Gov. C. L. "Butch" Otter appeared on national television last night talking about the Idaho Health Freedom Act, which he signed into law Wednesday. He was the first governor in the nation to sign such a bill (Virginia passed a similar bill, but the governor allowed it to become law without his signature).

The bill requires Idaho's attorney general to sue the federal government if the state is forced to require health coverage for Idaho citizens. Some three dozen states are considering such measures, what Otter is calling a Constitutional mass. In the two clips below, Fox News' Neil Cavuto lets Otter say "Constitutional mass" several times while CNN's Anderson Cooper fires back: "What do you mean by Constitutional mass?"

Otter waffles on the question, instead claiming that Congress does not have the Constitutional authority to pass the health reform bill that Democrats in the House plan to approve on Sunday. Cooper says that question of federal authority was laid to rest after the Civil War.

Cavuto asks an interesting, and related, question too, though he lazily pins it on unnamed Otter critics: Does this bill create havoc, with the 50 states deciding not to follow federal law, even in matters of the military. They say (unnamed critics) that, "you are the one inciting danger," Cavuto posits.

Otter also maintains that the health reform bill is unfair because it treats states differently. We find no reference to individual states in the full text of the bill, but USA Today assures us (sorry, only link i could find this morning) that the special, vote-buying provisions for Nebraska have been struck but that Louisiana (and maybe Florida, according to Otter) will still get extra Medicaid funding because they are in natural disaster recovery areas.

[UPDATE: Otter spokesman Jon Hanian acknowledges that the Nebraska deal has been removed from the bill, but told citydesk that there are new carve-outs for Tennessee, and that North Dakota, Montana and Connecticut, as well as Louisiana are still getting special treatment. Hanian cites Fox on this and WaPo has an eerily similar story too. Oh, that's an AP story.

“The governor’s concern remains … we were led to believe that this process was going to be transparent ... The process wasn’t going to be questioned,” Hanian said.]

Watch and compare the two interviews below (and thank Fox for not embedding an ad with their clip! And, note the awesome speed reader in the bottom right corner ... Who says Fox can't do snark?):

Citydesk just got off the phone with Ada County Commissioner Sharon Ullman, whom we called to ask when she planned to file for the governor's race.

Ullman was pulling up to the Central District Health Department for the first of three pilot health screening clinics that she helped organize. Students with Idaho State University's Meridian Health Sciences Center are giving free checkups to Ada County residents as we speak.

The clinic will be open until 7 p.m. tonight at Central District Health, 707 N. Armstrong Place.

The county put up $600 for three pilot free clinics—the next one will be 3-7 p.m., April 23 at the Vineyard in Garden City—aimed at low-income people without health insurance. Ullman said the county has budgeted $3.4 million this year for indigent care, paying the hospital bills for county residents who end up in the emergency room and cannot afford to pay their bills.

The health screenings are an effort to get people treatment before they have to check themselves into the emergency room.

“People who don’t otherwise have access to that service, if we can get them in here at an extremely low cost then we as a community are better off,“ Ullman said, adding that taxpayers are paying one way or the other and that preventive care is less expensive.

She also made a political point with the program. Gov. C. L. "Butch" Otter has asked counties to pay for larger and larger shares of indigent care, while at the same time decrying health care mandates coming from the Federal government.

"We have socialized medicine, but we have it in its absolute worst form," Ullman said. “We don’t provide preventive care but we let people get so sick they end up in the emergency room.“

A half hour later, Ullman called back to say that in the first half-hour of the screenings, a man came in with dangerously high blood pressure and was taken to the emergency room, possibly saving his life.

How many lives did Otter, Rammell, Kemp or Allred save today?

The group on the Idaho Capitol steps today demands change in the nation's health care status quo.

healthcareforamericanow.org, which organized similar marches across the country today, was emblazoned on professionally done multi-color posters that advocated the need for a national health care plan. Idaho Main Street Alliance, partnered with United Vision for Idaho, to declare that the American system of health care is broken, and needs a fix.

• Andrew Crisp
• UVI statehouse rally on health care.

Numerous speakers took the steps above the Liberty Bell replica, including Adrienne Evans, Director of United Vision for Idaho.

"We want real health care. We can achieve that through taxation that's just, and fair. We're advocates of a progressive tax. Did you know that just 2 percent of Idahoans made more than $200,000 last year? I think it's indicative of our priorities [as a state]...We're not working together," she said.

Dave Whaley, President of the AFL-CIO group of labor unions, also spoke in favor of health care reform.

