Old Debates In A Murder’s Wake And Ohio’s Controversial Don’t Say Gay Bill

[0:02] In this episode, we talk about how a murder last week has led to a reminder of old complaints about the lack of a public option health care plan from back in 2009.

[0:14] We then take a look at the sneaky, unethical way Ohio’s Don’t Say Gay Bill is about to become law, and if passed, will also threaten our secular public school system. I’m Doug Berger, and this is Secular Left.

[0:34] Music.

[0:44] On December the 4th, there was a breaking news flash across all the news channels of a murder, a brazen murder that took place, or alleged murder that took place in New York City outside a posh hotel. And it was something like five or six o’clock in the morning. The time was 6.45 in the morning. And Brian Thompson, who was the CEO of United Healthcare Insurance Company, since 2021 was shot and killed outside the entrance to the New York Hilton Midtown in Manhattan. He was there to attend an annual investors meeting for UnitedHealth Group, the parent company of UnitedHealthcare.

[1:36] And so when they looked at the closed caption, the surveillance video, because in New York City is one of the most highly surveilled areas in the country. They have cameras everywhere. And so they saw, they had a camera and it showed the guy shooting the executive. He had a hoodie on and a mask and he even used a silencer. And what was also kind of, I don’t want to say funny because murder is not funny, but What was kind of comical, put it that way, was that the guy then, the guy that shot the executive, then got away on an electric bike and rode through Central Park and supposedly got on a bus at the Port Authority and left town on a bus.

[2:33] So as I’m recording this, they did arrest somebody who matched the description and had some of the materials that they saw on the video, arrested him in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He was spotted by somebody at a McDonald’s, a McDonald’s worker, which that’s a whole other discussion about how this guy, if he is the killer, planned his escape because he did not plan it very well. But anyway, but that’s not what I’m going to I’m not going to talk about the murder.

[3:05] I don’t I don’t endorse taking matters into one’s own hands. And especially if you’re angry, angry over insurance companies, health insurance companies, because there’s a lot of anger towards insurance companies. So many stories. But what it did was it brought back the debate over health care reform that happened during President Obama’s administration back in 2009-2010. At the time, the Democrats controlled the House and the Senate.

[3:46] And so President Obama had also campaigned, not on Medicare for all, but what was called a public option. Basically, what it would do is it would cut out the private insurance companies, and you could get insurance that would be administered directly through the federal government, kind of like how Medicare works. But it would be not Medicare. It wouldn’t be considered Medicare. It’d be a separate plan. And so he campaigned on that during his 2008, his initial campaign. However, when he got to serve in the White House and they started working on health care reform, they watered everything down. And it really pissed off a lot of progressive people like myself. We were really pissed off because not only did we not get the public option, we didn’t get any consideration for people. You know, they did the ACA, the Affordable Care Act. That was the watered-down version.

[5:01] And it reminded me, too, that when people complained that it wasn’t perfect, not saying that if it had a public option, it’d be perfect, but it’d be a lot better than the ACA. We were told by many Democrats at the time, they’re like, this is just the first step. You know, we’re going to put this into place. And once it’s into place, then we’ll add on to it or fix it. And then they kind of bring up how Social Security operated and Medicare, that when those things first came on board, they were limited and they had this, that, and the other thing. And then it got added on to and changed over the years. So they were saying that that’s what they were going to do. Well, it’s been more than 10 years and they haven’t added anything. They haven’t added Medicare for all, which is something that Bernie Sanders has supported and I support as well. No public option. At the time that they passed the ACA, there was no pharmaceutical negotiation for medicine for Medicare. There is now because that was passed under a separate bill recently.

[6:24] And they were like, what happened? Why did that happen? Because what it did was it destroyed a lot of the credibility for President Obama with people on the left. And as we look at the prism from the distance and we look at it, the whole tapestry, if we look at the whole tapestry, political tapestry from that time, it’s not a surprise because when you’re in politics and you’re in the highest office in the world you kind of want to stay there and so what he did what the president did was he watered this shit down to get something passed he probably was also under the impression that it would be fixed later but it wasn’t something that you know because once this got passed then he had to start running for re-election. And of course, then we had the Tea Party shit that happened after the ACA was passed. And then that’s when Donald Trump came out of his coffin.

