Category: Health Care

Universal Healthcare Saves Lives and Money

Lack of universal health care is killing us.
Lack of universal health care is killing us.

We’re literally being eaten alive with medical bills.

If you can’t afford insurance, you will not get proper medical care unless you can pay up front. If you CAN afford insurance, you pay more per year already than people in other countries WITH universal healthcare pay in a year, AND they live longer, according to statistics tracked for decades with the WHO.

Pay less, get more, no one left out. The math is simple.

Right now MILLIONS are still left out. Why would anyone say no to universal healthcare?

The math and the medicine are in our favor.

Right now, we’re paying money through the nose IF we can afford insurance. If we can’t, we die.

The math and economics are simple. Don’t believe the damn lies industry execs are telling you so they can keep their millions.


GOP Senator Wants to Take Away Health Coverage So People Find God

Mark Green, Tennessee, Medicaid, poverty, health care
Mark Green, Tennessee, Medicaid, poverty, health care
Tennessee state senator Mark Green opposes Medicaid expansion because it keeps people from knowing God. (Screengrab)

GOP State Senator Mark Green of Tennessee needs a Congress “Come to Jesus” talk. His radical, perverted, and twisted preference is for Tennessee to reject medicaid expansion because health care somehow prevents people from finding God.

Poor people, at least. I don’t see Mr. Green volunteering to give up his own medical coverage so he can get closer to Jesus.

That’s what he said. And Mr. Green now wants to go to congress. His opponent, Democrat Justin Kanew, shared this video where Green confesses to his death-panel mentality, sharing his desire to deny the people of Tennessee health coverage because the federal expansion of Medicaid would keep people from finding Jesus.

Disgusting.

From Justin Kanew:

NEW VIDEO: My opponent Mark Green explains the radical religious views behind his decision to reject billions of our federal Medicaid expansion dollars – which caused many rural hospitals to close and 300,000 Tennesseans to go without health coverage, including 30,000 veterans.

Here’s what Green says in the video:

… every person who came to Christ came to Christ with a physical need… People go to God because of a physical need and they walk away with a spiritual need met. That’s the story of the Gospels. And so government has stepped in, at least in this country, and done all the work for the church. And so the person who’s in need — they look to the government for the answer. Not God. And I think, in that way, government has done an injustice that’s even bigger than just the entitlement — creation of an entitlement welfare state. I think it’s even bigger. And in this setting, I’ll share the story… I think it interrupts the opportunity for people to come to a saving knowledge of who God is…

How easy it is for some of those who have to deny those who have not.


The Fear of Trump Among the Elderly

senior, man, fearful, sad

senior, man, fearful, sad

A man fearful, sad. (Creative Commons)

I don’t know if there’s anything so under-reported and so heart-wrenching right now as the fear of Donald Trump among the elderly. There is a grave terror, almost, of what Trump and the Trump Administration might do to the safety net supporting the vast majority of our senior Americans. This is across the board, although some are more fearful than others, depending on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, veterans, those with physical or mental disabilities — no one seems to consider herself or himself safe.

Had a conversation yesterday with a retired couple. They’re white, middle class, now living on a fixed income. But their fear is palpable. The rumblings among the GOP in Congress to gut or privatize Social Security, slash Medicare — these are real concerns for this couple.

I’ve heard similar fears expressed by older family members and friends. The revolt would be great and gray.

GOP governors have already hacked away at Medicaid, with Maine’s GOP Governor Paul LePage saying earlier this month “he would rather ‘go to jail’ than expand Medicaid programs without a long-term plan for substantial funding.” That’s a nice statement, and, on the surface, it sounds like responsible economics. But what is he doing to secure such sustainable funding? And what is the economic cost of people dying early or young because of lack of access to health care?

If we examine news reports, we find some coverage of Social Security, fears of what Paul Ryan might do to Medicare, but this anxiety our longtime residents feel about Donald Trump, is, I believe, under-reported.

And I hope some news organizations begin to take a closer look.


