Day: July 26, 2009

Florida Sen. Jim King Dies

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Florida State Sen. Jim King

Florida lost a great one today. State Senator (and former Senate President) Jim King died of pancreatic cancer. And even though King was a Republican, I found him to be fair, thoughtful, and always humorous. He shared a trait that any good legislator or public servant has: when you came to him for help, he never asked — or particularly cared about — your party affiliation.

I only have a couple of personal memories of the man. One was when he was running for re-election and addressed my Tiger Bay club. King was a massive man, and by that I pretty much mean fat, but he told us that day he felt like a buck in rutting season.

The other was when I was leading a delegation of Florida advertising professionals on their annual pilgrimage to the state capitol to ask that advertising not be taxed. King was senate president at the time and we requested a meeting with him on the day of a critical vote. He kept his appointment with us and even though he was wanted on the Senate floor, and his assistant stuck her head in periodically to see if he was done yet, he treated us as if he had all the time in the world.

King also bucked (so to speak) Jeb Bush and his own party over the Terri Schiavo debacle. He passionately spoke out against Jeb’s foray not just into his constituents’ bedrooms but in this case, their death beds. More recently, the country might remember King as the Florida legislator who championed “truck nutz,” as an expression of “truckliness” and claimed to have a pair on his own SUV. I can easily believe that.

Pre-Existing Condition: Healthcare Reform Hits a Wall

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Not again.

The Washington Post’s Steven Pearlstein has it exactly right about health care. We can’t let things keep going as they are.

Among the range of options for health-care reform, there’s one that is sure to raise your taxes, increase your out-of-pocket medical expenses, swell the federal deficit, leave more Americans without insurance and guarantee that wages will remain stagnant.

That’s the option of doing nothing, letting things continue to drift as they have for the past two decades as we continue to search in vain for the perfect plan that would let everyone have everything they want and preserve everything they already have while getting someone else to pay for it.

So the next time you hear someone throwing a hissy fit because health reform might raise taxes on some people, or steer people into managed care, or require small businesses to contribute $2 a day for each employee’s coverage, just remember to ask yourself: And that’s compared with what?

We got scared and backed off health insurance reform in the ’90s when Bill and Hillary Clinton tried to tackle the problem, and we all know where that’s led us.

I won’t even bother mentioning that no other modern government puts this expectation on its business sector. Whoops, I just did.

What bothers me most, however, about the plan the Democrats have been kicking around is that it is still tied to employment. Having a job and having a need for health care are totally unrelated. Even if you don’t have a traditional employer (maybe, like me, you are your own employer), you still need health care. How did we ever come to expect that the boss would be responsible for making sure our medical procedures and dental appointments are paid for? I won’t even bother mentioning that no other modern government puts this expectation on its business sector. Whoops, I just did.

Health care reform is shelved until after Congress’s August recess. The insurance companies and big pharma won round one (or two, if you count the Clinton loss). We have to make sure they don’t continue winning, because as Pearlstein says, that’s the one sure way the rest of us lose.