How shameless.
Families USA Board of Directors:
Jarrett Barrios
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation
Kathy Bonk
Communications Consortium Media Center
Gordon Bonnyman
Tennessee Justice Center
James M. Christian
Universal Development Enterprises, Inc.
Robert Crittenden, M.D. Chief of Family Medicine Service, Harborview
Medical Center
Jack Ebeler
Ebeler Consulting
Bob Edgar
Common Cause
Mary Kay Henry
SEIU
Jeff Kirsch
Fight Crime: Invest in Kids
John McDonough
Health Care for All
Angela Monson
Oklahoma University
Health Sciences Center
Philippe Villers
President and Co-Founder of Families USA Foundation
Ron Pollack
Executive Director and
Vice President
******
Families USA
Families USA, the national organization for health care consumers. Families USA’s mission is to achieve high-quality, affordable health coverage for everyone in the U.S.
Soros Advocacy Fellowship for Physicians
Robert Crittenden, MD, MPH collaborated with Washington Citizen Action Education and Research Fund to build public support and to ensure access to quality health services for low income people.
Soros Advocacy Fellow Robert Crittenden, M.D., M.P.H., about the high cost of health care for the average family. He discusses the fact that concierge health care, where patients pay a fee for enhanced services from their doctor, will make primary care inaccessible to many families.
Dr. Crittenden was a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow with Senator George Mitchell, and a health policy advisor to Governor Gardner of Washington.
Dr. Crittenden has been President of the Rainier Institute and a Soros Fellow. He is currently Chair of the Working for Health Coalition in Washington State that focuses public dialogue on safety net issues. He is also the Executive Director of the Herndon Alliance, a nation coalition of about 50 organizations focusing on increasing the base of people supporting affordable health care for all people in America.
In seeing the need for children to have care, not simply insurance, Robert A. Crittenden, M.D., M.P.H. created Kids Get Care (KGC), a program within the King County Health Action Plan that places care as the primary focus to ensure that children receive early integrative and preventative physical, developmental, mental, and oral health services through attachment to a healthcare home.
Jarrett Barrios
Senator Jarrett Barrios, a Cambridge Democrat who has been an outspoken advocate for minorities and gay marriage, confirmed today that he will leave office in early July to become the president of the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation.
An ambitious lawmaker who clearly enjoyed the political fray, Barrios served as a state representative from 1999 to 2002, before becoming a state senator.
Barrios said the new position will allow him to make a bigger difference on the issues he cares about, especially increasing access to quality, affordable healthcare for people of color.
Barrios said he would make slightly more money in this position than he earns from his Senate position and his law practice.
Barrios, an openly gay, Latino lawmaker who married his partner after the state’s high court legalized same-sex marriage.
who counts among his pet causes a living wage for human-services workers, Clean Elections, funding for bilingual education, and domestic-partnership benefits for gay municipal workers.
He grew up in Tampa, Florida, where his Cuban-immigrant grandparents rolled cigars in a factory. His father was a carpenter; his mother, a social worker.
He served as a political intern to former Boston city councilor David Scondras. He worked on the campaigns of progressive politicians such as Scondras and former Boston city councilor Rosario Salerno.
his life partner, Doug Hattaway. Hattaway, a spokesman for Senate majority leader Tom Daschle and, before that, a press secretary for former vice-president Al Gore’s presidential campaign, is a powerful figure in the Democratic Party. These connections paid dividends for Barrios
Sen. Jarrett Barrios said that he and his partner of more than 10 years could lose health and other benefits if the ban was adopted. Legislators are debating a constitutional amendment that would define marriage.
Kathy Bonk
From 1978 through 1987, Kathy directed the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund’s Media Project.
Kathy has worked on many multi-year, issue-oriented efforts for prominent foundations, for the Open Society Institute, Turner Foundations; and domestic and global women’s issues, for the Ford, Robert Sterling Clark, Gerbode and Packard Foundations, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Women Donors Network.
Previously, Kathy served as a public information officer at the U.S. Department of State, and the Voting Section of the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division. From 1978 to 1987, she directed the Media Project for the National Organization for Women’s Legal Defense and Education Fund. Kathy is on the board of Families USA, Population Connections and the Center for Law and the Public Interest and is an advisor to Ms. magazine.
