Posts tagged with 'health care'
Weekly Pulse: #DearJohn, Does Banning Abortion Trump Job Growth?
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by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
With millions of Americans out of work, House Republicans are focusing in on real priorities: decimating private abortion coverage and crippling public funding for abortion, as Jessica Arons reports in RH Reality Check.
In AlterNet, Amanda Marcotte notes that the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, or H.R. 3, also redefines rape as “forcible rape” in order to determine whether a patient is eligible for a Medicaid-funded abortion. Under the Hyde Amendment, government-funded insurance programs can only cover abortions in cases of rape and incest, or to save the life of the mother. Note that the term “forcible rape” is legally meaningless. Supporters of the bill just want to go on the record as saying that a poor 13-year-old girl pregnant by a 30-year-old should be forced to give birth.
Feminist blogger Sady Doyle has launched a twitter campaign against the bill under the hashtag #dearjohn, a reference to Speaker John Boehner (R-OH). Tweet to let him know how you feel about a bill that discriminates against 70% of rape victims because their rapes weren’t violent enough for @johnboehner, append the hashtag #dearjohn. (more…)
Weekly Pulse: White House Takes Offensive Against Health Care Repeal
By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
This week, House Republicans will hold a vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The bill is expected to pass the House, where the GOP holds a majority, but stall in the Democratic-controlled Senate. In the meantime, the symbolic vote is giving both Republicans and Democrats a pretext to publicly rehash their views on the legislation.
At AlterNet, Faiz Shakir and colleagues point out that repealing health care reform would cost the federal government an additional $320 billion over the next decade, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. The authors also note that despite Republican campaign promises to “repeal and replace” the law, their bill contains no replacement plan. Health care reform protects Americans with preexisting conditions from some forms discrimination by insurers. At least half of all Americans under the age of 65 could be construed as having a preexisting condition. No wonder only 1 in 4 Americans support repeal, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll released on Monday.
Perhaps that explains, as Paul Waldman reports at TAPPED, why the White House is vigorously defending health care reform. The Obama administration is making full use of the aforementioned statistics from The Department Health and Human Services on the percentage of Americans who have preexisting conditions:
As the House prepares to vote on the “Repeal the Puppy-Strangling Job-Vivisecting O-Commie-Care Act,” or whatever they’re now calling it, the White House and its allies actually seem to have their act together when it comes to fighting this war for public opinion. The latest is an analysis from the Department of Health and Human Services on just how many people have pre-existing conditions, and thus will be protected from denials of health insurance when the Affordable Care Act goes fully into effect in 2014
Republicans are fuming that Democrats are “politicizing” a policy debate by bringing up the uncomfortable fact that, if the GOP’s repeal plan became law, millions of people could lose their health insurance. As Waldman points out, the high incidence of preexisting conditions is an argument for a universal mandate. It’s impossible to insure people with known health problems at an affordable cost unless they share the risk with healthier policy-holders. Hence the need for a mandate.
Anti-choice at the end of life
In The Nation, Ann Neumann explains how anti-choice leaders fought to re-eliminate free end-of-life counseling for seniors under Medicare. The provision was taken out of the health care reform bill but briefly reinstated by Department of Health and Social Services before being rescinded again by HHS amid false allegations by anti-choice groups, including The Family Research Council, that the government was promulgating euthanasia for the elderly.
As seen on TV
The Kansas-based anti-choice group Operation Rescue is lashing out at the Iowa Board of Medicine for dismissing their complaint against Dr. Linda Haskell, Lynda Waddington reports in The Iowa Independent. Dr. Haskell attracted the ire of anti-choicers for using telemedicine to help doctors provide abortion care. The board investigated Operation Rescue’s allegations, which it cannot discuss or even acknowledge, but found no basis for sanctions against Haskell. Iowa medical authorities said they were still deliberating about the rules for telemedicine in general.
