New England Journal of Medicine To SCOTUS: Say Yes To Marriage

The opponents of same sex marriage have had quacks, religious zealots, and fraudulent researchers file amicus briefs with the United States Supreme Court ("SCOTUS") in Obergefell V. Hodges going to great lengths to mask the reality that same sex marriage bans are first and last based on anti-gay animus, ignorance and religious extremist bigotry.   Perhaps in response to the parade of batshitery on display from the "godly folk," the New England Journal of Medicine - one of the most respected medical periodicals - has published an editorial in support of marriage equality.  Among the reasons cited for the editorial's position is that marriage equality promotes the health of same sex couples and their children.  The Christofascist blather on about "hating the sin, but loving the sinner" and caring about "the children," yet in reality they do not give a damn about LGBT individuals or their children.  The truth is that they would prefer it if we all just died and disappeared. Here are editorial highlights:

Eleven years ago, Massachusetts became the first state in the country to give same-sex marriages full legal recognition. Today, same-sex marriage is legal, through legislative or judicial action or by popular vote, in more than 35 states and the District of Columbia. It is recognized by the federal government. And polls consistently show that it is supported by a clear majority of Americans. However, in Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan, and Tennessee, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled in favor of laws and constitutional amendments that define marriage as a union between a man and a woman only, denying recognition of same-sex marriage.  . . . .  We believe that the Court should resolve this conflict in favor of the full recognition of same-sex marriage throughout the United States. 

A fundamental tenet of all medical care is the acceptance of patients as they are, for who they are, with respect and without prejudice or personal agendas. In most of the world, including the United States, there has been a long, sad history of mistreatment of homosexuals and misunderstanding of homosexuality, a normal expression of human sexuality. This mistreatment has ranged from disrespect to ridicule, from ostracizing to genocide. . . . And there are still health care providers who offer ways to “treat” homosexuality as if it were an illness.

Many of us in decades past have known people who felt they had no choice but to hide their homosexuality with false behaviors and sham marriages. Too often physicians have seen the price that their patients have paid for society's lack of acceptance of homosexuality. Stigma and shame lead to stress, anxiety, dysfunctional behavior, depression, even suicide..

Same-sex marriage should be accepted both as a matter of justice and as a measure that promotes health. Marriage as an institution is about stable, long-term relationships, which we know encourage health, reduce the risk of some diseases, and promote healthy families. All health professionals know that in those with chronic and severe illness, care almost always relies in part on family. And when things get really difficult, as when life and death decisions need to be made, physicians know that talking with a patient's partner is not legally the same as working with a patient's spouse. Many same-sex couples are now raising children, and the health of those children demands that their parents have the full rights and protection of marriage. In our society, marriage is often essential to obtaining and keeping adequate health insurance coverage for both members of a couple and for their children. More than 1000 federal benefits are conferred by marriage, among them access to family medical leave, Medicaid, and Veterans Affairs medical services.

The Supreme Court should require the full recognition of same-sex marriage throughout this country. If the Court rules otherwise, whatever the legal logic, a clear injustice will result. And that injustice would damage the health and welfare of millions of Americans.

Killing the Right Wing Fantasy that Private Charity Can Meet Public Need

Go to any right wing blog and you will find posts whining that the state and/or federal government has should have no role in supporting the poor and needy  Instead, these greed driven screeds claim that private charity should meet the needs of the sick, the poor, the unemployed, etc.  The reality, of course, is that private charity doesn't have the capacity to meet the need for assistance.  The other reality is that government has stepped in to fill these types of needs for many decades.  The so-called welfare state did not suddenly arise out of nowhere in the 1960's.  But, dealing with and accepting historical reality is not something that today's GOP and its Christofascist/Tea Party is exactly known for.  These folks live in a fantasy world.  A piece in Democracy Journal destroys the far rights favored talking points on taking the government out of providing a social safety net.  Here are excerpts:

Conservatives dream of returning to a world where private charity fulfilled all public needs. But that world never existed—and we’re better for it.

[C] conservatives tell themselves a story, a fairy tale really, about the past, about the way the world was and can be again under Republican policies. This story is about the way people were able to insure themselves against the risks inherent in modern life. Back before the Great Society, before the New Deal, and even before the Progressive Era, things were better. Before government took on the role of providing social insurance, individuals and private charity did everything needed to insure people against the hardships of life; given the chance, they could do it again. 

This vision has always been implicit in the conservative ascendancy.  . . . which argued that a purely private nineteenth-century system of charitable and voluntary organizations did a better job providing for the common good than the twentieth-century welfare state. This idea is also the basis of Paul Ryan’s budget, which seeks to devolve and shrink the federal government at a rapid pace, lest the safety net turn “into a hammock that lulls able-bodied people into lives of dependency and complacency, that drains them of their will and their incentive to make the most of their lives.”

