If this sounds unnatural, it’s the reality for many young girls of color who experience early signs of puberty at alarming rates. The latest research adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting that an array of social and environmental factors may be causing girls’ bodies to develop prematurely. Breast Cancer and the Environment Research Centers–looked at 1,239 girls screened in Manhattan, Cincinnati and San Francisco. It reveals stark racial disparities.

The girls who developed breasts early, as young as age seven, were disproportionately Black and Latina. Black 8-year-olds were more than twice as likely as white girls to develop breasts. As the NYT reports:

At 7 years, 10.4 percent of white, 23.4 percent of black and 14.9 percent of Hispanic girls had enough breast development to be considered at the onset of puberty.

At age 8, the figures were 18.3 percent in whites, 42.9 percent in blacks and 30.9 percent in Hispanics. The percentages for blacks and whites were even higher than those found by a 1997 study that was one of the first to suggest that puberty was occurring earlier in girls.

As Susan Shane explained in a 2008 Colorlines essay, early puberty tends to produce complicated dilemmas. Girls often find themselves physically maturing at a faster pace than they learn how to deal with sexual contact, and may face certain cancer risks later in life.

The findings dovetail with earlier research by the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, which has tracked elevated exposures to environmental toxins in mothers in low-income New York neighborhoods. The data reflect a disturbing prevalence of chemicals known to be endocrine disruptors, including common plastic ingredients known as pthalates.

The Obama administration has begun taking environmental health risks more seriously, beginning with a groundbreaking report from the Presidential Cancer Panel which highlighted the threats of environmental carcinogens.

Meanwhile, the White House is campaigning to reduce childhood obesity, another health problem tied to early-onset puberty, which may expand poor kids’ access to healthy foods and recreation.

As the budget battle shakes out, it’s too early to tell how comprehensively the administration will address the link between health and environment. The research is clear, however: the risk to youth isn’t just about “lifestyle,” but justice, especially for the young girls of color who carry an unequal burden as they step suddenly into adulthood.

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There’s noise now in Washington that policy makers are considering paying for health care reform, in part, by taxing health care benefits workers receive through employer-provided health coverage. Such an ill-conceived plan not only represents a big a tax hike for workers and their employers, but carries serious and hidden costs, according to a new study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

In “Not-So-Easy Money: Taxing Health Care Benefits Comes with Costs,” Elise Gould, EPI’s director of health care policy research, warns

we should proceed with extreme caution before moving to cap or eliminate this tax exclusion.

The latest government figures show that in 2007, 70 percent of the 253 million people with health insurance received at least some of their coverage through employers. Currently, the money spent on providing health care coverage is tax deductible to the employer and the employee is not taxed on it.

Workers who get their health care coverage through employment, and the employers who provide it, already have seen years of their costs climbing and their coverage shrinking through higher premiums, bigger co-pays, larger deductibles and more exclusions in coverage.

On top of that, workers’ paychecks have stagnated as they have given up pay raises to funnel those funds to cover the higher health care costs and maintain coverage.

UAW Legislative Director Alan Reuther recently told The New York Times that proposals to tax health care benefits

would represent a tax increase on working families. They would undermine good health care coverage.

Not only are the proposals a tax hike on workers, but, says Gould, they also could accelerate the decline in employer-provided coverage.

The current policy of excluding health benefits from taxation provides employers with an incentive to offer health insurance to their workforce. When large groups of workers (and their families) sign-up for health insurance through employers, “risk pools” are formed. The key to these risk pools is that people are not grouped according to their health, creating a viable and stable insurance pool.

Taxing health insurance benefits would encourage the young and healthy to opt out of these pools; upon their exit, premiums would likely rise for those remaining.

Consequently, a policy that taxes health benefits would likely accelerate the substantial erosion in employer-sponsored insurance that has occurred since 2000 and thus cause more people to lose insurance coverage altogether.

Those pushing the health care tax also claim it would reduce health care costs by discouraging workers from so-called “wasteful” health care spending and steering them away from more comprehensive, quality coverage to lower-cost, more bare-bones coverage. Says Gould:

…taxing high-priced health coverage will heavily burden two groups: workers in small firms and workers in employer pools with higher health risks, such as those with a high percentage of older workers.

