Constructive debate on health care is always welcome. It's an important part of the process of achieving meaningful reform. Unfortunately, what we've seen out of the insurance industry over the past few weeks can't be categorized as either "constructive" or even a "debate" but rather a misinformation campaign designed to confuse and distract attention from those who are seeking real health care solutions.

The most recent salvo was a set of state-by-state analyses released yesterday by WellPoint claiming that under health reform individual premiums would skyrocket. Like the now widely discredited report from America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) and the deeply flawed Blue Cross Blue Shield analysis, the WellPoint study arrives at its conclusion by cherry picking certain policies and ignoring major aspects of reform that would affect both the number of people covered and the premiums they would pay. Among the policies that WellPoint’s study consciously ignores: special policies for young adults including premium credits and a special "young invincibles" plan; reinsurance to lower the cost of catastrophic care; and the benefits of creating a new health exchange, which the non-partisan CBO says will reduce premiums. As a result, WellPoint reaches almost exactly the opposite conclusion that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and other independent health experts have reached about the benefits of health insurance reforms.

Bottom line: if you take a flawed methodology and break it down state by state, you still end up with a flawed result.

The WellPoint analysis did make one novel argument worth noting. It argued that imposing fees on health insurance providers and drug and device makers represents a tax on individuals and families. This is an argument that is being echoed by conservative think tanks like AEI. But the claim does not withstand scrutiny for at least three reasons:

• First, the idea that the entire fee will be passed on to consumers is not credible – especially given the policy design. The policy assesses a flat amount per year, paid by companies based on their market share, beginning in 2010. The assumption that these companies will accumulate the amount of these fees and pass them along in a lump sum to enrollees later simply does not make sense.
• Second, these fees are intended to recapture part of the benefits these businesses will get from reform. No one disputes that newly insuring nearly 30 million more Americans will increase their access to needed services – translating into new business for insurers, drug companies and device makers and other providers. This new revenue would far exceed the amount of the new fees – so if you believe that they will pass along the new assessment, they will also pass along their new windfall to consumers.
• Third, the fees help improve and expand coverage and thus reduce the $1,000 hidden tax tens of millions of Americans pay for the uncompensated care of the uninsured. Even if you believed that somehow companies would find a way to pass the fees along, they would be more than outweighed by the benefits middle-class families would get from not only hundreds of billions of dollars in health care tax credits but from reducing the hidden tax they currently pay for the uninsured.

Cross-posted from the Office of Science and Technology Policy's OSTP blog.

It was a record-breaking year for women in science, as anyone who tracked the Nobel Prizes knows. But the struggle to attract and retain more girls and women to careers in science, math, and engineering is far from over. That’s why the Obama administration is pursuing a number of strategies aimed at getting ever more women to join the scientific ranks in the years and decades ahead.

The statistics this year were remarkable: For the first time ever, three women won scientific Nobels—Carol W. Greider and Elizabeth H. Blackburn, in physiology or medicine, and Ada E. Yonath in chemistry. Before this year only twelve women had won science Nobels in the more than century-long history of the prizes, compared to 523 men. That means this year’s female surge instantly raised the grand total of female science Nobel Prize winners by a whopping 25 percent. Talk about bending the curve!

It’s worth noting that women broke barriers outside the traditional sciences, too: A total of five women were honored with Nobel prizes this year, including Elinor Ostrom in economic sciences and Herta Muller in literature. Until now, the highest number of women to be honored in a single year was three, in 2004.

But the record-breaking achievements made by women in the sci-tech arena is especially gratifying to those of us who work in this domain, and a number of policies and programs supported by the Administration aim to ensure that these records do not stand for long. Consider, for example, the range of initiatives at the National Institutes of Health, which has found that although women fare well with regard to winning training grants and fellowships, they do poorly compared to men when it comes to making the transition from student/postdoc to career scientist—in many cases because of time constraints imposed by child-rearing:

• NIH has doubled the time allowed for parental leave on the certain training fellowship awards.
• NIH has provided guidance to research institutions on allowable ways to include child-care reimbursement and parental leave for scientists getting NIH grants, making it easier for grantees to remain in the scientific workforce while they build their families.
• NIH has provided supplements to postdocs who have left the scientific workforce for family reasons, to help them re-enter the scientific professional community.
• In the intramural program, NIH has "extended the clock" on the tenure-track process, to accommodate family leave. This helps women who are balancing their scientific and family responsibilities to achieve their tenure-track goals and transition to career scientists.

