 This is Think Tech Hawaii. Community matters here. The choices that people have at the end of life. We have been dedicated to having the bill, medical aid, and dying pass the legislature. And so here we are now at the beginning of the session. And it is time to get ready to work at passing that bill. And a lot of other bills. So, with me today is a master at bill passing. It's Scott Foster, who has been on this journey of medical aid and dying for what, 20 years? 25 years. 25, yes. 25 years. So, Scott is the chair of the Kupuna Caucus for the Oahu County Democratic Party. No, it's a state party. A state party. A statewide. A statewide. There's counties, there's a lot of counties, and then there's the state. We're the state. And you're the state. Okay. Very good. So today, as you know, last week was the opening of the legislature. So we're going to talk today about the legislature, what it, about some of the bills that have already been proposed, and how you, the audience, can participate. How you can make this happen. So, Scott, Aloha, and welcome. I am delighted to have you as always. Aloha, Marcia. I'm delighted to be here as always. So tell us, tell us about, let's start with the legislature. What people need to know about the legislature. Well, we need a two-hour show for that. The legislature convenes every year in January, and people think that that's it. It lasts till May, I believe, and then it's over with, but it's not over with. It actually just starts over and keeps going. And as you know, you and I have worked since the last, the 2017 session, to get our bills back in a position to hopefully pass this year. The last session was exhilarating in that our bills sailed through the Senate. I think there were only two no votes, and then hit a roadblock in the House Health Committee. And for various reasons that would take another show to explain, but nonetheless, after that event, we immediately set to work to position the bill for this session, which we, I think, done a great job of doing. No little thanks to your work. Well, thank you, Scott. There are now two bills when the same bill is introduced in the House and the Senate. They're called companion bills. And in fact, I think there's four or five bills that have been introduced in the House and Senate just to be certain that we have a vehicle that keeps moving. So look for those bills to be announced. It could be this week. This is Wednesday. It could be today or next week. There's a deadline. I've forgotten exactly what it is, and that's coming up. So nonetheless, we've got the vehicles and it's time for all the folks watching our show and their friends and family to become involved. I'm looking for the calendar. It's in here someplace that tells us when these deadlines are. This little book is precious. It's free, and it's in everybody's office at the State Legislature and at the City Council. Unlike any other state in the United States, every telephone is in here. Everybody's telephone number is in here. An email address. Email address. Room number. And room number. All of it. All of it is in here. And it's free. Now, the 2018 is not out yet, so be patient. That'll be hopefully. But the 2018 is nobody changed office between 17 and 18. So the only two new people I think it is. Yes. And of course. It'll work for now until the new one comes. Yeah. Where is the calendar? It's in here somewhere. Don't keep talking. I might point out, for people who have not actually involved themselves before, you hear one griping and carping about the way things are in Hawaii and the City County and state governments. And yet, if you ask them, well, do you even know your legislator's name? Most people don't even know their senator or representative's name. They might know the council member's name, but it's a whole separate body, as you know. The city council is in session year-round. And people might call them for garbage pickup or book pickup or dead animal on the street. But the state is where the action is right now. Not that the city council isn't busy because they are. The reason I'm pointing this out is it's surprising to me to learn every day people don't know who they're griping about. And everybody seems to like their legislature, but they don't like the legislature. Well, the legislature is made up of their representatives and many others. And of course, when the legislators go out fundraising and community events and all the outreach that they do, you don't always get the reality of what's going on. Because, frankly, many of them, especially this time of the year and an election year, they're more concerned about getting elected than anything, re-elected than anything else. So that's why this little book is so handy. Let's show it again so you can see. This is a precious little thing. And like I said, it's free. It's in everybody's office. And so pick it up. City council as well as the legislature. Right. That's a place to start. Here we might mention the government website. And it's very easy to remember. It's hawai.gov, hawai.gov. And there you will see you can get information on every agency in the state, but also the legislature. And there you can find out all sorts of information. Now, it's free. You don't have to sign up to get information, but you have to sign up to submit testimony. Well, let me add to that that once you do get an account, because they ask you, I've had the same account every year for more years than I can count. It remembers you. And that is a good thing. You can verify or not if you're researching whatever it is once you have that account, which doesn't cost anything. You're there and you just push the button and say, I'm back. You know. And you can read other people's testimony. You can read the bill. Anything that you need to know is there. So I agree with you that you need to do that. And about who is who? Who's your legislator? Where, what district do you live in? It will ask you and then you put in your address and it'll tell you what district you're in. Everything you need to