Salon retracts RFK vaccine story
Online news magazine Salon.com has retracted a 2005 article by Robert Kennedy, Jr. alleging a link between childhood vaccines and autism, Kristina Chew reports at Care2. The article leaned heavily on now discredited research by Dr. Andrew Wakefield. His research had been discredited for some time, but only recently did an investigative journalist reveal that Wakefield skewed his data as part of an elaborate scam to profit from a lawsuit against vaccine makers.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Weekly Pulse: Giffords Shooting Reveals Flaws in U.S. Mental Health Services
By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) was shot in the head at a constituent outreach event in a supermarket parking lot in Tucson on Saturday. In all, the gunman shot 18 people, killing 6, including a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl.
Jamelle Bouie of TAPPED urges President Barack Obama to take up the issue of mental health care in his upcoming speech on the mass shooting. Several people who knew the alleged shooter came forward with stories of bizarre behavior and run-ins with campus police at his community college. College administrators ordered him to seek treatment before he returned to school, but he does not appear to have done so.
H. Clarke Romans of the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Southern Arizona explained to Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! that mental health services in Arizona have been devastated by budget cuts.
In 2008 the state eliminated support services for all non-Medicaid behavioral health patients and stopped covering most brand-name psychiatric drugs. At least 28,000 Arizonans were affected. Arizonans with mental illnesses can expect even more cuts in the future as the state slashes spending in an attempt to address its budget shortfall.
In AlterNet, Adele Stan, argues that, while we don’t yet know the gunman’s motives, the right wing’s intensifying campaign of anti-government hysteria and violent rhetoric may have emboldened an already disturbed person:
Had the vitriolic rhetoric that today shapes Arizona’s political landscape (and, indeed, our national landscape) never come to call, Loughner may have found a different reason to go on a killing spree. But that vitriol does exist as a powerful prompt to the paranoid, and those who publicly deem war on the federal government a patriot’s duty should today be doing some soul-searching.
Reform repeal vote on hold
The House Republicans had scheduled a vote to repeal health care reform this week, but the vote has been postponed in the wake of the Giffords shooting. However, the conservative U.S. Chamber of Commerce threw its full weight behind the repeal effort on Tuesday, according to Suzy Khimm of Mother Jones. The Chamber is going back on its earlier pledge not to oppose health care reform outright.
CA insurer hikes rates by 59%
Nearly 200,000 policyholders in California are reeling from a 59% rate hike by Blue Shield, Brie Cadman reports for Change.org. According to the company, the increase was not due to health care reform, but rather to “increased utilization.” State insurance officials are reviewing the rate hike, but they can’t reverse it unless they find that Blue Shield fails to meet the legal medical loss ratio (percentage of premiums spent on medical care).
Reproductive rights in the states
Rachel Gould and Elizabeth Nash of the Guttmacher Institute recap reproductive rights in the states at RH Reality Check. Last year, 44 states and the District of Columbia considered 950 repro rights-related measures on issues ranging from abortion to sex ed. By year’s end, 89 new laws had been enacted in 32 states and DC. Of these, 39 were abortion laws.
The vast majority of new abortion laws served to further restrict women’s access to abortion. The passage of the Affordable Care Act spurred several states to pass laws restricting insurance coverage for abortions. The District of Columbia’s decision to reinstate public funding was one of the few exceptions to the trend of restrictive new laws.
Autism/vaccine study based on “deliberate fraud”
The author of a discredited study purporting to link autism and vaccines schemed to profit from his tainted research from the very beginning, according to new research published in the British Medical Journal.
It turns out that the lead author, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, was secretly working on a lawsuit against vaccine manufacturers when he published a study in The Lancet that appeared to show a link between vaccines and autism. We now know that Wakefield falsified the findings that sparked a global panic over the safety of childhood vaccines.
The journal retracted the paper last year. Wakefield was stripped of his license to practice medicine.
Some observers think these revelations will finally put the debate over vaccines and autism to rest. Kristina Chew of Care2 is doubtful:
I am very sure that, even with all the facts, data, and evidence laid before them, those who believe that vaccines or something in vaccines caused or somehow ‘contributed’ to their child becoming autistic will stand by their claims, and by Wakefield. Some of these persons are my friends. They are parents, as am I, of autistic children.
