Bills to improve voting access for incarcerated individuals draw support from lawmakers, advocates

‘Pennsylvania can care about our democracy and promoting real justice and safety,’ state Rep. Rick Krajewski said

BY: CASSIE MILLER - 

With the general election weeks away, lawmakers and advocates are calling for legislation to better inform incarcerated Pennsylvanians about their right to vote and permit them to vote via absentee ballot. 

Supporters of House Bill 1756 and its counterpart House Bill 1757 — bills that would permit all incarcerated individuals to vote in Pennsylvania, provide voter information to correctional facilities, and direct the Department of State to create a “uniform policy for civic education” in correctional institutions — gathered on the Capitol steps Wednesday, hoping to garner support for the legislation currently before the House State Government Committee. 

The bill’s prime sponsor, state Rep. Rick Krajewski (D-Philadelphia) said that the legislation is needed to prevent “de-facto disenfranchisement.”

“This process will include dissemination of registration forms, ballot applications and ballots, civic education for voters to learn how to cast their vote, and designated staff to handle the collection and return of ballots. We will also be collecting data from each facility to oversee the effectiveness of their procedures,” Krajewski said. 

As long as they have been citizens for at least one month before the next election and will be at least 18 years of age on election day, many incarcerated individuals are currently allowed to vote in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The list includes pretrial detainees, convicted misdemeanants, individuals who have been released (or will be released by the date of the next election) from a correctional facility or halfway house upon completion of their term of incarceration for conviction of a misdemeanor or a felony, individuals who are on probation or released on parole, and individuals who are under house arrest, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections. 

The problem, lawmakers said, is that many eligible individuals don’t know it. 

“If you can empower and engage folks on the inside, who are at one of their lowest moments, and get them to engage in our democracy — What happens when they come home?” state Rep. Chris Rabb (D-Philadelphia) asked. “What kind of ambassadors, what kind of advocates are they going to be? Say: ‘Look, I voted, and I was on the inside, what’s your excuse?’”

Rabb, who said supporting the bill was “a no-brainer” for him, called the pair of bills “super voter” bills for their ability to empower more Pennsylvanians to cast their votes on election day. 

“Having people closest to the pain informed the policy — that will allow for justice for all,” Rabb said. 

State Rep. Aerion Abney, a Democrat representing Allegheny County, echoed Rabb’s comments about the potential impact of the legislation. 

“If you are someone who is extremely passionate about protecting our democracy, and expanding access to the ballot and voting rights, then this bill is for you,” state Rep. Aerion Abney (D-Allegheny) said. “If you are someone that cares about criminal justice reform, and protecting the rights of the people who are in our county jails, this bill is also for you as well.”

The rally to support the bills comes just a day after students from across the commonwealth gathered at the Capitol for another voting-related cause, urging lawmakers to consider two bills that would end closed primary elections in Pennsylvania and bring more voters to the polls on election day. 

The flurry of activity around voting rights is also happening as the Legislature quibbles over when Pennsylvania’s 2024 presidential primary should be held, as the current April 23 date conflicts with Passover.

“We have the opportunity to rewrite history,” Krajewski said. “Pennsylvania has historically been one of the worst states in our country when it comes to our carceral system. While we have the wind behind our backs, while we have this majority, we must use this political moment to say another world is possible, that Pennsylvania can be a state that believes everyone deserves a second chance, that Pennsylvania can care about our democracy and promoting real justice and safety.”

Photo credit: Cassie Miller 

Originally published on October 18th, 2023, in Penn Capital-Star

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Kaiser Settlement Sends Strong Message to Providers That Ignore Patient Needs

A California settlement compels the state’s largest health care provider to spend $150 million on behavioral health services.

• MARK KREIDLER
• OCT 16, 2023

Kaiser Permanente’s $200 million settlement with the State of California for its 
repeated failures to provide patients with adequate and timely mental health care 
was a long while coming.  The deficiencies themselves? Kaiser’s own employees 
say they’ve been hiding in plain sight.

“Years and years of banging our heads against the wall have finally paid off,” said Ilana Marcucci-Morris, a therapist at Kaiser Permanente’s Oakland Medical Center. “This has the potential to make Kaiser a leader in mental health care, rather than a serial violator of mental health care laws.”

The settlement, announced late Thursday by the state’s Department of Managed Health Care, includes a $50 million fine — the largest the department has ever levied against a health plan, Director Mary Watanabe said in a statement. Kaiser also pledged to spend $150 million over five years to build out behavioral health services that critics say have been woefully underdeveloped for years, leading to appointment wait times that violated state standards.

The settlement resulted from the department’s enforcement investigation and a nonroutine survey of Kaiser’s practices last year, which identified “several deficiencies and violations in the plan’s provision of behavioral health care services to enrollees,” the department said in a news release. Those included long delays for patients trying to schedule mental health appointments, a failure to contract enough high-level behavioral care facilities within its network, and Kaiser not making out-of-network referrals consistent with requirements under the law when in-network providers were not available, the department said.

Under the settlement, Kaiser must hire an outside consultant “to focus on corrective actions” related to access, referrals, appeals and grievances and to ensure that patients receive the mental health care they need, regardless of the type or severity of their conditions.

“Today’s actions represent a tectonic shift in terms of our accountability on the delivery of behavioral health services,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement. Newsom said the settlement aims to “provide Kaiser patients with the care they are entitled to in a timely manner.”

In a statement, Kaiser CEO Greg A. Adams said the agreement “takes full accountability for our performance during the survey period including our shortcomings, acknowledges our work to improve mental health care, and ensures that our ongoing investments not only help the members of Kaiser Permanente but also build a stronger mental health foundation in the communities we serve.”