know. So continue. Once you've signed up, by the way, it's very easy now. They've made it very simple to submit testimony. Now, in the case of the death with dignity, medical aid and dying legislation, as you know, I'm also the communications director for the Hawaii Death with Dignity Society. And anyone that goes to our website, and that's hawaidwdsociety.org, and Google brings it right up, we send out information immediately because once the hearing notice is, we say, dropped, but once the hearing notice goes out, it can be 48 hours, but when in the middle of the legislature, it's usually 24 hours. So you've got 24 hours to get your testimony in. Now, what I'm telling people now is all you have to do is press the button, put the bill number in, and up pops the hearing notice and also a puka that asks you if you want to submit testimony. Click on that, and there's all these autofills. Are you for or against a measure? Click or click? Yes or no? Will you be there in person to give testimony? Yes or no? And then new this year is a big column that you can write as much as you want within reason, probably 500 words, to tell your story about whatever issue you're wanting to support or defeat. And click send, and that's it. Now, basically all you have to do is say for or against, and that counts as much as if you write 10 pages. I was getting ready to say that. I worked in the city council for a long time. Not elected, but anyway. What I have come to know is that they count the yes and no. They weigh, if you watch the clerk at the testimony, when you go to the hearing, you will see the yes and the nay stacked. And that's, you know... It's just that simple. It's that simple. It's stick figures. Yes. It is very simple, the yes and the nay. And last session, there were 2,500 bills submitted. Needless to say, not every legislator reads all those bills. That's almost impossible. But they do have staff that read. And then the staff writes a summary. And then the summary goes to the legislator. And sometimes you can see them reading the summary just before the hearing. If you can think of the mountain of 2,500 bills. That's just... Well, in every issue you imagine, many very, very complicated. Yes. And so, while I like writing testimony, as you know, because I like to talk, but be sure that you put yes or no. Even if you submit testimony, you must say that, because that is the weight. And there's a lot of good arguments for and against every bill. So it's put it in, put in the testimony. It's a numbers game, yes. And honestly, the more you show up, part of success is always showing up. The two years that we worked on minimum wage. Now, I'm going to tell this. I wore the same jacket with the same flower and sat in the same seat for two years. So everybody knew, oh, God, there she is. Do we really have to deal with her? That was the way you make it known that you are here, that you are watching, that whatever your tactic is, be there, show up, let them know that you are watching. Get to know your legislator. You know, remind them, I pay your salary. Remind them, I pay your salary. I didn't ask you to run for that office. You asked me to vote for you. So here I am. Okay, you're mine. I own you. I worked, I walked for you. I donated to you. And people tend to be intimidated by elected officials, which is exactly how they like it. The fact of the matter is they're much more afraid of you, especially if you're active and vocal. And those of us, I try to hold my speechifying down and stick to the point. But they do know that if they do something stupid or ill-advised, I will call them on. Now, we need to take a break. We'll be back in just a bit, and then we'll go through the bills that we know are already there. Okay, we'll be right back. Aloha, welcome to Hawaii. This is Prince Dyches, your host of The Prince of Investing. Coming to you guys each and every Tuesday at 11 a.m. Right here on Thin Tech, Hawaii. Don't forget to come by and check out some of the great information on stocks, investments, your money, all the other great stuff. And I'll be one. And we're back. Today we are with Scott Foster, who I guess is, what can I say, an expert after 25 years of dogging the legislature on getting the bills from step one all the way through to the end. So let's talk about the bills before the legislature that you have already written testimony, that you have a feeling yes or no about. Where are we? I testify, write testimony and testify for the Kapuna Caucus, and the Kapuna Caucus is a- What is a Kapuna Caucus? Well, Kapuna is a rough definition. It's older and wiser. Thank you. And it's not that we're any smarter. It's just that we've lived, I'm 76. I'll be 80 pretty soon. You assume that you've gotten some wisdom in all those years. Yes, and some understanding. And the caucus is, there are a number of caucuses in the Democratic Party, seven I believe. Hawaiian Caucus, Health, Kapuna Caucus, Environmental Caucus, Labor Caucus, and all the rest. And that is people of like minds who are meeting together and determining what issues are common to them and working as a group. And the Kapuna Caucus does the same thing. And as the name might signify, we work primarily on senior and elder care issues. Healthcare being a major concern given the state of healthcare in this country. Earlier this week, well two days ago, I wrote testimony for I think 16 bills. Oh, wow. And I did not write long lengthy explanations because each one of those bills has pretty wise people who are in charge, leading the charge on those bills. And what they're looking from me and the community is just the support, as I mentioned earlier. And what are those bills? Well, one of the biggest issues this year is why Hawaii's unlicensed elder care industry is out of control. And long story short, licensed care homes which take care of many, many of our Kapuna, even Medicaid and Medicare patients, it's very expensive. And what's happened the last few years is those licensed homes that are inspected by the health department. And