We Are Venice… Who Are You?

By Ian Dean

We have a question to all the newcomers to this town. Who are you?

We see what you do, how much money you make, how much power you have… but we still don’t know who you are.

Maybe it’s time for you to know who WE are.

We are Venice.

We are the artists and the musicians, we are the homeless and the performers, we are the lost and the forgotten.

We are the children of the servants when Abbot Kinney won this land in a bet.

We are the brothers and sisters of the gangs.

We are the no good kids who revolutionized skateboarding and turned it in to a multi-billion dollar sport when it was viewed as nothing but a novelty toy.

We are the citizens who made a home in a town that was usurped by Los Angeles and then left to rot.

We are the graffiti writers and surfers who made our home on what used to be the POP.

We are the ones who took the worst of what we were given and made this forgotten ramshackle of a once proud city a place that was ours and no outsider wanted to be because we were “of color” or because we were losers with no incentive to better ourselves.

We are the ones who embraced all who dared to be different or were down on their luck.

We are the ones who called this place home even when Los Angeles wanted nothing but our oil.

WE are Venice.

WE stayed here when no one else wanted to walk even close to Ghost Town.

WE never complained about property values being affected by the homeless.

WE never bitched about kids running amok and doing the stupid things that all teenagers do.

We never bought up giant parcels of land, kicked out families who had been here for years to build a condo or a 5-star restaurant so that money could be made by the very fact that this was Venice… a fact that WE created.

You moved here because of the aura, you moved here because of how happy we were, you moved here to be a part of something yet, little by little, all you do is destroy it.

You want the cool points of living on the beach or by it, where Jim Morrison came to play, where the Dogtown kids were inventive enough to turn decaying asphalt of our broken and run down environment and turn it in to an empire on various levels.

We are Venice.     Who are you?

This is Festival Month in Venice

Don’t even think about missing the fun. Two of the best, and longest running outdoor events take place in September: Jazz at Palms Court/Venice Music Festival (see page 7) and the Abbot Kinney Festival (see back page).

Sunday, Sept. 19, is the 18th annual benefit fundraiser for the Venice Community Housing Corporation. Two events take place: Jazz at Palms Court Campaign Brunch is from 11am – 2pm and costs $125. (it’s a fundraiser). For the rest of us, there’s the Venice Music Festival from 2 – 6pm. It’s only $10. This year, Luminaries, The 44’s and Allensworth will perform. This is mostly an event for Venice locals.

Everyone comes to the Abbot Kinney Festival, a week later on Sunday, Sept. 26 from 10am – 6 pm. Don’t let the crowds deter you. Lots of Venice community organizations (including the Beachhead) will be there, as well as genuine handmade arts and crafts. There’s music and stuff for the kids.

First Friday, for Who?

By CJ Gronner

‘On my last First Friday I realized this: There are way too many food trucks, they are so marginally talented and they need to drive to Bakersfield and stay there. And also, people of Brentwood, Santa Monica and the Palisades, PLEASE NOTE: you are not cool for just coming to Venice one Friday of the month. Love & Hugs as always…”

So read the Facebook status of one of my Venice pals the day after last month’s First Friday. Yep, I think it’s time for we citizens of Venice to have another little Pow Wow about it all. What started out as a thing to help out Abbot Kinney merchants at a slow-ish time, and have a cool hang for the locals to mingle and enjoy each other as they strolled along the Boulevard, has now become a bit of a monster that no locals seem to want to participate in.

August’s First Friday was a madhouse. I helped out at my friend’s store (Firefly) that night, so I was really immersed in it this time, rather than looking down upon it all from another friend’s balcony, which has been the norm recently. The entire part of the evening that we stayed open after normal non-First Friday hours, I recognized not one single soul from Venice – and I know a lot of people. Not ONE.

When you ask Venice people these days if you’ll see them on First Friday, the general response is “No way, I can’t stand that mess,” and it has actually propelled many of us AWAY from Venice (Helpful Hint: that would be a good day to try and lure us East of Lincoln, East side pals!).

