The White House Blog

Watch, Discuss, Engage at 10:00: Clean Energy Forum on Public Health

At 10:00 AM EST today the White House, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Health and Human Services will host another Clean Energy Economy Forum. A group of stakeholders, business and community leaders will discuss clean energy and climate legislation work, and the benefits towards public health. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson will be answering questions, including some taken live from our Facebook chat application.
 

• Watch it through WhiteHouse.gov/live
• Watch, discuss and engage through Facebook

Reality Check: Claims That Reform Will Encourage Abortions at School "Sex Clinics" are Absurd

Ed. Note: Opponents of health reform appear to have run out of fresh smears against health insurance reform and have started recycling old debunked attacks. In response to those that brought up this attack that Politifact proved false months ago, we simply bring back this classic Reality Check first published on October 1, 2009.

Last night Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann questioned health insurance reform, raising the spectre of school-based "sex clinics" that would take students to "have their abortion, be back and go home on the school bus that night":

It means that parents will never know what kind of counsel and treatment that their children are receiving.  And as a matter of fact, the bill goes on to say what's going to go on -- comprehensive primary health services, physicals, treatment of minor acute medical conditions, referrals to follow-up for specialty care -- is that abortion? Does that mean that someone's 13 year-old daughter could walk into a sex clinic, have a pregnancy test done, be taken away to the local Planned Parenthood abortion clinic, have their abortion, be back and go home on the school bus that night? Mom and dad are never the wiser.

The absurdity of this claim earns high honors from Politifact, a non-partisan research organization: Pants on Fire!

Critics of the Democratic health care proposal have been increasingly raising concerns that the plan would provide taxpayer-subsidized abortions (a claim we address here). The Liberty Counsel, a conservative group, puts a different twist on that concern, alleging that Page 992 of the bill "will establish school-based 'health' clinics. Your children will be indoctrinated and your grandchildren may be aborted!"

The claim comes from a long list of items allegedly in the bill that is posted on the group's Web site and has been widely circulated in a chain e-mail. The list looks a lot like one that we checked in July, based partly on blog postings by Peter Fleckenstein on his blog Common Sense from a Common Man . In fact, the Liberty Counsel says it adapted its memo from Fleckenstein's original work.
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We spoke with Sarah Speller at the Liberty Counsel, who told us that the group had been getting a lot of calls about the memo and that everyone there was very busy as a result. However, she assured us that "as far as our office can tell, everything in the overview is accurate. That's about all I can tell you," she said. "I'm just relaying what I've been told to say."

That's not persuasive. We see no language in the three main versions of the bill that would allow school-based clinics, which have a long history of providing basic health services to underprivileged students, to provide abortions. Nor would the clinics even be new — they have been around for three decades. So we rate the claim Pants on Fire!

Open Government Laboratories of Democracy

"It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system," Justice Louis D. Brandeis wrote in 1932, "that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country."  The Obama Administration is taking unprecedented strides toward creating the most open and accountable government in history. And in so doing, we’re learning from those states and municipalities, which are undertaking exciting experiments to bring transparency, participation, and collaboration to the way they work as well.

Inspired by the President’s call for more open government, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts launched its data catalogue, following in the footsteps of Washington, DC, San Francisco, New York, and elsewhere around the country (as well as cities in Canada and the UK), to provide public access to information by and about government. What makes this exciting is not merely having transportation information available in machine-readable formats, but that professional and amateur enthusiasts can then get together, as they did last weekend, to create new software applications and data visualizations to better enable public transit riders to track arrival times for the next subway, bus, or ferry. Publishing government information online facilitates this kind of useful collaboration between government and the public that transforms dry data into the tools that improve people’s lives. (For another great example, check out what happened when we published the Federal Register for people to use.)

The National Association of State CIOs is helping to spur this movement toward greater data transparency at the state level by publishing “Guidance for Opening the Doors to State Data.”

Just as the federal government is using online brainstorming with government employees and the public to generate ideas for saving money or going green, state and local governments are also using new technology to tap people’s intelligence and expertise. The City of Manor, Texas (pop. 5800) has launched “Manor Labs,” an innovation marketplace for improving city services.  A participant can sign up to suggest “ideas and solutions” for the police department, the municipal court, and everything in between. Each participant’s suggestion is ranked and rewarded with “innobucks.” These innobucks points can be redeemed for prizes: a million innobucks points wins “mayor for the day” while 400,000 points can be traded for a ride-along with the Chief of Police.

Manor is also one of the few cities currently using bar codes (known as QR or Quick Response Codes) to label physical locations around town. These bar codes can be scanned with a mobile phone to communicate historical and touristic information, data about the cost of a municipal service, or emergency management information. Manor is experimenting with techniques for providing different information to different audiences. If a resident scans a QR code outside a home for sale, she gets the floor plan and purchase price; whereas the building inspector gets the inspection history; and the first responder gets information about the current occupant.

