closed. The trainer repeats “I do not have an internal guidance system.” “I do have an internal guidance system.” On the third “I Do,” we open our eyes, and a collective sigh of relief rises. Everyone looks around and smiles.

When Lakoff finally arrives and starts discussing messaging and the way to build support among conservatives for environemtnal issues, students slowly head to the door. A junior tentatively raises his hand, “I just don’t get it—why don’t they care?”

The Lakoff panel is one of 30 or so concurrent sessions running for three days on end. The conference is fantastically well-organized. Almost 6,000 students made the trek to the University of Maryland from all over the country, and the planners managed to deal with transportation, housing and the 1250-acre maze that is the University of Maryland at College park. This monumental achievement costs hundreds of thousands of dollars donated by foundations, corporations and individuals. The goal is to “create a path for young people to lead” environmental change. There are enough training sessions to educate a small army of activists, with an emphasis on recruitment, value messaging, and coalition building.

The conference is working to foster a new sense of professionalism and creativity in the environmental movement. Many top speakers are from organizations like the Apollo alliance, which works to create a broad-based environmental movement that appeals to working class America through an emphasis on innovation, technology investment and growth.

Unfortunately, most of the attendees are from the outdated save-the-polar-bears school of thought. Complaining about pollution, deforestation the general lack of ecological sensitivity has been the mainstay of the environmental movement for decades, and the newest generation of leaders seems bent embracing this well-beaten, circular path.

Serious change will require a broad-based consensus, one that goes far beyond college campuses and the coasts. And building that consensus will require a sensitivity to the complexity of environmental policy, a frank recognition of the need for trade-offs, and a willingness to work with many diverse groups and coalitions. The conference organizers made a concerted effort to move in this direction. Saturday’s morning sessions included time for “affinity groups” where diverse students could gather together and build communities. Expert discussants are encouraging students to move forward with pragmatic campus reforms. The Energy Action Coalition, who put together the conference, consciously reached out to a wide range of schools, including commuter colleges in the south, community colleges in the south-west, and state schools from around the country.

The tie-dyed filled rooms suggest this effort was largely wasted. The lack of diversity could be read in a number of ways. Perhaps outreach was still limited, or the location in Washington encouraged more Northeasterners. The more likely explanation, however, is also the more depressing one. The environment is still a special-interest issue, one that appeals to relatively narrow electorate. Needless to say, the Phish-show like atmosphere of the conference doesn’t inspire much hope for the future. Perhaps flying in dedicated activists to an environmental lovefest isn’t the most productive step forward.

By SARAH LEONARD

Sarah Leonard is a guest blogger for Future Majority. She is currently a student at Columbia University and a Fellow of the Roosevelt Institution at Columbia University.

The American media has propagated a tremendous falsehood with regard to President Ahmadinejad’s speech at Columbia University. The bottom line, with remarkably little variance across major news networks, has been that Columbia is being un-American by engaging in controversial free debate.

This is hardly shocking from conservative sources, such as FOX news. Bill O’Reilly has been reveling in this story for days now, since it combines his two favorite subjects for condemnation – the Ivy League and a Muslim with a podium. He won’t have to imagine a new liberal outrage for at least a few more days.

But the journalistic travesty committed by more mainstream networks, not usual shills for conservative politicians, has been chilling. The typical news segment follows this pattern: a reporter menacingly describes Ahmadinejad’s ethical and political crimes. The reporter then notes that this bad man will not be allowed to lay a wreath at Ground Zero. But, the voiceover adds, Columbia will be welcoming the Iranian President on Monday! Cut to head-shaking anchor.

The clear implication of each of these sorry excuses for reporting is that Columbia University is the only place un-American enough to host this man. He’s been rejected by the NYPD at Ground Zero, but welcomed by Lee Bollinger at Columbia. This reporting fails to address the real issue of debate and diplomatic engagement, instead regurgitating right-wing talking points in sanitized form.