And it really is a mess, literally and figuratively. A real mess, as people leave their food truck garbage everywhere (my bike basket is especially attractive to them for that purpose). A mess of people blocking the sidewalks, as it took me 20 minutes to get from locking Firefly’s back door to get to my bike parked in front. A mess of traffic, as 40 (!) Food Trucks (the most ever, I believe) lined the streets, and a long queue more of them waited their turn on Milwood to turn on to AKB. It’s gotten to where it’s really just kind of gross, and not many locals want to participate in that.

People that live in Venice chose their home for a reason, generally, and that is that it is VENICE … not Santa Monica, not the Marina, but Venice, and all that goes along with that. We don’t want Abbot Kinney to be another cheesy Promenade. We like to support local businesses. We like to park somewhere near our homes. We like to ride our bikes or walk without a hassle. We like to recognize SOMEONE as we go about our fun.

More and more shops and businesses on the street are talking about not staying open for First Fridays, as it doesn’t seem to be that profitable. The permanent restaurants on the Boulevard are all great, and busy on Fridays anyway. With such a glut of Food Trucks that night, and locals completely avoiding it all, who really benefits from the thing – other than the night trippers that want to feel all cool and Venice for an evening, I mean?

Again, I don’t have the answers, but we need to discuss it all, before the whole thing turns ugly. There’s already anger with the food trucks, the crowds, the garbage, the parking, etc … and that’s not cool. I just want my friends and neighbors to be happy, and there hasn’t been too much happiness (that I’ve heard of) with the whole First Friday deal. On the other hand, it’s merely one night a month, and I guess we can all stomach that … I guess.  Most seem to think it’s a passing phase/phenomenon, and we can just ride it out. People will find some other place to go litter and Twitter and get drunk soon enough. Time will tell…

It’s a good time to talk about Venice Cityhood, too. With independence from Los Angeles, we’d be more free to sort out what’s best for us as a city, and as a people. FREE – that’s a big, big part of why I chose to live here, to feel free to live however I want to, with like sorts that also greatly value their freedom. That’s why this paper is called The FREE Venice Beachhead.  It’s the core value, I believe, of Venice.

So let’s talk about all of it… First Fridays, supporting local business and the best ways to do that, if Cityhood is a real possibility that has support and benefits everyone, litter, parking and anything else you want to talk about. Write to The Beachhead, or stop me on the street Monday-Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, since I probably won’t be seeing any of you at First Friday.

Letters

• View from the Venice Boardwalk -Venice Beach Boardwalk Coalition Administrative Board (VBBC)
• Ocean Front Walk Lottery - Shirley Jackson
• Major Hoax: Don’t Get Fooled Again! - Cindy Sheehan
• Electric Trolley - Robin Doyno

————————–

View from the Venice Boardwalk

Oh, what a lootery for you and me!!!
Get your permit ($25) and
Your license (a mere $10 fee)
– AND JUST SHOW UP!!!

Okay, here’s at least part of the lottery scene at the Recreation and Parks office every Tuesday morning at Venice Beach.

First -  there are certain spaces that, no matter who is called for what, always seem to have been assigned to the same individual – even when that individual was not called!  Divine intervention?  Magic?  Mysterious forces?  You decide.

Second – Amazingly, some individuals have several names, all of which are entered into the lottery by said individual. Two names belonging to a single person had the misfortune to be called within one block of pulled permits in the lottery, revealing the duplication.  Sorry, only one allotted space per person per lottery. Where are Recreation and Parks Dept. checks and balances (or checks, at least)?

Well, given that even corporations, aliases, a wife (using both married and maiden names), the kids (any age) and the extended family can enter the lottery, perhaps the people in the office should be cut some slack.  You might wonder how many multiple names exist for a single individual that God hasn’t yet intervened to blow the permit holder’s cover.  At least six, according to some sources.

Third – Invariably, there are the complaints from the crowd of permit holders, while the lottery is underway, that go as follows:

A.   a particular individual has not been called for at least two weeks – sometimes even as much as nine weeks – preventing him or her from working.

B.   a permit holder is known by complainant to be a homeless person who never sets up in the allotted space, but sells the space to buy beer.