[7:35] And didn’t melt from the sunlight, even though he wears enough makeup that you think that’s probably why.

[7:43] So the ACA begat the Tea Party movement, begat Donald Trump.

[7:49] So we can blame Obama for that, but that’s not what I’m talking about. But anyway, what I wanted to explain, though, is that the issue with the health care reform back in 2009, 2010, it’s the rule that is a rule, but it’s not in the Constitution, the filibuster, the Senate filibuster.

[8:13] It’s been a part of the rule of the Senate since probably, I think, the 1860s or something like that. It’s not in the Constitution. It’s not a constitutional requirement. It can be changed at any time. They’ve never changed it because in a two-party system that we have, the one party doesn’t want to change it because then it will benefit the other party when they’re in power. And so I believe Harry Reid, Senator from Nevada, was a majority leader, and he would never even take a vote on anything unless he had 60 votes. That was the votes he needed to overcome a filibuster. It was 60 votes. They call it cloture. Cloture, closure, where you close debate, and then you move to a vote. He would never vote on anything unless they had 60 votes. And you would say, Harry, we want to vote on this. He’s like, I’m sorry. He wasn’t going to waste his time.

[9:20] So, the person that gummed up the works, the Senator Manchin of the Obama administration, was Senator Joseph Lieberman from Connecticut. He’s the one that forced Obama and the White House to remove the public option. He’s also the one that helped broker a deal between the White House and the pharmaceutical companies so that they would not oppose the bill either.

[9:55] And the reason why Lieberman did is because Lieberman got a lot of money from the insurance companies. He was a senator from Connecticut, and Connecticut is the home base of a lot of private insurance companies. And so I wanted to read this article. This is from commonwealthfund.org. It was a news article from December 15, 2009. And I’m just going to read the beginning of it.

[10:25] Says Democratic senators traveled to the White House on Tuesday for a meeting with President Obama aimed at building a unified front on health care. And Senator Joseph Lieberman said he’d likely join with them in backing a measure that dropped a government-sponsored insurance program. But a firm 60 votes to limit debate remained elusive as the clock ticked down towards the Christmas recess and senators still awaited a new score from the Congressional Budget Office. Protesters gathered at both ends of the city, with liberals upset by the lack of a public option, rallying at Lafayette Park, facing the White House, and conservatives chanting, kill the bill, masked across the street from the Senate.

[11:04] Obama said after meeting with Democrats that I’m feeling cautiously optimistic we can get this done, though he also acknowledged disagreements remain that need to be ironed out. Democrats do share a broad consensus that Americans need to be protected from the worst abuses of the health care industry, he said. Says, and this is the example I was telling you about the arguments. Well, we need to get something passed. We’ll fix it later. Says here, but Democratic Senator Debbie Stebenow of Michigan said, the main goal is to see a bill approved that will extend insurance coverage to an additional 30 million Americans. We’re in a process, she said, a legislative process where we have to bring everyone together and get the very best we can, then keep working, says Stebenow at a press event with faith leaders. The original Medicare bill approved in the 1960s did not include many provisions it has today, but it was a framework that later was strengthened, Stabenow said. This is about a framework, she said. Don’t underestimate the mere principle of getting into law, that every American should have access to affordable health insurance, that health care is a right, not a privilege, that fundamental framework will change the debate going forward.

[12:16] And, of course, the people on the left, the progressives, didn’t like the bill because it didn’t have a public option. It says, Senator Joe Lieberman opposed the public option in the 2009 health care reform primarily due to ideological and political reasons. He was concerned the public option would create unfair competition for private insurance companies and potentially lead to a government-controlled health care system. Lieberman represented Connecticut, a state with significant health insurance industry presence and was influenced by insurance industry interests. As an independent who caucused with Democrats, but often took centrist positions, he was a key swing vote in the Senate and used this leverage to oppose the public option. Yeah, what it was is he went to run for re-election, I believe it was 2008, or it might have been 2006.

