Tag Archives: health care

Gay Voters in 2008

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The New York Times covers gay voters. The article contains this huge bombshell:

[G]ay voters in New York are looking past the issues that have long guided them toward a candidate. They are talking about the conflict in Iraq, universal health care and whether it is more important to have a president with experience or exuberance.

Wow! Gay people care about more than just gay issues? You’re kidding! Gay people care about the war in Iraq and health care? Amazing!

Last time I checked, gay people were not just single-issue voters. “The issues that have long guided gay people toward a candidate”? What the hell is that supposed to mean? From reading this article, one would never think that gay Americans live in communities, pay taxes, go to war or have relatives and friends who go to war, care about other people, or consider themselves American.

All this article manages to do is dehumanize and ghettoize us.

Voting Decisions

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I spent my entire therapy session last night talking about politics.

Seriously. Except for one sentence at the beginning about something else, I spent the entire 45 minutes talking about the presidential race. But it was not a waste of money — it tied into my psyche.

I’m taking my vote in the New York Democratic primary next month very seriously. I’ve never thought so hard about a vote before. This is my first time voting in a primary, so it’s my first time having to choose between two or more Democrats.

Voting is a completely irrational act. The idea that my single vote will make a difference in an election is ridiculous — rare is the election that has been decided by one vote. There’s no need for me to spend so much time deciding whom to vote for when it’s extremely unlikely that my vote will matter.

And yet my vote does matter, because everyone else’s vote matters. Each individual voter, making up his or her own mind, is an important molecule in a large weather pattern.

And anyway, we should all think hard about our opinions on important issues, whether we get to vote on them or not. Thoughtful opinions lead to thoughtful discourse.

So, I keep going back and forth between Obama and Clinton.

I’m wary of anyone who’s too enthusiastic about Obama. All the Obama-worship is unsettling. This comment touches on much of what I feel about him. “Obama is a self-conscious messianic figure who is running a messianic campaign.” Yes. I find it creepy.

Our civic culture is going down the tubes, and it goes beyond the White House. Special interests control Congress; the media is lazy, distorting, and entertainment-driven; the American attention span shrinks by the month. A charismatic president alone can’t fix things. In fact, the executive branch isn’t supposed to be able to fix things all by itself. Our constitutional system is set up to resist change. It’s naive, idealistic and foolish to think that one incredibly well-spoken man (and he is incredibly well-spoken) is going to bring us all together, that he’ll inspire the Republicans and the corporations and the insurance companies to hold hands with all of us as we solve health care and skip down that happy yellow-brick road into a land filled with rainbows.

New Hampshire was a relief. Some people were speculating not if, but when Hillary should drop out. I saw or read something like the following: “The Clintons will have to decide if they really want to be the ones who tried to get in the way of this amazing historical moment.” Something like that. It felt like drug-induced euphoria, and even I got caught up in it, and looking back at those giddy five days from Thursday through Tuesday, it was really, really weird.

On Tuesday night I decided I was probably going to vote for Clinton. And despite what I just said in the previous few paragraphs, I’m ashamed to say that the reason was almost entirely emotional. Call me a sap, but when Hillary got on stage and said, “Over the last week, I listened to you, and in the process [pause, then softly:] … I found my own voice,” it touched something inside me. I’d never heard her say anything like that before. It built on her famous emotional moment the day before. (Which was not “tears” or “crying,” by the way, and I wish people would stop mischaracterizing it. And fie on anyone who thinks she was faking it. One, she’s not a good enough actor to fake it, and two, why would she want to, when conventional wisdom told us that an emotional breakdown would mean instant death to any female presidential candidacy?)

What really got me was the next day. I was talking to my mom over the phone the day after the New Hampshire primary, and I asked her what she thought. “Good for her,” she said emphatically. She said Obama seems to be all talk and she liked seeing Hillary win.