But this conservative vision of social insurance is wrong. It’s incorrect as a matter of history; it ignores the complex interaction between public and private social insurance that has always existed in the United States. It completely misses why the old system collapsed and why a new one was put in its place. It fails to understand how the Great Recession displayed the welfare state at its most necessary and that a voluntary system would have failed under the same circumstances. Most importantly, it points us in the wrong direction. The last 30 years have seen effort after effort to try and push the policy agenda away from the state’s capabilities and toward private mechanisms for mitigating the risks we face in the world. This effort is exhausted, and future endeavors will require a greater, not lesser, role for the public.

Beyond the need to deflate the imaginary landscape of the contemporary right, there’s also a need for liberals to reform their project. Liberals need to reclaim the public. Liberals need to be able to articulate that the welfare state succeeded in exactly the ways that the private insurance system failed in the Great Depression.

The state does many things, but this essay will focus specifically on its role in providing social insurance against the risks we face. Specifically, we’ll look at what the progressive economist and actuary I.M. Rubinow described in 1934 as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: “accident, illness, old age, loss of a job. These are the four horsemen that ride roughshod over lives and fortunes of millions of wage workers of every modern industrial community.” These were the same evils that Truman singled out in his speech. And these are the ills that Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food assistance, and our other public systems of social insurance set out to combat in the New Deal and Great Society.  

Over the past 30 years the public role in social insurance has taken a backseat to the idea that private institutions will expand to cover these risks. Yet our current system of workplace private insurance is rapidly falling apart. In its wake, we’ll need to make a choice between an expanded role for the state or a fantasy of voluntary protection instead. We need to understand why this voluntary system didn’t work in the first place to make the case for the state’s role in fighting the Four Horsemen.

As for social insurance specifically, the historian Michael Katz has documented that there has always been a mixed welfare state made up of private and public organizations throughout our country’s history. Outdoor relief, or cash assistance outside of institutions, was an early legal responsibility of American towns, counties, and parishes from colonial times through the early nineteenth century.  

But there were a few major problems with these [charity or welfare] societies. The first was that they were regionally segregated and isolated. These forms of insurance didn’t exist in places without dense cities, industry, or deep ethnic and immigrant communities. Even in states with large cities and thriving industries like California and New York, only 30 percent of workers had some sort of health-care coverage through fraternal methods. Moreover, the programs were fragmented and provided only partial insurance.

Thus, though they were pervasive throughout this time period, they never provided more than a sliver of actual, robust social insurance. As the Russell Sage Foundation concluded at the time, private societies stand “as a tangible expression of a keenly felt need, a feeble instrument for performing a duty beyond its own powers.”

That need was partly what gave rise to the Progressive movement. Private charity simply didn’t have the breadth and depth necessary to truly respond to the Four Horsemen in this industrializing era, and Progressives saw a greater role for government to address these ills.

There is more to the piece that deserves a full read.  Suffice it to say that the conservatives' fantasy about private charity meeting society's actual needs is a fictional as their claims that America was founded as a "Christian nation."  Conservatives' real goal is to slash social safety net spending so that they can amass more for themselves as the kick the poor, the sick and the unemployed to the curb. Ultimately, selfishness - along with racism and religious based bigotry - is the main motivation behind their quest. 

America's Mental Health Crisis; Creigh Deeds on "60 Minutes"

While I supported him against the now disgraced Bob "Taliban Bob" McDonnell, Creigh Deeds was a terrible candidate when he ran for governor of Virginia in 2009.  That said, his appearance on 60 Minutes this evening was incredibly powerful and helped to expose the disgraceful state of mental health care in America.  His scared face and deep emotion was so very, very moving. The lack of mental health care is literally a national embarrassment.  But it is especially relevant to members of the LGBT community struggling to deal with the harm done by anti-gay bigotry and the family rejection that some of us are faced with.  A clip from the show is posted above and well worth watching.

When I came out and struggled to overcome religious based internalized homophobia and societal condemnation, access to competent and supportive therapists was crucial.  Yet even with good medical insurance, coverage for mental health therapy was greatly limited and significant out of pocket costs were part of receiving the assistance I needed.  One can only hope that the nightmare that Creigh Deeds experienced and his personal testimony will push the Virginia General Assembly to do the right thing and (i) allocate more money for mental health care and (ii) force insurers to afford increased coverage for this much needed  segment of health care.

A sincere thank you to Creigh Deeds for speaking out so that the tragedy that happened to his son and his family hopefully does not happen to anyone else! 

The Truth About Mitt Romney's Health Care "Plan"

Click image to enlarge

I had conversations today with those who refuse to accept the fact that Mitt Romney's health care plan will cause much harm to millions of Americans - yes, most of these conversations were with republicans.  These conversation caused me to take another look at just how toxic the Romney plan would be for so many Americans in order that I could "re-educate" these apparent Fox News viewers.  In this process, perhaps the most effective explanation of the difference between "Obamacare," Romneycare as enacted in Massachusetts id applied nationwide, and Romney's current health care "plan" can be found at Think Progress which includes the chart above.  Take a good look and make sure your non-engaged, Fox News watching friends look at this chart and stop drinking the Romney/Ryan Kool-Aid.  Here are highlights from the Think Progress article:

A new study from Families USA compares both Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts health reform law and proposed health care plans as a presidential candidate with President Obama’s health care reform. The report finds that on both a national and state-by-state level, Romney’s proposed reforms would lead to a substanitally higher uninsurance rate and considerably less financial support for American families trying to access health coverage than Obamacare would. A key element of the study notes that Romney’s plan uses tax deductions (relief on the amount of taxable income workers have to claim) as opposed to Obamacare’s tax credits (an actual reduction in the total taxes workers pay) as its method of premium support, thus reaching fewer Americans and providing them with less subsidies. 