Critics have argued that Kaiser patients haven’t received adequate care for years, despite previous enforcement actions. Kaiser paid a $4 million fine in 2013 for not providing its members proper access to mental health care. Four years later, it agreed to redress similar failures. Yet Kaiser has consistently left patients without follow-up mental health appointments for weeks, sometimes months, state officials and critics have said.

The situation reached a boiling point last fall, when more than 2,000 mental health professionals affiliated with the National Union of Healthcare Workers walked off the job, frustrated during contract negotiations by what they said was Kaiser’s refusal to address persistent staffing issues and long wait times for behavioral services. (Disclosure: NUHW is a financial supporter of Capital & Main.)

Capital & Main reported in 2021 and again last year that Kaiser workers said wait times for mental health appointments often stretched four to eight weeks or more. Jenny Butera, a marriage and family therapist in Sacramento who has since left Kaiser, said on Aug. 14 last year, “My earliest next appointment (is) mid-October — for anybody.” The American Psychological Association said in 2020 that it had never “seen such an egregious case of delayed access for follow-up appointments.”

The DMHC paid attention to such stories, and legislation that took effect last summer required providers such as Kaiser to schedule follow-up appointments for mental health care patients within 10 days of their last visit. In the wake of Thursday’s announced settlement, the department said its survey continues and could prompt a modified corrective plan.

“This settlement is a monumental victory for Kaiser Permanente patients and its mental health therapists who have waged multiple strikes over the past decade to make Kaiser fix its broken behavioral healthcare system,” said union President Sal Rosselli. “The DMHC’s report affirms everything that Kaiser therapists have said about their patients’ inability to receive timely, adequate mental health care.”

In his statement, Adams said demand for Kaiser’s mental health care services rose 33% during the COVID-19 pandemic and that 20% more people have sought care in 2023 than at the same time last year. He added that “an ongoing shortage of qualified mental health professionals,” along with clinician burnout and turnover and the 10-week strike last year, made it “very difficult to meet this growing need for care.”

The union has disputed Kaiser’s characterization, arguing that qualified therapists fled Kaiser over the years because of unreasonable workloads and short-staffing practices that predated the pandemic.

Kaiser Permanente is the largest health care provider in California, with 9.4 million residents using the system. The company was founded as a nonprofit, though its Permanente Medical Groups operate as for-profit entities. Kaiser reported a record $8.1 billion in net revenue in 2021 before showing a loss in 2022 — the only year since 2007 that the company has posted negative income.

Kaiser therapists have complained for years that Kaiser paid scant attention to the mental health care needs of its patients — a fairly common practice among health providers, industry economists say. Thursday’s settlement will change the math a bit.

“It makes me feel hopeful, knowing they have to put money into this,” Marcucci-Morris said. “We’ve been pushing for well over a decade.”

Capital & Main

The opinions expressed here are solely the author's and do not reflect the opinions or beliefs of the LA Progressive.

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Solidarity with the Palestinian right to resist

Only history can place the October 7th Palestinian military action in Israel in its proper context – an act of self-defense in response to a steadily increasing, all-encompassing Israeli assault on Palestinians in the occupied territories, in general, and the “open-air prison” of Gaza in particular. The December 12th Movement International Secretariat strongly supports the Palestinian people in the righteous exercise of their internationally-guaranteed human rights.

Why Black People Should Be Concerned

Black people cannot allow ourselves to be misguided by the U.S. government/mainstream media narrative of what is going on in the Middle East.

As with much of U.S. history, Israel’s began with a myth – “A land without a people, for a people without a land” - to justify its 1948 creation as a settler-colonial state. In many ways, the Palestinian struggle for liberation reflects our struggle in the U.S. Just as the U.S. government domestic policy has historically perpetrated and profited from Black people’s forcible oppression here, its foreign policy does the same around the world, but particularly clearly in Palestine. The U.S. was instrumental in Israel’s establishment and the forced displacement of the Palestinian who lived there. It has unqualifiedly backed it with money, weapons, intelligence, aid, propaganda and political cover ever since. Israel is the U.S.’s “eyes, ears, caretaker and bodyguard” in a critical oil-rich, non-white, non-European, geo-economic-political area.

Israel has now declared a “complete siege” on Gaza and has cut off water, electricity, fuel and food to the already impoverished area. Israel has held Gaza in a state of siege for the last 17 years since Hamas began governing. Israel said that it will “exterminate” Hamas. Hamas is the government of Gaza, not simply a military force. Hamas is an integral part of the 2.4 million people of Gaza, an area the size of Detroit (population 620,000) and one of the most densely populated areas of the world. Israel cannot separate its extermination of Hamas from the people of Gaza. Nevertheless President Biden “has Israel’s back.”

When the entire world has united to condemn Israeli atrocities, the U.S. “has its back.” Between 1972 and 2021, the United States vetoed over 53 UN resolutions against Israel.i Major international human rights organizations have accused Israel of being an apartheid regime.ii And this is not surprising as Israel was one of the few open supporters of the South African Apartheid state. Nevertheless, the U.S. “had its back.”

So we must pay close attention to what is going on in the world, even if it seem unrelated to us. Malcolm X said if we fail to do so, we’ll treat our friends as enemies and our enemies as friends. The Palestinian people are our friends.

We must:

• Demand that the CBC support the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and self-defense
• Condemn Israeli State and colonial violence against the Palestinian people
• Demand that the U.S. end all aid to Israel
• Defend the Palestinian Movement and community in the U.S.
• Demand the Release of all (5000) Palestinian prisoners (including 1350 being held without charge or trial)

i UN Security Council Veto List; Newton, Creede, “A History of the U.S. Blocking UN Resolutions against Israel,” Al Jazeera, 5/19/2021

ii Amnesty International Report, “Israel’s Apartheid against Palestinians: a cruel system of domination and a crime against humanity,” 2/1/2022