Whats Wrong With This picture?

by Frank Pizzoli

Children Real Losers in Harrisburg City Schools

The hills are alive but not with the sound of music at Harrisburg city schools. "I knew he was leaving before he got here," said one source who insisted on anonymity. He, of course, is Dr. Lucian Yates, superintendent of Harrisburg city schools.

It was intuitive the source said. "He’s not from here. He knows Ohio, it’s closer to Kentucky, where he’s from. We’re a stepping stone." There is "no micromanaging going here. This is an intelligent board. They know how things work."

I know I believe all that. A certain amount of chaos in civic affairs is healthy. Constant turmoil is life threatening. Our city’s schools are close to DOA in an ambulance no one wants to chase. Even if MODE’s source is truly psychic, the point is moot. Who would want to serve as superintendent in a school district that had to fire Yates’ predecessor? Who would want to serve after Yates hadn’t even finished out his first contract before interviewing elsewhere? The situation is festering into an embarrassing boil.

Meanwhile, local Senator Jeff Piccola — with Philly’s Frank Salvatore — has taken up the banner of Governor Tom Ridge’s plan to rescue poorly performing school districts in Pennsylvania. The legislation calls for $20 million in special funding and initially focuses on 11 districts in the state with failure rates of 50 percent or higher. Ouch!

Why wait until the enterprise is in such dismal shape? I realize public policy targets are often guestimates and arbitrary. But why wait until half the kids fail? Wouldn’t 25 percent be a rude enough signal? Or are Pennsylvania’s schools in such sad shape that too many would qualify for the special funds and $20 million becomes much more?

At any rate, Harrisburg schools are one of the 11. The only losers, with or without Yates’ departure, are the children. I’m beginning to think we might need the whole $20 million right here — to pay the next person daring enough to take the job.

Viagra But Not the Pill?

Get a load of this — health care plans cover Viagra but often do not cover birth control pills. Does that strike anyone else as, umm, erecting barriers in the road toward controlling unwanted pregnancies? We already make women sleep on the wet spot, unless you’re in a hotel room with two double beds.

It struck Representative Lita Cohen as unfair, thus her introduction of House Bill 11. "I’m asking for ‘contraceptive drug equity’ on par with other medications and medical devices," she explains. For business owners given to hissy fits over employee benefits, her legislation does not require a company to provide health care coverage if it currently does not. Nor does it require companies that currently provide employee health care coverage without a "pharmacy" benefit to add that benefit to their plans. "My bill requires companies that already have coverage plans with drug coverage as part of the plan to provide equitable coverage for contraceptive drugs," Cohen says. "I’m not ‘mandating’ anything, just asking for fairness," she stresses.

Although 97 percent of typical fee-for-service insurance plans written for large groups cover prescription drugs and 92 percent cover prescription medical devices, including drugs and devices exclusively used by men, only 49 percent of these policies cover contraceptive devices in any form. Only 15 percent cover all five of the methods approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration, according to the language of the legislation. "It’s only fair," Cohen remarked.

Fred A. Sembach, vice president for government affairs for the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business & Industry, disagreed in a letter to Cohen. He notes that there are currently 20 mandated health insurance coverage requirements in Pennsylvania. They range from alcohol and substance abuse counseling to chemotherapy and cancer hormone treatments, from child immunizations to diabetic supplies. Five are mandated on a "nondiscriminatory" basis, which means they aren’t really "mandated".

Sembach’s concerns over Cohen’s legislation is that, according to his communication, employers already pay $10 billion annually for health care coverage and each one percent increase in cost adds another $100 million to their outlay. Consequently, the state chamber objects to the equitable coverage of prescription drugs used by women to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Why is it that costs associated with happy, healthy employees are always cast as beasts of burden on the broken back of employers? Humans are a cost of doing business.

Then Sembach’s logic gets watery. "Some of these mandates have been proven to reduce health care costs. Many have not been proven to reduce costs - or simply do not. If only half of them are increasing costs at just one percent each, the total cost to business is $1 billion per year." Or is it? What if the other half is lowering costs one percent? Isn’t that a break even? Sembach didn’t respond to requests for clarification.

The logic gets even looser as Sembach’s letter spins his employer’s version of reality. "If Pennsylvania’s uninsured, those covered by Medicare or Medicaid, and those whose employers self-insure (they’re excluded) for health care are factored out, HB 11 would apply to 30-40 percent of the state’s population. It is doubtful that the occurrences of unwanted pregnancies are distributed equally among these four groups; it is more likely that the highest rate of unwanted pregnancies occurs among the uninsured and those covered by Medicare and Medicaid." If that’s true, then what is the Chamber’s point? Clearly, by their own calculations, Cohen’s legislation wouldn’t increase employers’ costs since they’re not covering the bulk of unwanted pregnancies which, according to Sembach, occur in Medicare and Medicaid recipients not covered by business.

We could require health care plans to abandon coverage of Viagra and achieve the same goal of fewer pregnancies, but somehow we don’t think the Chamber would rise to the occasion.