[13:15] And he lost in the primary. A gentleman named Ted Lamont won the Democratic – Ned Lamont won the Democratic primary. And Lieberman was pissed off because he’d been a senator there for a couple of – since the 80s. And he assumed that he could keep going until he didn’t want to go anymore. And so he registered a party, not an independent party, but his own party, the Lieberman Party or People for Lieberman Party or something like that. And he filed as an independent and he ended up winning the general election. He beat the Democrat and the Republican. The reason why he beat the Republican is because the Republican candidate had some problems with gambling debts, and pretty much the Republican establishment just didn’t like him. What they did do is they threw their support to Lieberman because Lieberman was a conservative. He had conservative leanings. And Ned Lamont was painted as a Marxist liberal.

[14:29] And so Lieberman ended up winning the election. So he ended up going back to the Senate as an independent, but he caucused with the Democrats, kind of like Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders is an independent and caucuses with the Democrats. And I think Angus King in Rhode Island is one like that. But the difference between Lieberman and Bernie Sanders is Lieberman was conservative. So he didn’t get a lot of flack for it like Bernie Sanders did. And then the other thing about Lieberman opposing the public option was he argued the public option would increase government spending and potentially add to the federal deficit. And his opposition was crucial as Democrats needed 60 votes.

[15:17] Lieberman’s support was necessary to pass the Affordable Care Act. Ultimately, the public option was removed from the final legislation, largely due to him.

[15:27] And then, of course, then there was the deal with the big pharma. There were negotiations between the White House and pharmaceutical industry representatives during the Affordable Care Act development. The pharmaceutical industry agreed to support the ACA and contribute $80 billion in cost reductions over 10 years. In exchange, the Obama administration reportedly promised to block certain drug pricing reforms and prevent Medicare from directly negotiating drug prices. These negotiations were part of a broader strategy to secure industry support and prevent opposition that could derail the health care reform legislation. While a deal, in quotation marks, occurred, the specifics were complex and involved multiple stakeholders beyond a simple bilateral agreement. I highly doubt that. I believe it was a bilateral agreement. The negotiations were documented in several journalistic accounts and congressional investigations at the time.

[16:30] And then one of the other things, one of the other side points about this health care reform thing that came out during the debate over it was that U.S.-based corporations that operate in Europe, depending on where, what specific countries they operate in, they have totally different health care approaches than the employer paid health care plan that most people have. It says, in most European countries with universal health care, employees can use the national health system if it exists. Many U.S. corporations offer supplemental private health insurance to cover services beyond government health care, particularly for employees from the United States or executives. Some companies provide comprehensive health benefits similar to U.S. Plans, but they are often adapted to local regulations and health care systems. The extent a company provides and health care varies widely depending on the country, industry, and individual company policy.

[17:34] Key factors influencing health care provision include local labor laws, tax regulations, and competitive hiring practices in each European country. And I remember reading a story about Microsoft, either in Ireland or France, where they did not provide health care plans for their employees. They were required to use the national health system. And so that was money that the corporation was not spending.

[18:04] So they moved to, not only did they shelter their tax dollars in Europe, but they also moved a lot of work to Europe because all they had to do was just pay wages. They didn’t have to pay for health benefits.

[18:23] Yeah, the taxes were higher. The taxes in those countries were higher. But it’s piddly sticks compared to what they paid in the United States or should be paying in the United States. So anyway, that’s what I kind of wanted to talk about, kind of want to refresh people’s memories about the health care reform and some of the grief that President Obama got. And he did. I gave him grief, too. And I still don’t agree with it. You know, and like I said, you know, they claimed that it was a framework and they were going to come back and fix it later and they never did. And that is something that they really can’t, you know, they can’t put lipstick on that pig. If you would like to buy some secular left swag to show your support and to express your politics, then check out our merch store. We have branded items

[19:19] for sale, such as t-shirts, hats, mugs, and many other unique items. Check it out at secularleft.us.