These policies are available to men, as well, but are sure to be especially helpful to women given the realities of how household duties are segregated in American culture. A splendid and representative example: Carol Greider was not awakened by the 5 a.m. call that announced she had won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. She was awake and up already—folding laundry!

The Obama Administration is committed to developing even more creative strategies to attract and retain women in the sciences. At a recent meeting of the White House Council on Women and Girls, which was created by President Obama in March to ensure that all Cabinet-level agencies consider how their policies and programs impact women and families, discussion focused in large part on how to draw more girls and young women into science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) educational programs.

As Senior White House advisor Valerie Jarrett put it on Meet the Press this past weekend: "One of our investments in the Obama Administration is trying to get more women into science, technology, engineering and math, so that they can go into fields and really compete on a level playing field with men."

STEM education is also a major focus of this week’s upcoming meeting of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. (Catch Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s presentation on the topic, which will be live-streamed on Friday.)

A final advance worth noting along these lines is President Obama’s recent nomination of Sara Manzano-Diaz to lead the Women’s Bureau at the Department of Labor. For almost 90 years, the Women’s Bureau has worked to improve the status of wage-earning women, improve their working conditions, and advance their opportunities for profitable employment. The Bureau is the only federal agency mandated to represent the needs of wage-earning women.

Manzano-Diaz previously served as Deputy General Counsel for Civil Rights and Litigation at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, where she enforced fair housing, civil rights, and anti-discrimination laws.

Taken together, these initiatives demonstrate this Administration’s commitment to advancing the role of women and girls in today’s world, including area such as the sciences in which women have long been underrepresented.

Rick Weiss is Director of Strategic Communications and Senior Science and Technology Policy Analyst at the Office of Science and Technology Policy

It's no secret that institutions of all stripes focus their communications on certain messages day to day. We thought it would all be a little more open and transparent if we went ahead and published what our focus will be for the day, along with any related articles, documents, or reports.

Supporting report: "The Economic Effects of Health Care Reform on Small Businesses and Their Employees," Council of Economic Advisers, 7/25/09

Supporting article: "18,000 Die a Year for Lack of Insurance. Here’s One.," New York Times, 9/12/09

Talking Points: The Health Care Status Quo is Unsustainable.

• Looking at the numbers, one thing is clear: The status quo of our current health insurance system is unsustainable.
  • Skyrocketing costs are squeezing family budgets, threatening businesses' viability, consuming state and local budgets, and exploding our national deficit.
  • At the same time, eroding coverage is leaving more and more Americans uninsured – one injury or illness away from bankruptcy.
  • And even Americans with insurance have less security and stability than ever before.
     
• As a nation, we are currently spending roughly one in every six dollars on health care.  If we do nothing, in 30 years, one out of every three dollars in our economy will be tied up in the health care system.
  • We spend fifty percent more per person on health care than the next most costly nation – with much of it going to insurance bureaucracy that does nothing to improve our health.

Eroding Coverage, Stability, and Security

• Despite all the spending, tens of millions of Americans live without any coverage at all – one injury or illness away from losing everything.
  • 18,000 Americans die each year because they lack insurance – that's one death every half hour.
     
• Even for people with health care, all it takes is one stroke of bad luck to become uninsured.
  • Every day that goes by, 14,000 people lose their health insurance.
  • Insurance industry worst-practice are contributing to the problem, preventing those who need coverage most from getting it – and even dropping people with insurance because they get sick.

Squeezing Family Budgets

• In the last ten years, premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance have risen more than 130 percent – rising at three times the rate of wages.
  • Americans are paying more and more out of pocket – and they’re getting less.
  • A recent a survey found that nearly 60 percent of Americans, with and without insurance cut back on health care due to cost.

