Posts filed under ‘Health – Physical and Psychological’
Now Romney Says He Won’t Repeal ALL of Obamacare
We all know Mitt Romney has said — point blank, no caveats — that if elected, he will repeal Obamacare. Period.
Do I really have to provide a link? If you haven’t heard him say that a hundred times, Google “Romney I will repeal Obamacare Youtube” and you can check out any of the 834,000 results for yourself and you can watch him say it in any number of settings.
That said, this is what Mr. Etch-A-Sketch said this morning on Meet the Press:
Mitt Romney says his pledge to repeal President Barack Obama’s health law doesn’t mean that young adults and those with medical conditions would no longer be guaranteed health care.
The Republican presidential nominee says he’ll replace the law with his own plan. He tells NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the plan he worked to pass while governor of Massachusetts deals with medical conditions and with young people.
Romney says he doesn’t plan to repeal of all of [sic] Obama’s signature health care plan. He says there are a number of initiatives he likes in the Affordable Care Act that he would keep in place if elected president.
The. Guy. Will. Say. Anything.
Obamacare Hater Paul Ryan Requested Obamacare Money
Lee Fang over at The Nation just posted a piece documenting how Obamacare hater Paul Ryan quietly requested Obamacare money back in December, 2010:
Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan is barnstorming the country, promising to repeal every provision of the Affordable Care Act if the Romney-Ryan ticket is elected. But a letter he wrote to the Obama administration may undermine this message.
On December 10, 2010, Ryan penned a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services to recommend a grant application for the Kenosha Community Health Center, Inc to develop a new facility in Racine, Wisconsin, an area within Ryan’s district. “The proposed new facility, the Belle City Neighborhood Health Center, will serve both the preventative and comprehensive primary health care needs of thousands of new patients of all ages who are currently without health care,” Ryan wrote…
Check it out. Fang has a copy of the letter that came from Ryan’s office as proof.
I’m beginning to think the Romney campaign did a pretty crappy job vetting Ryan.
If Breast Cancer Doesn’t Kill You, the Cost of Treating it Might
A good friend of mine was diagnosed with breast cancer about six weeks ago. She had surgery to remove it but it wasn’t successful so her doctor recommended she have a double mastectomy, which she did two weeks ago to the day.
(Image via JeffreyDach.com)
I have been taking her food (as have others) and walking her dog every afternoon since then so we chat about her progress every day. This afternoon she told me she got the bill from the hospital, for the surgical suite and the roughly 30 hours she spent there. $75,000.00.
$75,000.00. And that doesn’t include the surgeon, the radiologist, the anesthesiologist, the physical therapist she’s seeing now, the plastic surgeon who’s creating new, artificial boobs and who knows who else.
$75,000.00 for hospital services only.
This thing will easily top $100,000.00.
Thank goodness she has insurance but god knows it won’t pay 100% of all the bills that will come rolling in.
If she didn’t have insurance she would probably be staring the Grim Reaper in the face right about now.
Five years ago I was fine one day and in the hospital with a ruptured appendix the next and suddenly I was looking at a bill of something like $37,000.00.
Americans, what are you thinking when you cheer candidates who want to get rid of “Obamacare?” No, it ain’t perfect but for crying out loud, let’s improve it, not abolish it. Do you all think you’re immune from these things happening to you?
Geezus!
(Can you hear me screaming now?)
Beware of the Word “Reform”
We need to be hyper-aware not to be seduced by the word “reform.” When Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan use it — which I suspect they will, ad nauseam for the next three moths — it means destroy-as-we-know-it.
(Image via FoxNews.com)
“60 Minutes”: Romney, Ryan answer critics of Medicare position
“What Paul Ryan and I have talked about is saving Medicare, is providing people greater choice in Medicare, making sure it’s there for current seniors. No changes, by the way, for current seniors, or those nearing retirement. But looking for young people down the road and saying, “We’re going to give you a bigger choice.” In America, the nature of this country has been giving people more freedom, more choices. That’s how we make Medicare work down the road.”
