Guaranteed Healthcare

By Donna Smith

Forgive me for being a tad confused.  I am finding it difficult to understand why one person goes to jail for privately selling an appointment for elected office while others have a legal right to buy their elected positions.  The U.S. Supreme Court says corporations are persons in terms of exercising free speech through political contributions.  Other persons who behave more like corporations than persons are spending personal fortunes buying positions of power in the public sector. 

Meg Whitman is working hard to buy the governorship of California.  Rick Scott is doing the same in Florida.  Millions and millions of dollars of their own personal fortunes have already been spent in their primary battles and both plan to spend “whatever it takes” to win.  In both states, the good that could be accomplished with what these two corporate born and bred candidates are spending to win their elections points to how insane our election process has become.  

In contrast, former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich faces another trial and millions in public funds will be spent trying to convict him of selling his favor in the appointment of a new U.S. Senator to Barack Obama’s seat after the 2008 Presidential election. 

We call selling a political office a crime; we don’t seem to mind buying those same seats.

    In our last post, we reviewed a daunting set of challenges to access and quality of care for Americans unfortunate enough to get cancer. In this post, we ask the obvious question whether, and to what extent, the new health care law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA), may help to alleviate these problems.

Disparities within the U. S. health care system result in serious impacts on access to care for patients with cancer at all stages from screening and prevention to treatment and survival. Access barriers further lead to disparities in the quality of care received. These concerns led the American Cancer Society to launch a national effort in 2007 calling for system reform that will provide “4 As coverage”:

By Donna Smith

For nearly nine years the 9/11 rescue workers have labored to have access to healthcare to treat the injuries sustained when they worked at ground zero on September 11, 2001, when planes slammed into the World Trade Center towers in Manhattan.  And the bill that would finally have granted those sick 9/11 rescue workers some help failed in the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday.

I know only four of these workers personally. And tonight I feel such shame and outrage that the only way I can express my sorrow is to let others know some of what I know and what I feel tonight.  Collectively we must do something to weigh in – our humanity demands so.

The failed bill was called the Zadroga Act, HR847, and it had 115 Congressional co-sponsors in the House.  It was named for police officer James Zadroga, who died of respiratory ailments after working at ground zero.

All across the nation, our allies in the fight to extend a progressively financed, single standard of high quality care for all are holding events to celebrate the 45th anniversary of Medicare. Four more than four decades, Medicare has helped millions of Americans protect their health and their wealth during retirement and during disability – the poverty level among the elderly dropped significantly in the years following the passage of Medicare. (READ MORE and TAKE ACTION!)

New census data released Tuesday confirm a huge spread in the rate of uninsured from state to state and the big difference in impact that can be expected as a result of the health-care overhaul recently passed by Congress.  

By Lena H. Sun
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 28, 2010

All insurers are required to set aside a certain portion of premiums for future claims that have not yet occurred and/or not yet reported over the expected term of the policy. Back in April I wondered if insurers were shifting some of their earnings into reserves in order to inflate their medical loss ratios — which measures the percentage of premiums that are actually spent on medical care — and keep their reported profits artificially low (remember, they keep insisting that insurer profit makes up just 4% of national health care spending).

Think Progress
By Igor Volsky

The legislative battle over the health care overhaul ended months ago, but it is hard to tell from the intense effort now under way by insurance companies to retool a critical provision.

The New York Times
By REED ABELSON

Our last four posts have examined the PPACA from the perspectives of the four main goals of health care reform — cost containment, affordability, improved access and quality of care. Here we draw these goals together in asking whether this legislation delivers enough to be worth the $1 trillion investment over the next 10 years, and whether it will really work.

In our last three posts, we examined how the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA) stacks up against the goals of reform for cost containment, affordability and access to care. Here we consider what its likely impact will be on the quality of care, the fourth major goal of the reform effort.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA) is being touted by its proponents as moving the country to near-universal coverage and a great step ahead in U.S. health care. But what does this really mean? Are the many barriers to care almost a thing of the past?

In our last post, we looked at some of the uncontrolled drivers of rapidly rising health care costs despite all the assurances of our politicians supporting the new health care law, the Patient Protection and Affordability Care Act of 2010 (PPACA).

The passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Act of 2010 (PPACA), our new health care legislation, in March was hailed by its supporters as an historic event of the magnitude of Social Security and Medicare. But four months later, it remains controversial, with repeated polls showing three large groups of divisive opinion, including those who would work to repeal it and others who believe that it will make no difference. The Democrats have launched a $125 million PR campaign to defend the new law amidst growing signs that many Democrats facing re-election are failing to get political traction on the issue. (1) (Allen, M. Dems launch $125 M health campaign. Politico, June 7, 2010)

By Donna Smith

Sometimes, Washington, DC, can be a pretty stuffy place.  It’s not just all the business suits and the clickety-clack of high-heels down the marble hallways as staffers rush to and fro doing the bidding of their Congressional members.  It’s not just the daily drone of anemic cries for civility from both sides of the political aisle  in the midst of economic recession, planet endangering climate change, the latest corporate contamination in the Gulf or on Wall Street or in our healthcare system.  It’s just stuffy here much of the time.  The people are often as dead serious as the issues.

But this week, during National Nurses Week, the stuffiness lifted.  A rush of light, fresh, clean and energizing energy came to DC clad in 1,000 bright red scrubs worn by the registered nurses of National Nurses United and their affiliate unions, the California Nurses Association, National Nurses Organizing Committee, the Massachusetts Nurses Association, United American Nurses, and the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals. 

By Donna Smith

We Americans like to bomb moms.  Whether it’s in a far away country where we send our children to kill other mothers and their children or whether it’s here at home where we drop economic and cultural and sexist bombs on moms, we definitely like to bomb moms.

Then we like to show the First Lady tearfully honoring her own mother from a position of power and privilege in beautiful party dresses in a china and lace-draped dining room in the White House– like a well choreographed ballet of national proof one day every year that we love our mothers.   Doesn’t really matter which First Lady we chat about here.  Each of them plays their dutiful role in the annual Mother’s Day dance of pride.