Tag Archives: National Football League

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

David Simas, The White House ~~ ACA


The White House, Washington

The very best people to describe what having new health insurance means — what it feels like — isn’t me, or any White House policy staffer. It’s not even the President.

It’s you. Or your neighbor, coworker, sister, or partner.

It’s anyone who woke up on the morning of January 1st with the peace of mind, security, and quiet dignity that comes with taking your health care into your own hands.

We’ve been hearing from a lot of you. Your stories are powerful, and they keep coming in.

Read what 10 different Americans had to say about what being covered now means to them. Then, join them and share a story of your own.

JoAnn S., Florida “I haven’t had insurance in years and my husband had a shared insurance junk-type policy. The day I signed up on Dec 10, I actually cried when the application went through. I got my first premium notice in the mail yesterday and  was never so happy to see a bill before.”

Gayla W., New Hampshire “I lost my job last April. My partner and I both have pre-existing conditions so our only option was to COBRA my employer-provided plan — at a cost of $1,676 a month. It was a good plan, but now we have a comparable plan through the ACA for $87 a month. I can’t describe just how life changing this is for us. We can afford to live again.”

Stella R., California “For me this makes all the difference between having good health or not. I recently had a CAT scan (which I had to pay out of pocket for) because I was losing a lot of weight. It turns out that something was found and now I will need to see specialists and have further procedures done to make sure it is not cancer. My first appointment is on January 6 with a specialist. If I did not have health insurance, I would not be able to see a specialist. It would wipe out any savings I have and leave me medically at high risk.”

Brian F., Florida “I have not had Insurance for over 10 years.  I had a pre-existing condition that made me uninsurable — even though I was perfectly healthy. The last quote I got was in 2008: It was $1,750 a month with a $10,000 deductible. There was no way to ever afford that. …This insurance changes everything for me. I do not have to worry anymore when I get a sore throat or an infected cut that I will have to go to the emergency room — run up thousands in bills and then have to file bankruptcy. This is a great day. Thank you for the ACA. It is a life changer.”

Elina K., Colorado “My mom, who is 61 and works as a freelance Russian interpreter, went to the ER in November. She, her partner and myself are uninsured. Tests confirmed she had a major blockage and would need surgery. The mass appears to be cancerous and is pushing down on her internal organs. She has been in severe pain for weeks. … Last night, around 3 a.m., she was admitted to the hospital and will be having surgery which she had to put off until her ACA policy kicked in at midnight. She now has expert care in a facility that in less than 24 hours changed her medication and treated her symptoms with noticeable results. When my stepdad came home tonight, exhausted after spending all day at the hospital, all he could say was ‘thank god for Obamacare’ …It may well end up saving her life.”

Kendra S., Oklahoma “Just this past October, my husband was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. This devastating news was compounded by the fact we were not insured, my husband could no longer work, and the rapid medical procedures that occurred quickly ran up thousands of dollars that we don’t have the money to pay. We quickly began researching the ACA, made an appointment with a local Community Care office and after many hours of research, to determine the coverage that we could afford. We are so grateful for the ACA. With the incredibly terrible stress that has befallen upon our family, at least now we know his medical expenses are covered.”

Rachelle L., Florida “My 28-year-old daughter was able to get healthcare coverage on her own for the first time through the ACA. She has a pre-existing condition, a genetic kidney disease that prevented her from getting coverage in 2009 at the age of 24 when she had to come off of our policy due to the age requirement. Her Cobra payments were $650 a month because she could not get  more reasonable private coverage due to her pre-existing condition.  In 2010, she was able to come back on our BCBS plan because of the ACA and was able to remain there until she finished school. We signed her up through the website and paid for her plan directly through Cigna on December 2: $298/month for a silver plan with a  $0 deductible! She received her new insurance card on December 27th for coverage starting Jan 1! We now have peace of mind that all of her medical needs will be covered at a reasonable cost.”

Curtis D., Washington “Our new coverage has begun. I am 62, and my wife is 55. We are both self employed and  neither of us have had coverage for the past seven years.  Thankfully we are both pretty healthy, but it feels good to know we can schedule a checkup and take care of any lingering issues we’ve been putting off. Thank you for making improvements to the health care of the country.”

Kelly M., Maryland “I have a new plan. I haven’t had insurance for years. When I applied for insurance before, I was denied for pre-existing conditions, even for plans with huge deductibles. I signed up on the Maryland Healthcare Exchange back in October, and by January 1st, I was holding an insurance card from Carefirst Blueshield and have already had my first doctor’s appointment. It works. I am proof. And I’m so grateful that I can take care of myself with dignity without having to go to the ER whenever I’m sick or have to spend half of my paycheck at an urgent care center. I can do all of the preventative measures that I have been putting off, and get back on the road to health. It’s a good feeling.”

Kate S., Connecticut “This healthcare reform is a life-changing event for my family. My husband and I have had to carry our own insurance for the past 25 years and, with the family insurance we had, we were paying $2,500.00 a MONTH for coverage, which we could not afford. Once the children graduated from high school, we had to take them off our policy because we could not afford it anymore. … We have never been high wage earners and the costs of our insurance have for years been an impossible burden. Now that the system is fair and goes by our income, we finally may be able to set money aside and save for our future.”

Simply put, for millions of Americans: Health reform matters.

If you’ve got a story of your own, share it with us here.

And if you don’t think stories like these ones get told enough — then do something to change that. Pass this on.

Thank you,

David

David Simas Deputy Senior Advisor The White House @Simas44

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

More of the Same?


By 

Will 2014 Be a Turning Point for Women?

As we’ve documented, the last few years have been very difficult for advocates of women’s reproductive freedom. From 2011-2013, more restrictions on abortion rights — a record-breaking 205 — were enacted by state legislatures than during the entire previous decade.

guttmacher2

While we have kicked off 2014 with yet another conservative attack on the Affordable Care Act’s birth control benefit, advocates for women’s reproductive rights believe that this year will be a turning point:

“The momentum has shifted,” Ilyse Hogue, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, told ThinkProgress in an interview. “Americans as a whole have had enough. We’re not just going to sit idly by and fight defensive fights and take these attacks on reproductive freedom sitting down. We’re starting to define what a new agenda for reproductive freedom looks like in the 21st century.” […]

“Abortion access is ground zero of reproductive freedom; without it, we don’t have autonomy and self-determination over our lives. But it’s not as though our reproductive lives start and end there,” Hogue noted. “There’s a whole landscape out there of policies that have lagged far behind.”

What does this new agenda look like?

Those policies include other health-related initiatives, like ensuring that women have access to family planning services and maternity care. They involve tackling violence by cracking down on domestic abuse and rape. But they also include economic policies to help ensure that women have the resources to direct the courses of their lives and provide for their families — like equal pay legislation, affordable child care services, and efforts to prevent workplace discrimination. Rather than framing reproductive rights as a women’s issue, groups like NARAL are working on making the point that they’re also inextricable from the nation’s economic agenda.

For much, much more on this, check out the rest of ThinkProgress’ Tara Culp-Ressler’s deep dive HERE.

BOTTOM LINE: While conservatives are only interesting in dragging us back into the culture wars of the past, progressives are focused on a proactive agenda to make sure women and their families have a fair shot at getting ahead.

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Labor: What The NFL Lockout Teaches Us


Last Sunday, the National Football League’s Green Bay Packers celebrated their fourth Super Bowl victory in franchise history, defeating the Pittsburgh Steelers 31-25. Yet now that the Super Bowl media circus has subsided, and Packers quarterback and game MVP Aaron Rodgers has taken his obligatory march in a Disney World parade, a labor dispute between the league’s team owners and the NFL Players Association is receiving greater visibility. The NFL’s collective bargaining agreement is set to expire on March 3. The owners opted out of the current agreement two years early, arguing that the players’ cut of the profits is too large (59.5 percent after a $1 billion credit is given to the owners). The owners are also pushing to extend the regular season by two games, to 18. But unless a deal gets done soon, the NFLPA expects the owners to impose a lockout, thus suspending next season indefinitely. In fact, the NFL owners‘ attempt to squeeze more profits from players is emblematic of what is happening to workers across the country, most of whom do not have anywhere near the amount of bargaining power as the NFLPA. As CAP’s David Madland and Nick Bunker wrote, “These negotiations are important not just to NFL fans but to all Americans because they show that collective bargaining — the process where unionized workers and management negotiate wages, benefits, and working conditions — can create significant benefits for both workers and owners.”

COLLECTIVE BARGAINING WORKS: Despite the owners’ complaints, teams and players have both prospered under the current agreement. The median player salary in 2009 stood at nearly $800,000 per year, an increase of 9.4 percent since 2006. While NFL teams are reluctant to open their financial books to the public, according to Forbes Magazine, the average NFL franchise is worth just over $1 billion (although these figures have been disputed). If true, an NFL franchise’s value has increased 16.2 percent, which Madland and Bunker point out is “a growth rate that is faster than the median player salary increase.” Anti-trust exemptions have also benefited the NFL’s owners, allowing them to maximize profits from marketing. As Time Magazine notes, “Public indicators of the game’s overall health are overwhelmingly positive. The sport is setting ratings records every week, revenues are strong, and ESPN is reportedly close to agreeing to increase the fee it pays the NFL to telecast Monday Night Football to around $2 billion annually, an increase of at least 65%.” In a statement, a representative for the NFL told The Progress Report that “the teams agree wholeheartedly that collective bargaining is critical, which is why they are committed to negotiating as much and as often as possible to get a deal that works for all sides. Each side bears responsibility for working as hard as they can to get a deal and avoid a work stoppage.