Kathy Bonk, coordinator of the National Organization for Women’s Media Task Force, was born in 1953. In 1988, she established the Communications Consortium Media Center (CCMC), a nonprofit organization that helps other organizations use communications strategies for policy change. In 1989, KB was awarded a Kellogg Foundation National Leadership Fellowship, which resulted in the establishment of some of the first family planning clinics in Moscow.
The mission of the Communications Consortium is to use communications strategies for policy change. Over the past 25 years, Kathy has been at the forefront of dozens of media campaigns that marked a sea change in domestic and global policies affecting women, children and families.
Gordon Bonnyman
How Gordon Bonnyman grew from the wealth and privilege of his Knoxville childhood into Tennessee’s most vocal advocate for the dispossessed.
As one of the country’s most prominent social justice lawyers,
At Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee and the Tennessee Justice Center, the Knoxville native has forced the state to reform its prison system and played a key role in the development of TennCare.
Tony Spezia, CEO of Covenant Health and PHP/Cariten. “Thanks to him, we now have medicine by court order. Let the courts decide who gets what types of treatment.”
Bonnyman first became exposed to issues of poverty and race at boarding school in Pottstown, Pa., during the ‘60s.
In college at Princeton and the University of Tennessee, he took a keen interest in the events of the time—Civil Rights movement, Vietnam War, the War on Poverty, he says.
Brian Bonnyman, a Knoxville doctor and Gordon’s younger brother, his sister, Anne, who is an Episcopal minister at a church in Wilmington, Del.
Gordon Sr., who at the time was president of Blue Diamond Coal Company, which owned the Scotia mine. While Gordon Jr. was beginning his career fighting in court for the disadvantaged, his father, Gordon Sr., was trying to deal with the lawsuits that resulted from deaths at Scotia. The surviving families sued for $60 million, and the case was eventually settled in 1980 for $5.9 million.
Bonnyman and another legal aid attorney—Russell Overby—decided to strike out on their own. With a grant from the Tennessee Bar Association, they formed the Tennessee Justice Center. Its goal is to do the things that state’s legal societies could do no longer—most notably, file class action law suits on behalf of the poor.
Bonnyman has headed up the Justice Center’s efforts to provide health care to the poor and uninsured, continuing numerous cases started by Legal Aid.
Covenant Health’s Spezia says that Bonnyman simply doesn’t understand the cost of doing business. “Because of Gordon Bonnyman, the state and the MCO’s are just throwing money away. He’s never had to reckon with reality, and because the state doesn’t have the brains or the will to stand up to him, I think he’ll just keep turning the screws until he perceives that his legacy is going to be killing the program.”
The 1996 Republican Congress had established a conservative agenda that sought to curb low-income Americans’ reliance on federal funds, a move Bonnyman saw as unacceptable. “Suddenly we had clients [to whom] we had to say, ‘I’m sorry, but we can’t represent you anymore,’
That desire for a response culminated in the founding of the Tennessee Justice Center. One of the issues the center currently seeks to address is poor Americans’ access to health care.
And he makes a very good living suing TennCare. His Tennessee Justice Center reported revenue of $704,000 in fiscal year 2002. A significant portion of that revenue is paid by TennCare in the form of legal fees. That’s right. The state of Tennessee pays Bonnyman’s legal fees. He has no incentive to stop the lawsuits, and every incentive to continue them - suing TennCare is how Bonnyman makes a living. TennCare made the Tennessee Justice Center, which Bonnyman formed in 1996 for the express purpose of suing the state of Tennessee on matters related to TennCare and welfare reform.
Gordon Bonnyman, the chief lawyer for enrollees, arguing that TennCare’s financial problems stem from mismanagement and that the cuts will harm the most medically vulnerable.
Philippe Villers
Philippe Villers founded the company Computervision with Marty Allen in 1969. In 1980 he co-founded Automatix, an early robotics company, which he led until 1986. He later served as president of Cognition Corporation for 3 years. He is currently (2006) president of GrainPro, Inc., and board member of a number of high-tech startups, as well as president of Families USA Foundation, which he endowed. [1]
Villers was born in France and came to the United States as a child. He earned a B.A. from Harvard University and an S.M. in mechanical engineering from MIT in 1960. He also holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Massachusetts Lowell.
Ron Pollack
Modern Healthcare named Mr. Pollack one of the 100 Most Powerful People in Health Care. National Journal named him one of the top 25 players in Congress, the Administration, and the lobbying community on Medicare prescription drug benefits.