Romney’s proposals would provide working families little more than half the subsidies that Obamacare does, and by 2022 Romney’s plan would lead to a net 50 million more uninsured Americans than Obamacare would.

Don't be afraid to challenge the ignorance of your Romney loving friends.  Whether they like it or not, they need to get their heads out of their asses and stop drinking the GOP/Christianist/Tea Party Kool-Aid.

A Sad Commentary on the USA's Health Care System

This Toles cartoon from the Washington Post sadly summarizes the reality for many Americans when it comes to access to health care. Not that the GOP or it's conservative Christian base gives a damn.

Bob McDonnell's Vicious Budget Priorities

Some say that Bob McDonnell is a rising star of the GOP. If so, people need to take a close look at his proposed budget cuts which demonstrate a low priority towards everyday citizens, particularly the poor and those at the bottom of the economic food chain. The budget cuts are very much in keeping with the mindset of The Family Foundation and other far right elements in the Republican Party of Virginia that all too often seem to believe that one is down trodden, it is because one deserves such misfortune. Indeed, these self-congratulatory Christianists seem to take a decidedly un-Christian view of others be they black, gay, Hispanic, or non-Christian. It may be a very long four years under McDonnell's administration. The Virginian Pilot has details of McDonnell's proposed cuts and the reaction from those who work with society's down trodden elements. There seems to be little compassionate conservatism. Moreover, while McDonnell claims to want to create jobs and attract business, he utterly ignores what social atmosphere attracts the "creative class." Here are highlights:

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After reviewing his [McDonnell's] proposal to pare $2.2 billion from the budget, some human-service advocates question the governor's intentions. McDonnell's suggestions show "an absolute disregard in investments for our future, while... his spending demonstrates an appetite for more corporate takeover in Richmond," said Doug Smith, executive director of the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy.
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Smith takes exception to cuts McDonnell recommended for school meals, homeless people, juvenile crime prevention, and a state insurance program for low-income children and pregnant women. By proposing those cuts while asking the legislature to approve tens of millions in funding to attract business to Virginia with incentives and tax credits, "Bob McDonnell is choosing business over people in this budget," Smith argued.
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Trish O'Brien, executive director of a human services organization called CHIP/Healthy Families in Chesapeake, said that if legislators approve the proposed cuts, she will lose half of her staff members, who check on 3,000 children in at-risk families throughout Chesapeake.
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Some programs that would be slashed or eliminated would save relatively little money. For example, a teen pregnancy prevention program in Norfolk, Portsmouth, and five other areas would be ended to save $900,000.
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State Sen. Janet Howell, D-Fairfax County, said McDonnell's proposed reductions slice "the heart and soul" out of state government. Particularly upsetting to state Sen. Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, is the possible cut to a school meals program. "To even put school lunches on the table has got to be the most insensitive thought of the session, because that school lunch is the only decent meal some of these kids are going to get in a day's time," Lucas said.
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The cuts to social services, mental health services and health insurance programs would fray the safety net of a growing number of Hampton Roads residents, according to Betty Wade Coyle, executive director of Prevent Child Abuse Hampton Roads. "It's scaling back direct services to children and to the most vulnerable citizens in the community."
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Maureen Hollowell, who advocates for disabled people through the Norfolk-based Endependence Center, said 6,000 disabled and elderly people who receive services through a "consumer directed" program that allows them to hire their own personal care assistants would lose their funding under the governor's proposals.
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Many of us tried to warn that Bob McDonnell is no moderate, but few would listen. I hope voters take a good look at the GOP's priorities when it comes to viewing citizens as basically disposable goods. WWJD??

Southwest Virgina's Mortality Mystery

I noticed a story earlier in the week that looked at the declining life expectacy in various parts of the USA, including Southwest Virginia, but I did not find time to do a post on it. Now, today, the Washington Post has a story that focuses on Southwest Virginia's declining life expectancies, particularly for women. The article looks at a number of factors, but never adequately focuses on what I suspect is a major factor: lack of health insurance coverage that allows preventative treatment and diognostic tests. It is mentioned briefly, but fails to point out that emergency room care in non-profit hospitals does NOT include such medical treatment. Therefore, I believe much of the population lacks decent medical insurance coverage and as a result lacks minimal quality care. In fact, years ago my sister who is a nurse practioner worked in a clinic in that area of the state under a UVA grant and was horrified at the conditions and lack of medical care.

