THURSDAY NIGHT IS HEALTH CARE CHANGE NIGHT, a weekly Daily Kos Health Care Series.
Nyceve's panel, "Time for Action: How the Netroots Can Lead on Healthcare Reform" was moving, informative, thought-provoking and contentious. She provided something for everyone, drawing the audience into the timely debate.
Five speakers described their experiences with our failing health care system: a surgeon who fights for his patients' lives; a grieving mother whose daughter was denied a transplant by Cigna; a city attorney who is prosecuting insurance companies for fraud; a nurse-activist; and a progressive blogger. All agreed on one point: Health Care in America is broken and must be fixed.
It was there that paths diverged. Should we organize around Single Payer, eliminating private insurance altogether (damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead)? Or should we tack to starboard for political purposes, preserving private plans as one option? Should we prioritize politics or policy?
I have done my best to capture the language and passion of the speakers below the jump. They spoke far more quickly than I can type. I hope I have done them justice anyhow.
In an ongoing effort to make their colleagues unelectable, and to provide Democrats with an unassailable platform in November, House Republicans are dismantling and blocking some of the most popular provisions of the Iraq spending bill. Today they blocked passage of extended unemployment benefits despite rising unemployment. And, as we speak, they are working to remove a moratorium on seven Medicaid Rules changes proposed by Bush.
If they are successful, hospitals and emergency rooms will close in poor urban neighborhoods and throughout rural America. In addition, cuts will severely impact case management services to the elderly, people with behavioral disorders and other vulnerable populations; school-based clinics will be severely cut back; and many Americans including some veterans will find it harder to access rehabilitation services. Graduate Medical Education will be slashed to bits. The next generation of Americans will be a generation without doctors. And we will have little infrastructure to expand to create a nationalized health plan.
THURSDAY NIGHT IS HEALTH CARE CHANGE NIGHT, a weekly Daily Kos Health Care Series.
A few weeks ago, I decided to try to make a positive change in my personal life (as opposed to the activist types of changes I usually try to make for everyone else). I decided that I wanted to visit a nutritionist in order to improve my diet and lose weight. Logical, I thought, since I am now officially obese.
So, I made an appointment with my primary care physician who confirmed that I am indeed obese. She ordered a battery of tests and referred me to a nutritionist.
Then I did what any fiscally responsible individual would try to do. I called my insurance company to see if they would cover nutritional counselling.
George W. Bush appears to desire the complete destruction of the Republican Party for the next forty years even more ardently than he wants to fund his war in Iraq. Or so I am lead to believe by a recent spate of incomprehensible policy decisions. He has given the Democratic Party an arsenal of tools to use against both John McCain, and nearly every Republican incumbent up for re-election in the Senate. It is July 4 in May!
Democrats in the Senate have been unable to pass a series of extremely popular and necessary programs due to stiff opposition from the Bush Administration and Senate Republican leadership. Instead of giving up, Democratic Leadership has attached the programs to the Supplemental Appropriations Bill which funds the War in Iraq. The President, who has suddenly discovered "fiscal responsibility," is threatening to veto the bill unless the offensive amendments are removed. His water carriers, Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) are working hard behind the scenes to insure that Republicans uphold the President's veto.
Senate Republicans who are up for re-election in November (or ever) face an unsettling dilemma.
THURSDAY NIGHT IS HEALTH CARE CHANGE NIGHT, a weekly Daily Kos Health Care Series
HOT OFF THE PRESS: Senator Jeff Bingaman's office (D-NM) just called ten minutes ago to inform me that the Senator HAS included all provisions of the moratorium on Medicaid Rules in the supplemental funding bill on Iraq. The president may still shut down public hospitals, emergency rooms, teaching hospitals and school based health clinics as planned, but he'll have to pause the war to do it!
Let's see if he vetoes! More to come under the rainbow (i.e., fold).
I have previously diaried attempts by Bushco to secretly gut our public health safety net through a set of hard-to-understand rules changes. If implemented May 25 as planned, the rules will severely reduce federal subsidies to public hospitals, indigent hospital care, emergency rooms, clinics, school-based health, graduate medical education, case management, rehabilitation, and children's Medicaid enrollment, causing providers to close their doors. I even flew to DC with a few other health care activists, convincing a McClatchy editor to cover the story, and got some help from a professional I met on the web to film a YouTube documentary to alert the public! Other bloggers took up the cause, began calling their Congresscritters and voila! HR 5613, The "Protect Our Medicaid Safety Net Act" was born!
I have previously diaried our mutual efforts to prevent these rules from going into effect. The moratorium on the evil rules goes before the full Senate this week. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Charles Grassley (R-IA), and administration officials have vowed to kill the moratorium. Find out how you can help below the break.
Wonkette reports a bizarre story. The Bush Family has purchased a 98,840 acre ranch through a secretive land trust in Paraguay. The ranch, which is close to the Brazillian and Bolivean border is also located in proximity to natural gas reserves and a large water reserve.
I wonder why the Bushes are quietly purchasing land in Paraguay...where Simon Weisenthal famously hunted down Nazi fugitives? But the story gets wierder.