Wakefield’s die hard supporters weren’t swayed by earlier revelations of shoddy research and unethical conduct. It seems unlikely that this new found conflict of interest will change their minds.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Weekly Pulse: End-of-Life Counseling Returns, But Death Panels Still Nonsense
by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
A proposed program to cover counseling sessions for seniors on end-of-life care has risen from the ashes of health care reform and found a new life in Medicare regulations, Jason Hancock of the American Independent reports.
In August, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin started a rumor via her Facebook page that the the Obama administration was backing “death panels” that would vote on whether the elderly and infirm had a right to live. In reality, the goal was to have Medicare reimburse doctors for teaching patients how to set up their own advance directives that reflect their wishes on end-of-life care.
Patients can use their advance directives to stipulate their wishes for treatment in the event that they are too sick to make decisions for themselves. They can also use those directives to demand the most aggressive lifesaving interventions. (more…)
Weekly Pulse: Judge Rules Against Health Reform, Takes Cash from Opponents
by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
The Virginia federal judge who ruled against a key component of health care reform on Monday has ties to a Republican consulting firm. Judge Henry Hudson is a co-owner of Campaign Solutions, as Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! reports.
Hudson, a President George W. Bush appointee, has earned as much as $108,000 in royalties from Campaign Solutions since 2003. A cached version of the firm’s client roster lists such vocal opponents of health reform as Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Jim DeMint (R-SC), and Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-KS), the Republican National Committee and the American Medical Association.
In November, Collins and Snowe joined McConnell in signing an amicus brief to challenge the constitutionality of health care reform in a separate suit in Florida. Campaign finance records show that Campaign Solutions has also worked for Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who is spearheading the lawsuit. Tiahrt added an amicus brief to Cuccinelli’s lawsuit. (more…)
Weekly Pulse: What Do GOP Gains Mean for Health Care? Abortion Rights?
by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
The Republicans gained ground in last night’s midterm elections, recapturing the House and gaining seats in the Senate. The future House Majority Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) wasted no time in affirming that the GOP will try to repeal health care reform.
A full-scale repeal is unlikely in the next two years because the Democrats have retained control of the White House and the Senate. However, Republicans are already making noises about shutting down the government to force the issue. The House controls the nation’s purse strings, which confers significant leverage if the majority is willing to bring the government to a screeching halt to make a point.
Don’t assume they’ll blink. The GOP shut down government in 1995, albeit to its own political detriment. Rep. Steve King (R-IA) and his allies have sworn a “blood oath” to shut down the government, regardless of the consequences. The Republicans may actually succeed in modifying minor aspects of the Affordable Care Act, such as the controversial 1099 reporting requirement for small business. (more…)
Weekly Pulse: Crisis Pregnancy Centers, Christine O’Donnell, Condoms, and Concussions
by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs) in New York City may soon have to level with the public about their real agenda. At the Ms. Blog, Michelle Chen has an update on proposed legislation which would force CPCs in New York to disclose that they aren’t reproductive health centers.
CPCs are anti-choice ministries that masquerade as full-service reproductive health clinics. They typically set up shop near real clinics to trick unwary clients. Real clinics dispense medical advice from doctors, nurses, and other licensed health care professionals. They are required to tell clients about the risks and benefits of all their treatment options. They don’t push clients towards abortion or adoption. CPCs are typically staffed by volunteers. Instead of medical advice, they hand out over-the-counter pregnancy tests and medically inaccurate information about the risks of abortion. They use pseudoscience and high pressure sales tactics to derail as many women seeking abortions as they can.
Chen reports that if the bill becomes law, New York CPCs will have to post signs disclosing that “they do not provide abortion services or contraceptive devices, or make referrals to organizations that do.” If the facility lacks licensed on-site medical professionals, the center would have to inform prospective clients of this fact. This is an excellent piece of consumer protection legislation. If CPCs are honest about who they are and what they do, they should have no problem with the law. (more…)
Weekly Pulse: Palin Revives Death Panels; Boobs Against Breast Cancer; and the Anti-Gay Bullying Crisis
by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Don’t look now, but Sarah Palin is back on her death panel kick, just in time for Halloween. No, really, don’t look. It just encourages the former governor of Alaska to recycle the exhaustively debunked allegation that health care reform will involve bringing the elderly and the disabled before “death panels” who will judge whether they are fit to live.