Small businesses are paying high premiums for the insurance they provide to their employees not because the plans are especially lavish, but because they have high administrative costs and include too few employees to constitute the broader risk pool that would qualify them for lower premiums.

Employees whose characteristics cause them to be classified as higher risks make them more expensive to insure. Adding a tax on top of the cost of premiums they and their employers pay will likely drive more of them into the ranks of the uninsured.

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The San Francisco health care ordinance, which was passed by the city and county Board of Supervisors in July 2006, has been in effect for more than a year. It provides coverage for 80,000 mostly low-wage workers. The program offers comprehensive health care services to uninsured San Franciscans and their employers at a reasonable cost, with subsidies for small- and medium-size businesses and low- and moderate-income individuals. It splits the costs among employers, employees and the city.

To prevent employers from eliminating coverage, the San Francisco health care initiative establishes a minimum health care spending requirement for businesses in the city, depending on the number of employees. If a business does not provide health coverage, it must pay into a fund that provides coverage.

Led by the restaurant group, many San Francisco business owners have waged a legal battle against the health care program. In September, a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled against the group when it found the health care program does not violate the federal law that regulates employee benefits, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA).  Earlier this month, the court denied a review petition.

According to the Daily Labor Report (subscription required), the restaurant group then filed for an emergency stay, claiming the appeals court ruling upholding the city ordinance threatens the model for federal health care reform envisioned by the Obama administration and will likely be overturned. The DLR reports the restaurant group argues that the economic recovery package:

represents the government’s recognition of a national interest in employer-provided health care. The Ninth Circuit’s decision, it said, threatens that national interest by posing a “significant obstacle to nationally uniform benefit plan administration.”

Deputy San Francisco City Attorney Vince Chhabria says:

The alleged emergency is that restaurants will have to continue providing health care benefits during that process. It is difficult to understand how this is an emergency, given that the law has been in effect for more than a year now. It is also difficult to understand how this is an emergency, given that the restaurants are passing the costs on to their customers, and their customers are very happy to know that the people serving and preparing their food are getting health care as a result.

The San Francisco Labor Council and city unions were instrumental in both winning passage of the health care program and the legal battles. The city says more than 36,000 people already have received basic medical care under Healthy San Francisco. The vast majority are low-wage workers in service, retail and restaurant jobs whose employers do not provide health care coverage and who cannot afford to purchase it on their own.

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As Obama’s White House health care summit approached on March 5, advocates of a so-called “single-payer” system, under which the government would cover everyone, eliminating the role of private insurers, were stunned to learn they weren’t invited. It was an insult to organizations that have been warning for years about the health care crisis-in-the-making and putting forward the single-payer alterative — Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), the California Nurses Association (CNA) and Healthcare-NOW!

Rep. John Conyers, the sponsor of a bill, known by its official designation HR 676, that would establish single-payer, personally asked Obama for an invitation when the two met at a Congressional Black Caucus meeting. The answer was no.

Only because people flooded the White House with angry phone calls, faxes and e-mails, and PNHP threatened to protest, the administration relented and reluctantly invited Conyers and Oliver Fein, the president of PNHP.

At the summit, Obama stated: “In this effort, every voice must be heard. Every idea must be considered. Every option must be on the table. There will be no sacred cows in this discussion.”

This simply isn’t true. Obama and his advisers have stated openly and unequivocally that as far as they are concerned, single-payer isn’t on the table — and the White House guest list for the summit proves the point.

Summit invitations went out to more than 120 “stakeholders,” [1] every one of them opposed to single-payer, save for Conyers and Fein. It was a rogue’s gallery of profit-seeking, price-gouging, highly compensated corporate criminals from the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

Among them were Karen Ignagni, president and CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), annual compensation $1,236,422; Scott Serota, CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield, annual compensation $1,498,018; Jeff Kindler, CEO of Pfizer, annual compensation $12.6 million; and Ken Powell, member of the Business Roundtable and CEO of General Mills, annual compensation $6,515,047.