"This country needs to do something new and visionary in regards to health care. If those in Congress won't do that, the people need to voice and vote their opinion when the time comes," he said.

When asked about the Legislature's efforts to combat any US Congress-led health care reform, both Whaley and his wife, who was also in attendance, shook their heads.

"What a waste of money, money that could go into school programs and agencies being cut like IPTV. This idea of opposing the Government publicly and looking foolish...it's time to get beyond that," Whaley said.

The bill, ironically dubbed the Health Freedom Act, passed the Senate State Affairs Committee this morning, on a near party-line vote, with only Lewiston Republican Joe Stegner opposing it as "meaningless legislation," according to the Spokesman-Review.

• Andrew Crisp
• Supporters of a national health care plan gathered outside, while opposition to such a plan coalesced inside.

Last night, the Boise City Council—with a tie-breaking vote from Mayor Dave Bieter—passed a resolution calling for health care reform.

Television covered it, but print, apparently did not. Sorry.

According to KBCI-2, Maryanne Jordan, David Eberle and Elaine Clegg supported the measure and Jim Tibbs, Alan Shealy and Vern Bisterfeldt voted against it. Bieter broke the tie saying that health insurance costs for city workers continues to rise almost 15 percent a year, robbing cash from other city functions.

Thirty-four people testified on the resolution, mostly against, according to city spokesman Adam Park. Each was given two minutes to state their piece.

KTVB-7 reports that:

This year, healthcare expenses for city workers will reach $13.9 million.
By 2012, it's estimated it'll cost $16.8 million - a cost that be passed on to taxpayers.
“That money comes out of funds for the parks, funds for police, funds for fire, funds for our library system,” Bieter said. “There's a limited amount of money and that detracts from all the services we offer. So it really is an issue that affects us directly.”

Many of the candidates for the City Council election in November spoke against the resolution. A Tea Party Boise co-founder was also in attendence, according to KIVI-6: "This is meant to show Washington where Boise stands where Idaho stands and this is not the way we feel at all," Tea Party Boise co-founder Brendon Smythe said. (We especially like the comment posted by "Gene Fadness" (is it THE Gene Fadness, or a wannabe) on KIVI's story: "Basic to any story — WHO VOTED FOR AND WHO VOTED AGAINST????")

Channel 2 is the only station that named names, by the way.

Candidate Dan Dunham sent this quote to the Guardian:

“As a city council candidate, I want to remind Mr. Mayor that your job deals with our city. You should be concerned with the local economy, local housing issues, the city budget, and ways that you can actually affect the quality of life for city residents.

When I am elected to the city council, I will not support this kind of “NOT IN MY JOB DISCRIPTION” waste of city resources. My only hope is that the national attention you seek will be as good as the attention you gave to public testimony tonight.”

UPDATE:

The White House just sent out updated health care stats for Idaho:

The status quo is not an option. The number of uninsured in Idaho has increased from 204,000 in 2001 to 236,000 in 2008. The percent of non-elderly adults without insurance increased from 20.3 % to 21.9 %. And this number only considers people who are uninsured for an entire year — it does not include people in Idaho who have more recently lost coverage through the recession, or who had shorter gaps in their coverage.

Private coverage is eroding under the status quo. The percentage of people with employer-based coverage decreased from 71.3% of the population in 2001 to 71.1% in 2008.

More workers are being left without protection from health care costs. Too many workers in Idaho do not have health coverage, at 151,000 in 2008. More than one in five workers in Idaho lack insurance.

The problem of the uninsured is a problem that crosses income brackets. The new Census numbers also drive home the fact that everyone in Idaho is vulnerable to losing health insurance. An additional 17,500 people from high-income households are now uninsured.

UPDATE II
Statesman covered the meeting too, just couldn't find the link this morning.

The Boise City Council will consider a position statement on health care reform tonight at its 6 p.m. meeting at City Hall. The resolution is being urged in towns across the nation by the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the National League of Cities.

City Council candidate Lucas Baumbach takes exception with the resolution and urges his supporters to "Give the Obama-supporter mayor" a piece of their mind.

"This is not a city function. The city council is a runaway train! Kick the bums out!" Baumbach wrote.

For more on Baumbach and the rest of the Council candidates (there are 10, by the way), read BW tomorrow.

The mayor's resolution calls for insurance market reforms to help keep costs down, specifically for public employers like the city. But it also calls for expansion of public sector health care programs and a new public health plan option.

Read the whole thing below.

Advocates for single-payer national insurance will stage a die-in tomorrow from 5:30 - 6:30 p.m. outside Regence Blue Shield of Idaho, 1211 W Myrtle St., in Boise.