In 1997, Mr. Pollack was appointed by President Clinton as the sole consumer representative on the Presidential Advisory Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality in the Health Care Industry. In that capacity, Mr. Pollack helped prepare the Patients’ Bill of Rights that has been enacted by many state legislatures.
Prior to his current position at Families USA, Mr. Pollack was the Dean of the Antioch School of Law.
Mr. Pollack was also the Founding Executive Director of the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), a leading national organization focused on eliminating hunger in the U.S. Two of his notable accomplishment at FRAC include: (1) arguing two successful cases on the same day in the U.S. Supreme Court to secure food aid for low-income Americans; and (2) the successful federal litigation that resulted in the creation of the WIC program for malnourished mothers and infants.
Mr. Pollack received his law degree from New York University where he was an Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Fellow.
Bob Edgar
Bob Edgar became the president and CEO of Common Cause. Before that, he was general secretary of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA
Edgar serves on the boards of several organizations, including Independent Sector, the National Coalition for Health Care and the National Religious Partnership for the Environment. He serves on the board of directors of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, organization that is a principal resource for Congress on environmental and energy issues.
Edgar is well known for his service as a DEMOCRAT
six-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives
He often said that his commitments are to Peace, Poverty and Planet Earth — and later added and to Pluralism!
Mary Kay Henry
Mary Kay Henry has devoted her life to helping America’s health caregivers form unions, improve their jobs and the quality of care, and advocate for a more rational and humane health care system.
During her 25 years as an organizer and leader in the nation’s largest health care union, she has played a major role in helping more than half a million health care workers join together in SEIU, negotiate for better working and patient care conditions, and actively shape health care policy at the state and federal levels.
An active champion of health care reform, Mary Kay envisions a U.S. health care system that provides universal coverage and gives front-line caregivers a real voice in patient care. She is a member of the executive board of Families USA, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to the achievement of high-quality, affordable health care for all Americans. She is also a labor adviser to and member of the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops’ Subcommittee on Catholic Health Care.
Mary Kay is active in the fight for immigration reform and gay and lesbian rights. She is a founding member of SEIU’s gay and lesbian Lavender Caucus. She and her partner, Paula Macchello, have been together for 20 years.
Jack Ebeler
Jack Ebeler, MPA, is a consultant in health care policy and health care. He provides counsel on the federal policy environment and the changing health care marketplace, and focuses on how to shape and respond to that environment to achieve better coverage, care and affordability. Jack serves on the Health Care Services Board of the Institute of Medicine (IOM), the boards of directors of Families USA and the National Academy of Social Insurance.
In 1995 and 1996 he served in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, first as deputy assistant secretary for planning and evaluation/health and then as acting assistant secretary for planning and evaluation. Prior to that he was a principal at the consulting firm Health Policy Alternatives, vice president at HealthPartners in Minnesota, on the staff of the Subcommittee on Health and the Environment of the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce, special assistant to the Administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration, (now the CMS), an analyst at the Congressional Research Service and at the federal Medicaid program and as a staff member on Capitol Hill.
Angela Monson
A member of the Oklahoma State Senate from 1993 until November, 2005 and the Oklahoma House of Representatives from November 1990 until her election to the State Senate, Monson was the primary sponsor or co-sponsor of much of the legislation pertaining to health care coverage, financing and delivery systems in Oklahoma, and was one of the chief architects of the Oklahoma Health Care Authority, the state’s Medicaid agency.
During her tenure as Health Committee Chair, Monson was instrumental in developing the Conference’s position and actions on the Tobacco Settlement between the states’ attorneys general and the tobacco companies.
She was also a member of the National Black Caucus of State Legislators Executive Committee.
Nationally, Monson served as a member of the Steering Committee of the Reforming States Group, a Milbank Memorial Fund health care initiative, and was also a board member of the Public Health Law Association. In 1998, Monson was appointed to the National Advisory Council to the National Health Service Corps by then Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala.
As a community activist, Monson has been an active member of many community based organizations and previously served as President of the Oklahoma City Branch of the NAACP.
I thought at the time that this story just sounded to set-up and here we are with the true facts thanks to you and other Freepers. This needs to get to the talk radio people for Monday...thanks much
Does anybody know if/where the RAT response is posted online?