C.   a permit holder whose name is called in the lottery, but who does not set up and instead, gives/sells the space to someone else.

Fourth:  There are the ten “NO VENDING” BLACK SPACES – purportedly unassigned, first come, first served.  Vendors regularly claim those black spaces by coming very early in the morning to the beach, often establishing a PERMANENT claim on the space.  In which case – and more often than not – getting called in the lottery is a perk.

Additionally, vendors who regularly claim and occupy those black spaces are known to give a space they have won in the lottery to a friend, or let it lie vacant, while they vend from the BLACK SPACE.  Alternatively, it appears that they let someone they know, who is in need of a space, use “their” BLACK SPACE, with the understanding that it reverts back to them when they need it at the end of their lottery period.

-Venice Beach Boardwalk Coalition Administrative Board (VBBC)

————-

Ocean Front Walk Lottery

Dear Beachhead,

I read Della Franco’s letter to the Beachhead (July, 2010) regarding the problems with your Lottery at Venice Beach with more than a little sense of disbelief.

First off, in all my years involved with Lotteries I never heard of someone being able to sell their place in the Lottery, much less someone wanting to buy it.

I’m also confused at allowing multiple family members to participate. That simply goes against all logic.

And from what I gather, the Lottery was established just for local Venice artists and craftspeople, but now outsiders have muscled in where neither do they belong, nor judging from the tone of Ms. Franco’s missive, are appreciated.

I believe I have a solution to Ms. Franco’s conundrum.

The seashore along our New England coast is absolutely

littered with the most beautiful smooth rounded stones of all sizes, but, from the pictures I have seen on the web of Venice Beach, you suffer from a terrible dearth of nice, palm-sized and larger stones, so necessary to conducting a satisfying Lottery.

Perhaps you could get those “Recs and Parks” fellows to procure a truckload, or if that’s not possible, move your Lottery to a site where suitable projectiles are more abundant.

I do hope this helps you resolve your problem.

Regards, Shirley Jackson, Bennington, Vt.

————

Major Hoax

Don’t Get Fooled Again!

Dear Beachhead,

The U.S. once again declare a false end to the war in Iraq on August 31 in a fake ceremony in Baghdad..

First of all, this was never a war. This always has been an illegal invasion and occupation of a sovereign country and it was obviously for the monetary benefit of a few, and millions of people, including my family, have suffered because of it.

• The first MAJOR HOAX was that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had WMD and a connection to al Qaeda and if the US didn’t invade immediately Iraq would send mushroom clouds, or drones with bio-weapons to the US East Coast–
• the second MAJOR HOAX was that we ended the war on May 1, 2003 when then US president, George Bush, declared an “end to combat operations;”
• the third MAJOR HOAX is that the US ended a horrible dictatorship, only to be replaced with a puppet US regime that almost makes execution a national sport.

Now, with a country in ruins and the US leaving many major construction projects unfinished-we are again perpetrating a MAJOR HOAX, not just on the people of Iraq, but the people of the US.

With 50,000 troops (the 3^rd Armored Cavalry is deploying from Ft. Hood, Texas to Iraq as we speak), 18,000 mercenary killers and 82,000 support contractors (staffing an Imperial Embassy the size of 80 football fields), the illegal and immoral US occupation of Iraq is far from over.

As Ret. Lt. General James Dubik said recently: “It is in our (US) interest to have an Iraq that is friendly to the US.” What he means is an Iraq that is friendly to US war profiteers.

I want to say this in the most simple and direct way that I can: “If you believe that the war in Iraq is over, and not merely carnage rebranded, then you are deluding yourself and I hope you wake up to the fact that for generations human beings have been used as pawns for the political elite-and, don’t forget, that this is an election year.”

I urge all of you to put on your critical-thinking caps and reject this propaganda and reaffirm your commitment to peace above political party.

-Cindy Sheehan

————

Electric Trolley

Dear Beachhead,

Jim Smith’s “Getting Around Venice” article in the August issue (#346) makes such very good sense.

The community of Venice would greatly benefit from an electric trolley (shuttle).