[19:32] In the month or so after a major general election, like we had in November, Remember, a lot of legislatures that still operate towards the end of the year go into what’s called lame duck session. And I think I’ve talked about Ohio’s lame duck session, mainly because they are trying to force the LifeWise bill, the LifeWise bill that would benefit at LifeWise Academy through the Ohio legislature. And as I’m recording this, on the day that I’m recording this, they were having another hearing in the Ohio Senate Education Committee where they were considering an amended bill that originally was titled House Bill 8.

[20:24] And House Bill 8 has the fake pseudo title of the Parental Rights Act or something like that is what it’s called. Mainly, it’s Ohio’s version of the Don’t Say Gay Law that we are familiar with from places such as Texas and Florida. And House Bill 8, the original form of it, would add broad curriculum censorship requirements, redefine sex to undermine existing civil rights protections granted to LGBTQ plus people, and force disclosure and alternative curriculum rules for teachers and counselors that leave educators with impossible and conflicting rules and onerous new obligations. House Bill 8 requires school officials to out any student questioning their identity to their parents, even in cases where abuse is suspected.

[21:24] You know, that’s the most awful, most awful part of the bill, is that it would require teachers and school officials to out children to their parents without any consideration about what’s going on at their home life.

[21:41] So House Bill 8 is a bad bill. And I also want to point out, too, that the Ohio legislative sessions here in Ohio are two years.

[21:52] And this is the end of the current legislative session. And if House Bill 8 does not pass by the end of the year, then it dies and it would have to be reintroduced the next session. Probably not going to happen. But it’s also, I also want to point out that the bill number corresponds to when it was introduced. So right now in December, it’s December, they’ve had a couple more bills that they’ve introduced, not necessarily bad bills, but bills in general, with 600 as the number, 600 plus. And here they’re dealing with House Bill 8 at the end of a session.

[22:40] And there is just no reason to pass this bill. There just is no reason. And what it is, is the Christian nationalists that hate trans people, they believe that the public schools are indoctrinating children to become trans. They think it’s just something that you pick up, that you learn, like cursive writing, or how to use a calculator in your math class. That’s what they think it is. And so they don’t want the, and these are the religious zealots. I’m not talking about average everyday people, but the religious zealots don’t want kids to know about trans people. They don’t want them to know about gay people. They don’t want to talk about it at all. They say it’s inappropriate, which is not the case.

[23:30] You know, they used to say the same thing about sex education. They, and they still do. A lot of them still do, you know, because they think that this stuff has to be taught at home, but that’s not the purpose of a public school. A public school is for children to learn about other ideas they may not be familiar with in their home life, in their little bubble at home. And the religious zealots want to keep it that way. They want to keep their little Johnnies and Tinas in little bubbles where they don’t learn about anything that the adults don’t like. And that’s the thing. The adults don’t like this stuff. It’s not the kids. The kids could care less.

[24:11] You know, they’re like, oh, Johnny has two dads. Oh, okay.

[24:16] You know, that’s how usually the younger kids, and we saw that with racism when they were doing the integrations in the 60s and 70s, integrating public schools. You know, most adults hated it. They thought, oh, my gosh, the world’s going to end. And the little kids were going, oh, little Tim, he’s black. Oh, cool. Big deal. Little kids didn’t care.

[24:46] You know, you have to, a child is not born a racist. A child is not born anti-gay. That is things that they learn. They learn that from home. You know, and I go back to how I grew up. I learned a lot of stuff from Sesame Street. I learned how to share, how people were, you know, humans weren’t any different than any other person. You know, I learned a lot about not being racist, not being bigoted towards other people. I learned how to, like I said, I learned how to share. And that was from watching Sesame Street in school. You know, I tell this story quite often. You know, I was five or six years old and we’re walking somewhere and I see a guy in a wheelchair and I stared at him because I’m five or six years old. I’ve never seen a guy in a wheelchair before. And my mom kind of pulls on my hand a little bit. She whispers, don’t stare. You know, that’s how parents teach kids. And then they learn additional stuff in public schools. Because that’s the whole point. Critical thinking.