Ryan added, “My mom is a Medicare senior in Florida. Our point is we need to preserve their benefits, because government made promises to them that they’ve organized their retirements around. In order to make sure we can do that, you must reform it for those of us who are younger. And we think these reforms are good reforms. That have bipartisan origins. They started from the Clinton commission in the late ’90s.”
Instead of doing a he said, she said interview about their “position” on Medicare, wouldn’t it be great if 60 Minutes actually read Ryan’s plan and told us in a factual way what it says? I mean, it’s right there in black and white. Maybe the “critics” are right!
Geezus.
The Susan G. Komen Foundation Implosion Continues
Susan G. Komen for the Cure announced Wednesday that its two top leaders will be leaving their posts:
Nancy G. Brinker via NancyGBrinker.com
Chief executive Nancy Brinker plans to shift into a new management role focusing on revenue creation, strategy and global growth as chairwoman of the Komen Board Executive Committee, according to a news release from the organization Wednesday evening.
Translation: Brinker’s been assigned to a back-office job in the hope that she’ll quit.
Meanwhile, Komen president Elizabeth Thompson will leave the organization in September, and board members Brenda Lauderback and Linda Law also are stepping down, the release said.
The shakeup comes months after the foundation came under fire during a controversy over funding for Planned Parenthood projects.
News emerged in late January that Komen had decided to stop giving money to Planned Parenthood for breast-screening services because Planned Parenthood was the focus of a congressional investigation launched at the urging of anti-abortion activists.
Susan G. Komen was Nancy Brinker’s sister. Brinker lost her way. She veered off into politics instead of concentrating on breast cancer prevention.
Too bad.
Papa John’s Pizza Hates Obamacare
If you eat at Papa John’s pizza, you should know that they hate Obamacare and they are going make sure you pay if they have to implement it, dammit (so, hint, hint, call your congress critter and tell him or her to get it repealed!):
Pizza chain Papa John’s told shareholders that President Obama’s health care law will cost consumers more on their pizza.
On a conference call last week, CEO and founder John Schnatter (a Mitt Romney supporter and fundraiser) said the health care law’s changes — set to go into effect in 2014 — will result in higher costs for the company — which they vowed to pass onto consumers.
“Our best estimate is that the Obamacare will cost 11 to 14 cents per pizza, or 15 to 20 cents per order from a corporate basis,” Schnatter said.
“We’re not supportive of Obamacare, like most businesses in our industry. But our business model and unit economics are about as ideal as you can get for a food company to absorb Obamacare,” he said.
“If Obamacare is in fact not repealed, we will find tactics to shallow out any Obamacare costs and core strategies to pass that cost onto consumers in order to protect our shareholders best interests,” Schnatter vowed.
An increase of between “15 to 20 cents per order?” I would imagine Papa John’s pizzas vary in price by 15 to 20 cents already, given the fluctuating price of gas and of things like corn and wheat. Seems to me CEO Schnatter’s agenda is to scare his customers into rallying against Obamacare which he obviously personally loathes.
Well, that ain’t gonna happen on my end. My reaction isn’t to turn against Obamacare, it’s to turn against Papa John’s, which has a shop not eight blocks from my house.
We have got to do something about health care costs in this country. Obamacare isn’t perfect but it’s a start.
See ya Papa John’s.
Shortages Pushing EMTs to Use Expired Drugs
Really? This is happening in the United States of America?
(Image via ChipsAhoy.com)
Drug shortage pushing some EMTs to extremes
When paramedics ran out of a critical drug used to treat irregular heartbeats, the Bend Fire Department in Central Oregon dug into its stash of expired medications, loaded the trucks, and kept treating patients.
Paramedics reported asking some of those facing medical emergencies: “Is it OK if we use this expired drug?”
Emergency responders in various jurisdictions have reported turning to last-resort practices as they struggle to deal with a shortage of drug supplies created by manufacturing delays and industry changes. Some are injecting expired medications or substituting alternatives. Others are simply going without.
As the drug crisis mounted for the Bend Fire Department earlier this year, the agency had 11 expired medications in its drug kits, despite risks that the drugs might not work as intended in life-or-death situations. The crisis has eased a bit, but the agency still carries expired doses of two drugs in serving a city of 80,000 people.