Listening to Hillary, talking to my mom, hearing my mom support Hillary… this all mixed together in my brain, and I realized what was behind my feelings. When I finally saw Hillary’s softer side this week, to me it made her seem… maternal. I love my mom, and I received enormous affection from her when I was growing up. So I guess something in me adores middle-aged maternal women, and I saw it in Hillary in those two days.

And I thought, that’s the only thing Hillary had been missing: heart. She has experience, she’s tough-minded and practical, she knows how to deal with Congress — and on top of all that, she’s actually human after all.

I’d yell “You go, girl!” if it wasn’t such a cliché by now.

All of this started to fade yesterday to the point where I don’t know anymore. I’ve realized Obama isn’t an idealistic empty suit after all; it’s just that the messianic fervor around him turns me off and makes me wary. But Clinton isn’t a valueless Machiavellian; she really does want to make the world a better place.

I’m still leaning toward Clinton right now. But I reserve the right to change my mind again and again before February 5 — and I probably will.

NJ Civil Unions

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From the New York Times: 2 Months After New Jersey’s Civil Union Law, Problems Finding True Equality.

I’m not sure what to make of this article, even though I did learn things from it.

Its thesis seems to be that civil unions are causing problems for gay couples that would be solved if they had access to marriage. It begins with several anecdotes about people who are being denied health insurance coverage by their civil-union spouses’ employers, when married spouses would be granted coverage. The nut graf states that these problems “rais[e] questions about whether the new arrangement adequately fulfills the promise of the State Supreme Court ruling that led to it.” The writer of the article seems to have an agenda, which is often the case when an article states that something “raises questions.”

[R]esidents who work for companies headquartered in other states, and those whose insurers are based outside New Jersey, have found it difficult if not impossible to sign their partners up for health insurance. Unions and employers whose self-insured plans are federally regulated have also denied coverage in some cases. Staff members in doctors’ offices and emergency rooms have questioned partners’ role in decision-making. Confusion abounds over the interplay of state and federal laws governing taxes, inheritance and property.

Can you really blame a law on the fact that people disobey it or don’t understand it?

The article also deals with several instances of unequal treatment that would persist even if the New Jersey legislature had granted marriage rights, and not just civil union rights, to same-sex couples.

For example, some companies provide only “self-insured” health care plans, which are financed by employers rather than purchased from state-regulated insurers. Because self-insured plans are governed by a federal law – ERISA, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act – apparently insurers and employers think the plans are also subject to DOMA. But apparently that’s not true:

[G]ay-rights advocates said federal law did not prohibit self-insured companies from providing benefits to same-sex couples. A 2006 report by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation found that more than half the Fortune 500 companies, most of which have self-insured plans, offered benefits to domestic partners.

“It’s the employer’s own choice to decide who’s a beneficiary, and the federal government doesn’t prevent employers from doing the right thing,” said Michele Granda, a staff lawyer with the Boston-based Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders. “Those employers are purposefully choosing to discriminate against their employees.”

Which would be the case even if New Jersey allowed gay couples to get married. Because DOMA theoretically applies to them, too.

The article does point out the problems inherent in divergent state/federal marriage schemes, though – problems involving taxes, Medicaid, and bankruptcy.

Civil union partners filing taxes jointly in New Jersey have to file federal tax returns as if they were single, then calculate what they would owe on a joint federal return to figure their state credits and deductions, said Stephen J. Hyland, a lawyer and writer of “New Jersey Domestic Partners: A Legal Guide.”

“Civil union couples will most likely be treated as if they are single for purposes of qualifying for Medicaid, which can jeopardize the couple’s home if one partner needs nursing home care,” Mr. Hyland said.

Bankruptcy is governed by federal law, although state law determines how married and civil union couples hold title to their property.

There’s a real tension between federal schemes and traditional states’-rights theory. Federal programs are so much more a part of Americans’ personal lives than they used to be. What’s the solution? Either the federal government should recognize all marriages that a particular state recognizes, or state-married (and state CU’d) couples just have to deal with two different schemes until we get a more enlightened Congress and president.

It’s probably going to be the latter. Whenever that happens.

Oh. And so much for my trying to write short blog entries.