the particular agency is led by a longtime friend of ours, John McDermott, who just does a great job with it. John discovered that a lot of homes are opting out of being licensed and that they're renting rooms to seniors now. And yet they still are rendering some care, whether it's medication or food. And they should be licensed and inspected. And that's been a really big contentious battle for several years, which will come to a head this year. I'm sure they've been working with the representative John Mazzuno, the new chair of the Health and Health and Human Services Committee, worked with the Attorney General to get just the right language to get this bill passed. So there's, I'm going to say, at least 85 or more individuals and organizations involved, including the Kapuna Caucus of the State Legislature, which is a different organization than our organization, which is a Democratic Party organization. So the Kapuna Caucus of the Legislature is made up of legislative tours? No, there's a House co-chair and a Senate co-chair. The people who are active represent various organizations, Alzheimer's, MS. The whole gamut of disease is kidney. And when they meet, there's a room full. There's maybe 100 people involved in that and they have real clout. There's also many people from the administration who come to the Kapuna Caucus, legislative caucus to learn because they know that that's where the hard questions will be asked. Well, now, I guess the state did not pass the federal guidelines for inspecting these homes statewide and the person from the health department said, which broke my heart, but he said that they only had nine inspectors for all of these islands. And, you know, I couldn't pass this up. Why? Only nine and they all live on Oahu. Can't you hire people that live on these islands to do the inspection in order to meet the federal guidelines? And they hemmed in awe of why they couldn't do that. It wasn't a satisfactory answer. But let's get to the rest of the bills before we run out of time. Well, another bill that's particularly interesting and important to me is the... Many of us have worked for years to try to get a single-payer health care system. And it's fallen on deaf ears despite the people nationally. Ralph Nader has been talking about single-payer for a quarter of a century. Senator Bernie, that's one of the planks of his platform, a single-payer. What is single-payer? Single-payer takes the insurance industry out of the process so that... and the overhead that an insurance company has in administering the funds. And the insurance companies are the ones that are determining what care and when and how much you get. Never mind what the doctor has to say. Some doctors, they accuse them of over-prescribing and over-treating our too many X-rays, too many MRIs. Well, there may be some abuse to the system. Of course, there always is. That's another reason we need more inspectors at the health department. But then you get into the problem of scarce resources, where they're allocated, and many times a misunderstanding by the legislators who vote on the budgets of what that budget in a particular department actually does. So it's getting all of that information to a legislator who is dealing with, as you said, thousands of bills. I heard this year it's 3,000. So we'll see. But once the legislature gets rolling, it's like a machine. I mean deadline, deadline, deadline, deadline. And frankly, a lot of details get overlooked. Now, mercifully, once a bill is passed, such as the medical aid and dying bill, the next step, once the bill is passed, is rule-making. A lot of legislators, and too many I fear, try to spell out every detail in a bill. And that's what happened to the medical aid and dying bill last year. They went so far into the weeds, on the minutiae and the details that should have been left to the rule-making process, which is another open, public process, hearings, fighting over every word to get it just right before the bill, the law is put into action. Let's keep going because we're going to run out of time. Next bill. Okay, well, I don't want to leave the bill we're trying to get past this year, is on the Hawaii Health Care Authority, which would be tasked with studying the Hawaii statutes, the federal statutes on health care, and coming up for hopefully the next session, a single-payer bill that would work for Hawaii. It's very complicated. Health care laws drive you nuts just trying to understand it. Okay, next? Well, so many of these are dealing with issues that are important. Many of them clarify former bills. Here's one for example, requires the auditor to conduct an audit of each domestic violence nonprofit organization that has received state funding in the past years, five years. Well, what that's about is there's a myriad, 501 nonprofit organizations out there, many getting state funds, many overlapping in what the money is to be used for, and many of them simply don't do anything. Oh, boy. So that's an interesting one. Family court bill, position appropriation funds to assist in the review certification or recertification of dialysis centers and other health care facilities under the purview of the Department of Health. That is so bad. Not inspecting dialysis. That is so bad. Well, you see, this is what we're dealing with, and I feel badly sometimes that I can't help with some of these other ones, but there's only so much one can do. But that one, the kidney foundation ought to have everybody out on that one. Yes. Here's another one relating to the elder. Elderly makes financial exploitation of an elder by a caregiver, a class A felony. Absolutely. As it should be. Absolutely. Makes you wonder why it hasn't been. In the bill, medical aid and dying, if you tamper with the person that is passing, it is a class A felony. Now, what we are at the end, we need you to go get the book, type in your name and all at the state, guv.gov, guv.gov, and every bill, all the hearings, everything you want to know will come up. And we'll see you next time.