Another invitation went to Billy Tauzin, a former Republican member of Congress notorious for his sleazy deals, and now, as president and CEO of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the top lobbyist for the drug company giants.

There were representatives from patient organizations and unions at the table, too: the American Cancer Society, AARP, Families USA, the Service Employees International Union, the United Auto Workers, and the AFL-CIO. Unfortunately, the leaders of these organizations still accept that there is a role for the private insurance industry, even while many of their members do not.

Watching the breakout sessions streaming live over the Internet was both infuriating and surreal. The “stakeholders” sat side by side at the same table, laughing and smiling — among them, CEOs responsible for a health care crisis that has left 50 million Americans uninsured and that causes the needless deaths of 18,000 and 100,000 people every year, depending on who is doing the estimating.

Meanwhile, not one union leader or patient advocate or political leader was willing to point out the responsibility of the insurance and pharmaceutical industry for the crisis. Not one dared to speak truth to power, not even Conyers.

Obama set the tone for the meeting by asserting, “Each of us must accept that none of us will get everything we want, and no proposal for reform will be perfect. While everyone has a right to take part in this discussion, no one has the right to take it over.” Yet in each of the five breakout sessions, the insurance industry did dominate the discussion. Moreover, the moderators of each session were all foes of single-payer, including Zeke Emanuel, a physician and brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

At the end of the forum, Obama handed the microphone to Ignagni, the voice of the insurance industry, who declared, “We hear the American people about what’s not working. We’ve taken that seriously. You have our commitment to play, to contribute, and to help pass health care reform this year.”

Really? Is this the same Ignagni whose AHIP bankrolled the infamous Harry and Louise television commercials 15 years ago in a successful attempt to smear the Clinton administration’s health care reform effort (though the Clintons certainly helped by putting forward a compromised proposal).

Does anyone seriously believe the AHIP would be willing to play fair if it didn’t think the Obama administration was preparing to deliver “reform” on terms that preserve its interests and profits?

Single-payer advocates never even got in the door in Sen. Ted Kennedy’s secret meetings on health care. According to the New York Times, Kennedy has been holding behind-closed-doors gatherings since last fall with lobbyists from AHIP, PhRMA, the Business Roundtable and others.

These clandestine, invitation-only sessions were designed to whittle down options for health care reform under the Obama presidency, with the health care industry setting the parameters of what would be acceptable. Reportedly, the insurance industry got a guarantee from Kennedy that single-payer wouldn’t be on the table.

According to the Times, the consensus in the Kennedy meetings embraced so-called “mandates”–a legal requirement that every American have health insurance. As a memo written by a Kennedy staffer and leaked to the Times put it:

[T]he sense of the room is that an individual obligation to purchase insurance should be part of reform if that obligation is coupled with effective mechanisms to make coverage meaningful and affordable…There seems to be a sense of the room that some form of tax penalty is an effective means to enforce such an obligation, though only on those for whom affordable coverage is available.

According to the Times, the industry lobbyists at Ted’s table said they would accept stricter regulation, including a requirement to offer coverage to people with pre-existing medical conditions, but only if the federal government requires everyone to buy coverage.

This is essentially the same scheme for insurance mandates that was passed in Massachusetts in 2006, under then-Gov. Mitt Romney, a right-wing Republican.

Under the Massachusetts law, for those who don’t have employer-provided coverage, the state subsidizes sub-standard insurance coverage for the poor, and requires those in other income brackets to buy policies or pay a tax penalty — this year, it will be over $1,000.

In other words, the insurance companies make money coming and going, and ordinary people pay the price. A recent study by doctors at Harvard Medical School, titled “Massachusetts’ Plan: A Failed Model for Health Care Reform,” shows the Massachusetts mandate model isn’t financially sustainable or truly affordable for those required to buy private insurance.

The plan hasn’t even attained its stated goal of “universal” coverage: over 200,000 people in Massachusetts are still uninsured, and that number will increase as a result of rising unemployment. That is the other major flaw in the model — it continues to link health insurance to employment.

