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Berkley faces handicap

The ethics investigation of U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley, announced this week, is likely to hang over her during her entire U.S. Senate campaign this year.

It took 10 months just to reach this point. The complaint, by the Nevada Republican Party, was filed in September 2011 following a New York Times report on Berkley’s advocacy of positions in Congress on medical practices that the newspaper claimed could benefit her husband’s clinic. Virtually no one is predicting quick action by the House Ethics Committee.

Meanwhile, Berkley—whose name recognition in populous Clark County gave her an early lead in her Senate race—has now fallen into steady second place rankings in surveys. Berkley and her opponent, Republican Dean Heller, are separated by only two or three points, but that margin has held for the last five surveys.

Last week a Washington Post report pointed to what it called “anecdotal evidence” that some Romney voters will cross over to vote for Berkley. This was a reference to “several” Las Vegas voters cited by the newspaper, only one of whom was named—David Leavitt, a Clark County resident with a prominent Mormon name in the county, who said he planned to vote for Berkley.

Ralph Denton 1925-2012

Nevada liberal icon Ralph Denton has died at his home in Boulder City at age 86.

Denton was one of several men—Richard Ham and the late Otto Ravenholt were others—who became Democratic heroes in the state by taking on U.S. Rep. Walter Baring, a right wing Democrat, in Democratic primaries. Baring, once a moderate member of the U.S. House, moved far to the right during the Kennedy administration. At the time, Nevada had only one House member, so it was a statewide race. Denton advocated liberal views that carried greater weight coming from a native son who was raised in Caliente. He was particularly forceful on civil rights in a state that still had racial bars. After attending law school in Washington, D.C., where he met another law student named Grant DENTON Sawyer, he returned to Nevada and ultimately became a deputy to Sawyer, who had become Elko County district attorney.

Later Denton moved to southern Nevada. He became one of a small group of advisors to Sawyer when auto manufacturing millionaire Errett Cord funded the governorship campaign of state Attorney General Harvey Dickerson, raising the possibility of a governor taking office beholden to a single man for most of his financial backing.

In a three-way race, Sawyer beat Dickerson in the Democratic primary with surprising ease. In that year, the Democratic nomination was nearly tantamount to victory—the incumbent Republican had lost the support of his own party and was trying for a third term. Sawyer served two terms as governor.

Some of Sawyer’s small cadre joined his administration, but Denton went back to Boulder City, though he continued his political support and counsel of Sawyer.

In 1964, in the first primary after Baring’s “conversion,” Denton lost to the incumbent by just 3 percent of the vote. He ran again in 1966, losing by 3.5 percent. (He later said he ran the second time in order to pay the bills left over from the first time.)

Denton did serve as Esmeralda County district attorney and as a Clark County commissioner.

In 1968 he aided U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy in getting elected assistant majority leader of the Senate by bringing pressure on Nevada senators.

Over the years Denton took on a steady stream of unpopular clients. Michael Green, who worked on Denton’s book A Liberal Consciencewith him, once said he was “a living refutation of every nasty lawyer joke ever told.”

Wait and see

Experts say public polarized by a law they don’t understand

Two weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on the Democratic health by care plan came down, the public Dennis Myers remains poorly informed about what the plan contains—and journalism has been very little help at solving that ignorance. Both CNN and Fox got the Supreme Court ruling wrong, both initially reporting that the individual mandate in the Democratic plan had been overturned by the court.

“They may not regulate these policies very strongly.”

Trudy Lieberman Health reporter

For clearer reporting on the health care issue, see Trudy Lieberman’s reports at www.cjr.org/author/ trudy-lieberman-1/

The problem of misinformation about the plan began long before that, of course. In March, a Kaiser Family Foundation survey reported that 14 percent of the public believed the plan had already been overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Other Kaiser surveys found that many features of the law are popular, like tax credits for small businesses offering coverage and the right of patients to appeal decisions, but that the public did not know the Democratic plan contains them—and the number who did know it was declining. In April 2010, 75 percent of respondents to a Kaiser survey said they knew that the law would provide subsidies for some lowincome people. By March of this year, that number had dropped to 56 percent.

