Waiting in a steamy conference room the other day to celebrate Maryland?s expansion of health insurance coverage, Dr. Peter Beilenson was crammed in with the reporters on the side of the room, but he wasn?t just your average spectator.
Now the Howard County health officer, Beilenson recalled that about 10 years ago, when he was Baltimore City health commissioner, his wife said to him, “Why don?t you stop complaining” about the lack of health insurance and do something about it. He did.
He started an organization for universal health coverage in Maryland called Health Care for All, raised about $300,000 and, perhaps most significantly, hired Vinnie DeMarco.
Tireless lobbyist
DeMarco is the Energizer Bunny of public interest lobbyists in the state: Long-lasting, persistent, relentlessly upbeat and undeterred by obstructionists and disinterested reporters he pesters on their cell phones.
DeMarco was an assistant attorney general in consumer protection before he turned to lobbying for gun control legislation and then an increase in the tobacco tax to pay for child health care. He was fresh off that battle in 1999 when he signed on to lead the charge for Health Care for All.
“I was a little naive about health care then,” DeMarco said over a lunch of vegetarian sushi. (He?s a vegan). “I had a three-year plan.” That was nine years ago.
Funded by local foundations, DeMarco and his cohorts have assembled a broad coalition of groups ? unions, religious groups, health care providers ? to lobby for universal health care. They helped enact the Fair Share Health Care ? the so-called Wal-Mart bill that had business groups going berserk ? overriding a veto by Gov. Robert Ehrlich. Maryland was the first state in the nation to try to tax large businesses that provide inadequate health coverage.
While federal courts ultimately shot it down, “it really galvanized the issue,” DeMarco said, garnering national publicity. Wal-Mart eventually improved health insurance coverage for its workers, as well.
Ehrlich?s time was “four years in the wilderness” for DeMarco and his group, but the Republican governor did sign a plan for group purchase of prescription drugs, a plan ultimately blocked bythe Bush administration.
The July 1 expansion of Medicaid to families making less than $20,500 was “absolutely critical,” DeMarco said.
“We?re not at health care for all yet,” he said. While waiting for the national solution that everyone concedes is needed, “we?re working on a smart state-based way to do it.” He?s now sowing the seeds with lawmakers, and will roll out the plan in the fall.
Butt revenues down
It was DeMarco?s group that successfully pressed for doubling the tobacco tax last November to both help pay for expanded health insurance and to keep teens off the habit. The goal to cut consumption has clearly been too successful. Cigarette tax revenues are down $23 million so far this year despite the 100 percent increase.
Another irony in the success of state efforts to cure a national crisis in health care is that some of the same progressive and religious groups who support it ardently oppose local attempts to handle illegal immigration, such as the recent raid supported by Anne Arundel County Executive John Leopold.
Virtual town meetings
Got a call from Rep. John Sarbanes while I was eating dinner Monday night.
It was another of the freshman congressman?s virtual town hall meetings. Unlike the real town hall stops that typically attract 50 to 100 people ? many of them activists and retirees ? Monday night?s mass conference call had 4,532 of Sarbanes? constituents online, according to his communications director, MaKeda Scott.
Participation is generated from automated calls and voluntary call-ins, and the numbers have grown since Sarbanes did his first in February.
“Constituents seem to enjoy having the direct contact with the congressman,” Scott said.
The hour long conference call starts out with brief remarks from Sarbanes, and then he takes questions. Topics last week included Medicare-provider reimbursement, energy and gasoline prices ? “mostly pocketbook issues,” Scott said. People who don?t get to ask questions can leave a voicemail.
Recordings of some previous virtual town hall meetings ? and some in-person events as well ? can be found on the congressman?s Web site. It?s not something you might want to download to your MP3 player, but it sure is accessible.
