Jim Geraghty over at NRO selectively cuts and pastes from Alaska legislative history on HB 270, the 2000 bill that prohibited victims of sexual assaults or their insurance companies from being billed for exams.
Typically, he either hasn't actually read the full history, or bothered to do the related research, or ... he's blowing smoke out of his, uh hat.
Geraghty's premise:
Liberal bloggers have cited the story of Wasilla charging victims for rape kits as evidence that as mayor, Sarah Palin backed cruel and insensitive policies. But just about everything we know from initial accounts of this controversy is wrong.
Okay, let's see how he backs this up. Having mentioned the committee hearings for the bill, HB 270, he goes on:
1.Wasilla was not mentioned in any of the hearings. . . .The Democratic sponsor of the legislation, Eric Croft, told USA Today recently that "the law was aimed in part at Wasilla , where now-Gov. Sarah Palin was mayor." Yet in six committee meetings, Wasilla was never mentioned, even when the discussion turned to the specific topic of where victims were being charged. (The Matanuska-Susitna Valley, the surrounding region — the most densely populated region of the state, and roughly the size of West Virginia — is mentioned in passing.) Croft testified at the hearing where Phillips read the Juneau woman’s statement, so he must have known that it was a problem well beyond Palin’s jurisdiction, even if he chose not to tell USA Today about it.
Well no, the Matanuska-Susitna (Mat-Su) Valley, where Wasilla is located, is not merely "mentioned in passing." According to the minutes for the March 23, 2000 hearing of the Health, Education and Social Services Committee, an advocate for the bill testified as follows:
LAUREE HUGONIN, Director, Alaska Network on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, came forward to testify. She clarified that
while it may be true that Deputy Commissioner Smith may not have
found an instance where law enforcement has forwarded a bill,
hospitals have. It has happened in the Mat-Su Valley, on the
Kenai Peninsula, and in Southeast, and that is why the bill is
being brought forward.
So one of the main reasons that the bill was introduced was that, among others, a hospital or hospitals in the Mat-Su Valley have forwarded bills for sexual assault exams. Okay, the principal hospital for the Mat-Su Valley is the Mat-Su Regional Medical Center, located between Palmer and Wasilla, which are the two main population centers in the valley.
Here's what the local paper said about those two cities when the bill passed:
While the Alaska State Troopers and most municipal police agencies have covered the cost of exams, which cost between $300 to $1,200 apiece, the Wasilla police department does charge the victims of sexual assault for the tests.
. . .
Palmer police chief Laren Zager said that to his knowledge, no sexual assault victim has ever been billed by the city of Palmer for an exam to collect evidence of a crime. Zager, who has been police chief since January, said he would never expect a victim to be burdened with the cost of a police investigation.
Just to make it a little more clear what the legislature was dealing with when they passed the bill, a little background:
During the time Palin was mayor of Wasilla, her city was not the only one in Alaska charging rape victims. Experts testified before the Legislature that in a handful of small cities across Alaska, law enforcement agencies were charging victims or their insurance "more than sporadically."
. . .
But Wasilla stood out. Tara Henry, a forensic nurse who has been treating rape victims across Alaska for the last 12 years, told CNN that opposition to Croft's bill from Wasilla Police Chief Charlie Fannon was memorable.
"Several municipal law enforcement agencies in the state did have trouble budgeting and paying for the evidence collection for sexual assault victims," Henry said. "What I recall is that the chief of police in the Wasilla police department seemed to be the most vocal about how it was going to affect their budget."
Croft has a similar memory. He said victims' advocates suggested he introduce legislation as a way to shame cities into changing their practice, and Wasilla resisted.
"I remember they had continued opposition," Croft said. "It was eight years ago now, but they were sort of unrepentant that they thought the taxpayers shouldn't have to pay for that."
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Next up from Geraghty:
2. The deputy commissioner of Alaska’s Department of Public Safety told the State Affairs Committee that he has never found a police agency that has billed a victim. In light of Wasilla’s low number of rapes according to available FBI statistics (one to two per year, compared to Juneau’s 30-39), and the fact that the Wasilla Finance Department cannot find any record of charging a victim for a rape kit, it is entirely possible that no victim was ever charged.