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As backward as the greater Norfolk area seems at times, it is down right cosmopolitan and progressive compared to the southwest part of the Virginia which is the poorest area in the state and also the most backward in terms of social views and education. Other than coal mine operations, there are not many large employers in that area of the state - not anymore that is. Furniture manufacturers, textile mills and other former large manufacturing and industrial employers that once paid a living wage and provided health insurance coverage have largely closed down as jobs have been exported overseas. As the article notes, even Wal-Mart closed a store in that region. The state is making efforts to induce new employers to relocate to that part of the state, but few progressive firms would want to be based in that area. While the area is physically beautiful and has gorgeous mountains (the Appalachian Trail runs throught the area), socially it is like a 1950's time warp in the worse sense and no liberal or gay in their right mind would move there if they had a choice in the matter. In fact, those with brains and ambition leave the area for more progressive parts of the state or country. Thus, the area is in a downward spiral - the more backward and reactionary it becomes, the fewer would be employers want to relocate there. Bigotry, reactionary politics (Southwest Virginia is the GOP's most secure bastion in Virginia) and fundamentalist Christianity which predominate the area have a very high price in terms of driving development and progress away. Here are some story highlights:

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In this corner of southwest Virginia, cow-speckled fields and empty downtown streets tell of a slower, calmer life. It's a place where older men can be found around a table every morning drinking 25-cent coffee with the nearest Starbucks miles away. Residents will tell you little distinguishes the city of Radford and neighboring Pulaski County from elsewhere in rural America. That is what troubles health-care workers here most about a new study that found a sharp drop in life expectancy for women in the two communities.

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According to the study, life expectancy for women dropped in nearly 1,000 counties but fell most in Radford and Pulaski. In 1983, life expectancy for women in the two jurisdictions was about 84 years. By 1999, it had dropped 5.8 years, to 78. No other jurisdiction in the nation had a decrease of more than 3.3 years.

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But in an area struggling economically, where the day's gas prices might determine whether it's worth a drive to the doctor's office, it's not always easy to push preventive measures, he said. "If you are struggling to put food on the table, you don't have time to think about prevention," Hershey said, adding that lack of health insurance is a significant problem in southwest Virginia.

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On Main Street in the town of Pulaski, economic distress is clear. "For Sale" signs hang on several storefronts, and even at lunchtime, few people stroll the streets. It wasn't always like this, business owner David Allen said. That was before popular stores left and major manufacturers, such as Pulaski Furniture, where many residents worked, closed. Now everyone talks about expected layoffs at Volvo, a major employer. "It's going downhill," John Stevens said. "We even lost a Wal-Mart here. Who loses a Wal-Mart?"

59% of US Doctors Support Universal Healthcare

In my opinion, one of the biggest scandals in the USA is the number of American citizens who lack basic healthcare insurance coverage and/or access to preventative medical treatment and diagnostic testing. As an employer, the amounts paid by both employers and employees for health insurance is an ever increasing burden. In the past, one of the lobby groups who opposed some form of universal or national healthcare system was the nation's doctors who believed that it would reduce their incomes. Now that tide appears to be turning, leaving I suspect insurance companies and pharmaceutical manufacturers as the leading opponents. Why the opposition? Because it could mean a reduction in the obscene denials by insurance companies of treatment coverage and almost unbelieveably expensive drug costs. Here are highlights from a Raw Story article (http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Doctors_support_universal_health_care_survey_0401.html):

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than half of U.S. doctors now favor switching to a national health care plan and fewer than a third oppose the idea, according to a survey published on Monday.

The survey suggests that opinions have changed substantially since the last survey in 2002 and as the country debates serious changes to the health care system. Of more than 2,000 doctors surveyed, 59 percent said they support legislation to establish a national health insurance program, while 32 percent said they opposed it, researchers reported in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.

"As doctors, we find that our patients suffer because of increasing deductibles, co-payments, and restrictions on patient care," said Dr. Ronald Ackermann, who worked on the study with Carroll. "More and more, physicians are turning to national health insurance as a solution to this problem."

"Across the board, more physicians feel that our fragmented and for-profit insurance system is obstructing good patient care, and a majority now support national insurance as the remedy," Ackermann said in a statement.

The Indiana survey found that 83 percent of psychiatrists, 69 percent of emergency medicine specialists, 65 percent of pediatricians, 64 percent of internists, 60 percent of family physicians and 55 percent of general surgeons favor a national health insurance plan. The researchers said they believe the survey was representative of the 800,000 U.S. medical doctors.

Americans Go to Mexico for aAffordable Dental Care

It is ironic that the GOP and those who like to trumpet the supposedly wonderful health care system in the USA and who oppose “socialized medicine” never bother to address the 45+ million of people without health care insurance. An even bigger issue for many American families is the lack of dental insurance since many employers that offer healthcare coverage do not provide any dental insurance. Now, the situation has become downright embarrassing: U.S. citizens are now going to Mexican border towns to get dental care they cannot afford in the world’s wealthiest nation. Not only do we now have a government that spies on its citizens like in some banana republic, but now people fell forced to go to a developing country for dental (and often medical care). Here are some highlights from a Yahoo News story (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080201/hl_nm/mexico_usa_dentists_dc):

Shrugging off concerns about hygiene and Mexico's brutal drug war, thousands of Americans are heading to Ciudad Juarez and other Mexican border cities for cheap dental treatment. "I had to get my teeth fixed. I need a perfect smile to make a successful career in music. Treatment in the United States is so pricey," said Clay, a Texan trying to get a record deal as a hip-hop artist. U.S. dental treatment costs up to four times as much as in Mexico, making it tough for uninsured Americans to treat common problems such as abscessed teeth or pay for dentures. A dental crown in the United States costs upward of $600 per tooth, compared to $190 or less in Mexico.