[25:59] You know, being exposed to different ideas. That’s the whole point. But these religious zealots don’t want public schools to do that.

[26:09] And it’s just you know and they’re like well you have to do just reading writing and arithmetic that’s it that’s all we want oh and sports got to have the sports try not to get rid of the sports, you know they were pretty quick these religious zealots were pretty quick to get a law passed that allows homeschooled students to participate in high school sports because you’ve got to have the sports. That’s one of the reasons why they’re doing the LifeWise bill, to require public schools to accommodate LifeWise is because people don’t have time on Sundays to send their children to church because they’ve got travel baseball or travel softball or some other kind of travel sport, and they’re playing on Sundays.

[26:58] So rather than prioritizing religion, which they claim they want to do, they want to force the public schools to do it. And so, like I said, today they were having the hearing, probably the final hearing. They’ll probably vote on it probably tomorrow.

[27:17] And so this is just one of the things. This is how it opens up House Bill 8, Section 3313.473A. The General Assembly maintains that a parent has a fundamental right to make decisions concerning the upbringing, education, and care of the parent’s child. Well, in general, that is true, but in Ohio, that is not true. Because this is the same General Assembly that ignored parental rights and passed a bill that banned gender-affirming care for minors. Even if the parents wanted their kids to have gender-affirming care, the state instituted a law that’s being fought in the courts right now to ban it. So that’s kind of what they do with this House Bill 8. Now, the other thing that really just tears me up is House Bill 8 passed the House. Okay. This bill, House Bill 8, was passed in the House. And so it goes to the Senate, the Ohio Senate. And that’s why they’re having a hearing today in the Ohio Senate Education Committee.

[28:25] Well, in this committee, they’re entertaining amendments to this bill. And one of the amendments is they’re adding the RTRI, the Religious Release Time Religious Instruction Law that they’ve been trying to get passed. And I’ve talked about it before, House Bill 445, and they introduced it in the Senate, Senate Bill 293.

[28:52] Well, they got a lot of pushback. The House Bill 445 looked like it was on a fast track to getting passed, until the House Speaker changed the chairperson of the committee, the primary and secondary education committee in the House.

[29:11] And appointed Gail Manning, Representative Manning, to be the chair. Representative Manning, I believe, is a retired teacher, or she might have been a school board member. And she hates this RTRI bill, hates House Bill 445. Well, because the chair has control over what gets considered and what doesn’t, they did the opponent hearing and basically House Bill 445 withers on the vine and definitely is not going to pass. House Bill 445 isn’t going to pass this session.

[29:51] So what the religious zealots did then is they talked some senator, Senator Reynolds, in the Senate Education Committee to introduce a Senate version. Exact same. It’s just a copy and paste of House Bill 445. Supposedly just makes one change. Changes the law from a school district may have a RTRI policy to a district shall have an RTRI policy. And so we did the hearings. They had the proponent hearing. Well, they had a free for all. It was proponents, opponents, and interested parties. And it was like a two and a half hour testimony witness session. Witnesses were limited to like, I think it was three minute remarks. There was over 200 testimonies, written testimonies turned in opposing Senate Bill 293.

[30:53] Then we find out that the Satanic Temple is going to start a Halion Academy RTRI program at a Central Ohio school district, Marysville, which is northwest of Columbus. And so they got a lot of phone calls from freaked out Christian nationalists that they were going to let Satan in, which is not the case, but that’s what they were saying. So we thought that we had a chance to stall this bill. Well, then comes along, substitute House Bill number eight, which includes the RTRI stuff. But they just didn’t change one word. Now, one of the things that we were doing with the people I was working with was encouraging school districts. One of the things that in the law, the original law.