Well as we saw earlier, the advocate testifying for the bill specifically pointed out that "while it may be true that Deputy Commissioner Smith may not have found an instance where law enforcement has forwarded a bill, hospitals have." Hello?
Geraghty displays monumental laziness in his second-hand reporting of rape statistics. You'd think he'd notice that the FBI stats do not show any rape stats at all before 2000 (noting that not all jurisdictions report to them), which contradicts the chief's own 2000 reference to prior rape cases. You'd think he'd know that the City of Wasilla posts an easily-accessible webpage with its crime stats. And according to the city's own figures, the there were between 10 and 18 sexual assaults reported per year during Palin's tenure as mayor. Click, click, easy peasey.
Oh, and by the way, the City of Wasilla Finance Department can only search its records back to 2000, coincidentally the year the prohibition on charging for forensic exams took effect. A little different from saying they "couldn't find any record," isn't it?
And the conclusion that this all means no one was ever billed? Apple+Orange=kitty cat.
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And finally, Geraghty's coup de stupid:
3. Three times, witnesses told the committees that hospitals were responsible for passing the bill on to victims, not police agencies. If the bill went straight from the hospital to the victim, without ever being sent to the police department, this would explain why no confirming paperwork could be found in the Wasilla Finance Department.
Duh, ya think?
Hint: Police departments don't perform the exams. Hospitals do. Hospitals get paid.
In almost all other jurisdictions, the police agencies took responsibility for the bill. Get it?
So Geraghty has now figured out that it is the hospital getting paid, and guess what, he actually includes testimony that the police usually pick up most if not all of the bill:
Also at one of the meetings, Trisha Gentile, executive director of the Council on Domestic Violence & Sexual Assault, said some Alaska hospitals "have chosen to separate some of the costs of sexual-assault exams. Hospitals are adding sexually-transmitted-disease (STD) and blood tests to the cost of sexual-assault exams, and the hospital makes a choice to bill the victim for those charges. Police departments are willing to pay for sexual assault exams, but it is an internal decision on the part of the hospital as to who pays the hospital bill."
He can't quite figure out that the question of what the hospitals separate out is not the issue. The issue is that victims were being billed for the forensic exams and tests themselves, even if through their insurance companies. And that is what the legislature specifically wanted to avoid:
DEL SMITH, Deputy Commissioner, Department of Public Safety, came forward to testify. He reported that the department, law
enforcement statewide and the Alaska Police Chiefs Association
support this kind of legislation. In his experience, the police
have never thought it appropriate that a victim of a crime should
pay for anything in the way of gathering forensic evidence to
support the prosecution of that crime. The victim ought never to
see the charge on her insurance forms or be hassled in any way.
Oh, and by the way, the victim still paid the deductible, even when the insurance company was billed. Not to mention the copay that most insurance companies require for emergency room use - anywhere from $50 to $100.
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One last little bit of disngenuity:
From the beginning, the story didn’t seem to add up. Nothing in Sarah Palin’s background suggested a callousness to rape victims; it seemed particularly unlikely that a female mayor would support such a bad policy. Palin spokeswoman Maria Comella told USA Today in an e-mail that the governor "does not believe, nor has she ever believed, that rape victims should have to pay for an evidence-gathering test."
No mention of the fact that a thorough exam includes testing for sexually transmitted diseases and if necessary, access to emergency contraception.
Let's remember that Palin is on record as believing a woman should be required to bear her rapist's baby.
But it's quite possible the anti-emergency-contraception folks had their say in drafting HB 270. When it was first introduced, it required law enforcement agencies to pay not just for the exam for gathering evidence and to determine whether a sexual assault had occurred, but also for STD testing and emergency contraception. Those provisions were immediately amended out, so that the bill as passed only required that a victim or a victim's insurere not be billed for the cost of the exam for gathering evidence or to determine whether a sexual assault had occurred.
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So here's my question. Is Geraghty intetionally dishonest or just lazy?