Nevada School of Community Health Sciences dean Mary Guinan at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said this week that the law is so long and lobbying and advertising did so much to distort its provisions that the public has no real idea of its content.

“Even I don’t know, now, what the state of it is,” she said after the court protected some parts and overturned others.

Afew days before the court ruling, health care writer Trudy Lieberman of the Columbia Journalism Review wrote that “the enemies of the Act are winning the communications war. And they seem to have the help of the media.”

Lieberman, who reported on health care and insurance for three decades at Consumer Reports, said in an RN&R interview that the public remains poorly informed after the court ruling.

“They didn’t understand it as the act was going through, the debate was going on three years ago,” she said. “They don’t understand it now. They didn’t understand it after Obama signed it into law in March of 2010. … And I don’t think anything has changed.”

She said there is plenty of blame to go around, including to President Obama.

“He didn’t do very much to tell people what it was all about and why he needed it. And that’s something we talked a lot about at CJR, and I think that’s a big problem. That opened the way for a lot of demagoguing by Republicans.”

The state’s health-care future awaits important decisions by Gov. Brian Sandoval following the U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

Guinan said some parts of Nevada’s perpetually unhealthy health profile could be improved by the plan.

“We have a very poor [screening] rate in Nevada for cancer,” she said. “It’s clear that screening for cervical cancer can actually prevent the cancer, because pre-cancerous lesions can be found.”

She also said Nevada currently has a half-million people with poor or no insurance, about 300,000 of whom could now qualify for Medicaid under the law. The other 200,000 could use the state insurance exchange. Medicaid is a program of health care for low-income people.

But Nevada’s extent of participation in Medicaid is still uncertain. A peculiar line of argument being used in Nevada on whether state Medicaid programs will be opened to more Nevadans has emerged since the Supreme Court decision, which upheld making an additional 17 million people nationwide eligible for Medicaid in 2014—but further ruled that states cannot be penalized for not expanding its Medicaid programs for those people.

Under the Democratic plan, the new income threshold for Medicaid eligibility is $29,000 dollars a year for a family of four. In Nevada, Gov. Brian Sandoval has taken a wait-andsee position on whether Medicaid eligibility should be expanded.

Some of the debate on whether that should happen in Nevada has dealt not with whether more poor people should be served but on whether doing so would help the state’s economy by bringing more federal dollars into the state.

The Las Vegas Sun, for instance, quoted UNLVprofessor Robert Lang saying that Clark County lags in the size of the health care industry-share of the economy. Nationally, that share is 18 percent, and in Clark County, it is 14 percent. Beefing that up could provide 40,000 jobs in the state, Lang said.

That line of argument troubles Guinan. “I think that’s a rather unfortunate approach to health care, saying it should stimulate the economy,” she said

Democrats themselves may be surprised by some of the consequences of the new law, particularly in continuation of the trend—already under way in the private sector—of dumping more health costs on consumers and workers. Congressional Democrats closely tied the program to insurance companies. Lieberman said the continued primacy of insur-

large, even shocking increases in insurance costs.

“So what you’re beginning to see now are policies with humongous deductibles like not just a $100 or $200,” she said. “We’re talking $5,000 or maybe $10,000 in some cases. And I’ve seen a few that go as high as $20,000 or $40,000. … In addition to the high deductible that people are facing, there is going to be other kinds of cost sharing. And I’m not talking about raising a copay from $40 to $60. I’m talking about the substitution of co-insurance for co-payment. And co-insurance is the percentage of the bill that the insurance company or the employer requires you to pay. And that number is going up as well. So then instead of, say, 10 percent co-insurance on some services, you might be paying 30 percent, or 40 or 50 or 60.”

She said many people will likely pay the fine for not having insurance instead.

Lieberman also said the patient’s experience in the doctor’s office will probably be unchanged. Nothing in the Democratic program simplifies things. The practice of having to deal with a mini-bureaucracy in every doctor’s office will, if anything, get worse.