[31:50] RTRI law, was that students could not miss core subjects. But it didn’t define what core was, just said core subjects. And so a couple of school districts, including Toledo Public Schools, they updated their RTRI policy and indicated that all classes were core. The only classes that weren’t core was lunch and recess because they wanted to limit the effect of the disruption from LifeWise Academy. So what is the religious zealots do? Well, what does LifeWise Academy do? They get their buddies in the legislature to add in to the law that they define what the core classes are in the law. And they put in, core curriculum subject means reading and English language arts, mathematics, science, social studies, and health education.

[32:50] So they define it. The religious nut cases define it. Then the other thing that they put in was one of the arguments that Reverend Gary Click from Fremont, who is a sponsor of House Bill 445, said, you know, the school and Josh Williams, Representative Josh Williams in our area also said, the school district can make this policy any way they want. Well, that’s not true, because they added in the amendment that a school district board of education shall ensure that a policy adopted under Division B of this section grants students reasonable access and opportunity to attend a release time course in religious instruction during a time when non-core curriculum subject courses are offered. A board shall not unduly limit access and opportunity to attend a release time course in religious instruction during that time.

[33:49] So now they’re limiting the school district about how they can control when lifewise. So basically, they’re setting this up to be exactly how lifewise wants to operate. This is primarily going to benefit lifewise because, one, they want to be a special. If you listen to the videos that I provided in my last episode of the LifeWise employees talking, that they want LifeWise to be a special. They want it to be integrated into the school day, just like art and music and library time and computer time. That’s what they want. That is their goal. And this part in the bill gives that to them.

[34:34] So, Reverend Click lied, Representative Williams lied, and you’re going to say, but Doug, this is the Senate bill. Well, that’s the thing. They all have a part to play in this. So, this is just underhanded. This is undemocratic, and this is how Christian

[34:57] nationalist legislators operate. Is they’re underhanded because we knew that this bill, House Bill 8, was going to have amendments. We had heard from the people that know in the legislature they were going to add RTRI stuff, but we hadn’t seen the actual text of the bill, and it wasn’t released until after, the time limit to submit opposition testimony. Because that’s what they do is they try to sneak it under, because what they’ll do is they’ll think nobody’s going to oppose this, and they’re going to have their committee hearing, and they’re going to say, okay, is there anybody in opposition? Seeing nobody, let’s move on.

[35:44] Because they know that this is a bad bill, so they’re trying to sneak it under the radar. And luckily, there’s been a lot of people watching, watching what they’re doing. And that is one of the things that really burns my hide about this, is that they’re being secretive like this. Not only that, but they’re adding the RTRI stuff to a bill that’s already passed the House. So this RTRI stuff that couldn’t get through a committee on its own is going to end up probably getting voted on in the next day or two. Without getting a committee vote on its merits.

[36:30] And I think people that live in Ohio should be pissed off because the Ohio legislature, with the supermajority Republicans, they do this all the time. It is secretive. They call meetings with opposition testimony within like four days. So you have four days to write something up or four days to arrange your time to get there to be in person.

[37:03] Or they call these meetings even more suddenly than that, like this one. We knew this one was coming up. We just wanted to see the text of the actual bill. And they didn’t post it until after it was too late to submit opposition testimony. Now, I will say, though, that the original House Bill 8 had at least 200, 300 opposition testimonies. And Equality Ohio and Honesty for Ohio Education were there today to hit back on this bill. My problem is that it’s probably for naught, actually. I mean, it’s still important to be there to fight against it. But I think what’s going to happen is it’s going to pass out of committee and it’s going to get voted on. And LifeWise is going to get what they want.

[37:57] And so I just wanted to talk about that today. I’m very upset about it, not only for the LGBTQ plus community, but also for people that want a secular public school. And neither of those constituencies are going to be happy after this lame duck session.

[38:19] Thank you for listening to this episode. You can check out more information, including links to sources used, in our show notes on our website at secularleft.us. Secular Left is hosted, written, and produced by Doug Berger, and he is solely responsible for the content. Send us your comments, either using the contact form on the website, or by sending us a note at comments at secularleft.us. Our theme music is Dank and Nasty, composed using Amplify Studio.

[39:06] Music.