“We’ve never [before] had to go diving back into the bin to try to retrieve expired boxes of drugs,” said Tom Wright, emergency medical services coordinator for the Bend Fire Department, which has been administering outdated medicines for about a year. “We had the backing of our insurance company that giving expired drugs is better than giving no drugs at all.”
We really are going to hell in a handbasket.
Republicans Blow $50 Million on Repeal Obamacare Game
Remember the Republican “jobs agenda?” Me either:
Republican Speaker of the House, John Boehner (Image via ThinkProgress.org)
Health Care Law Repeal Efforts By House GOP Cost Nearly $50 Million: CBS Report
While Republicans lambast the cost of implementing health care reform, a new report shows that their efforts to repeal the law have come at a major cost to taxpayers — to the tune of nearly $50 million.
The House of Representatives again voted to repeal President Obama’s signature health care law on Wednesday, marking the 33rd time Republicans have attempted to take down the legislation. The 32 previous repeal efforts faltered at the hands of the Democrat-controlled Senate; the latest attempt is unlikely to break that pattern.
According to a report by CBS News, these efforts, widely viewed as symbolic political maneuvers, come with a high price tag.
CBS’ Nancy Cordes reported Wednesday that Republicans’ many fruitless attempts at repealing the Affordable Care Act have taken up at least 80 hours of time on the House floor since 2010, amounting to two full work weeks. As the House, according to the Congressional Research Service, costs taxpayers $24 million a week to operate, those two weeks amounted to a total cost of approximately $48 million.
Nice to see some actual reporting/journalism going on around here. Republicans playing to their base with $50 million of our taxes money.
UPDATE on Seasonal Forest Service Firefighters Not Having Health Insurance
In late June I posted about how seasonal firefighters who descend on hellacious wildfires (most often in the west) don’t have health insurance.
(Image via AP)
Here’s the good news:
President Barack Obama has directed federal officials to offer seasonal firefighters the option of purchasing federal health insurance coverage, White House officials told The Denver Post on Tuesday.
On a recent trip to Colorado Springs, the president was apparently moved by the men and women firefighters he met, senior administration officials said in an interview.
When he returned to Washington, he told his Cabinet that he wanted to “find a solution” for the hundreds of workers toiling in dangerous conditions without the option to buy into federal insurance.
The 15,000 or so temporary seasonal workers who descend into fire zones are usually young people who work sundry outdoor jobs, depending on the time of year. Some pick up contract work removing trees in the fall, or they work at ski areas in the winter. Many are college students.
But because they are not full-time U.S. Forest Service employees, before Tuesday’s announcement they did not have the option of purchasing federal health insurance.
Under a directive that will be made in the “near future” from the Office of Personnel Management, this group will get that option by the end of this month, White House officials said.
Mitt Romney (Using a Teleprompter) Gets Booed at NAACP Convention
Mitt Romney got booed, and almost heckled, at the NAACP Convention this morning for saying he would repeal Obamacare:
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney got loud and sustained boos from the audience at the NAACP conference this morning over his suggestion that he would repeal “Obamacare,” President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law.
Here’s where Romney drew boos:
“I will reduce government spending,” Romney said. “Our high level of debt slows GDP growth and that means fewer jobs. If our goal is jobs, we must, must stop spending over a trillion dollars more than we earn. To do this, I will eliminate expensive non-essential programs like Obamacare, and I will work to reform and save Medicare and Social Security, in part by means-testing their benefits.”
Read more and see a video here. He seems genuinely stunned.
Woman Waits Until She Qualifies for Medicare Before Having 51-Pound Cancerous Tumor Removed
This is just awful. I can only imagine how terrified this woman must have been:
New Jersey surgeons removed a rapidly growing, 51-pound (23-kg) cancerous tumor from a woman who had delayed treatment for more than a month until she became eligible for health insurance, her doctor said on Tuesday.
“She was a skinny lady with a huge belly. I mean it looked like she was literally pregnant with triplets,” said Dr. David Dupree, who led the surgery on the 65-year-old woman, at Riverview Medical Center in Red Bank, New Jersey.
“She was just all belly,” he said in describing his first meeting with the patient, a homemaker from nearby Union Beach, New Jersey, who asked to be identified only as Evelyn, her first name.
About six to eight weeks before she showed up at the hospital, Evelyn noticed discomfort in her abdomen and that her normally 120-pound frame was rapidly ballooning.Dupree said she sought medical help on June 4, just days after her 65th birthday, when she would qualify for Medicare, the U.S. healthcare program for seniors.
“The reason she didn’t go earlier was because she had no insurance,” he said.
By now, she weighed more than 170 pounds, her legs were swollen with trapped blood, she was badly dehydrated, and, scans showed, the tumor – a malignant sarcoma – was crushing her inferior vena cava, one of the main veins returning blood to the heart, and putting her life in danger.
[...]
But after she became short of breath on Sunday evening, Dupree brought the surgery forward.
“I knew that she wasn’t going to make it through the night,” he said.
“Either she goes now or she dies tonight,” he recalled thinking.
Opening her up, Dupree and his team found the tumor, which appeared to have originated out of the fatty tissue around her large intestine, had engulfed many of her internal organs, and had to be sliced away “millimeter by millimeter” over the course of the five-hour surgery.
Evelyn had surgery Sunday night and now faces the possibility of future treatment for any remaining cancer.
I would have been both terrified and furious. There is no reason why, in the richest country on Earth, this has to happen…oh, wait, yes there is. The insurance companies own Washington.
Good luck Evelyn!
Bill O’Reilly Apologizes For Being an Idiot
This is a follow-up to a post I put up last week about how back in March Bill O’Reilly promised to “apologize for being an idiot” if the Supreme Court failed to overturn Obamacare which he was sure they would do.
(Image via Wikipedia)
Well, I’ve got to give him credit. Last night he did just that:
I’m not really sorry, but I am a man of my word, so I apologize for not factoring in the John Roberts situation. Truthfully, I never in a million years would thought the chief justice would go beyond the scope of the commerce clause to date and into taxation. I may be an idiot for not considering that.
Yo, Bill: The only thing wrong with it is that last sentence. I isn’t a question of you “may be” an idiot. You are an idiot.
Move to Canada — Get Away From Obamacare!
The end could be better but calling all Obamacare haters — here’s your ticket to ride:
Take the Health Care Quiz
One of the peeves I have with Democrats is that they haven’t fully owned “Obamacare,” particularly some of the good things in the bill which, polls show, most people don’t know about or understand.
To that end, test your knowledge of some of the broader aspects of the bill here at the Kaiser Family Foundation.
The quiz consists of ten questions.
FYI, to my own surprise, I answered 7 of the ten questions correctly.
This is Just About How Crazy Cons Are When it Comes to Obamacare
Andy Borowitz isn’t all that far off when it comes to summarizing what cons are saying about Obamacare (my Tweet of the Day):
Off the charts.
Bye-Bye Rush
Rush Limbaugh is another one of those idiots who wants to flee the country because of rampant socialism — flee that is, to a country with ah, rampant socialism:
(Image via Twitter @etanthomas36)
Michele Bachmann Proves Me Right
What did I tell you? That the neocons would start railing against “activist judges” because they don’t like SCOTUS’s decision on health care?
Well, thank you very much Michele Bachmann:
Bachmann Rails Against Activist Court After Health Care Ruling
These guys are so boringly predictable.
Oh, and look at the time on that screenshot (see larger version at the link above). It says 8:37 PT. That means she was doing the “activist judges” thing at 10:37 ET, roughly 90 minutes after the decision was announced. She obviously turned to the GOP talking points manual and looked under disagree-with-court-decision and found: Scream: Activist judges!
In Lieu of SCOTUS Decision, GOP Now Talking About “Armed Rebellion”
This is what happens when a Republican surrounds himself with Fox and Rush: He thinks a majority of voters belong to the Tea Party and that a majority of voters will think what he has to say is perfectly reasonable:
(Image via MichiganCapitolConfidential.com)
The former spokesman for the Michigan Republican Party sent out an email that questioned whether armed rebellion was justified over the Supreme Court ruling upholding Obamacare.
Matthew Davis, an attorney in Lansing, sent the email moments after the Supreme Court ruling to numerous new media outlets and limited government activists with the headline: “Is Armed Rebellion Now Justified?”
Davis added his own personal note saying, “… here’s my response. And yes, I mean it.”
“There are times government has to do things to get what it wants and holds a gun to your head,” Davis said. “I’m saying at some point, we have to ask the question when do we turn that gun around and say no and resist.
“Was the American Revolution justified?”
This is wacko. And Davis is a lawyer? Where did he get his JD? Liberty University? And don’t you just love how Republicans are so fond of evoking images of people waving guns around?
Cons Moving to Canada Because of Obamacare
Checkout the tweets Buzzfeed assembled sent by people who are fed-up with the United States and all the “socialism” going on around here thanks to the Supreme Court’s ruling on Obamacare this morning.
Here’s a taste:
More here.
Now, welcome to the Canadian Health Care’s website:
Canada’s health care system is a group of socialized health insurance plans that provides coverage to all Canadian citizens. It is publicly funded and administered on a provincial or territorial basis, within guidelines set by the federal government.
Under the health care system, individual citizens are provided preventative care and medical treatments from primary care physicians as well as access to hospitals, dental surgery and additional medical services. With a few exceptions, all citizens qualify for health coverage regardless of medical history, personal income, or standard of living.
Ahahahhahahhhahhhha!
Geezus.
Bill O’Reilly to Apologize For Being an Idiot
On March 26, Fox’s Bill O’Reilly said he’d “apologize for being an idiot” if Obamacare was upheld. So, let’s all watch “The Factor” today. Woohoo!!
Watch the video here.
(P.S. He’ll find a way to weasel out of it.)
Activist Judges
Well, it appears the Supreme Court has essentially upheld “Obamacare.” Listening to early analysis it sounds like a complicated decision so the thinking on that could change but that’s where it stands as of now.
I’m taking bets on how long it will be before the right starts yelling about those “activist judges.” I’m thinking an hour or two. Notice they only dust that off and bring it out when SCOTUS makes a ruling they don’t like.
How We Die — Then and Now
This is pretty darn interesting — a comparison of the top ten causes of death (worldwide) in 1900 and in 2010 via the New England Journal of Medicine:
(Image via nejm.org)
Read the accompanying article here.
Hypocrisypalooza
I take a three mile “speed walk” five days a week. Based on the yard signs I’ve seen in front of one of the houses I pass, its occupants are very conservative. They were for McCain in ’08 and they’ve displayed signs for conservatives in local elections.
But, sorry to say, they don’t appear to be very bright. On the back of one of their cars, a Prius (they also have a Porsche and a Volvo), are two bumper stickers, one on top of the other. The top one looks like this:
40 Days for Life is:
[A] community-based campaign that draws attention to the evil of abortion through the use of a three-point program:
- Prayer and fasting
- Constant vigil
- Community outreach
40 Days for Life takes a determined, peaceful approach to showing local communities the consequences of abortion in their own neighborhoods, for their own friends and families. It puts into action a desire to cooperate with God in the carrying out of His plan for the end of abortion in America.
So in other words, 40 Days for Life wants to impose its religious views on the women of America and make laws restricting what they can do with their own bodies and their own lives.
Immediately below the 40 Days for Life bumper sticker — and I mean immediately as in less than an inch — is this bumper sticker:
Okaaay. Apparently the blatant hypocrisy going on here is lost on the owner of that Prius.
The One Thing You Don’t Want to Touch in a Hotel Room
Disgusting:
A study that investigated bacterial populations on hotel room surfaces found television remote controls and housekeeping carts to be amongst the most heavily contaminated items.
[...]
The study adds some empirical weight to other ad hoc investigations that have likened hotel rooms to giant petri dishes.
[...]
For the study, Kirsch and her colleagues sampled a variety of surfaces from hotel rooms in Texas, Indiana and South Carolina. They tested the levels of total aerobic bacteria and fecal bacterial contamination on each of the surfaces.
While some of the most contaminated samples, including the toilet and the bathroom sink, were to be expected, they also found high levels of bacterial contamination on the TV remote and bedside switches.
The only thing I could think of while reading this was:
“How Can We Drive More Ounces Into More Bodies More Often?”
A shorter title for this post might be, “Confessions of a Former Coca-Cola Marketing Executive”
Todd Putman stepped up to a podium Thursday ready to break with his past.
Stretched before him was a ballroom full of public health officials and community activists, gathered in Washington for a “National Soda Summit” on how to loosen the soda industry’s grip on the American appetite.
To fast forward in a fairly long article:
From 1997 to mid-2000, [Putman] was a top marketing executive at Coca-Cola.
“It took me 10 years to figure out that I have a large karmic debt to pay for the number of Cokes I sold across this country,” he said.
On Thursday, he came to settle it.
[...]
“I’m not against soft drinks per se,” he began carefully. “What I am for is balance of power. And I think the power has shifted in the wrong direction. The resources, the scale, the intelligence, the strategy these companies use is intense.
“We need to take all that thinking . . . all that strategy and convert it — jujitsu it — to healthy products.”
Such a mission would have been inconceivable to the man who joined Coca-Cola back in 1997, Putman said during an interview before the speech.
[...]
“It’s one of the great marketing machines of the world. You’ve got so many tools at your fingertips. . . . You’re dealing with Michael Jackson, the NFL, multimillion-dollar decisions,” he said. “If you’re interested in moving consumers, then you’re most happy when you move millions of consumers. . . . It’s exciting, intoxicating, even. I felt like the king of the world.”For all the range and reach of Coke’s marketing operation, Putman said he quickly learned it was built around one goal: per capita consumption. “How can we drive more ounces into more bodies more often?”
Putman tells a fascinating story. It’s a real indictment of the industry, straight from the horse’s mouth. I suggest reading the whole thing if you have time.
Benjamin Quayle (R-AZ) Introduces Bill Designed to Screw Asbestos Victims
In the mid-80s through the early 90s I worked for a product liability / medical malpractice law firm. One of its specialties was “asbestos litigation.” Two attorneys at the firm helped people who had been harmed by asbestos exposure. You wouldn’t believe the hoops both the government and the attorneys for the asbestos manufacturers made them jump through. Some of the suits took y-e-a-r-s. I remember thinking that the manufacturers were dragging the cases out, just waiting for the Plaintiffs to die, thus (hopefully) reducing the amount of money they ended up paying, which happened more than once.
So it speaks volumes as to the amount of ice in the veins of Dan Quayle’s boy, Benjamin Quayle (R-AZ) who — in true Republican fashion — is working to make it even harder to obtain compensation for people who have been harmed or killed by asbestos exposure, even though manufacturers knew it was deadly prior to World War II but hid that information.
(Image via Wikipedia)
WASHINGTON – June 6 – Even the asbestos industry has its defenders on Capitol Hill. Their support for the deadly carcinogen and the industries that use it was on display when the “Furthering Asbestos Claim Transparency (FACT) Act of 2012” was introduced last month.
The proposal, authored by Rep. Benjamin Quayle (R-Ariz) with the support of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the industry-funded American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC would place new burdens on asbestos trusts, which exist solely to compensate present and future victims of asbestos disease. The Quayle bill would allow companies responsible for these trusts to squander their assets, force victims to submit mountains of information and even deny compensation to victims. In short, the bill is designed to swamp the claims process with paperwork so that victims seeking compensation may never collect.
Designed to “swamp the claims process with paperwork so that victims seeking compensation may never collect?” Yah yes, it’s the American way. Instead of doing something to punish the industry for hiding the dangers of asbestos, and causing death and/or injury to thousands and thousands of innocent Americans, he has come up with another layer of protection for the industry.
I guess the new tactic isn’t just to wait until victims die so the manufacturers pay less. Now they want to pay nothing and Quayle is directly helping them do that.
Quayle should update his Wikipedia picture (above) by snapping a pic in front of this flag:
Oh, and don’t you just love the title of Quayle’s bill? The “Furthering Asbestos Claim Transparency (FACT) Act of 2012.” Exactly the opposite of what it actually does.
Spending on Health Care v. Spending on Health
As usual, we’ve got it bassackwards:
(Image via the WashingtonPost.com)
(Via.)