Threatening Businesses' Viability

• American businesses – especially small businesses – say high health costs are impeding their ability to compete, expand and hire more workers.  Too often they're forced to choose between covering their workers and staying afloat.
  • Because they lack bargaining leverage, small businesses pay 18 percent more than larger businesses for the same health insurance plan.

President Obama's Plan

• President Obama's health insurance reform plan addresses three basic goals:
  • If you have health insurance, it will give you more security and stability, and crack down on insurance industry worst-practices like denying you coverage because of a pre-existing condition, or dropping or watering down your coverage when you get sick and need it most.
  • If you don’t have insurance it will give you quality, affordable options.
  • And it will lower the cost of health care for our families, our businesses, and our government.

Today the Vice President is on the second day of a three-day trip through Central Europe, where he is visiting Poland, Romania and the Czech Republic. The trip comes on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall – and the subsequent collapse of communist dictatorships across Central Europe. The autumn of 1989 was a remarkable season of change, when history moved with lightning speed as the men and women of the region broke free from decades of oppression.

Few could have imagined then that in just 20 years, the nations of the region would become stable democracies and would be full members of both NATO and the European Union. But they are, thanks to a lot of visionary leaders in Central Europe, and the help and support of the United States and the nations of Western Europe.

Vice President Joe Biden speaks at the Central University Library Bucharest, in Bucharest, Romania. October 22, 2009. (Official White House Photo by David Lienemann)

The Vice President is in the region not only to celebrate the tremendous progress that the region has made in the last two decades, but also focus on the future -- to reaffirm our alliance and partnership with these countries, and to challenge them to continue to play an increasing leadership role in Europe and on the world stage. He believes that their experience is particularly relevant to other nations in transition to democracy.

He is also talking to the political leaders in each country about our shared agenda, including the situation in Afghanistan, and the new European-based missile defense system that the President announced last month. That system is designed to meet the growing threat to Europe and U.S. forces based there from the threat of medium range missiles from Iran.

The Vice President gave a speech today at the Central University Library in Bucharest, the scene of heavy fighting in December 1989 when the Romanian people brought down the Ceausescu regime – the most brutal dictatorship in Europe. At our request, the U.S. Embassy in Romania invited not only local students, but also top diplomats from 10 countries in the region. They met with the Vice President after his speech. This afternoon, General James Jones, the President’s National Security Adviser, will meet in the Roosevelt Room with diplomats from those same countries.

Vice President Joe Biden speaks at the Central University Library Bucharest, in Bucharest, Romania. October 22, 2009. (by David Lienemann)

Tony Blinken is National Security Advisor to the Vice President

We've discussed health insurance reform from a lot of different perspectives here at WhiteHouse.gov, from doctors to seniors to small business owners.  In a new video, First Lady Michelle Obama discusses it as a woman, and as a mom:

iVillage is also taking questions on this video that HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will answer next week, hop over to join in.

President Obama may have been speaking metaphorically when he promised, during his inaugural address, that his administration would "restore science to its rightful place." But he was also speaking literally. And as a number of Administration initiatives have since made clear, one of the most rightful places for science today is the classroom.

The Obama administration has pursued with real zeal an array of approaches to bolstering science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education (also known as "STEM ed"). These have ranged from formal federal grant programs such as Race to the Top, which is providing competitive grants to states that pump up the innovation in their academic programs, to events such as Astronomy Night on the White House lawn—the historic educational fest earlier this month that brought 150 local middle schoolers onto the South Lawn after sunset, where NASA astronomers and others pointed dozens of telescopes at the Moon, Saturn and its moons, and the furthest reaches of the universe.

The emphasis makes sense. Science and technology are responsible for a very large portion of this nation’s economic growth over the past 50 years. And scientists and engineers today are in the best position to solve many of the most pressing challenges facing the nation and the world, including energy shortages, climate change, inadequate healthcare, and poor nutrition.