Video: Vermont Approves Single-Payer Health Care: ‘Everybody in, nobody out’

From our friends at Occupy Democrats regarding the state of Vermont adopting a single-payer health care system where all hospitals will operate as not-for-profits:

The program will be fully operational by 2017, and will be funded through Medicare, Medicaid, federal money for the ACA given to Vermont, and a slight increase in taxes.  In exchange, there will be no more premiums, deductibles, copay’s, hospital bills or anything else aimed at making insurance companies a profit.  Further, all hospitals and healthcare providers will now be nonprofit.

This system will provide an instant boost the state economy.  On the one side, you have workers that no longer have to worry about paying medical costs or a monthly premium and are able to use that money for other things.  On the other side, you have the burden of paying insurance taken off of the employers side, who will be able to use the saved money to provide a better wage and/or reinvest in their company through updated infrastructure and added jobs.  It is a win-win solution.

Win-win indeed.

This, by the way, is precisely the way Canada moved to a single-payer health care system: state by state.

And now it’s our turn.

Thank you, President Obama!


NYTimes: Third-Quarter U.S. Growth at 4.1% Rate in New Estimate. Good News?

Underemployment BLS June 2013
Source: BLS

The economy is improving, and has been for years under President Obama.

It’s just been sluggish, and there are plenty of people out of work still. There are even more who are underemployed (above graphic is from June 2013). According to Forbes, the "official" underemployment rate does not count discouraged workers who have settled for part-time jobs, or have just given up. These people, properly tracked under what’s called the "U-6" rate, showed underemployment at 14.3% in June 2013.

So, what exactly are we to infer from the revised estimate, reported today by the New York Times, that third quarter estimates for the economy showed 4.3% growth? The NYTimes reports:

The United States economy grew at an astonishing 4.1 percent annual rate, the federal government said Friday in its third and final revision of gross domestic product for the third quarter.

The rate was the fastest in almost two years.

The Commerce Department said business spending was stronger than it originally thought, leading to the revision up from 3.6 percent. Economists had expected the final estimate of growth to be unchanged from that 3.6 percent.

According to the Times, the growth rate for quarter two was 2.5%.

So, this is good news, right?

Not so certain, given the underemployment rate and other factors. Those of us in the middle and lower are making less, therefore spending less.

Consider the rise in companies buying back their own shares of stock, to the tune of $211 billion.

Enter Robert Reich from December 17, via Facebook (emphasis added):

A big reason why CEOs are about to rake in big year-end bonuses even though their sales are lousy (after all, America’s vast middle class and poor aren’t earning enough to buy much) is CEOs been using their companies’ cash, plus whatever they can borrow at rock-bottom interest rates engineered by the Fed, to buy back their own shares of stock. This maneuver raises the price of the remaining shares, thereby giving the CEOs – whose pay is tied to share prices – huge rewards. This year, the 30 companies listed on the Dow Jones industrial average authorized $211 billion in buybacks, lifting the Dow (and CEO pay) to record heights.

This $211 billion could have gone instead to American workers in the form of higher wages – which would have come back to companies in the form of higher sales. McDonald’s, for example, spent $6 billion on share repurchases and dividends last year, the equivalent of $14,286 per restaurant worker employed by the company.

It’s a vicious cycle as long as CEO incentives are directed toward raising share prices rather than sales, and as long as the economy is organized around the stock market rather than good jobs.

Since many of our pensions were shifted to the stock market via crapshoot 401Ks, we have learned that the stock market is not a safe environment for our retirement funds to exist. Know anyone who was unable to retire because his or her 401K lost half its value or more — just when that person was planning to exit the work force?

I do. Too many, in fact.

So, yes, a 4.1% growth in the economy is good news. However, as long as the corporations are defining growth based on the stock market as opposed to job growth, most of us in America will have to wait — and work — for a paradigm shift in the outlooks of corporations.

Or, we will have to fight for it, just like we did in the early 20th century.

Let’s begin by organizing the Service Industry.

More on that to come.


Damn the GOP. What They’re Doing Is Unprecedented, Immoral, and Evil

The GOP government shutdown just hit home for a close friend.

His son, a laborer who lives in a so-called "Right To Work" state, was out of work. He had been let go from his previous job because he became injured outside of work. Rather than give him a month to heal, which is all he needed, his employer at the time just let him go. Tried to tell him that he was doing him a favor. That he could collect unemployment, as opposed to making nothing for the 30 days or so he would need to heal.

