Hi Holly,
As you know, I have been working on a getting a screening bill passed in PA. One of the things I think you have to your advantage is I believe Nebraska is a unicameral assembly. Legislation only has to pass one body.
You can check out my blog on this at:
www.coalregionvoice.blogspot.com
One of the uphill battles we have in Pennsylvania is that our General Assembly (both houses) can tap dance around rhetoric without really going on the record. Also legislation has to be voted on and brought out by the committee where the bill originates. Last session, basically one man decided if the bill was going to make it out of committee.
The PA government sometimes makes the feds look like neophytes. Google " Pennsylvania Legislative payraise" "Vincent Fumo" and " PA legislative staff bonuses". If you think our current federal admin keeps the public in the dark, they have nothing on the way the PA General Assembly had operated for the past 25 years. Once elected, it is hard to loose if your an incumbent. You loose based on personal scandle not on legislative performance.
I could best describe it as a hockey game and you have to "Grind". Dig the pucks from the corner, check and cover the blue line.
This session thought, our new banking and insurance chairman is on the record supporting the same bill in the last session. Also, there is story about Northeastern Blue Cross using a 175 million dollars.....get this.....to fund a medical school. We have had rhetoric in PA for years about employers not being able to afford premiums and dropping coverage or closing down all together. Then they blame the unions.
In President Bush's State of the Union, he offered some suggestions in code. The idea is to crack to code. From my guess, he want's to get big business out of providing health insurance to employees in the long run. Leave it up to the individual through a tax incentive. Goldman Sach's paid out 16 billion in bonuses this past December, PA's state bugdet is 27 billion. Will big business use this new found wealth to grow the wage or will it stay at the top? Is every individual able to read the fine print of their indvidual or family plan? Will more people roll the dice? A good read on insurance reform is RJ Eskow's the Sentinel blog about universal coverage and insurance reform.
Once again check out my blog above and draw your own conclusions.