We've gone from a handful of patients when we started 2-1/2 years ago to 150 new patients a month," said Joe Andel, an American who owns the Rio Dental clinic in Ciudad Juarez with his Mexican dentist wife, Jessica. Rio Dental, which uses U.S. labs to make its crowns, picks patients up at the airport in El Paso, Texas, across the border and has treated people from as far away as Alaska and Hawaii.

Dentistry in the United States has become prohibitively expensive for some patients, with bills that can run to tens of thousands of dollars. Malpractice insurance premiums, operating costs that are much higher than in Mexico and dentists seeking to claw back the rising cost of their tuition all weigh. Even among Americans who have medical insurance, many find they are not covered for treatment other than the basics, and paying on credit means high interest payments.

Meanies And Hypocrites - More Reasons Why I Left the GOP

I forgot to mention the other day E. J. Dionne's column in Friday's Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/11/AR2007101101601.html) that addresses the GOP attack machine's treatment of Graeme Frost, the 12-year-old from Baltimore who delivered the Democrats' reply to a radio address by President Bush in September concerning his veto of the expansion of the children's health care program known as SCHIP. Dionne rightly identifies this conduct as reprehensible and, in my view, hardly consistent with upholding "family values." Here are some highlights:

Frost is the 12-year-old from Baltimore who delivered the Democrats' reply to a radio address by President Bush in September. The seventh-grader pleaded -- in vain, it turned out -- that the president not veto Congress's $35 billion expansion of the children's health care program known as SCHIP. A car crash in December 2004 left two of Halsey and Bonnie Frost's children comatose, Graeme with a brain stem injury and Gemma, his sister, with a cranial fracture.

The kids were treated, thanks to SCHIP. The Frosts spoke out so the public would know that real people lie behind the acronym. Their reward was to be trashed on right-wing blogs and talk radio as if they were multimillionaires ripping off the system. The assault on the Frosts apparently began on the Free Republic Web site and quickly spread to National Review Online, Power Line and Michelle Malkin's blog, as well as Rush Limbaugh's radio show.

And of what were the Frosts guilty? Well, they own their own home, which they bought for $55,000 in 1990 and which is now worth about $260,000; they invested in a commercial property, valued at $160,000; Halsey Frost, a self-employed woodworker, once owned a small business that was dissolved in 1999; and Graeme attends a private school on scholarship. I rely here on facts reported this week in the Baltimore Sun and the New York Times, both of which set straight the more outlandish claims made by the Frosts' attackers. The right is unapologetic.

Why is it that the far right in the GOP are so anti-abortion, yet really do not seem to give a flying f**k about children once they are born? I simply do not understand the logic - or, should I say, the lack thereof? Another review of this despicable behavior can be found here in Time: http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1670210,00.html

U. S. Supreme Court - Religious groups must offer employees birth control

This action by the U. S. Supreme Court will no doubt have some of the wingnuts screaming. Not only did the Court refuse to hear the case, it did not even offer any explanation. Therefore, the lower court opinion upholding the laws stand. Here are highlights of the RawStory article:

The US Supreme Court rejected Monday a bid by Roman Catholic and Baptist groups to stop offering their employees birth-control benefits as part of their health insurance. The case hinged on the organizations' right to place their own beliefs at the center of their employment practices, offering a new battle ground over the age-old state versus religion debate at the start of the court's new year.

The top court rejected a petition by the groups arguing that by being forced to offer contraception pills and equipment on their employee health-insurance plans, their First Amendment rights to free speech were violated. The petition sought to overturn a New York state law that mandated that all employees of religious groups must have access to birth-control measures as part of their employer-provided health insurance.

The Supreme Court did not publish an explanation of its decision against the petition, which had also been supported by Orthodox Jewish and other religious groups in a brief to the court.

Following Bush Over a Cliff

This column by David Broder (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/26/AR2007092602067.html?nav=hcmodule) discusses a phenomenon that I simply do not understand - why members of the GOP blindly follow a president that the vast majority of the population disapprove of and believe is taking the country in the wrong direction. The GOP increasingly deserves to be savaged at the polls in 2008. As for the Chimperator, perhaps a mental institution is where he belongs:

The spectacle Tuesday of 151 House Republicans voting in lock step with the White House against expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) was one of the more remarkable sights of the year. Rarely do you see so many politicians putting their careers in jeopardy.