SO WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?: “What happens in these disputes is that economic issues are presented as moral issues — good versus evil,” said Fay Vincent, a former commissioner of Major League Baseball who presided over the sport’s 1990 lockout. “But it’s hard to look at these circumstances and not see a case of owners’ wanting their cake and eating it, too.” Why should progressives care about wealthy NFL players? “Liberals should care and side with labor, even if some of the players do make a lot of money,” progressive blogger and economist Duncan Black wrote this week, adding, “This is about how the pie gets split, and that matters even if it is a really big pie.” Indeed, it does matter. High-profile NFL players are privileged multi-millionaires, but this is not the case for most players in the league, many of whom make the league minimum $300,000 and only stay in the league for just under four years on average before retiring. The wear and tear on the player’s body in an increasingly violent sport often leads to early retirement. A recent independent study found that, as Esquire reported, “Not only are pro-football injuries and concussions at a nine-year high, but brain-related injuries are the most common specified type of injury in NFL games.” And the New Yorker noted last week that retired NFL players “are five to nineteen times as likely as the general population to have received a dementia-related diagnosis” due to brain injuries. Steelers star receiver Hines Ward said of the NFL, “They don’t give a fuck about concussions. And now they want to add on two extra games? Are you kidding? Come on, let’s be real.” Citing health issues, Cleveland Browns linebacker Scott Fujita said adding two games to the regular season “is completely unacceptable.” It “feels like a slap in the face,” he said.

WHAT ABOUT THE FANS?: NFL football has grown to be America’s most popular and most lucrative sport, thus, the party in the dispute most often ignored is the fans. The New York Times reports that “[c]urrently, 10 N.F.L. stadiums are 100 percent publicly financed and 19 are at least 75 percent publicly financed.” As Brian Frederick, executive director of the pro-fan lobby group Sports Fans Coalition, wrote this week, “Taxpayers (most of whom are NFL fans) have spent over $6.5 billion subsidizing NFL stadiums around the country, with nearly $4.5 billion of that coming in just the last 10 years” — a fact that has increased profits for both players and owners. “These stadium subsidies are important because they are what give the fans leverage and why this all matters in the political realm,” said Frederick, who is promoting a petition to “Save Next Season.” And while cities with NFL franchises stand to lose money if a lockout were to take effect, there is no doubt that thousands of those working in and around the stadiums will be out of a job and many local economies will suffer as a result. As Philadelphia Eagles lineman Winston Justice noted, “It will hurt local business owners, employees at restaurants, hotels, and all of the great people who work at Lincoln Financial Field [in Philadelphia], on game day, just to name a few.”

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Help Fill a Stadium: AFL – CIO 2/5


When the NFL Players Association (NFLPA)—the AFL-CIO union that represents all professional football players, past and present—suggested a plan for the labor movement to fill a football stadium with unemployed workers, members of the military and children, I got really excited and pledged our support right away.

What could be better than giving the gift of football to folks who may not be able to afford to go to a game while times are tough?

We’d like your help to fill a football stadium with unemployed workers, members of the military and children for the NFLPA Texas vs. The Nation game.

This very special game attracts hundreds of NFL scouts and personnel. It features draft-eligible college seniors who are poised to be our next professional players.

Each ticket to the game costs $10 to buy. But the NFLPA has generously agreed to match 100 percent of our donations. Thanks to this match, every $10 you donate will buy TWO tickets for unemployed workers, military veterans and children.

Please pitch in $10, $20 or $40—and give the gift of two, four or eight football tickets to unemployed workers, members of the armed services and children.

If you can make it to San Antonio, for the game, you also can buy tickets to attend the game yourself.

This is going to be a great game featuring the football stars of tomorrow. Top college seniors with ties to the state of Texas will take on top seniors from across the nation. The five-year-old all-star game is making its debut in San Antonio this year, after previous games in the Sun Bowl in El Paso, Texas.

We’ve been talking to local nonprofits—and they’re really excited about your support. Military bases are already on board, too. But we need you. If the union movement is going to fill the stadium in San Antonio, it’s going to take thousands of small donations.

It takes only 30 seconds of your time and as little as $10 to help.

Please donate a ticket or two—and have your donation doubled—so San Antonio football fans who are unemployed, and others who can’t afford to come, can attend.

The AFL-CIO and the NFLPA are hosting a special football game in San Antonio. Can you make a small donation to help fill the stadium with unemployed workers, military veterans and children?  Click on link below …

http://act.aflcio.org/salsa/track.jsp?v=2&c=3KsQnNNHbmQ8TPTZyJhYTH2Wytbgu75H

Donate a ticket for just $10 and the NFLPA will match that donation—so you’ll make it possible for TWO unemployed workers, military members or children to attend the game.

If you can make it to the game in San Antonio on Feb. 5, even better.  Learn more and buy tickets.                                                                          http://act.aflcio.org/salsa/track.jsp?v=2&c=TTP2MZFya3nsSUuWKUeP3H2Wytbgu75H

 

In solidarity,

Manny Herrmann

Online Mobilization Coordinator, AFL-CIO

P.S. If you’re interested in attending the game yourself, click here to learn more and click here to buy a ticket