As more of these innovative projects that foster open government go live and achieve results, we look forward to showcasing some of them on our blog and eventually making details available on the Open Government Innovation Gallery.  Developers with new tools to offer to facilitate open government – including free social media applications -- should also check out Apps.gov and list their products (here’s how) for others to use. Openness and accountability are the responsibility of government at every level.  By getting out the word about innovations that help to realize open government in practice, we can both promote new experiments and help people find and re-use the best ones.

Beth Noveck is Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Open Government

Moving Closer to a Victory for All Americans

In an historic vote a week and half ago, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would finally make affordable health care possible for the citizens of our wonderful country.  Then yesterday the Senate introduced their own legislation, "another critical milestone in the health reform effort" as the President put it.

When President Obama addressed members of Congress in September, "This is our moment to live up to the trust that the American people have placed in us—even when it’s hard; especially when it’s hard. This is our moment to deliver."  But of course as great a milestone as the vote was, we’ve still got a ways to go so we need everybody to stay involved.

For our part, we have been working all along to ensure the American people are engaged in the discussion on reform.  That’s why I hosted a web chat recently on how health insurance reform will help to eliminate health disparities and how reform will affect underserved communities.  Citizens and leaders from around the country submitted hundreds of questions beforehand and during the chat via Facebook.  I wanted to post the video of that for anybody who missed it and take this opportunity to address some of the questions we didn’t have time to answer.

Question #1: We got a lot of questions from disabled Americans – I touched on some of the issues during the chat, but this was another one I wanted to address:

"How will the special needs of some people with disabilities be addressed? Examples include deaf individuals needing interpreters skilled in signing medical information, women who are partially paralyzed or use wheel chairs needing special equipment for medical examinations such as gynecological examinations. The Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago would be a great resource on these issues."

Health reform will lower costs for people with disabilities by rewarding quality and cutting waste, two guiding principles for this entire effort.

By expanding health insurance to all Americans and providing premium assistance to make it affordable, health insurance reform will significantly increase access to a choice of health insurance plans for individuals with disabilities. This will enable individuals who are employed to keep their jobs rather than giving up employment in order to receive Medicaid benefits.

People with disabilities are less likely to receive preventive care and are more likely to be diagnosed with screenable cancers at a later stage. By ensuring that all Americans have access to preventive care and investing in public health, health reform will work to create a system that prevents illness and disease instead of just treating it when it’s too late.

In addition, health reform will include the CLASS Act - a new voluntary, long-term care services insurance program.  Under the program, individuals will pay a premium, and in exchange, the program will provide a lifetime cash benefit that offers seniors and people with disabilities some protection against the costs of paying for long-term supports and services.  The program also helps individuals obtain services and supports that will enable them to remain in their homes and communities. The CLASS Act is not comprehensive long-term care reform, but it represents a helpful step that provides individuals with a viable mechanism for insuring against the risk of needing long-term services that broadens the resources for financing long-term services to lessen the reliance on Medicaid. 

Question #2:  This is a question that we didn’t get to, but really we just can’t answer enough because of how much misinformation has been out there about it:

"How will the health insurance reform affect costs and coverages for seniors who currently already have Medicare? Will they have to pay more taxes in the future? Many solely depend on their social security retirement income, what impact does it have on seniors?"

Health insurance reform protects Medicare benefits and reduces costs for seniors. Medicare benefits will not be cut.  Period.  In fact, seniors will get benefits they do not have under the current system: a reduction in prescription drug prices if they fall into the gap in coverage known as the “donut hole”; no cost-sharing for preventive care; and more coordinated care that will enable providers to track their health, treatments and prescriptions and avoid duplication and medical errors.
 
The President’s plan protects Medicare and improves its financial health. Not one penny of the Medicare Trust Fund will be used to help pay for reform.

By eliminating waste, such as overpayments to private insurance companies and cutting down on unnecessary hospital readmissions--- we will strengthen the Medicare trust fund – by 4 to 5 years - and be sure benefits are protected in the future.

Question #3: This one gets at a core issue in our health care system:

"Health Insurance Reform has focused on acute medical care. Why has it ignored long-term care which if unattended creates serious acute medical care problems (particularly for minority communities)? When will the White House address long-term care?"

As I mentioned above, health insurance reform adds a new, innovative program for long-term supports and services called the CLASS Act. Employed individuals pay premiums, and if they develop a disability, they receive a cash benefit of at least $50 a day that they can use to pay to for services to assist them with daily activities. This program will empower people to remain active in their communities, and take charge of their long-term care needs. It will also help people avoid needing to go into a nursing home or other nursing facility.

Beyond the CLASS Act, several proposals exist that would improve long-term care. The draft Senate Finance bill would provide additional funding to states to develop home and community based services under Medicaid.  It would also provide funding to ADRCs, or Aging and Disability Resource Centers, which provide needed information for people with disabilities seeking caregiver assistance. Also, nursing homes would have increased transparency, including reporting of staffing and improved complaints processes.

Valerie Jarrett is Senior Advisor and Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement