Category Archives: Health Care

March 11, 2011 · 5:43 pm

Dem Senator: Republicans brewing ‘toxic tea’ that will ‘bring shame to our country’ | Raw Replay

All I can say is “Amen”…..

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) on Thursday excoriated Republicans for taking their cues from the tea party movement, which he deemed to be pushing “dangerous” spending cuts that will “create pain for our children” and “shame” America.

“Here in Congress, tea party activists have seized control of the Republican side of the aisle—and it is far from a tea party for lots of jobless people and those qualified to study in college but unable to pay the freight,” Lautenberg said.

“Now that they are in power, we see they’re brewing Toxic Tea—a dangerous concoction that will create pain for our children and bring shame to our country.  We know that cutting critical programs now brings sky-high prices later—in more illnesses and a less-educated society. So we look at the future and we say we must invest in our children, our environment and medical research. But every time, they say: ‘No.’”

The New Jersey Democrat tore into the slew of Republican spending cuts, which include deep cuts to education, medical research, and women’s health services.

via Dem Senator: Republicans brewing ‘toxic tea’ that will ‘bring shame to our country’ | Raw Replay.

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March 9, 2011 · 9:42 pm

Female Sexuality Still Terrifying to Conservative Lawmakers | | AlterNet

Amazing…

But not really…

The Republicans screamed about jobs and deficits  before the elections, then focused on enforcing their social agenda and personal morals once the election was over…

These folks seem to now be really focusing in on controlling women and their behavior.

I guess they really are getting back to the basics.

They temporarily gave up on the Gays and decided to go back to the beginning to try to drive women back to 1962….

They can come back to the Gays and other minorities once they have women safely back in their place prior to the Women’s  Liberation Movement….

 

The Republican attack on Planned Parenthood, in the form of the House zeroing out funding for the organization in the continuing resolution on the federal budget, seemingly came out of nowhere. For decades, the kinds of services provided with federal dollars by Planned Parenthood—contraception, STD testing and treatment, cancer screening—had been assumed non-controversial by the Beltway media. The reproductive rights debate was framed mainly as a fight over bodily autonomy versus fetal life, between secular humanists and religious folks who believed fertilized eggs had souls.

So why then an attack funding STD treatment and contraception? Why, all of a sudden, do you have politicians like Rep. Steve King railing against Planned Parenthood not because of fetal life—after all, depriving women of contraception access will likely increase the abortion rate—but because Planned Parenthood is “invested in promiscuity”? Why do you have a conservative figurehead like Sean Hannity arguing not that abortion is wrong because it’s taking a life, but because teenage girls shouldn’t be making out in the back seats of cars in the first place? Why is Gov. Scott Walker not only attacking collective bargaining rights in the state of Wisconsin, but trying to eliminate contraception coverage (but not erectile dysfunction medication) on the grounds of “morality”?

The dusty old argument that female sexuality is a subversive force that needs to be strictly controlled isn’t as dead as we thought.

via Female Sexuality Still Terrifying to Conservative Lawmakers | | AlterNet.

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March 9, 2011 · 9:30 pm

Two-thirds of states cut mental healthcare funds: advocacy group | The Raw Story

This is not good…

Aside from the inhumanity of not helping the helpless, this will have big downstream societal impacts….

Crime, Homelessness…

More short sighted decision making….

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Two-thirds of states cut mental health funding from their general fund budgets over the last two years, according to a report released by a mental illness advocacy group on Wednesday.

Kentucky with 47 percent, Alaska with 35 percent, and South Carolina and Arizona both with 23 percent made the largest percentage cuts to mental health spending in their general fund budgets, which do not include federal Medicaid funding, the study by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) found.

“Cutting mental health means that costs only get shifted to emergency rooms, schools, police, local courts, jails and prisons,” said NAMI executive director Michael Fitzpatrick. “The taxpayer still pays the bill.”

via Two-thirds of states cut mental healthcare funds: advocacy group | The Raw Story.

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March 2, 2011 · 7:20 pm

Why the Right Attacked Unions, ACORN and Planned Parenthood — Institutions That Help Bridge Politics and Daily Life | | AlterNet

This pulls it all together…

But while it’s obvious that the right wing is out to break the back of the progressive movement, it’s easy to miss the strategy that guides their selection of specific targets. Their attacks are all carefully aimed at the same critical juncture: institutions that work for people in their daily lives and in the political arena, those that connect people’s personal struggles across the country to the political struggle in Washington. Once we recognize the critical role these progressive service organizations play in building progressive politics, the right’s broader strategy in Wisconsin and elsewhere becomes clear. Scott Walker is a soldier in the same army as James O’ Keefe and Lila Rose, the right-wing video pranksters who tried to smear ACORN and Planned Parenthood.

Indeed, last month’s attack on Planned Parenthood provoked a sickening sense of déjà vu. Seemingly out of nowhere, undercover activists secretly filmed an employee of a major progressive institution making embarrassing statements. The resulting video makes news and inflames the debate around federal funding of the organization’s services. It was the ACORN attack all over again [see Peter Dreier and John Atlas’s “The GOP’s Blame-ACORN Game”].