The often-congested Abbot Kinney Blvd. corridor would be a likely good starting point in making an impact in reducing the overabundance of automobiles.  A covered trolley with tiered fares for natives and tourists would be so very practical and chic at the same time. The electric trolley could be a boon to the merchants and aid the community member trying to get from point “A” to point “B” without spending too much time in traffic.

I have had some good fortune in writing grants and developing ideas (many years ago) and would be most pleased to hear from community members that would like to kick this idea around.

Peace,  Robin Doyno

The Real Stink about Dumping

By Peggy Lee Kennedy

Recently, right-wing radio, along with some mainstream media, have been having a field day regarding alleged RV dumping of black water in Venice. With all the propaganda surrounding this, I cannot understand how over 100 gallons of sewage could come out of a holding tank that most likely has somewhere between a 25 and 40 gallon capacity. And the Venice Neighborhood Watch character, whose credibility has been questioned by community members, was the person who fingered the alleged dumper.

Still, Councilman Bill Rosendahl is calling for an agency “working group” in order to better respond to public health hazards. Here are some of our most critical public health hazards they will ignore:

1. The dumping of carbon pollution from petroleum and coal used for energy and transportation – our carbon footprint is something we should all be trying to reduce, but one of the main culprits is our US Military.

2. The dumping of livestock excrement into our waterways by factory farms, often unregulated, pollutes and kills life by spreading the chemicals injected into the animals along with the insecticides used on livestock feed into lakes, streams, rivers that flows into our oceans, and seeps into the ground water,

3. The dumping of methane gas into our atmosphere by these livestock factory farms, which is a significant greenhouse gas linked to global warming. If you purchase and consume factory farmed animal products, you are contributing to these public health hazards – not to mention creating a health hazard for you and your family.

In fact, these few examples of dumping I have cited (and there are more) are well documented public health hazards that many scientists believe will end life as we know it on Planet Earth, especially if they aren’t reduced or controlled dramatically, not the people who live in RVs in Venice.

So a little perspective is in order here – along with trying to focus on positive solutions.

The city and the county could provide some free vouchers for RV dumping at Dockweiler State Beach. They could also open the existing public restrooms at nighttime. Along with a few well maintained port-a-potties – we could solve many of the issues related to the normal human functions.

Considering the millions of people who visit Venice, generating millions of dollars of tourist revenue, it is simply silly that our city councilman has not tried at least these few things prior to calling for a high-faluting working group.

He could also do the humane thing and make sure people living in vehicles had some safe local public parking lots to go to at night before calling for the homeless haters to fill out bogus petitions in order to justify putting in his newly amended oversized vehicle ordinance in Venice.

We absolutely need to consider taking emergency measures pertaining to our homeless population, like providing safe public parking lots, because many people living in vehicles are sick or disabled, and we are in the middle of an economic crisis that does not appear to being resolved any time soon.

Let’s not forget that we have the largest Free Clinic in Southern California in Venice.

Unfortunately, our city has mainly chosen law enforcement, incarceration, and the court system as the non-solution-based answer to homelessness. It costs much more to criminalize homeless people than to house them, and our local tax dollars are supporting these heavy expenditures. We tax payers are helping to perpetuate a big, festering, budget boil that has no cure.

It would save money and be much more helpful to those in need if people could get united behind solutions, like building more low income housing or assisted living, rather than hate and fear mongering. And as for that right-wing radio, I think if you listen to those stations too much your IQ will be decreased – if not eliminated completely.

Dumping Sidebar: US Military Dumping of Carbon

In 2006 the Department of Defense was the largest consumer of energy in the world – using 1 quadrillion BTU. A standard military M-1 Abrams tank will only go 20 miles on 100 gallons of fuel. Lets not forget the hazardous public health effects of depleted uranium or all the extremely nasty chemicals, like perchlorate, used for explosives.

–The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism – By Barry Sanders, AK Press

Dumping Sidebar: United Nations Declares Sanitation A Basic Human Right

Sanitation and safe and clean drinking water is a human right essential to the full enjoyment of life and all other human rights, the General Assembly declared July 28, voicing deep concern that 2.6 billion people, including the homeless in Venice, do not have access to basic sanitation and almost 900 million people worldwide do not have access to clean water.