And his employer knew that this lad had only worked for him for five months, therefore not qualifying for unemployment. And, it turns out, this employer has done this to other workers, letting them go in the fifth month of employment, so the employer has to pay neither benefits nor unemployment.

This is what the GOP refers to as "Right To Work," the myth that, forbidding unions from requiring workers to join a union when they get a job, workers now can be "free" of union dues and work, because, dammit, they have the right to work.

In reality, it means states full of workers, like my friend’s son, who have no union protection, no unions who negotiated fair working conditions. None of that. Not at all.

And employers can be as ruthless as the nasty members of the GOP, some of the meanest pols we’ve seen since just before the Great Depression, when robber barons ruled, and pols danced to their commands.

So my friend’s son applied for another job. Went through the entire interview process. Passed every background check, drug test — paid for by the hiring company — and was given his "new employee" packet.

And, on what was supposed to be his first day of work, was told that the company could not start him, because of the government shutdown.

Because of the government shutdown, the company was not certain that some contracts would be upheld.

That’s not what they told him at first. But, after he pressed them, they admitted this was, in fact, the case. The government shutdown.

The damn GOP government shutdown.

His son says it was evident the company was scrambling. Some news from on high had reached the blue collar workers, and the company, and American company, was being downsized.

These inglorious GOP members of Congress have got to go.

All of them.

They claim that this shutdown is the fault of the Democrats and the Democratic President who "refuse to negotiate.

Bullshit.

And here’s proof.

From BillMoyers.com, proof that this debt ceiling crisis is not politics as usual:

Never before has a minority party linked controversial legislative demands with a threat to shut down the government or imperil the global economy. But House Republicans would have you believe otherwise.

In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal this morning, Rep. Paul Ryan writes that president Obama “says he ‘will not negotiate’ on the debt ceiling. He claims that such negotiations would be unprecedented. But many presidents have negotiated on the debt ceiling—including him. ”

Ryan was referring to a speech given in September before the Business Roundtable — an association of CEOs of large US companies — in which the president said, “You have never seen in the history of the United States the debt ceiling or the threat of not raising the debt ceiling being used to extort a president or a governing party, and trying to force issues that have nothing to do with the budget and have nothing to do with the debt.”

Ryan continued: “He’s refusing to talk, even though the federal government is about to hit the debt ceiling. That’s a shame — because this doesn’t have to be another crisis. It could be a breakthrough.”

But that’s spin: Negotiating would set a dangerous precedent, because Obama’s right that this time really is different. Here are three reasons why.

Go to the original article here and read, and then act.


Video: Former President Bill Clinton Explains the Affordable Care Act

On Wednesday, September 4, President Clinton delivered remarks from the Clinton Presidential Center on the critical role a high quality, affordable and accessible health care system plays in the United States and any country’s economic and social well being. Throughout his public career and now through the work of the Clinton Foundation, President Clinton has championed increasing access to health care and improving health systems for everyone.


Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl, Smug and Crafty Politician

Donald Wuerl, smug politician

Cardinal Donald Wuerl is a crafty, smug pol. (Catholics for Equality)

Donald Cardinal Wuerl has come a long way.

From John Cardinal Wright’s secretary, to bishop, to cardinal.

He’s come far.

But, in his heart, at his best, he’s just another pol.

Unelected, mine you.  But a pol nonetheless.

Our friends at Catholics for Equality are trying to talk some sense into him, but his sanctimoniousness won’t listen.

Here’s their release, where they note His Eminence’s blatant electioneering:

Catholics for Equality, the country’s largest national political organization of pro-LGBT equality Catholics, joined hands today with several fair-minded and faithful Catholic social justice groups in organizing a peaceful protest outside the Archdiocese of Washington, DC’s rally promoting the U.S. bishops’ “Fortnight for Freedom” election year political campaign. The Catholic groups came together with prayers and hymns under one giant united banner which read, Bishops: We Need Pastors, Not Politicians, Your Antics are Hurting the Church.