ACORN was unique as a national organization that served our nation’s poor people. Wrangling with life’s common but critical challenges like mortgages and housing forms, ACORN employees built trust by offering assistance person-to-person, neighborhood-by-neighborhood. They then leveraged that trust to lobby for federal legislation to address the root causes of the crises facing these communities—predatory lending, lack of community investment and stagnant wages.

Planned Parenthood operates over 800 health clinics across the country. These clinics are often the only option for women who need vital services, including contraception, HIV testing or PAP smears to detect and prevent cancer and other life-threatening illness. Three million Americans go to Planned Parenthood every year, and one in five women in the United States will visit a Planned Parenthood clinic in their lifetime. The personal relationships developed at clinics inform Planned Parenthood’s critical and ongoing advocacy for federal support for reproductive health and freedom. As a trusted brand representing women in DC, Planned Parenthood Action Fund has successfully lobbied for greater access to healthcare, better educational resources for family planning and the preservation of a woman’s right to choose.

More:   Why the Right Attacked Unions, ACORN and Planned Parenthood — Institutions That Help Bridge Politics and Daily Life | | AlterNet.

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February 24, 2011 · 6:38 pm

DEA to legalize marijuana only for ‘Big Pharma,’ NORML claims | The Raw Story

Money talks….

Especially from the Pharmaceutical Industry…

A Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) proposal to reclassify the main psychoactive chemical in marijuana as a Schedule III substance would allow pharmaceutical companies to market the drug while still penalizing common recreational use, according to marijuana law reform advocates.

The main psychoactive chemical in marijuana, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), is currently a Schedule I substance within the US Controlled Substances Act, the most restrictive schedule with the greatest criminal penalties.

In November 2010, the DEA proposed reclassifying dronabinol, a synthetic THC, as a Schedule III substance, which would place it among substances such as hydrocodone and allow it to be dispensed with a written or oral prescription.

“The DEA’s intent is to expand the federal government’s schedule III listing to include pharmaceutical products containing naturally derived formations of THC while simultaneously maintain existing criminal prohibitions on the plant itself,” Paul Armentano, the deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), wrote at AlterNet.

With its proposal, the DEA is responding to the demands of large pharmaceutical companies, he claimed.

Marijuana plants and THC extracts would remain illegal under the proposal, but companies would be able to purchase THC from a government-licensed provider to develop pharmaceutical products.

“While the DEA’s forthcoming regulatory change promises to stimulate the advent of legally available, natural THC therapeutic products… the change will offer no legal relief for those hundreds of thousands of Americans who believe that therapeutic relief is best obtained by use of the whole plant itself,” Armentano added.

“Rather the DEA appears content to try to walk a political and semantic tightrope that alleges: ‘pot is bad,’ but ‘pot-derived pharmaceuticals are good.'”

THC can help cancer patients regain their appetites and sense of taste, according to a study published on Wednesday.

“This is the first randomized controlled trial to show that THC makes food taste better and improves appetites for patients with advanced cancer, as well as helping them to sleep and to relax better,” Dr. Wendy Wismer, associate professor at the University of Alberta, said. “Our findings are important, as there is no accepted treatment for chemosensory alterations experienced by cancer patients.”

Fifteen states and the District of Columbia have passed legislation to legalize the medical use of marijuana.

via DEA to legalize marijuana only for ‘Big Pharma,’ NORML claims | The Raw Story.

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February 24, 2011 · 6:36 pm

Will the GOP Blackmail Dems into Defunding Planned Parenthood? | | AlterNet

I can’t believe people aren’t more focused on the GOP attack on Women’s Health Care.

The Dems just don’t seem able to get out a message…

I did what little I could.  I made a donation to Planned Parenthood yesterday and I encourage you to do the same.

Here’s the link to do so:  https://secure.ppaction.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=pp_ppol_DonationFormOneTimeGift

When the news came down Friday afternoon, it was genuinely shocking, which is a rare event in our era of over-the-top right-wing antics: House Republicans, following the lead of Planned Parenthood-obsessed Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., zeroed out spending for family planning services in the continuing resolution to fund the government.

Even though pro-choicers have known for years that the anti-choice movement opposes contraception right alongside abortion, these cuts to Title X, which doesn’t fund abortion but only contraception and other reproductive health care, were still a surprise, considering how popular contraception remains with the general public. Still, while this bill was a punch to the gut for the vast majority of Americans who support birth control services, most political watchers assumed it to be symbolic anti-choice posturing from House Republicans, and that the Senate and the president would not allow federal support of Planned Parenthood to be abruptly cut off.

I wish I could share their confidence in Planned Parenthood’s safety. There’s reason to fear this gesture is more than symbolic, and that Republicans could successfully blackmail Democrats into defunding Title X, a funding initiative that goes all the way back to radical feminist socialist Richard Nixon. For a hint of what could happen, look back at what happened with the Stupak amendment that nearly derailed health care reform, forcing Democrats to accept a compromise that dramatically curtailed access to abortion for low-income women. Republicans, and a handful of conservative Democrats, have already demonstrated that they will hijack the debate to attack women’s rights, and there’s no reason to think this won’t happen again.

