Healthcare Shortfalls

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 31, 2009
2:03 PM


CONTACT: National Organization for Women (NOW)
Mai Shiozaki, 202-628-8669, ext. 116; cell 202-641-1906
NOW Outraged at House Vote on Abortion Coverage -- Women's Rights Traded Away
WASHINGTON - July 31 - NOW is outraged to learn that the House Energy and Commerce Committee passed an amendment excluding abortion services from the "essential" health benefits package as defined by the government. Under this amendment, subsidies used to help pay insurance premiums for low-income people could not be used for abortion services. The New York Times reports that "insurers must use money from private sources to pay for any abortions."

"Reproductive health care is a fundamental right. Any health care plan that does not cover the full range of reproductive services, including abortion, discriminates against women," said NOW President Terry O'Neill. "Once again, our representatives are giving in to the right wing by trading away women's rights. Well, I have a message for them, our reproductive rights are not theirs to give away."

O'Neill noted that a majority of voters support coverage for abortion services, with only about a quarter opposed to using tax dollars to pay for abortion. In addition, a recent study found that most people in the U.S. with employer-based insurance currently have coverage for abortion. "Don't low-income people deserve the same level of coverage as other people in this country?" asked O'Neill. "Our lawmakers should be ashamed of themselves for perpetuating class-based and gender-based biases as they attempt to 'reform' our broken health care system."
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The National Organization for Women (NOW) is the largest organization of feminist activists in the United States. NOW has 500,000 contributing members and 550 chapters in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Also, the Black Agenda Report's Bruce Dixon wrote a scathing piece on Top Ten Ways To Tell Your President & His Party Aren't Fighting For Health Care For Everybody. Number 4 hits especially hard:
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The president and his party have received more money from private insurers and the for-profit health care industry than even Republicans, with the president alone taking $19 million in the 2008 election cycle alone, more than all his Repubican, Democratic and independent rivals combined.

Democratic senator Max Bacaus got $1.1 million in 2008. Democratic senators Harkin, Landreau and Rockerfeller each got over half a million, and Senator Durbin got just under half a million. Other Democratic senators got a little less. Four Democrats in the House, Rangel, Dinglell, Udall and Hoyer got over half a million apiece in 2008, with other Democrats not far behind.

Is there any wonder that the insurance companies, like the drug companies are also running “bipartisan health care reform” commercials using the president's exact language?

But all are worth reading and really worrysomep.

Some Irony from Bill Maher

From the Huffington Post. Original article here.

New Rule: Not Everything in America Has to Make a Profit

How about this for a New Rule: Not everything in America has to make a profit. It used to be that there were some services and institutions so vital to our nation that they were exempt from market pressures. Some things we just didn't do for money. The United States always defined capitalism, but it didn't used to define us. But now it's becoming all that we are.

Did you know, for example, that there was a time when being called a "war profiteer" was a bad thing? But now our war zones are dominated by private contractors and mercenaries who work for corporations. There are more private contractors in Iraq than American troops, and we pay them generous salaries to do jobs the troops used to do for themselves ­-- like laundry. War is not supposed to turn a profit, but our wars have become boondoggles for weapons manufacturers and connected civilian contractors.

Prisons used to be a non-profit business, too. And for good reason --­ who the hell wants to own a prison? By definition you're going to have trouble with the tenants. But now prisons are big business. A company called the Corrections Corporation of America is on the New York Stock Exchange, which is convenient since that's where all the real crime is happening anyway. The CCA and similar corporations actually lobby Congress for stiffer sentencing laws so they can lock more people up and make more money. That's why America has the world;s largest prison population ­-- because actually rehabilitating people would have a negative impact on the bottom line.

Television news is another area that used to be roped off from the profit motive. When Walter Cronkite died last week, it was odd to see news anchor after news anchor talking about how much better the news coverage was back in Cronkite's day. I thought, "Gee, if only you were in a position to do something about it."

But maybe they aren't. Because unlike in Cronkite's day, today's news has to make a profit like all the other divisions in a media conglomerate. That's why it wasn't surprising to see the CBS Evening News broadcast live from the Staples Center for two nights this month, just in case Michael Jackson came back to life and sold Iran nuclear weapons. In Uncle Walter's time, the news division was a loss leader. Making money was the job of The Beverly Hillbillies. And now that we have reporters moving to Alaska to hang out with the Palin family, the news is The Beverly Hillbillies.

And finally, there's health care. It wasn't that long ago that when a kid broke his leg playing stickball, his parents took him to the local Catholic hospital, the nun put a thermometer in his mouth, the doctor slapped some plaster on his ankle and you were done. The bill was $1.50, plus you got to keep the thermometer.

But like everything else that's good and noble in life, some Wall Street wizard decided that hospitals could be big business, so now they're run by some bean counters in a corporate plaza in Charlotte. In the U.S. today, three giant for-profit conglomerates own close to 600 hospitals and other health care facilities. They're not hospitals anymore; they're Jiffy Lubes with bedpans. America's largest hospital chain, HCA, was founded by the family of Bill Frist, who perfectly represents the Republican attitude toward health care: it's not a right, it's a racket. The more people who get sick and need medicine, the higher their profit margins. Which is why they're always pushing the Jell-O.

Because medicine is now for-profit we have things like "recision," where insurance companies hire people to figure out ways to deny you coverage when you get sick, even though you've been paying into your plan for years.

When did the profit motive become the only reason to do anything? When did that become the new patriotism? Ask not what you could do for your country, ask what's in it for Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

If conservatives get to call universal health care "socialized medicine," I get to call private health care "soulless vampires making money off human pain." The problem with President Obama's health care plan isn't socialism, it's capitalism.

And if medicine is for profit, and war, and the news, and the penal system, my question is: what's wrong with firemen? Why don't they charge? They must be commies. Oh my God! That explains the red trucks!

Nobama Nobama No

I'm feeling down today. Can't provide any more commentary than that.

The first workplace raid under Obama:

28 employees were arrested when over 70 ICE agents forcibly raided Yamato Engine Specialists in Bellingham, Washington.

Racewire's Hatty Lee quotes the President:
“Well, I don’t know about you, but I think it’s time for a president who won’t walk away from comprehensive immigration reform when it becomes politically unpopular.” President Obama's words from Sept. 2008. Maybe he needs to be reminded of these words.

What we can do:
• The Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM) asks the president to stop raids
• The Campaign for Community Change asks us to call President Obama

Also, from Racewire, Tammy Johnson critiques Obama's racial coding:


In other not particularly uplifting news:

The NYT reports that:
Across the country, children are providing care for sick parents or grandparents — lifting frail bodies off beds or toilets, managing medication, washing, feeding, dressing, talking with doctors. Schools, social service agencies and health providers are often unaware of those responsibilities because families members may be too embarrassed, or stoic.
Reuters also wrote yesterday:
Prison inmates infected with the AIDS virus often stop taking life-saving drugs after being released, raising health risks for them and their communities, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
The researchers said the U.S. prison system has become an important front in efforts to curb the spread of the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV.

WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?! The implications are too overwhelming for me to think about right now

It's time for change - I'm feeling optimistic

In these most desperate of times change may be coming.

Attempts to control youth are failing!! Twelve young people in Mass juvenile prisons may be liberated after the Supreme Judicial Court "struck down a law that allowed the state to keep juvenile offenders in custody for three years after they turned 18, if officials believed they would be "physically dangerous to the public.'"(read more here)
Also, even though youth curfews exist in neighboring cities and towns, a youth curfew has been overturned in Oakland after massive resistance to the mass criminalization of young people. (News report here)

AND KIDS WILL GET HEALTHCARE!! And President Obama signed the Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act, expanding the SCHIP (State Children’s Health Insurance Program ) health insurance program for children of low-income families and enabling states to provide an additional 4 million children with health insurance.

Senate: Yea-66, Nay-32

House: Yea-290, Nay-135

The bill awaits the president's signature.

In Philadelphia, public schools are considering a new "turnaround” strategy for "chronically underperforming schools, one based on Chicago’s controversial Renaissance 2010 project that closes existing schools and opens new ones under a different management structure." A big part of this proposal involves charter schools which are controversial, but it COULD provide immediate relief to some of the least-resourced schools in the country.
From "The Notebook:

At the proposed “contract schools,” outside managers would have more independence than the private managers currently operating schools under the District’s existing “diverse provider” model – they would be able to employ their own staff, for example.

In addition, some schools – to be called “innovation schools” – would be reconstituted from the ground up with new teachers and leadership, but managed by the District with union teachers.

“Performance schools” would not be reconstituted with new personnel, but like the others would be given more “autonomy” over school management in exchange for “greater accountability."
Complete article here

Women in Iran are protesting for rights and what makes me excited is that this is not imposed from a foreign organization but rather from "the people" themselves:
"Women’s rights advocates say Iranian women are displaying a growing determination to achieve equal status in this conservative Muslim theocracy, where male supremacy is still enscribed in the legal code. One in five marriages now end in divorce, according to government data, a fourfold increase in the past 15 years." (Full NYT article here)

The Obama administration named three people to posts in its intergovernmental affairs office on Friday, including Jodi Archambault Gillette, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. The Lakota woman will serve as a deputy associate director in an office that functions as a mediator between the administration and state, tribal and local governments. This is a huge step and the highest position a Native person has held in the U.S. Details here

The Migration Policy Institute’s published a list of 36 recommendations for the Obama administration on immigration. These changes include reassessing the border fence, and ending the criminal prosecution of undocumented immigrants. The hope is that this would give the federal government a chance to look at the actual effectiveness of its enforcement mechanisms. .

From Racewire:
That pragmatism would be a great improvement over the ideologically-driven measures that immigration restrictionists have successfully pushed for the last eight years. The country could stop wasting both resources and human rights credentials in silly projects that distract us from focusing on more serious problems, like human trafficking and terrorism.

The report also recommends a number of changes that would bring due process to the immigration system, including steps that prevent indefinite, unlawful and unsafe detention of migrants. These are mostly administrative, bureaucratic changes, but they will provide relief to real human beings who are now having their border communities torn up by fence construction, being separated from their families, rounded up in raids, and held in detention centers where people are dying. One of the things we should assess is how much these practices generate racial profiling.

[...]

It’s unlikely that the Obama Administration, with enforcement-oriented Janet Napolitano at the helm of Homeland Security, will adopt most of them unless they hear from the call from US residents who aren’t ideologically tied to pushing out immigrants. Conservatives say that they only oppose undocumented immigration, but people on both sides of the debate know that the line between those with papers and without is very thin, that families and communities hold both, and that policies directed at undocumented immigrants inevitably affect the documented too.

LINK to the full RaceWire article

Boston cops may have escorted two gay porn stars to a nightclub - I'm skeptical but if so this might have beeen the most radical police action ... ever? Read about it here

AND MEXICO CITY'S MAYOR IS GIVING OUT VIAGRA TO 'POOR MEN' AGE 60 AND ABOVE. NYT Article here