They shell out more for private school than some families live on. No pity here. Homeschool-public school. Pick one & buy your own insurance.
bump
Maybe Bonnie should take up her crusade for health insurance with her EMPLOYER!
Bonnie Frost
In 2007, Bonnie joined the Kaufman-Wills Group as an associate conducting various market research projects, compiling competitive journal profiles, developing and maintaining databases, and helping to manage company operations. A graduate of Towson University, Bonnie’s previous work experience includes bookkeeping and operations management for Frostworks, Inc., as well as curriculum writing, admissions work, and teaching preschool and kindergarten at First English Lutheran Preschool in Baltimore.
Kaufman-Wills Group, LLC
24 Aintree Rd
Baltimore, MD 21286
www.kaufmanwills.com
Alma J. Wills, Partner
Ph: 410 477 2329
Fax: 443 337 0583
Cara Kaufman, Partner
Ph: 410 821 8035
Fax: 443 269 0283
Fred Fusting, Partner
Ph: 410 494 0722 Fax: 443 279 2955
Kaufman-Wills Group is about SOLUTIONS. We look forward to bringing solutions to you and your organization!
this IS the other America!
The poor kid only has ONE house...!
Cheers!
bump for later read
Self imployed people typically avoid taxes by paying themselves low salaries. They instead rent from themselves, and do other things. Paying 40k in tuition means these folks probably have "real" discretionary incomes north of 200k/year.
Excellent work!
You are starting to show up in the news:
http://westernstandard.blogs.com/shotgun/2007/10/poor-family-own.html
Frost’s mother, Bonnie, says, “You should explain to Graeme why you against expanding healthcare for kids, please don’t veto this bill.”
Among those lobbying for the program on Tuesday was Bonnie S. Frost of
Baltimore. Her daughter, Gemma, now 9, has been in the program for eight
years and received treatment for a traumatic brain injury after an auto
accident in 2004.
The money provided in the bill is $35 billion more than the current level
of spending and $30 billion more than Mr. Bush wanted.
To cover the cost, the bill relies on tobacco taxes, especially the
cigarette tax, which would be increased to $1 a pack, from the current 39
cents.
The bill would make the following changes in the children’s insurance
program:
¶Dental services would have to be covered. Mental illnesses would generally
be covered on a par with physical illnesses.
¶States could cover pregnant women with low incomes. The federal government
would reduce payments for coverage of parents and would gradually end
coverage of nonpregnant childless adults in the program.
¶Instead of directly providing coverage to children in low-income families,
states would have new incentives to subsidize premiums for private health
insurance offered by employers.
The bill stipulates that federal money cannot be used to provide health
benefits for illegal immigrants. But states could try to verify citizenship
by using Social Security numbers, without inspecting documents like birth
certificates and passports.
The compromise package would expand the $5 billion-a-year children’s health
insurance program by an average of $7 billion a year over the next five
years, for total funding of $60 billion over the period.
the measure would push children already
covered by private health insurance into publicly financed health care,
while creating an “entitlement” whose costs would ultimately outstrip the
money raised by the bill’s 61-cent increase in the federal tobacco tax.
it would move the nation toward “socialized
medicine,” ease access to Medicaid for illegal immigrants, and lavish
“pork-barrel” spending on a few lucky states and districts.
The bill’s fine print does raise indigent health-care reimbursements to
Tennessee and Hawaii, helps county-operated health facilities in
California’s Ventura and Merced counties, and boosts Michigan’s Medicaid
subsidies, a provision inserted by House Energy and Commerce Chairman John
D. Dingell (D-Mich.).
Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), chairman of the House
Democratic Caucus, contrasted Bush’s opposition to the bill with the
hundreds of billions of dollars the administration has sought to fund the
war in Iraq.
“It’s about the priorities, and the president has told us his priorities,”
Emanuel said.
“It’s no surprise the president finds himself isolated,” Emanuel said at a
Democratic event that included a Maryland mother who relied on SCHIP
coverage when two of her children were badly injured in a car wreck.
Eight Democrats opposed the bill. Some, from tobacco-growing districts,
object to raising the federal cigarette tax to $1 a pack, a 61-cent
increase. Some Hispanic members complained that the bill would make legal
immigrant children wait five years to qualify for SCHIP, but voted for it
anyway.