David Corn of Mother Jones caught Palin referencing the thoroughly debunked myth in her latest interview with the conservative website Newsmax. Oh, and she says she won’t rule out a presidential run in 2012.
Boobs against breast cancer
October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. The National Cancer Institute estimates that over 207,000 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010 and that nearly 40,000 will die of the disease this year. Breast cancer is the second-most common form of cancer in women.
Amie Newman of RH Reality Check notes that even Kentucky Fried Chicken is getting in on the awareness action with pink chicken buckets “for the cure.” This month, KFC is donating 50 cents from each rosy-hued tub of Original Recipe chicken to Susan G. Komen For The Cure, a leading breast cancer advocacy group. The promotion is expected to raise between $1 million and $8 million for breast cancer research and activism. That’s between 2 million and 16 million buckets of chicken. It’s more of a barometer than a donation, really. (more…)
Weekly Pulse: Health Insurers Banking on Tea Party to Poison Election
by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
The health insurance industry is spending millions to influence the implementation of health care reform, but thanks to a groundbreaking Supreme Court decision and lax campaign finance laws, the public record only reflects a fraction of total expenditures.
The Republican and Democratic parties are on track to spend a record-breaking $500 million dollars on the midterm elections with the help of corporations, unions, and the health insurance industry. The New York Times says that, thanks to the proliferation of opaque 501(c)4 groups, this election is shaping up to be “the most secretive since Watergate.”
Money in politics is hazardous to our political health. Symptoms of campaign finance poisoning include compulsive lying, combativeness, confusion, amnesia, and paranoia. The patient may become convinced that he or she is being stalked by a “death panel.” Epidemiologists don’t know exactly what level of cash exposure is safe for democracy, but everyone agrees that the U.S. is subjecting itself to untested doses of political money.
Health industry gives millions to Tea Party Caucus
The insurance industry has quietly shifted its political giving to massively favor pro-repeal Republicans, and health care providers are now the biggest backers the of the Tea Party Caucus, which is pledging to repeal health care reform, Lee Fang reports in AlterNet. The industry has given over $2.7 million to Republican members of the newly minted ultra-conservative caucus.
The insurers are also sinking big bucks into a $25 million slush fund that will sponsor attack ads against Democrats in 20 House races and a handful of Senate contests. The slush fund is a 501(c)4 group lead by Republican lobbyist Scott Reed.
“Citizens United opened the door for the unparalleled participation by corporations at the financial level,” Reed told a reporter. Citizen’s United is the recent Supreme Court decision that gave companies the right to spend unlimited amounts of their shareholder’s money to run attack ads. Before, companies could only spend money that employees donated to the company PAC and that was subject to limits. We can only speculate which companies are giving to Reed’s group. Since it’s a 501(c)4 and not a PAC, it doesn’t have to disclose its donors.
Fang says its unclear whether the donations to the Tea Party Caucus and the slush fund are part of the $20 million “war chest” that insurance giants UnitedHealth, WellPoint, Humana Inc., Aetna Inc. and Cigna Corp are rumored to be setting aside to influence the implementation of health care reform.
About that mandate…
The insurance industry is spending millions to elect members of the Tea Party Caucus and other Republicans who are promising to repeal the universal mandate, i.e., the stipulation that everyone has to carry health insurance.
Ironically, as Kevin Drum points out in Mother Jones, the mandate is one part of health care reform that the insurance industry loves. What corporation wouldn’t like a law that forces everyone to buy their product? What the insurers don’t like, Drum explains, are the regulations that prevent insurers from weeding out unprofitable customers. Even the pro-repeal Republicans are promising to keep popular provisions of health care reform that ban discrimination against people with preexisting conditions. In Drum’s view, the industry probably wouldn’t be giving millions of dollars to the GOP if they thought the Republicans were serious about repealing the individual mandate. He thinks it’s more likely that the Republicans plan to keep the mandate and scrap the popular consumer protections.
