(An Ongoing Series About Your Finest Public Servants At Work)

Health care reform has launched Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) back into the spotlight. After four terms, we thought, perhaps Lieberman sprinkles legislative magic from Hartford to the Hart Building. Let’s take a look.

Lieberman is the chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security. One of the most important functions of that committee (and of Congress) is not just to spend money but to keep track of it. In fact, checks and balances are the whole point. But Lieberman held no hearings. None. Possible malfeasance by the Bush administration? Nope. Checking up on the progress of the Department of Homeland Security? Not hardly.

“We like to do legislation,” he told reporters. “We don’t like investigating … just to see who is at fault.”

Aetna, I'm glad I met ya!

This must extend to the role of Alberto Gonzalez, too. The former attorney general was supportive of the now-infamous torture memos. Lieberman said this: “As he leaves public service, the Attorney General deserves our appreciation for his work for our nation.”

Then again, Lieberman was also supportive of waterboarding, voting against a ban, saying, “It is not like putting burning coals on people’s bodies. The person is in no real danger. The impact is psychological”

He has been repeatedly and publicly foggy on the war on terror, calling Iraq “the central front of the war on terror against the enemies who attacked America on 9/11/01,” and in 2005 stating that “The last two weeks have been critically important and I believe may be seen as a turning point in the war in Iraq and the war on terrorism.”

Nearly $1 trillion spent on the war later, let’s look at health care reform, which Lieberman worries will increase the national debt.

Lieberman’s nickname (as told by one of our favorite congressional sources) of “Senator Aetna” comes from the $110,000 in campaign donations this year alone that the insurance giant has given him.

The senator, who is up for re-election in 2010, has promised to filibuster health care reform, and hold an investigative Homeland Security hearing on the recent shooting at Fort Hood by a Muslim soldier.

Perhaps he’s scheduling this flurry of activity between his ubiquitous television appearances. Hey, Senator Lieberman—what’s your deal, guy?

When photojournalist Kelly Shimoda set out to chronicle debt for Film@11, the average US household had it — Harvard University’s Elizabeth Warren was seen as a Cassandra for her study that found families were in financial trouble due to large, fixed expenses like mortgages and health care insurance —but no one wanted to talk about it, at least not on record. Debt was seen as painful and shameful.

Well, it’s still painful, but the shame is no longer personal. Over 1 million Americans filed for bankruptcy last year. Many of them filed because of health care costs, and many of those actually had health insurance.

Our latest episode of “Political Graffiti” tackles the sticky question of reform and what to reform. Former Cigna executive Wendell Potter suggests starting with the insurance cartel itself.

Flu season is nearly upon us, and the good folks at the New York City Health and Mental Hygiene are providing the population with free access to the influenza vaccine. However, while there are over 8.3 million people in New York City proper, there is only a grand total of five free walk-in clinics operated by the city – one for each borough, or one clinic per 1.7 million people. In practice, this turns out to mean that it takes roughly four hours for a person to get a flu shot.

I arrived at 9 am at the clinic on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. The place had been open for an hour, and the line was already a hundred and fifty people long.

I spent the next three hours in line. Arguments broke out over line etiquette. A rat ran through the crowd. Every 20 minutes we shuffled forward en masse as another group was taken indoors. At last I was called, and with renewed vigor I strolled inside and down to the basement … where we were told to sit in chairs. Another half an hour passed.

A custodian cleaning the nearby bathrooms peered at us. “You know, y’all could just head to a Duane Reade or a Walgreen’s or somewhere and get this same shot right now! Fifteen dollars!”

“Twenty-five,” replied a Russian lady.

“Okay, okay, 25,” said the custodian, smiling. “Still, that’s not so much.”

Finally a female police officer coralled us into the elevator to the fifth floor, and then on to another seating area where we filled out several forms and waited for our number to be called. As I sat down, I heard the nurse bark “93!” I was number 140.

An hour later, I heard my number. After a series of quick questions with an attendant (all of which I’d already answered on the forms I’d filled out), the attendant pointed, without looking, towards a door, and I entered a hallway leading to the exam rooms. And sat down to wait again.

The shot itself, when it finally came, took about a minute and a half to administer. My arm throbbed afterwards.

At this rate, if everyone chooses to save their $25 and go with the public option, for all of New York to be inoculated would take approximately 3,718.6 years. Considering that the flu virus changes annually, we’re a bit behind.

- Ned Thorne

So when upwards of 80 percent of health care insurance markets are held by a single company (WellPoint, we’re looking at you, in Maine), it would seem like a matter for the Justice Department, right?

Not so fast. Health care insurance companies have been exempted from anti-trust laws because of the McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1945, which allows for state but not federal anti-trust regulation.

It’s been a nice loophole for the insurance companies — 94 percent of US health insurance markets meet the Justice Department standards for “highly concentrated” (or, little competition). And even if Congress had the will to overturn McCarran-Ferguson, critics say this will do next to nothing, as since 1996, according to the American Medical Association, the federal government has cleared 400 mergers in health insurance. This would coincide with the time period when most Americans saw their premiums soar and services plummet.

But Congress looks ready to give it a whirl, anyway. Both the House and the Senate have approved language that will drop the anti-trust exemption, and while the insurance industry dismisses this as a temper tantrum several congressional sources tell us that “the Senate is awfully motivated.”

Right now, the move has bipartisan support. One reason might be the study recently released by the Business Roundtable, a nonpartisan group representing CEOs of major companies. It found that without “significant” marketplace reforms to reduce costs, health care costs per employee will triple to nearly $29,000 over the next decade.

Hidden in a scenic, sheltered river in Cornwall in the southwest of the UK, there is a sight that shows just how bad the state of the world economy has become.

“The Fal Estuary is the barometer of world trade,” said Captain Andy Brigden, Harbor Master of Carrick who is responsible for the Fal Estuary. “When the Fal is empty of ships, trade is buoyant. When it’s full, as it is now, things are tough”.

The Fal Estuary has seen similar gluts before, during the Great Depression and the troubled economies of the 1960s, 1980s and as recently as the 1990s.

German ship-owner Claus-Peter Offen says the current glut is unlikely to change anytime soon, because of the severe downturn in trade and major over-capacity in the shipping industry. Offen predicts that one-fourth of the world’s fleet will be laid up by 2011, and world trade will not recover to early 2008 levels until 2014.

“As soon as a vessel leaves (the Fal), another vessel replaces it,” Captain Brigden says. “Some of the departing ships are lucky and find a cargo to deliver. Others are scrapped. Because of the drop-off in trade, many of these ships that are scrapped are not even a third of the way through their working lives.”

According to Captain Brigden, car carriers and container ships have been badly hit. These vessels make up the majority of ships in the estuary.

“Basically what’s happening is we are buying and selling fewer cars. So that is why we have car carrying ships here. We’re buying less goods from China, and that is why we have container ships here.”

Yet, for the Fal Estuary community, things aren’t all bad. The glut in ships has brought a small boost to the local economy. Harbor authorities charge ship-owners thousands of dollars each month for laid-up vessels. Claus-Peter Offen says that this boost is going to continue for sometime yet.

- Ed Head