The organizers claim that 60 Americans die every day from a lack of health coverage and hope to have at least 60 folks "dead" for the event.

Idaho Rep. Walt Minnick is planning to phone-in townhall meetings on health care reform during the August recess. They will be held on Aug. 19 and 31 at 7 p.m.

A live townhall meeting in Post Falls last week went well for Minnick, according to Northwest Public Radio [Listen here].

People here are skeptical about the government getting more involved in health care, but Minnick didn’t get the aggressive lobbying and even heckling that other members of Congress have received.

Minnick is not dodging the public on his position on health care reform with his phone calls, however. He is planning a face to face discussion as well.

"I also hope to announce soon an event organized specifically to bring together representatives from seemingly divergent interests for a serious and substantive discussion to find Idaho's 'common ground' on health care and how it is impacting our economy," Minnick said in a press release. "I want to take back to my colleagues in Washington, D.C., a set of principles to bridge the current divides, a set of principles upon which the vast majority of Idahoans can agree."

To get on one of the calls, contact your closest Minnick office:

Washington DC Office: (202) 225-6611
Meridian Office: (208) 888-3188
Lewiston Office: (208) 743-1388
Coeur d’Alene Office: (208) 667-0127

Dr. Joe Jarvis, head of the Utah Healthcare Initiative, spoke at City Club of Boise this afternoon and citydesk showed up, took a spot in the back and diligently took notes in our trusty reporter's notebook. Had we had the forethought to check Jarvis' blog this morning rather than late yesterday afternoon, we'd have seen his City Club comments posted in full bright and early at 5:42 a.m. this morning.

Idaho Health Care for All picked up the tab for Jarvis' Boise travel expenses, and for those who caught the talk but were disappointed not to have Jarvis' usual slideshow (which he ditched in deference to the Boise State Radio crowd listening in), Idaho Health Care for All will post the slides.

Jarvis, who's run unsuccessfully for office in Utah twice, has a simple message when it comes to health-care reform: Health care is not a commodity that is efficiently distributed by a marketplace and therefore it's not a question of if the system needs to change, but how.

In his City Club remarks, Jarvis hammered a few key points more than once, specifically that health-care spending is on an unsustainable trajectory, and in order to effect change, a new system must reign in waste. Seems simple enough, right?

The only caveat is that what Jarvis considers waste is what health corporations consider profit. And to keep status quo, those corporations spend, according to Jarvis, $1 million a year courting every member of Congress—and that figure does not include campaign contributions.

Jarvis, not surprisingly, is not impressed by what he sees being debated in Congress. He flat out says both Congress and President Obama are wrong to throw tax money into massive reform. The issue is not a lack of money to provide coverage, according to Jarvis, it's that too much money is spent.
"Per-capita health spending is twice as high as it is in any other nation, and rising faster, because we waste up to half our health spending on inefficiency and poor quality."

So what's the solution according to Jarvis? Well, he opposes socialized medicine for starters, but he said, market forces have no place in medicine. He does, however, argue that as members of a society, we have a shared social responsibility to care for the sick. We also have agreed that we have a shared social responsibility to build a functioning transportation system and we tax ourselves to create and upkeep that infrastructure, he said. No one has a Constitutional right to pavement, but we work together to make it happen, Jarvis said.

In conclusion, he did offer six health-care practices he says should be eliminated in order for a new system to be successful:
1. Health underwriting, or cost shifting
2. Unsafe hospitable practices, which is the fifth leading cause of death in the country (behind HIV, auto accidents and breast cancer)
3. Inappropriate, or superfluous care, especially when less expensive and equally successful options are available.
4. Perverse incentives (Jarvis cites a Wall Street Journal article that states: "Hospitals and doctors can make more money providing inefficient, mediocre care.")
5. Market-based health policy ("Shopping is perhaps the quintessential American experience, but patients are not shoppers.")
6. Benefit denial, or rescission, which is essentially the practice of dumping the sick.

After his speech, Jarvis also fielded a number of questions, in which touched on the importance of electronic medical records (very important, says Jarvis), the Canadian health-care system (flawed) and the Wyden-Bennett Bill (against it, because it will create Swiss-cheese coverage due to a lack of quality improvement and cost control measures).

Final words: the health-care change we need cannot be mandated entirely from the big boys in Washington, D.C. Quality improvement will come from those who are at patients' bedsides. Patients must take responsibility to consider all options. And most importantly, the profiteering must end.

Wendell Potter former Cigna exec tells Bill Moyers how health insurance companies have hijacked American's health-care system. See the full interview here.