Under
the expansion proposal, states could seek federal waivers to steer funds to
some families earning at least triple the official poverty-level income,
provided the states showed progress enrolling the main target: children in
families earning up to double the poverty rate
legislation could qualify some New York
families of four making about $83,000 a year, or four times the poverty
level
60 Minutes broadcast failed to tell viewers that Families USA, which issued the study, “is a left-wing organization with an agenda of increasing government involvement in health care.”
“60 Minutes” identified Families USA as a non-partisan group
“We are non-partisan – I want to be clear about that,” said [Families USA Executive Director Ron] Pollack. “We have never supported or opposed any political candidate for any office, ever. I don’t know how I could be more resolute about this. And indeed, our tax exempt status requires us to be.” Pollack said that the vast majority of the group’s finding comes from non-partisan foundations, though it has received a “tiny proportion of funding” from George Soros.
Ron Pollack is right when he says Families USA is non-partisan, but that’s a red herring. The National Center for Public Policy Research did not say that CBS should have told viewers that Families USA supports candidates of one particular political party for public office, we said viewers should have been told that Families USA is “a left-wing organization with an agenda of increasing government involvement in health care.” When CBS decided to call Families USA a “non-partisan health care watchog group” without saying anything about its leftism, viewers were misled. What possible reason, other than bias, would 60 Minutes have had to do that?
Interestingly, while CBS called Families USA a “non-partisan health care watchog group,” it called the National Center for Public Policy Research “a conservative group called The National Center For Public Policy Research.” The National Center is conservative, but it has the same tax status as Families USA — and has an equal claim to be called “non-partisan” by CBS.
Families USA bills itself as a “national nonprofit, non-partisan organization dedicated to the achievement of high-quality, affordable health care for all Americans.” This has led the media to refer to it as a health care consumer advocacy group. But Families USA has strong partisan ties to the Democratic Party, labor unions and liberal activism. And it has received major financial contributions from George Soros, who is donating millions to Democratic-leaning advocacy groups.
President William Jefferson Clinton
Remarks as Delivered
For Families USA
January 23, 2003
Thank you very much for the warm welcome.
And, Ron, thank you for the reference to Hillary. You actually should have given her a bigger round of applause because, unlike me, she can still do something for you.
I am delighted to be here. Chris Jennings, who was my health care adviser in the White House, and several other people who worked with us are here today. And I see a lot of other old friends in the audience, some of whom I worked with in Arkansas over 20 years ago.
The Institute on Medicine as a Profession (IMAP) which according to it’s website “aims to set forth a vision for professionalism in the 21st century and to promote that vision through research and policy initiatives. “
IMAP received a $7.5 million grant from George Soros who made his money in part from wrecking currencies. IMAP is part of a new venture called The Prescription Project, which is funded by Community Catylst, which in turn is funded by the same group that funds the liberal Families USA which also receives money from Soros. The Prescription Project is being funded by the Pew Charitable Trust to the tune of $6 million but is also linked to the Prescription Access Litigation Project through its affiliation with Community Catalyst. That project is comprised of the largest tort lawyers suing drug companies for a variety of reasons.
The Prescription Project is designed to end companies from having any contact with doctors or patients whatsoever
PS. Health Care For All is affiliated with Community Catalyst and Families USA
The kids’ injuries are from a car accident. Health insurance has little-to-no applicability here. Their auto insurance should have covered this.
Wow.
Reminder that they might not be paying any tuition at all. From the school site:
“In 2007, 18% of Park students in grades 1-12 received over $2 million in financial assistance that ranged from $1,000 per year to full tuition.”
It seems to me that the Frost's probably received tuition assistance from the Park School (check the link.) IF this is true then we have a couple with four children, two of which attend a PRIVATE instead of a local PUBLIC school, mooching off financial assistance instead of using whatever amount of non-subsidised tuition they pay for health insurance for the entire family instead.
Don’t worry, the ‘decider’ has changed his mind.
Bush calls for compromise on children’s healthcare
Oct. 7
“If putting poor children first takes a little more than the 20% increase I have proposed in my budget for SCHIP, I am willing to work with leaders in Congress to find the additional money,” he said.
Regardless of the boy’s financial status, for the Democrats to use him as a political prop is deplorable. Is this what they really have come to?
These are the kinds of people who will be running the country if the Democrats win in 2008.