The bill they opposed, at the urging of President Bush, commands healthy majorities in both the House and Senate but is headed for a veto because Bush objects to expanding this form of safety net for the children of the working poor. He has staked out that ground on his own, ignoring or rejecting the pleas of conservative senators such as Chuck Grassley and Orrin Hatch, who helped shape the compromise that the House approved and that the Senate endorsed.

Governors of both parties -- 43 of them, again including conservatives such as Sonny Perdue of Georgia -- have praised the program. And they endorsed the congressional decision to expand the coverage to an additional 4 million youngsters, at the cost of an additional $35 billion over the next five years. The bill would be financed by a 61-cents-a-pack increase in cigarette taxes. If ever there was a crowd-pleaser of a bill, this is it. Hundreds of organizations -- grass-roots groups ranging from AARP to United Way of America and the national YMCA -- have called on Bush to sign the bill. America's Health Insurance Plans, the largest insurance lobbying group, endorsed the bill on Monday.

Bush's adamant stand may be peculiar to him, but the willingness of Republican legislators to line up with him is more significant. Bush does not have to face the voters again, but these men and women will be on the ballot in just over a year -- and their Democratic opponents will undoubtedly remind them of their votes.

Two of their smartest colleagues -- Heather Wilson of New Mexico and Ray LaHood of Illinois -- tried to steer House Republicans away from this political self-immolation, but they had minimal success. The combined influence of White House and congressional leadership -- and what I would have to call herd instinct -- prevailed.

Record Number of Americans Lack Health Insurance - Federal report cites drop in employer-sponsored coverage

I know that I have harped on this issue before, but I truly believe it is one of the biggest domestic issues in the USA. Statistics show that over one-half of all bankruptcies is due to a family medical crisis. Sometimes even where the parties have health insurance coverage. This article from MSNBC (http://health.msn.com/healthnews/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100168613&GT1=10316) shows that the problem of uninsured Americans is increasing. That one of the leading industrail nations in the world treats its citizens in this manner is a disgrace. Even more scandalous, it is the party of "family values" and public religion that most opposes changes in health coverage for Americans. Here are highlights form the story:

TUESDAY, Aug. 28 (HealthDay News) -- A record number of Americans are without health insurance, according to new U.S. Census Bureau statistics released Tuesday. Some of the trend can be explained by employers who are curtailing coverage or making it too costly for lower income workers to afford, the report said.

"The number of people without health insurance coverage increased from 44.8 million in 2005 to 47 million in 2006," David S. Johnson, chief of the bureau's Housing and Household Economic Statistics Division, said during a teleconference Tuesday. The percentage of Americans without health insurance rose to 15.8 percent in 2006 from 15.3 percent in 2005, Johnson added. "This is the second consecutive year of increase," he said.

The problems of the uninsured are particularly acute among children. The percent and the number of children under 18 without health insurance increased to 11.7 percent from 10.9 percent from 2005 to 2006, and to 8.7 million from 8 million, respectively. "The number of children covered by private insurance decreased from 65.8 percent in 2005 to 64.6 percent in 2006," Johnson said. "The increase in the uninsured rate can be attributed to the decline in private coverage." Moreover, 19.3 percent of children in poverty had no health insurance.

Davis added that employers were dropping coverage of dependents. "It really varies by the income of the family," she said. "Either employers aren't covering the kids, or the premium share is too high for families to afford."

Rules May Limit Health Program Aiding Children

More "compassionate Conservatism" from Chimperator Bush. How this man thinks himself a Christian when his policies give to the rich and take form the less affluent baffles me. Granted, I think the guy is a moron, but even a rudimentary reading of the Gospels would suggest that his policies are not exactly what I suspect Jesus would have endorsed. Here are highlights from the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/21/washington/21health.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp):

The Bush administration, continuing its fight to stop states from expanding the popular Children’s Health Insurance Program, has adopted new standards that would make it much more difficult for New York, California and others to extend coverage to children in middle-income families. Administration officials outlined the new standards in a letter sent to state health officials on Friday evening, in the middle of a month long Congressional recess. In interviews, they said the changes were intended to return the Children’s Health Insurance Program to its original focus on low-income children and to make sure the program did not become a substitute for private health coverage.

After learning of the new policy, some state officials said yesterday that it could cripple their efforts to cover more children and would impose standards that could not be met. “We are horrified at the new federal policy,” said Ann Clemency Kohler, deputy commissioner of human services in New Jersey. “It will cause havoc with our program and could jeopardize coverage for thousands of children.”

When Staying Alive Means Going Bankrupt, Plus: U.S. Life Expectancy Lags Behind Other Countries

I have posted several times on the health insurance and health care crisis in the USA faced by millions of Americans. This story highlights how it CAN happen to you, even though you have a good job and are anything but a deadbeat. When one of my daughters had a serious illness less than 10 years ago, I experienced first hand what a medical crisis could do to one's savings and finances. Here are portions of this MSNBC story (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20201807/):

In our second Gut Check America vote, readers rated health care as the issue of most concern for them. After a false start in Oregon, we found reader Kathleen Aldrich, a Lompoc, Calif., resident who wrote to us about how her battle with cancer drove her to bankruptcy, even though she had health insurance. Here is her story:

LOMPOC, Calif. - Kathleen Aldrich, financially ruined by two bouts with ovarian cancer, is not who you might assume she is. She raised three kids as a single mom. She worked hard for years. She had good jobs. She paid her bills. She lived in a nice house and drove a nice car. She had a decent credit rating. She had health insurance.