The 192-member Assembly also called on United Nations Member States and international organizations to offer funding, technology and other resources to help poorer countries scale up their efforts to provide clean, accessible and affordable drinking water and sanitation for everyone.

The Assembly resolution received 122 votes in favour and zero votes against, while 41 countries abstained from voting, including the United States.

If you have to stack ‘em, you’ve got too many cars

It all began when Restaurant Developer Fran Camaj, otherwise know as ADC Development of Beverly Hills, applied to the city of Los Angeles for a permit to demolish the existing structures at 1305 Abbot Kinney Blvd. and build a restaurant on the site.

Naturally, the city rubber stamped the application even though it did not have adequate parking.  Venice residents appealed to the Coastal Commission which found that substantial issues existed, especially the lack of parking. The Commission staff supported the appeal.

The Developer hired Attorney John Henning who had been, and may still be, the lawyer for Mark Ryavec’s Venice Stakeholders Association, which has been leading the effort to bring overnight permit parking to Venice. The Commission voted against it last June.

Henning recently argued before the Venice Neighborhood Council that the solution to the lack of parking for the restaurant is to stack the cars 30 feet high in a mechanical contraption (not to be confused with the photo above).

Camaj also owns another restaurant on Abbot Kinney Blvd. at Milwood Avenue, called Gjelina.

Back at 1305 AKB, some of the units are classified as residential, although they haven’t been used as such since the boulevard became hip and landlords could charge more renting to businesses. The proposed new building would not be mixed use which would allow replacement of the former residential units.

It took the VNC more than an hour to dispose of the car stacking scheme. But this is likely not the end of the road, so to speak, for this latest gentrification plan.

–Jim Smith

Putting Labor Back in Labor Day

By Roger Linnett

The one thing in this country that we should be talking about but aren’t, especially considering it’s Labor Day, is jobs. Real jobs, too – not menial part-time jobs or ones that are ego-crushingly below one’s qualifications and experience.

The economy seems to be recovering, if you follow the financial news, but there hasn’t been a concomitant re-employment of sidelined American workers. The growing realization is that our jobs aren’t coming back, and the corporations are just fine with that.

Recently, talking head economists let slip that American industry is sitting on over $1 trillion in cash, which it is now going to use for mergers and acquisitions, i.e., buying up and consolidating economic holdings and power. We could be in for a whole new wave of job losses.

Remember the good old days after the Reagan tax cuts, when larger corporations were gobbling up smaller ones like M & Ms? Jobs disappeared by the thousands as consolidation was the mantra of the day. What couldn’t be consolidated was dismantled and shipped overseas where goods could be produced at a fraction of the cost, mainly labor, than they could in the good ol’ U.S. of A. We even gave tax breaks to companies that shipped their plants and our jobs overseas! (Just ask Senatorial Candidate Carly Fiorina about the killing she made with Hewlett-Packard.)

Then, our trade policies were shredded during the Clinton years; remember GATT, NAFTA and the WTO?  So that today our tariff rates on imports average around 2 percent, whereas most of the rest of the industrialized world still operates at around 20 percent. Who in their right mind would want to open a factory here that could compete with our overseas rivals given those circumstances? And those jobs that can’t be outsourced (a vile term) are, nonetheless, under assault.

A case in point – -

Three hundred five union workers at the Mott’s apple processing plant in Williamson, near Rochester, N.Y., voted to strike last May when the plant, owned by beverage conglomerate, the Dr. Pepper Snapple Group (DPS), demanded that the employees take a pay cut averaging about 33 percent.

The reason for the company’s action was not economic hardship; in fact, the company is making record profits. The company’s position was based on their reckoning that the plant’s workers were making about half again as much as the average wages being paid for blue-collar production in the Rochester area. It should be noted, however, that the area’s workforce and economy has been suffering from years of layoffs and downsizing led by the industrial mainstays of the area, Xerox and Kodak. DPS maintains that, since the labor market in the area is depressed, they are overpaying their employees.

According to a recent New York Times article, union officials say that 70 percent of the plant’s workers earn $19 or less an hour and that many are highly experienced (some as much as 24 years) and deserve well more than $14 an hour –  the current comparable regional average wage, according to DPS.