The cost of an individual plan in Massachusetts averages around $3,500 for an individual and $10,000 for a family. The Commonwealth Choice program classifies commercial plans into four levels: Gold, Silver, Bronze and Young Adult. The lower-priced Bronze plans have a $2,000 per person deductible, co-pays and restrictions on where care is provided. The message: We won’t all be Michael Phelps.

As for the federal “reform” effort, insurance executives have made it clear they will oppose the creation of a new public Medicare-like option, with the government providing health care benefits. The insurers complain this would be unfair competition — Ignagni has called such proposals “a ’stalking horse’ to drive the nation toward a single-payer government system.”

The insurance companies want “reform” that delivers the entire nation to their doorstep and forces us to buy private insurance from them at prices they set. They definitely don’t want any option that lets people opt out of their system and choose a public plan, as no doubt millions would, if given a choice.

In a distortion of the single-payer slogan “Everybody in, nobody out,” the insurers want everybody in and nobody out . . . of their private, for-profit system.

The health care summit was a reality check for anyone who may have had illusions that Obama would advocate for a single-payer system once he got into office. Despite saying that he would favor such a system if he was “starting from scratch,” Obama is clearly opposed to single-payer under the current circumstances. On the contrary, he has invited the parasitical insurance industry to continue to play a central role in health care.

The administration is holding health care forums in five states, and activists are planning to hold protests and pickets to make sure the message of the single-payer movement is heard. The hope for winning health care justice for all doesn’t lie with political leaders, but with organizing and protest at the grassroots.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Activists for single-payer plan to make their voices heard at demonstrations outside the White House forums on health care reform taking place around the country. See the home page of the California Nurses Association Web site for more details as they become available. The group Healthcare-NOW! also has information about the protests.

Physicians for a National Health Program has a Web site that makes the case for a government-administered single-payer program and has information on single-payer legislation sponsored by Rep. John Conyers.

Nancy’s Welch’s article, “National Health Care: A Dream Deferred,” in the International Socialist Review, examines what it will take to win health care for all. Also in the ISR, Helen Redmond uncovers the crooked practices of the pharmaceutical industry in “Bitter Medicine.”

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Obama is convening a summit this afternoon with about 150 elected officials and representatives of groups that have much at stake in the outcome — and that helped kill the last attempt at an overhaul during the Clinton administration 16 years ago.

“The Forum will bring together the people who have a stake in our health care system and the people who have the ability to change it; those who worked to pass health care reform a decade ago and those who worked to defeat it,” the White House says in a background paper.

To counter Obama’s plans, Rep. Zach Wamp (R-TN) appeared on MSNBC to reiterate that Republican claims that a national health insurance plan is “…a fast march towards socialism…”

But he went further.

“Listen, health care a privilege…For some people it’s a right, but for everyone, frankly, it’s not necessarily a right…”

No kidding.

Let’s look at some of Rep. Zach Wamp’s claims:

“Half the people that are uninsured today choose to remain uninsured. Half of them don’t have any choice, but half of them choose to, what’s called, ‘Go naked.’ And just take a risk of getting sick. They end up in the emergency room, costing you and me a whole lot more money. How many illegal immigrants are in this country today, getting our health care? Gobs of ‘em.”

Let’s say for the sake of argument that Wamp is correct (even though he refused to back this up with anything at all) that would still leave half, that by his own admission, “don’t have any choice”. They are just screwed.

As for the ones that do choose to go without, it is generally because they are so poor that the choice is between health insurance…or eating. It’s pretty understandable why some would choose to go without. Which is why the government should provide health insurance for all.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) was quite astute with his reaction:

“Well my reaction is that it was said by somebody who has a really good health [insurance] plan as a member of the House of Representatives.”

Indeed. Members of Congress need only serve for five years to be fully vested in the Federal programs. Once vested, they receive lifetime retirement and health benefits. Yep. Wamp has served since 1995 so he is fully vested. He has health benefits forever. Yet he wants to stand in the way of others getting health benefits.

If there is anyone at least twenty-five years old in the 3rd Congressional district of Tennessee that is without health insurance…just run against this asshole. If you beat him, you will have nice Federal health insurance. Just like Wamp.

Contrary to what Wamp claims, health insurance is not a privilege. It is a human right. For everyone. Not just Congressmen.

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