The peaceful protest took place outside a rally held at George Washington University’s Charles E. Smith Center. The special event presided over by Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl was billed as a prayerful service, but was in fact a political campaign rally to motivate Catholics to vote against the re-election of President Obama because of the Health Care Reform Act and his support for LGBT equality. Wuerl and his fellow bishops claim that the exemptions provided in the Act are not sufficient for the Catholic Church and that they are being victimized by the federal government. Furthermore, the bishops claim that the Act is the greatest infringement upon religious liberty in American history and see themselves as martyrs like St. Thomas More, St. John Fischer, and others in church history.

“The bishops no longer represent Catholics in the pews on so many social issues, from contraception to legal equality for LGBT people,” said Joseph Palacios, Director of the Catholics for Equality Foundation. “We also reject the bishops’ election year campaign that they are now somehow victims of religious liberty, especially as the U.S. Catholic Church receives 62% of its funding for Catholic Charities from federal and state funds — money coming from the taxes of all Americans. Catholics Charities in Washington, DC, receives 68% of its funding from taxpayers. This does not include taxpayer vouchers for Catholic schools and other support for Catholic health care programs. If the bishops want exemption from the law, then they should stop receiving taxpayer funding.”

According to a new report released this week by the Public Religion Research Institute, 57% of American Catholics do not believe that the right to religious liberty is being threatened in America today. The report also notes that 65% of Catholics believe that most employers should be required to provide their employees with health care plans that cover contraception at no cost and that 63% believe religiously affiliated agencies should not be able to refuse to place children with qualified gay and lesbian couples.

“The bishops’ 2012 “Fortnight for Freedom” campaign is nothing more than election year political posturing,” said Phil Attey, Executive Director of Catholics for Equality. “For the past 10 years the bishops have earned the public branding of abusers, oppressors, and political bullies. They’ve lost the ear of Catholics in the pews and political leaders in Washington … including Catholic political leaders. In order to change this political reality, the bishops know they have to first have to change their public image. But instead of doing so by championing social justice issues — fighting for the poor, the sick the marginalized and the oppressed, as bishops have done in the past — our bishops are opting to run around spending our collection plate money on a campaign to claim they are the real victims in today’s society. Catholics aren’t stupid, though. We know what we see and we’re not buying it. The bishops are only bringing more embarrassment to our church.”

The USCCB’s “Fortnight for Freedom” campaign launched this week consists of events in over 37 dioceses across the country. The campaign officially concludes on July 4th with a nationally televised Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC, though the bishops’ election year political activities are expected to continue all the way to election day.

Catholics for Equality empowers pro-equality Catholics to put our faith into ethical and effective political action on behalf of the LGBT community and their families.

Catholics for Equality was founded in 2010 to support, educate, and mobilize Catholics in the advancement of freedom andequality at the federal, state, and local levels for our lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender family, parish and community members.

Will no one save us from these meddlesome clerics? They, who now claim moral authority, after decades of shielding pedophiles.

Will no one save us?

 


Mitt Romney Flip Flop Collection: A Hilarious Video Compilation

Enjoy.

For educational purposes only.


Willard ‘Mitt’ Romney: The (Un-)Artful Dodger

Ask Romney Anything?

Ask Willard "Mitt" Romney, the (Un-)Artful Dodger, anything? Really?

For those who watched the GOP circular firing squad Saturday night, you may recall Mitt Romney referring to a question about states banning birth control “silly.”

The only thing “silly” was his dodge, as he tried to deny his own state the right to offer birth control in 2005.

From the Huffington Post:

Mitt Romney artfully dodged a question about whether states have the right to ban birth control during Saturday’s Republican presidential debate, calling the question “silly” and saying that states wouldn’t want to do that anyway. But as governor of Massachusetts in 2005, Romney took a harder line on contraception, vetoing a widely supported bill that would make the morning-after pill available over the counter in that state and require hospitals to offer emergency contraception to rape victims.

His surprising veto did not stand. The Massachusetts state Senate voted unanimously to overrule it, and the state House voted 139-16 to do the same.

Imagine that.

If he does get the GOP nomination, this multi-millionaire’s record will speak for itself, even as he tries to blow smoke over it.