More:   Will the GOP Blackmail Dems into Defunding Planned Parenthood? | | AlterNet.

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February 20, 2011 · 12:38 pm

The G.O.P.’s Post-Tucson Traumatic Stress Disorder – NYTimes.com

Interesting article from Frank Rich today…

If the GOP is tiring of the rabid right and people realize they have nothing to offer, will the Dems finally capitalize on the GOP lack of ideas?

Or will they show the usually lack of nerve and cede the communications war in the name of bi-partisanship?

If they had had an effective communications strategy and some balls, we would have a better Health Care plan-with the Public Option- and they would still control the House of Representatives.  Oh, and we might have had a chance at true infrastructure development and Financial Reform.  Then President Obama might be viewed more as FDR than the Herbert Hoover imagery that is being used more and more often in the press…

Glenn Beck’s ratings at Fox News continued their steady decline, falling to an all-time low last month. He has lost 39 percent of his viewers in a year and 48 percent of the prime 25-to-54 age demographic. His strenuous recent efforts to portray the Egyptian revolution as an apocalyptic leftist-jihadist conspiracy have inspired more laughs than adherents.

Sarah Palin’s tailspin is also pronounced. It can be seen in polls, certainly: the ABC News-Washington Post survey found that 30 percent of Americans approved of her response to the Tucson massacre and 46 percent did not. (Obama’s numbers in the same poll were 78 percent favorable, 12 percent negative.) But equally telling was the fate of a Palin speech scheduled for May at a so-called Patriots & Warriors Gala in Glendale, Colo.

Tickets to see Palin, announced at $185 on Jan. 16, eight days after Tucson, were slashed to half-price in early February. Then the speech was canceled altogether, with the organizers blaming “safety concerns resulting from an onslaught of negative feedback.” But when The Denver Post sought out the Glendale police chief, he reported there had been no threats or other causes for alarm. The real “negative feedback” may have been anemic ticket sales, particularly if they were to cover Palin’s standard $100,000 fee.

What may at long last be dawning on some Republican grandees is that a provocateur who puts her political adversaries in the cross hairs and then instructs her acolytes to “RELOAD” frightens most voters.

via The G.O.P.’s Post-Tucson Traumatic Stress Disorder – NYTimes.com.

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February 18, 2011 · 10:44 pm

Health Care Repeal Would Cost $210 Billion: CBO

Of course facts, especially from a non-partisan source like the CBO, don’t mean much to Republicans….

See Robert Hurt, VA-5, as an example…

WASHINGTON (By Susan Heavey) – Repealing the U.S. healthcare law enacted last year would add $210 billion to the nation’s deficit over the next decade, congressional auditors said on Friday.

The Congressional Budget Office said enactment of a House of Representatives measure last month to scrap the healthcare overhaul would eliminate a number of provisions aimed at reducing federal healthcare costs as well as strip out new revenue-creating taxes and fees.

via Health Care Repeal Would Cost $210 Billion: CBO.

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February 16, 2011 · 7:09 pm

Study Backs Zinc to Prevent, Speed Recovery From Common Cold – AOL Health

Fascinating…

If you’re like most people, chances are you rarely get through the winter without having at least one bout with the common cold.

There is no cure for the common cold, but many try to speed recovery, often by taking echinacea, vitamin C or some other natural remedy.

Zinc has long been touted as a cold “cure,” but many studies have failed to back its effectiveness.

More recent trials, however, find that zinc may not only shorten the duration of a cold, but also prevent one.

via Study Backs Zinc to Prevent, Speed Recovery From Common Cold – AOL Health.

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February 14, 2011 · 5:56 pm

10 States With the Worst Eating Habits | | AlterNet

Very interesting article…

Funny how the worst states are the mainly very Republican states.  I wonder about that correlation….

Americans are fat and getting fatter by the year. Recent data reported in medical journal Lancet showed that BMI (Body Mass Index), a recognized measurement of obesity, is higher on average in America than in any other nation.

The obesity problem, however, is international. The report in Lancet states that “In 2008, 9.8 percent of the world’s male population were obese, as were 13.8 percent of women. In 1980, these rates were 4.8 percent and 7.9 percent.” US eating habits and diets have been exported, many experts say. Nations which before had relatively lean diets which were high in grains and fruits  now consume many more soft drinks and hamburgers.

This trend toward poorer diets has caused obesity to be the most written-about health problem in the United States. Fat Americans are more likely to have diabetes, coronary artery disease, strokes, and certain forms of cancer. Less well reported are links between obesity and dementia, obesity and postmenopausal estrogen receptors, and obesity and social status. Thin people, apparently, are more likely to be chief executives and billionaires. The problem of obesity is so acute that the number of studies about its causes and solutions grows by the day. The journal Health Affairs reported last year that overall obesity-related health spending reaches $147 billion in the US, about double what it was a decade earlier.

More:   10 States With the Worst Eating Habits | | AlterNet.

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