THURSDAY NIGHT IS HEALTH CARE CHANGE NIGHT, a weekly Daily Kos Health Care Series
I first diaried the Bush administration's surreptitious effort to shred our public health system through obscure Medicaid Rules Changes in December of 2007. At the time, I had been frantically calling local and national papers to draw attention to the story. No one wanted to pick it up. So I travelled to Washington DC to collaborate with Marty Sonnenburg, a film-maker I met on the web, and he shot this YouTube video for me:
We posted it on Daily Kos, ePluribus Media and My DD (we figured we'd alert the Hillary crowd, too), as well as on progressive blogs in key Republican states. Find out how it played out, and how you helped to save the day after the jump!
I have never been a big fan of Governor Bill Richardson because of his reliance on the same 50 plus 1 strategy of voter suppression favored by Carville and the Clintons, and because of his past lack of interest in Dean's 50 state strategy. However, I am impressed with the courage he showed in denouncing the race-baiting of his former allies. I don't see him as a Judas, helping to nail Jesus to the cross with a kiss. I see him as Brutus, the man who stopped Ceasar.
Talking Points Memo posted this article by McClatchy stating that Roger Stone, the Republican operative who staged the Republican "demonstrations" that stopped the Florida Vote count in 2000, wrote a memo to the FBI urging them to look into Spitzer's use of a prostitution ring four months prior to Spitzer's resignation.
I am a community organizer in the health care field. I was asked to put together a weekly series on health-related issues for DailyKos. The series will appear every Thursday evening at 5:00 pm Eastern time, and will offer Kossacks who are working to promote positive changes in our health care system the opportunity to discuss their issues and strategies.
I would like to encourage individuals who are working towards change at the local, state or national level to contribute diaries. Comment threads will be used to network and to share organizing stratetgies. I am going to recruit community organizers who are unfamiliar with the joys of blogging to participate as well. DemFromCT, nyceve, Dallas Doc and dadanation have generously agreed to contribute the first diaries to the series.
This series is intended as an organizing tool. Together, we can create healthy communities!
The Bush Administration has published a list of twelve proposed Medicaid Rules changes which will cut at least $15 billion over five years from our public health budget. If the rules changes go into effect in March and May as scheduled, they will result in closures or scaling back of Emergency Rooms, outpatient clinics, teaching hospitals, school based clinics, public hospitals, services to the disabled and case management. I have previously diaried the rules changes in detail here.
These new rules will make it even more difficult for disabled veterans to access rehabilitation services. And they will close many of our public hospitals.
While most of us are focused on universal care, the Bush Administration has been incrementally shredding our existing public health safety net in ways that have yet to become apparent. The most recent assault on our public health care infrastructure is escaping the notice of mainstream media and citizen journalists alike, probably because it is not easily explained. I am referring to a proposed set of arcane regulation changes by the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) which, if enacted, will result in $15 billion dollars in cuts over five years to service providers.
The damage that Bush has not been able to inflict through legislation is now being secretly implemented through an administrative back door. Even if Congress rejects the cuts Bush proposed to public health in his most recent budget, changes in regulations will insure that funding is not available for specific programs and activities.
Although the Gubenatorial Mansion and both houses of the state legislature are comfortably controlled by Democrats, the systematic disenfranchisement that tossed New Mexico to Bush in 2004 threatens to throw the 2008 presidential election results to the Republicans as well.
In early December, I diaried a proposed Medicaid Rules change, which, if it goes into effect in May as scheduled, will result in draconian cuts to public and teaching hospitals. This is a non-partisan issue: the US v. the Bush Administration. Representatives Eliot Engel (D-NY) and Sue Myrick (R-NC) have introduced HR 3533, the Preserve Our Public and Teaching Hospitals Act into the house to block the odious rules change. Senators Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and Elizabeth Dole (R-NC)have attemtped to introduce a moratorium on the rule in the senate.
Unfortunately, the good guys have not been able to muster the votes to extend an existing moratorium on the rules change, which would spare our frayed public health care infrastructure a possibly mortal blow for at least another year.
We have been hearing from the Bush Administration about the need to create federal databases, and to intercept electronic communications without the use of warrants. First we were told that spying would help to keep us safe from terrorists. Now we have learned, via the New York Times, that prior to 9-11, Bush spied on Americans' communications with Latin America to prosecute its "War on Drugs." We are informed in the same article that Bush sought to build his capacity to gather information about entire neighborhoods without warrants.
The story below the break describes the local misuse, by Republican politicians and hate groups, of a criminal database to further a political campaign. Coincidentally enough, the case involves communications with Latin America in the War on Drugs.
While people are focused on universal care, the Bush Administration is incrementally chipping away at our existing public health safety net. The most recent assault on our public health care infrastructure is escaping the notice of mainstream media and citizen journalists alike, probably because it is not easily explained. I am referring to a proposed arcane regulations change by the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) which, if enacted, will result in $4 to $5 billion dollars over 5 years in cuts to public hospitals and other hospitals that serve indigent patients. In addition, CMS is proposing other rules changes that will result in billions of dollars of reductions to teaching hospitals.
These hospitals serve as the backbone of our public health safety net, train the next generation of physicians and health care professionals, and are essential to any kind of response to disaster, terrorist attack or pandemic outbreak. Without them, our already frayed public health infrastructure may disintegrate.
