Posts tagged with 'stupak'
Weekly Pulse: DADT, Vampire Bees, and Other Hazards to Your Health
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By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Dr. Kenneth Katz recently published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine titled “Health Hazards of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” This week, he penned an op/ed for RH Reality Check about his experiences treating U.S. military at an STD clinic in San Diego. Dr. Katz sees the Pentagon’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” rule for LGB members of the military as a huge roadblock to good medical care. He’s pretty confident that his military patients feel safe divulging their sexual histories to a civilian doctor like himself. But when those troops go overseas, they are cared for by military doctors. Technically, doctor-patient communication is exempt from DADT, but many patients don’t realize that they can tell their military doctors about gay sex without fear of reprisals (at least in theory). Dr. Katz’s patients have told him that they won’t go for recommended follow-up STD screening after they ship out because they’re afraid to be honest with their doctors. He worries about how many troops are suffering from treatable infections in war zones because they aren’t allowed to serve openly.
Food stamp use skyrockets, swordfish sales unaccountably flat
Monica Potts of TAPPED points to the alarming statistic that in the last month alone an additional 500,000 Americans went on food stamps. She notes that the right wing website Daily Caller is alarmed not by the fact that fellow citizens can’t afford food, but rather that there’s no gruel-only foodstamp program available:
Meanwhile, the conservative news site The Daily Caller is shocked, shocked, to learn that you can use food stamps to buy all manner of food. The government, apparently, doesn’t restrict you from purchasing an $18-per-pound swordfish steak from Whole Foods. But that kind of discovery, like almost everything else in the “debate” over food stamp use, is the sort of ridiculous one that comes from a person who’s never been hungry.
The Hyde Amendment
In Campus Progress, Jessica Arons and Madina Agénor call for the repeal of the Hyde Amendment for being an assault on the reproductive rights of poor women and women of color. The Supreme Court declared abortion to be a constitutional right in 1973, yet nearly 40 years later, the Hyde Amendment still prohibits nearly all federal funding for abortions. In practice, the women most affected by the Hyde Amendment are those who depend on government health care programs like Medicaid and the Indian Health Service:
Former U.S. Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL), the law’s sponsor, admitted during debate of his proposal that he was targeting poor women because they were the only ones vulnerable enough for him to reach. “I certainly would like to prevent, if I could legally, anybody having an abortion, a rich woman, a middle-class woman, or a poor woman,” he said. “Unfortunately, the only vehicle available is the … Medicaid bill.”
Meanwhile, ultra-conservative Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) is calling on Congress to de-fund the reproductive health provider Planned Parenthood, Andy Birkey reports in the Minnesota Independent. In an interview with a conservative news site, Bachmann doubled down on that idea, suggesting that all of health care reform be de-funded because it funds abortions. This is not true. The aforementioned Hyde Amendment guarantees as much. Furthermore, even though health reform never would have funded abortions, President Obama signed an eleventh-hour executive order guaranteeing that health care reform would not fund abortions.
Brooklyn bees gorge on maraschino cherry run-off
Home beekeeping is the hottest new trend for health-conscious locavores. New York City recently changed the law to accommodate beekeepers in the five boroughs. Just because you live in an industrial neighborhood in Brooklyn is no reason to miss out on this sweet action, right? Well, actually, there is a catch. That nice honey at the farmers’ market tastes like lavender because that’s what those rural bees ate. What do bees in Red Hook, Brooklyn eat? Run-off from a maraschino cherry factory. The overindulgent bees “look like vampires” according to one local keeper and their honey runs bright red. Maraschino honey sounds like a delicious mash-up of high and low culture. Unfortunately, Sarah Goodyear reports in Grist that the end product doesn’t taste nearly as good as it looks. Arthur Mondella, the owner of Dell’s Maraschino Cherries, wants to do right by the beekeepers. He initially suggested putting out vats of different colored syrup to “help” the bees make rainbow honey. His proposal was not well-received by the crunchy set. Instead, he has agreed to work with the beekeepers to keep the bees out of the vats next year.
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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: Obama to Promote Health Plan at Summit
By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
On Monday, the White House released its plan for health care reform, which resembles the Senate bill with additional concessions for liberals and labor unions. Tomorrow, President Obama will hold a televised health care summit. Obama is billing the summit as a last-ditch attempt to solicit Republican ideas for health care reform. In fact, he’s hoping to give the GOP enough rope to hang itself.
It takes two…
As Katrina vanden Huevel argues in the Nation, bipartisanship takes two parties, but the Republicans have refused to negotiate unless health care reform starts over from scratch. That’s not bipartisanship, that’s showboating. President Obama is giving the Republicans one last chance to waste the entire country’s time so that he can point to the sorry spectacle and say, “Look, what they made us do.” (more…)
Weekly Pulse: A Senate Bill By Christmas?
By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium Blogger
Early Monday morning, the senate voted 60-40 along straight party lines to defeat the initial attempt to filibuster the health care reform bill. Yesterday, it passed the second of three procedural votes, bringing the Senate one step closer to a final vote on the health care reform bill. Majority Speaker Harry Reid (D-NV) is on schedule to vote on the bill before Christmas. (more…)
Weekly Pulse: Senate Prepares to Cast First Votes
By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium Blogger
The Senate is scheduled to begin voting on proposed amendments to the health care reform bill today. It takes 60 votes to pass an amendment and most of the proposed measures for the health care bill will never pass. It’s a great opportunity to grandstand over pet issues, however. (more…)
Weekly Pulse: Bachmann Fan Threatens to Shoot Up Newspaper
By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium Blogger
A Michigan woman threatened a Minnesota newspaper with mass murder for criticizing Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN)’s anti-health reform rally, reports Paul Schmelzer in the Minnesota Independent:
…A woman in Michigan, angered over a newspaper editorial criticizing Bachmann’s event, threatened to take a gun to the paper and “do what they did at Fort Hood” in response.
How pro-life. (more…)
Weekly Pulse: The Stupak Setback
By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium Blogger
A clique of anti-choice Democrats in Congress joined forces with Republicans to write abortion access out of the House’s health care reform bill last Saturday. Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) wants to force women to choose between affordable health insurance and abortion coverage, even if they pay for abortion coverage with their own money.
Pro-choice Democrats and women’s health activists are up in arms over the eleventh hour deal. Ellie Smeal of Ms. Magazine denounces the Stupak amendment as a betrayal of women:
Millions of poor and middle-class women would be denied abortion coverage and millions more would lose the coverage they already have, since 85 percent of private plans now cover abortion. Far from being abortion-neutral, the Stupak amendment is a giant step backward for women. It’s unacceptable. In the compromise to get the bill passed, women and their health-care rights were thrown under the bus. (more…)
