In which the Governor of Hawaii puts Rep. Issa in his place, big time.

[mahina]

Governor, 3 GOP congressmen at odds over Health Connector
http://www.staradvertiser.com/newspremium/20140406_Governor_3_GOP_congressmen_at_odds_over_Health_Connector.html?id=254088811&c=n (paywall, sorry guys)


Gov. Neil Abercrombie on Friday struck back at U.S. House Republicans who alleged that the Hawaii Health Connector did not complete adequate security testing before launching in October, placing consumers at risk of identity theft and fraud.
U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif.; U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio; and U.S. Rep. James Lankford, R-Okla.; sent letters in March to Hawaii and nine other states and the District of Columbia complaining of potential security lapses during the rollout of health care exchanges — like the Hawaii Health Connector — in the federal Affordable Care Act.

The lawmakers claimed that the Hawaii Health Connector did not have a security assessment prior to its Oct. 15 launch, placing the personal information that consumers provide to sign up for health insurance at potential risk. The lawmakers asked Abercrombie for documents and communications related to the health exchange.

"Your letter is full of mistakes, misrepresentations, omissions and false assertions," Abercrombie wrote Issa, Jordan and Lankford. "Your letter omits important facts related to the Hawaii Health Connector (Connector) and takes information out of context, misrepresenting the status of the Connector with respect to system security and authority to connect to the Federal Data Services Hub. Because of your flawed assumptions and mistakes, you have predictably reached erroneous conclusions.

"With a little due diligence, you and your committee staffers could easily have avoided these errors," the governor wrote. "Instead your letter appears to be a classic case of ‘ready, fire, aim.'"

Abercrombie told the lawmakers that the state would process their request for information under the state's open records law, which requires fees to cover the cost of producing documents.

[Augiedog]

1. Or

Another analogy might be: pick up grenade, pull pin, through same. But then again what do you expect from an arsonist.

[G_j]

2. curious how many of those letters went to states

with Democratic governers.

[hootinholler]

3. Darrel RFA Issa

Old Ready Fire Aim Issa

Maybe it's actually Fire Aim Ready?

[UTUSN]

4. R#51 & K n/t

[freshwest]

5. Real world meets Faux world. Very good, thanks for posting. n/t

[mahina]

7. Well sure!

[Thinkingabout]

6. Seems everything Issa is involved with is lies, lies, lies.

It should be Oversight Committee, Oversight Committee, Oversight committee.

[KamaAina]

8. Neil Abercrombie rocks!

I had the great pleasure of hearing him speak at a Martin Luther King Day dinner in Honolulu (yes, Virginia, there is an NAACP chapter in Honolulu ). He tore up the stage and spit out the splinters! It was during the '04 primary season, and I was about to charter him a plane and fly him to New Hampshire!

[spanone]

9. republican politics are fraught with 'fuck with the democrats'....little else

[okaawhatever]

10. I think I like that response even better than the IRS comissioner Koshinen's response when he

refused to continue with the bogus Issa IRS investigation. It is clear already that there's no "there, there" but a Repub congressman decided to try and intimidate Comissioner Koshinen. When Koshinen said basically he wouldn't cooperate,
Rep. Mark Meadows, R-NC asked for a date at which agency officials could be held in contempt for not providing additional records.

"I think the timeline is whenever you think you could actually sustain that in a court," Koskinen replied.


Abecrombie and Koshinen, my two favorite people this month.

[Cha]

11. "Ready Fire Aim"! Perfect, Mahalo Mahina!

[Hekate]

12. There's a great LA Times article on the Hawai'i state health care system: 40 years old!

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-healthcare-coverage-20140406-dto,0,7780529.htmlstory#axzz2yH5e6woc

Hawaii's trailblazing healthcare underscores disparity

The state's system and widespread insurance coverage mean its residents are some of the nation's healthiest.
Forty years ago, the state became the first to require employers to provide health benefits.
By Noam Levey
April 5, 2014

When the giant kapok and nawa trees that tower over the Queen's Medical Center in downtown Honolulu were planted more than a century ago, Hawaii faced a health crisis.

Many on the islands, including the queen who founded the hospital in 1859, feared that native Hawaiians, devastated by smallpox, measles and other illnesses brought by foreigners, were in danger of dying off completely.

Today, the people who walk under these trees are some of the healthiest in America.

Hawaiians live longer than their counterparts on the mainland. They die less frequently from common diseases, such as breast and colon cancers, even though these cancers occur more often here than in most other states. They also pay less for their care; the state's healthcare costs are among the lowest in the country.

Hawaii's success owes much to the state's trailblazing health system and its long history of near-universal health insurance.

Forty years ago, the state became the first to require employers to provide health benefits, codifying a tradition that grew out of Hawaii's agrarian past, when sugar and pineapple plantations employed doctors to care for their workers.

That system has led to some of the highest rates of coverage and best access to medical care in the country.

"There has always been a mentality here that if you are sick, you go to the doctor. It's just part of the culture," said Myra Williams, 64, who has lived in Hawaii for 35 years and was recently treated successfully for early-stage breast cancer.

Nearly 99% of the patients at the cancer center at Queen's have health coverage, a level unheard of at most urban medical centers on the mainland.

Healthcare in America is a tale of two countries.
>snip<
In Texas, which has the lowest rate of insurance coverage in the nation, residents are 40% more likely to die from breast cancer than they are in Hawaii, according to federal cancer data.

Read the rest here:
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-healthcare-coverage-20140406-dto,0,7780529.htmlstory#axzz2yH5e6woc

[Hekate]

13. Me me aloha pumehana to Neil Abercrombie and the State of Hawai'i -- Kick

[Solly Mack]

14. K&R

Beautiful!