It’s wonderful that this country was home to so many Nobel Prize winners this year. But STEM education is increasingly being appreciated as the key to assuring that America cultivates a new generation of experts as well, with the skills to create the new green technologies we need to strengthen our economy in the 21st Century.

STEM education will be a major topic at this week’s meeting of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, which will feature a STEM presentation by Education Secretary Arne Duncan. You can watch the livestream on Friday, Oct. 23, at 10:45 a.m., at www.whitehouse.gov or at www.OSTP.gov.

What do you think is going right, or wrong, with STEM education? Send your comments during Duncan’s talk via the White House Facebook account or via Twitter (use the hash tag #STEMcomment).

Last summer I was privileged to join President Obama, then Senator Obama, on his second visit to Israel. I followed him as he studied each wall at Yad Vashem.  I looked on from a distance as he slipped a personal prayer into the stones of the Western Wall, the Kotel.  I witnessed the courage and endurance of the citizens of Sderot and touched the remnants of the countless Hamas rockets that are their ever-present terror. 

This week, I am back in Israel representing the Administration at a conference hosted by President Peres and meeting with key Israeli and Palestinian leaders.  

I carried a message from our President about a vision of the world that lies within our grasp — if we have the courage to seize it. 

The right place to start is with a common vision—not of some distant future but of the world we seek for our children and our grandchildren.  Our view of that world is rooted in a truth that my nation has long held to be self-evident: and that is that all people are created equal—of equal worth, of equal consequence, and with equal rights.

This is a belief that’s deeply rooted in the American experience, but it’s also one with universal power. We cannot afford to write off vast swathes of the world as somehow marginal or irrelevant or doomed. We wouldn’t tolerate it for our own children, and we shouldn’t accept it for someone else’s. The belief that we all matter equally carries powerful implications. It means that no child should be left to drown in conflict and despair. It means that, in a moral sense, all of our fates are bound together.

But this bedrock belief in human equality and human dignity also has powerful geopolitical implications in our interconnected age. It drives us toward a foreign policy that is principled and pragmatic—one that recognizes not only the moral claim placed upon us by our common humanity, but also the strategic realities that we face in our interlinked world. Today, transnational security threats such as terrorism, nuclear proliferation, pandemics, and climate change can cross borders as freely as a storm. So the days when we could view our own interests in isolation are over. The days when we could focus on our own security and prosperity without regard for that of others are past. More and more, our fates are bound closer together. More and more, we live in a world where we rise and fall together, where zero-sum politics no longer fit today’s hard realities, where what’s good for others is often good for us.

A realistic view of the world thus requires an ambitious approach to the world. We must tackle the great problems that we face together. We must find cooperative solutions to challenges that pay no heed to borders. We must think strategically rather than just acting tactically. And we must recognize that there is a growing sphere where our interests and our values converge.

[Ed. Note: Click here to read the full speech delivered by Ambassador Rice at the Israeli Presidential Conference 2009, Facing Tomorrow, Jerusalem]

Susan E. Rice is the United States Ambassador to the United Nations

Earlier this week, we launched the GreenGov Challenge – a new way for federal employees and military personnel to help green our government. The response thus far has been tremendous, but I know there are many more of you that we still need to hear from.

Energy efficiency is an issue I’m passionate about, and it is a major focus for the Department of Energy. For the next few decades, energy efficiency will be our most effective tool for reducing our carbon emissions, and the best way to reduce energy bills for America’s families. Specific ideas on how to save money and energy are especially welcome.

I know many federal employees share my passion and have great ideas for how to help the government become greener. Many have shared great ideas already on my Facebook page.

The GreenGov Challenge is a way for you to have your ideas heard. Ideas can be submitted through October 31st. We recognize that some of the best ideas on how to save energy may not be new, but they are simply not widely adopted. I want to hear from you what you think are the most cost-effective ways to save energy and money as well as new ideas. The top ideas will be evaluated and put into action shortly thereafter.

I hope you will take a moment to think about the energy saving opportunities around you, to dream up new ways to solve them, and to be a part of making this effort a success. I look forward to reviewing your ideas and tackling this challenge with you.

Steven Chu is Secretary of Energy