The Times article also cited Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which represents the Mott’s workers as stating, “they said, ‘We have no financial need for this, but we just want it anyway because we figure we can get away with it.’ “

DPS wanted to cut their wages by about $3,000 a year, freeze pensions, end pensions for new hires, reduce the company’s 401(k) retirement contributions and increase employees’ costs for health care benefits. DPS said it was merely seeking to bring its benefits more in line with those of its other plants, the Times reported.

Furthermore, the employees were already incensed that over the previous two years the company cancelled bonuses, the company summer picnic and the annual employee’s children’s Christmas party, thus priming the workers to overwhelming agree on the strike vote. Adding insult to injury, the company posted record profits last year and increased its dividend by 67 percent in May.

DPS’s dilemma is that it can’t just up and move its plant to China. The apples are here, so they’re stuck. The company has hired scabs to keep the plant open as the annual harvest begins. The plant processes about half the apples produced in the region, but many growers in the area are concerned about reports that the plant is only operating at one third its capacity. Despite pressure to settle, the company has refused to resume negotiations. Happy Labor Day, indeed!

Our country has gone from being the greatest creditor nation in the world to being the greatest debtor nation in the world; from being the largest exporter of finished goods to the largest importer of finished goods and from the largest importer of raw materials to the largest exporter of raw materials. We have, in 30 short years, gone from being the greatest industrial power on the globe to a third world nation. Our consumer-driven economy is being strangled because of the decimation of the working and middle classes.

It is a principle of all economics that demand precedes supply. Thus, it must also be true that, in a consumer-driven economy, the consumers have to have enough money to purchase the products available. Henry Ford knew this; he paid his workers enough to afford to buy the cars they made; a practice which appalled many fellow industry leaders of the day.

So, how do we regain our former, glorious, working man’s America?  Labor built this country. So labor, the people, must be pre-eminent in the plans.

First, withdraw from the WTO. It’s about time we started protecting our own industries and our own jobs again, instead of being a global laughing stock.

Second, roll back the Reagan tax rates to pre-1980 levels, when we taxed anyone who made over $3 million per year at 74 percent. That will encourage companies to reinvest their profits in their businesses instead of sending them to offshore tax havens, and will bring CEO compensation back to reality.

Third, start enforcing the Sherman Anti-Trust Act again, which, Teddy Roosevelt used to break up the cancerous monopolies of the Robber Baron era. We must deconstruct the mega corporations that control media, energy, food production and virtually own our political process.

Fourth, pass the Employee Free Choice Act. It was the unions that grew the working and middle classes that drove our economy. Union jobs, as a percentage of the total labor market, have decreased from around 25 percent in 1980 to about 7 percent today.

The American work force has been consigned to the scrap heap, and replaced with a cheaper, but just as expendable, version. Our only purpose today is to consume the products being imported from around the world.

It’s time for us to climb down off that scrap heap and take back our hard-won standard of living; to re-ignite the true American Dream, not of unspeakable riches and the dreams of avarice, but the one about owning your own home, providing for a secure retirement, about the freedom from worrying that a devastating illness will wipe out a lifetime’s work and of helping your children have a better life than yours. Only then can we once again “celebrate” Labor Day.

New Healthcare Law Provisions Take Effect

By Roger Linnett

Many new aspects of the Patients Protection and Affordable Care Act, which the president signed on March 23, 2010, are now in effect and much more soon will be. The major features of the new law are:

• It makes insurance more affordable by providing the largest middle class tax cut for health care in history, reducing premium costs for tens of millions of families and small business owners who are priced out of coverage today.
• It helps 32 million Americans afford health care who do not get it today.
• Under the plan, 95% of Americans will be insured.
• It sets up a new competitive health insurance market giving millions of Americans the same choices of insurance that members of Congress have.
• It brings greater accountability to health care by enumerating practical rules to keep premiums down and preventing insurance industry abuses and denial of care.
• It will end discrimination against Americans with pre-existing conditions.
• It will reduce the deficit by somewhere between $30 billion and $100 billion over the next ten years – and by as much as $1 trillion over the second decade – by cutting government overspending and reining in waste, fraud and abuse.