Now she has a record of bankruptcy and is the embodiment of the fear that nags at millions of U.S. families: that they are but one medical calamity away from losing everything. Like Aldrich, they — and perhaps you — could be.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Aldrich says thoughtfully, sitting in the neat, pale green living room of her tiny stucco duplex in the middle of this mostly middle-class American town. “I don’t see that I did.”

Just turned 50, tall and blond with a quick smile, Aldrich is gratefully in remission for a second time from the ovarian cancer, the No. 5 cancer killer of women. Despite “feeling like a little black cloud follows me around all the time,” she has a lot to live for, from a budding long-distance romance to a precocious 6-year-old granddaughter named Alyssa.

The bankruptcy has quashed all thoughts that she might someday retire. More immediately, it has left her unable to obtain thousands of dollars of work on her teeth, which likely were weakened by the powerful anti-cancer drugs. And it has left deeper wounds of shame and guilt over having to walk away from unpaid bills after a lifetime of responsible living.

Aldrich’s situation is "asinine" but increasingly common, said Dr. Deborah Thorne of Ohio University. Thorne, co-author of a widely quoted 2005 study that found medical bills contributed to nearly half of the 1.5 million personal bankruptcies filed in the U.S. each year, said that ratio has likely worsened since the data was gathered. Bankruptcy in the light of large medical bills is “unfortunately the only choice many people have," she said. "They will never in their lifetimes pay them off. Like Aldrich, Thorne said, three-quarters of the individuals in the study who declared bankruptcy because of health problems were insured.

It’s hard for Aldrich to talk about her situation without strong emotions, and some tears, surfacing. But she does not want to be seen as a pity case. She sees herself as a cautionary tale for average Americans: “It can happen to you.”

As more and more Americans in Chimperator Bush's Amerika find their access to quality medical care reduced by an inability to afford health insurance and/or pay co-pays and stop loss amounts, it is no surprise that while Americans are living longer than ever, they are not living as long as people in 41 other countries as reported by CNN (http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/08/13/life.expectancy.ap/):

For decades, the United States has been slipping in international rankings of life expectancy, as other countries improve health care, nutrition and lifestyles. Countries that surpass the U.S. include Japan and most of Europe, as well as Jordan and the Cayman Islands.

"Something's wrong here when one of the richest countries in the world, the one that spends the most on health care, is not able to keep up with other countries," said Dr. Christopher Murray, head of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

A baby born in the United States in 2004 will live an average of 77.9 years. That life expectancy ranks 42nd, down from 11th two decades earlier, according to international numbers provided by the Census Bureau and domestic numbers from the National Center for Health Statistics.

Researchers said several factors have contributed to the United States falling behind other industrialized nations. A major one is that 45 million Americans lack health insurance, while Canada and many European countries have universal health care, they say.

France's Model Healthcare System

I have indicated previously that I support a sea change in the healthcare system in the USA. Some bloggers - such as the Pink Elephant - express worries about government run health care. Yes, there are issues for concern, but those issues should not be used to justify the continuation of a system that is seriously broken and that leaves millions with no effective healthcare coverage. This Boston Globe column (shttp://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/08/11/frances_model_healthcare_system/) hows that there a number of models that the USA would do well to look at:

MANY advocates of a universal healthcare system in the United States look to Canada for their model. While the Canadian healthcare system has much to recommend it, there's another model that has been too long neglected. That is the healthcare system in France.

Although the French system faces many challenges, the World Health Organization rated it the best in the world in 2001 because of its universal coverage, responsive healthcare providers, patient and provider freedoms, and the health and longevity of the country's population. The United States ranked 37.

The French system is also not inexpensive. At $3,500 per capita it is one of the most costly in Europe, yet that is still far less than the $6,100 per person in the United States. An understanding of how France came to its healthcare system would be instructive in any renewed debate in the United States.

That's because the French share Americans' distaste for restrictions on patient choice and they insist on autonomous private practitioners rather than a British-style national health service, which the French dismiss as "socialized medicine." Virtually all physicians in France participate in the nation's public health insurance, Sécurité Sociale.

Their freedoms of diagnosis and therapy are protected in ways that would make their managed-care-controlled US counterparts envious. However, the average American physician earns more than five times the average US wage while the average French physician makes only about two times the average earnings of his or her compatriots. But the lower income of French physicians is allayed by two factors. Practice liability is greatly diminished by a tort-averse legal system, and medical schools, although extremely competitive to enter, are tuition-free. Thus, French physicians enter their careers with little if any debt and pay much lower malpractice insurance premiums.