Nevada was not a party to any of the lawsuits against the federal health plan. But two Nevada governors—Jim Gibbons and then Brian Sandoval—sued as private citizens. Sandoval must administer the plan. Arecalcitrant governor could have an impact on how the plan is carried out. Guinan is hopeful that will not happen because Sandoval is more moderate than Gibbons was. By way of contrast, on Monday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry announced he would not expand Medicaid there and would try to obstruct other provisions of the law. Guinan said, “I believe he [Sandoval] is more understanding of the needs of the people of Nevada for health insurance. … Better heads will prevail.”

Lieberman said state governors can decide not to have the state insurance exchanges called for by the Democratic plan. Not, apparently, in Nevada, though. Nevada lawmakers created an exchange last year, and $75 million is in hand for its operation. It does not appear the governor has the authority to block its operation now. Even if he did, Lieberman said, the federal government would just come in and run it.

One way a governor could hurt the federal program is through the state insurance commissioner, who in Nevada is appointed by the governor. “Agovernor who is not keen on the act could certainly control what his state insurance commissioner was going to do, vis-à-vis regulation. And they may not regulate these policies very strongly.” Ω

“Better heads will prevail.”

Mary Guinan UNLV medical dean

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Entertainers

In downtown Sparks on the Fourth of July, as hundreds of people cooled their heels in sweltering heat because of a delay in launching fireworks, Aislee and Peter Gonda danced to keep the crowd entertained. The fireworks finally began just after 10:30 p.m., the delay reportedly caused by high winds.

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Nuclear woman

On June 29, the U.S. Senate selected environmental science and geology professor Allison Macfarlane to lead the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Former chairman Gregory Jaczko resigned in May after harassment allegations were made against him by employees, and other critics said he had a political agenda.

Macfarlane is an environmental science and geology professor. While it was clear that she would be President Obama’s nomination, Republicans favored NCR commissioner Kristine Svinicki for the position. Svinicki’s support for Yucca Mountain earned her support from Republican senators, and the Senate confirmed her for another term as commissioner.

Name day

University of Nevada, Reno’s renewable energy program was recently named the Jeffrey L. Ceccarelli NV Energy Renewable Energy Program after Nevada alum Jeff Ceccarelli, who is retiring after 40 years as an executive for NV Energy. Ceccarelli is a civil engineer and a member of the College of Engineering Advisory Board.

The program works toward offering education and job opportunities in the renewable energy sector. In a statement, College of Engineering dean Manos Maragakis said, “We are able to offer a renewable energy minor to all students, an online graduate certificate in renewable energy, a new renewable energy track in electrical engineering, and state-of-the-art graduate education, including a renewable energy laboratory at the Redfield Campus.” Learn more about the university’s renewable energy efforts at http://www.unr.edu/energy/about/index.html.

Love on the range

Are you a farmer looking for love? If so, look no further than FarmersOnly.com, a dating website exclusively for farmers. The website is similar to other dating websites, but caters to agricultural folks.

“Instead of asking what your astrological sign is, at FarmersOnly.com we ask if you raise or breed alpacas, horses, cattle, chickens, dogs, goats, rabbits, sheep, grow crops, or if you’re an organic farmer, student farmer, cowboy, cowgirl, or just a farmer wannabe!How many singles sites do that?” They have a point. Check it out at www.farmersonly.com. —Ashley Hennefer

ashleyh@newsreview.com

ECO-EVENT

Recycling is about more than just bottles and cans—it can also be used to update your wardrobe. The 2nd Annual Dusty Couture Burning Man Costume Swap is a not-for-profit community event designed to help Burners get new costumes. Attendees bring costume donations to share, or donate $5-$20 at the door. In exchange, attendees leave with new-to-you playa clothes. Good Luck Macbeth Theater, 119 N. Virginia Street. For more information, visit http://tinyurl.com/dustycouture.

Got an eco-event? Contact ashleyh@newsreview.com. Visit www.facebook.com/RNRGreen for more.