Here is a breakdown of the new provisions in three areas; 1) Consumer Protections, 2) Improved Quality at Lower Costs and 3) Increased Access:

Consumer Protections

Effective March 23rd -

• An easy to use website comes online to compare health insurance coverage options and choose the the best plan for them, with ongoing improvements as data from insurance companies and public input make it more comprehensive.

Effective September 23rd -

• Insurance companies are prevented from denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions. In 2014, this prohibition extends to everyone.
• Rescission, i.e., dropping people from coverage when they get sick is banned, except in cases of fraud.
• It will be illegal to use errors on applications or technical mistakes to deny coverage.
• Imposing lifetime dollar limits on essential benefits like hospital stays is prohibited.
• A sharp restriction of the use of annual dollar limits on patient coverage. In 2014, all annual limits will be prohibited.
• A simplified way to appeal (to either the insurer or to an outside board), if the company denies coverage or a claim is established.

Improved Quality at Lower Costs

Effective March 23rd -

• Small businesses are eligible for tax credits to help them provide insurance for their workers. The first phase provides a credit of up to a 35 percent of the employer’s contribution. In 2014, tax credits will cover 50 percent of premiums. Small, non-profit organizations may receive up to a 25 percent credit.
• Seniors, who this year fall into the gap in Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage known as the “donut hole”, will receive a $250 rebate. In 2011, a 50 percent discount on prescriptions begins.
• A new $15 billion Prevention and Public Health Fund will invest in such proven prevention programs as smoking cessation and decreasing obesity.
• Medicare investigators, who returned more than $2.5 billion to the Medicare Trust Fund in FY 2009, will receive additional resources to further reduce fraud and waste in Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).

Effective September 23rd -

• New and existing Medicare plans that make specified changes will cover preventive services, bringing relief to millions of seniors for whom preventive care means early identification of disease and greater opportunity for treatment and recovery. In 2011, Medicare eliminates all co-pays and deductibles for these services.

Increased Access

Effective March 23rd -

• Young people are allowed to remain on their parents’ insurance policy until their 26th birthday, unless offered insurance at their work. Most insurance companies already offer this.
• A transitional high-risk-pool program provides new coverage options to individuals who, because of a pre-existing condition, have been uninsured for at least six months. States have the option of running their own temporary high risk pool. If a state chooses not to do so, a National pool will be established by the Department of Health and Human Services.
• Funding to expand the number of primary care doctors, nurses and physician assistants, through scholarships and loan repayments for primary care doctors and nurses working in under-served areas. Doctors and nurses with student loans will also receive tax relief if they practice in communities with a shortage of health care providers.
• $250 million in new grants for states that have or plan to implement measures that require insurance companies to justify their premium increases. Insurance companies with excessive or unjustified premiums may be ineligible to participate in the new health insurance exchanges beginning in 2014.
• States will receive increased federal matching funds for covering low-income individuals and families on Medicaid.
• A $5 billion program to maintain affordable care has been created targeted at Americans who retire before they are eligible for Medicare( age 65) or are without employer-sponsored insurance, until more affordable coverage is available through the exchanges in 2014, Previously, many had seen their life savings disappear due to current exorbitant rates.

Effective January 1, 2011 -

• New funding will be allocated over the next 5 years to support the construction of, and expand services at, community health centers, allowing these centers to serve some 20 million new patients across the country.

Future legislation is working its way through Congress to extend and improve on the new law. For example, should the “public option” provision that allows Americans to join a national, single-payer program be enacted in the future, the savings in costs for both consumers and health care providers could be greatly improved, leading to further deficit reductions, while improving patient services.

Not waiting for a national program, many states are looking into starting their own single-payer programs. Congress is also in the process of creating legislation that will gradually lower the eligibility age for Medicare, which will further improve coverage and reduce patient’s expenses.

Data for this article was compiled from the following:

WhiteHouse.gov,

KaiserFamilyFoundation.org, ModernHealthcare.com and the SeniorCitizensJournal.org.