Nor do France's doctors face the high nonmedical personnel payroll expenses that burden American physicians. Sécurité Sociale has created a standardized and speedy system for physician billing and patient reimbursement using electronic funds. It's not uncommon to visit a French medical office and see no nonmedical personnel. What a concept. No back office army of billing specialists who do daily battle with insurers' arcane and constantly changing rules of payment.

Moreover, in contrast to Canada and Britain, there are no waiting lists for elective procedures and patients need not seek pre-authorizations. In other words, like in the United States, "rationing" is not a word that leaves the lips of hopeful politicians. How might the French case inform the US debate over healthcare reform?

National health insurance in France stands upon two grand historical bargains -- the first with doctors and a second with insurers.

Doctors only agreed to participate in compulsory health insurance if the law protected a patient's choice of practitioner and guaranteed physicians' control over medical decision-making. Given their current frustrations, America's doctors might finally be convinced to throw their support behind universal health insurance if it protected their professional judgment and created a sane system of billing and reimbursement.

French legislators also overcame insurance industry resistance by permitting the nation's already existing insurers to administer its new healthcare funds. Private health insurers are also central to the system as supplemental insurers who cover patient expenses that are not paid for by Sécurité Sociale. Indeed, nearly 90 percent of the French population possesses such coverage, making France home to a booming private health insurance market.

The French system strongly discourages the kind of experience rating that occurs in the United States, making it more difficult for insurers to deny coverage for preexisting conditions or to those who are not in good health. In fact, in France, the sicker you are, the more coverage, care, and treatment you get. Would American insurance companies cut a comparable deal?

Bush threatens to veto health care coverage for kids and seniors, but think Bush, Cheney or Roberts had any problems with their health insurance?

I could not help but reference this post on America Blog (,http://www.americablog.com/2007/07/bush-threatens-to-veto-health-care.html) since it gets to the growing crisis in this country for so many people: the cost of health care coverage. At the moment, my premium is $1337.00 per month. My office has a group plan and all employees can have coverage through it if the so elect. But if you are and individual, there are people with pre-existing conditions who cannot get coverage: The insurance carriers want your premium dollars, but want as little chance of actually having to pay anything out as possible. I believe it is a travesty that the supposedly most advanced nation in the world has millions and millions of citizens who do not have and cannot obtain health coverage. Here's some of America Blog's commentary:

Over the past two weeks, three of the top officials in our government have undergone major medical experiences. Bush had a colonoscopy and polyps removed; Cheney got some kind of new cardiac device; and John Roberts had a seizure that landed him in the E.R. If those experiences had happened to most Americans, we'd be sorting through our health care plans to figure out what was covered and how much we owed. That is, if there was health insurance coverage.

Meanwhile, I don't think Roberts is fretting that he had a pre-existing condition or whether E.R. visits are in his plan. The rest of us are tortured over things like that.You know that none of those guys have any such worries. You're paying for them to have the best health care around.

Yet, George Bush is vowing to veto the SCHIP reauthorization. This week, the House will pass its version of SCHIP reauthorization, the Children’s Health and Medicare Protection Act (CHAMP), H.R. 3162. That bill will provide health care to 11 million kids while protecting senior citizens from the Bush effort to privatize Medicare. Yep, health care for kids and seniors. But, Bush can't have that.

Chimperator Bush: No Deal On Children's Health Plan

This article in the Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/18/AR2007071801434_pf.html) pretty much says it all as to what Bush's version of "compassionate Conservatism" is in reality: tax cuts for the extremely wealthy and no health insurance for poor children. WWJD? The Chimperator yesterday:

. . .[R]ejected entreaties by his Republican allies that he compromise with Democrats on legislation to renew a popular program that provides health coverage to poor children, saying that expanding the program would enlarge the role of the federal government at the expense of private insurance. . . . The 10-year-old program, which is set to expire on Sept. 30, costs the federal government $5 billion a year and helps provide health coverage to 6.6 million low-income children whose families do not qualify for Medicaid but cannot afford private insurance on their own.

In the 15-minute interview, Bush also rejected the charges by former surgeon general Richard H. Carmona that the administration's political appointees routinely rewrote his speeches, blocked public health reports for political reasons and screened his travel.

This man and his regime truly make me ill. He can worry about stem cell research and frozen embryos, but to hell with living children. Is he just totally crazy or knowingly evil?

WWJD - Bush Is Prepared to Veto Bill to Expand Child Insurance

Yet another example of Chimperator Bush's bogus "compasionate conservatism (which I am sure the Christianists are applauding) since I am sure that many of those children are hispanic or black):

The White House said on Saturday that President Bush would veto a bipartisan plan to expand the Children’s Health Insurance Program, drafted over the last six months by senior members of the Senate Finance Committee.

The vow puts Mr. Bush at odds with the Democratic majority in Congress, with a substantial number of Republican lawmakers and with many governors of both parties, who want to expand the popular program to cover some of the nation’s eight million uninsured children.

How much more damage do to the country before his term expires?? The full New York Times story is here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/washington/15child.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1184505115-UtZOaszpTBVSyzANYoAd/w