Mini plans, maxi ripoffs
Meanwhile, McDonald’s and 30 other employers including a New York teacher’s union will get a special waiver from the federal government to keep ultra-low benefits caps for their cheap health insurance plans. Ann Pietrangelo of Care2.net explains that McDonald’s currently offers so-called “mini plans” to its workers, but these plans run afoul of the Affordable Care Act because they spend too much on administration and too little on health care. The waiver means that McDonald’s can continue to cap benefits at $2000 for another year.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) has launched an investigation into these mini plans to determine if they deliver value for the worker’s dollar. The McDonald’s plan costs $14 per week for a plan that caps benefits at a $2,000 a year, or $32 a week for up to $10,000 worth of coverage. At $14 a week, low-wage workers are paying $728 a year for a mere $2000 worth of coverage.
To give you some idea of what a ripoff that is, consider that the average employee who gets insurance through work kicks in about $4000 a year to insure her entire family. Benefit caps vary, but even a minimally acceptable family plan covers at least $100,000 per person, per year. Some plans don’t have yearly benefit caps. If McDonald’s and company hadn’t gotten the waivers, they would have been on the hook for up $75,000 worth of care above the benefits cap next year.
The yearly premiums of the $14/week plan are 36% of the maximum possible benefit. Whereas, if you’re paying $4000 a year for up to $400,000 in potential benefits for a family of four, your premiums add up to just 1% of the maximum payout. That’s a pretty lousy deal in itself, but not nearly as bad as McDonald’s mini-plan.
USA: Uh, sorry we gave you syphilis
The researchers with the United States Public Health Service deliberately infected hundreds of Guatemalans with syphilis as part of an experiment in the 1940s.
You’ve heard about the infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiment in which black men with syphilis were denied treatment for their disease so that researchers could study their decline and death, right? It turns out that one of the doctors behind the Tuskegee study got his start paying syphilis-infected prostitutes to have sex with prison and mental hospital inmates in Guatemala. When that proved an inefficient mode of transmission, the team tried inoculating their subjects with the pureed testicles of syphilitic rabbits. The researchers were trying to find a kind of “morning after pill” for syphilis. At least these unwitting “subjects” were treated with penicillin if they contracted syphilis. The Tuskegee victims weren’t so lucky.
Democracy Now! interviews Dr. Susan Rerverby, the medical historian who discovered long-buried records of the Guatemala program in the papers of one of the doctors involved in the Tuskegee study. Reverby’s paper prompted official apologies to Guatemala from President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, and Secretary of Health Kathleen Sebelius.
Working sick, touching food
A new survey of restaurant workers by a restaurant employees’ advocacy group found that nearly 90% of respondents have no paid sick days. The investigators questioned over 4000 restaurant employees and conducted interviews with 240 employees and 240 employers in 8 states, according to Micah Uetricht of Working In These Times.
June Lindsey, an employee at Popeye’s fried chicken in Detroit, told her story to the investigators:
I could not call in sick because no work meant no money and I couldn’t afford it at that time. My kids were very young… Halfway through the day, the sneezing, coughing and runny nose got worse. I asked the manager, “I am really sick and need to go because I could make others sick…” She laughed and told me, “Try not to cough, then.”
So I had to work that day sick, and who knows how many customers I got sick… Later on all of us got sick one by one, and all this came from another worker that came to work sick like me, but was not allowed to leave work!
The study also found that nearly 90% of restaurant workers lacked health benefits of any kind.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Weekly Pulse: Sharron Angle Mocks Insurance for Autism; The Fight to Save Food Stamps
by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
The woman gunning for Sen. Harry Reid’s (D-NV) job doesn’t believe that autism exists.
Yes, you heard right. Sharron Angle believes that the neurodevelopmental disorder know to medical science as “autism” is actually a government-backed hoax to redistribute wealth from hardworking health insurers to pesky kids and their greedy parents.
Angle was caught on tape promising to abolish mandatory insurance coverage for autism. “Everything that they want to throw at us is covered under ‘autism’,” Angle told the American Association of Underwriters this summer, tracing scare quotes with her fingers as she said “autism.”
Care2′s Kristina Chew, the mother of a 13-year-old boy with autism, responds to Angle’s airy dismissal:
…By saying that you don’t think there should be health care for autism, I take it that you don’t think that children, and individuals, with disabilities are in need of such things—living with their families and in their communities, healthy and safe, being loved and cared for? Being treated as we would all like to be? (more…)
