'Get Mad and Take Action' Needed to Improve Health Care Costs and Outcomes

By. Dr. Phillip Caper

For the next few months we’ll be bombarded by messages from the Obama administration urging people, especially young, healthy people, to sign up for insurance provided under the Affordable Care Act. Without them, premiums for that insurance will soon climb to unaffordable levels.

We’ll also hear plenty of noise from the ACA’s opponents. It will be hard to get any other health policy messages across during the upcoming PR blitz.

But there are some other important and noteworthy things going on in the policy world. Perhaps the most important is the growing interest in the origins of the high costs of medical care in the U.S., now about double that of other wealthy countries.

Read more of "Where is the Outrage over our Failed Health Care System" at:

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/18291-wheres-the-outrage-over-our-failed-health-care-system

More Whites Enter Poverty Class

Poor Prospects in a "Middle Class" Society Sunday, 18 August 2013 11:10 By Gary Lapon, Socialist Worker | News Analysis  

(Image: Open hands via Shutterstock)Gary Lapon sets out the facts about a country where 'have-nots' outnumber 'haves'.

One of the biggest myths about the United States is that it's a mostly "middle class" society, with poverty confined to a minority of the population.

The reality is exactly the opposite: The vast majority of people in the United States will experience poverty and economic insecurity for a significant portion of their lives.

Read more at Truthout:

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/18255-poor-prospects-in-a-middle-class-society
 

America's Most Serious Threat to Freedom and Democracy

By Ray Pensador

 

From Daily Kos.  Click photo of puppet strings to go to Daily Kos site and this article. 

I stopped watching all broadcast TV news (CBS, NBC, ABC), as well as cable TV news channels like CNN, and MSNBC, except in very rare occasions... Long ago I realized how extremely toxic and manipulative to the mind being exposed to programming by these media outfits is. 

 And as I detoxed my mind from exposure to that type of blatant corporate propaganda, I am now realizing that NPR programming, although of much higher quality, in the final analysis, it has similar effects if one is exposed to it throughout the day.
Here's what I've been able to notice (on my own, just by simple observation) when it comes to the effects of being exposed to the American mass media: There is a very serious and marked disconnect between the messaging and narrative being broadcast, and reality.

The programming's subliminal message is:

"Everything is fine; people are working, and happy, and going on vacation, saving money to send their kids to college, or buy a house, going to baseball, and hockey, and football games, or to a concert."

And of course, there is the messaging related to fear (crime, terrorism, etc.).

There is other type of narratives and messaging, but it all seems carefully calibrated to manipulate and to control, for the benefit of the ruling class.

Expanding Medicaid is to Choose Life

  

By Roy Herron
Special to The Commercial Appeal

 

At 13, I found my father on the floor. He’d had a heart attack.

 

What passed for an ambulance back then in rural Tennessee rushed him to the hospital.

 

The doctor told Mother if Dad had gotten to the hospital 10 minutes later, the doctor could not

have saved him.

 

If the hospital had not been there, the doctor could not have saved him.

 

Now that hospital — like many others — is at risk. More than 50 hospitals in Tennessee are struggling financially, and we are told that some will close.

 

And when hospitals close, other children’s fathers and other loved ones will die.

 

Why is this happening? Because the Republican officeholders controlling this state have refused to cash a federal check.

 

Tennessee could extend health insurance coverage to as many as 330,000 people in working families, if state officials accept the federal funds that would pay 100 percent of the costs of expanding the state’s Medicaid program for the first three years.

 

And if, but only if, we wanted to continue the expansion beyond three years, Tennessee would not have to pay more than 10 cents on the dollar. Hospitals providing millions of dollars in uncompensated care to uninsured patients could be paid for their services, and stay open.

 

But so far, Tennessee’s Republican governor and Republican legislators have refused to accept $1 billion a year of federal funding to cover 330,000 working poor. This is money that hospitals, doctors and nurses need to serve patients in rural areas and even in urban centers such as Nashville, where at least one major hospital is now releasing hundreds of employees.

 

The New England Journal of Medicine last year published research dealing with “Mortality and Access to Care” that documents how access to health care saves lives. The study, conducted by researchers from Harvard’s School of Public Health, analyzed data from states that did and states that did not expand their Medicaid programs to cover low-income adults without children or disabilities.

 

The researchers found that when more people have access to health care, more people live — “particularly those between the ages of 35 and 64 years, minorities, and those living in poorer

areas.”

 

In fact, they found that for every 500,000 adults included in state Medicaid programs, deaths declined by 6.1 percent. In other words, Medicaid expansion for 500,000 saved about 2,840 lives per year.

 

In the words of the study: “This finding suggests that 176 additional adults would need to be covered by Medicaid in order to prevent one death per year.”

 

Officials say 180,000 more Tennesseans could receive Medicaid coverage next year if the state accepts the federal funding. If they are not served, according to the Harvard study, more than 1,000 could die.

 

Deuteronomy 30:19 recounts Moses proclaiming God’s Word: “I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse; therefore choose life that you and your children may live.”

 

None of our neighbors and loved ones should have to die because politicians rejected Deuteronomy 30 and the Golden Rule.

 

Any Republicans denying Tennesseans lifesaving health care ought never again call themselves “pro-life,” not if they condemn thousands of uninsured Tennesseans to die.

 

Fortunately, there is still time to choose life. Pray that they will.

Irresponsible GOP Lets Working Tennesseans Fall Through the Cracks of Health Care

It does not make moral sense, or even economic sense if you have a heart of stone, to turn away millions of federal dollars coming into Tennessee to serve our people who have fallen through the health-care cracks.

Former Tennessee Senator Roy Herron, chairman of the Tennessee Democratic Party, lays it out.

Expand Medicaid for Working Tennesseans

If the politicians and the prisoners, the lawmakers and the lawbreakers, have health care, what’s wrong with working women and working men having health care?

That’s the question Chairman Roy Herron sought to answer in a column that ran in Sunday’s Knoxville News-Sentinel. 

Sunday, August 4, 2013

 

Working people need state to accept federal funds, expand Medicaid

 

Brain cancer attacked Virginia’s husband. At the end, when he couldn’t take any more, the 33-year-old took his own life. As did her son at 19.

 

For 31 years, she’s worked at the same Knoxville restaurant.

 

No benefits.

 

No health insurance.

 

In Nashville, near the Capitol, in a small, inexpensive restaurant, one extremely nice and polite waiter always hustles to serve us all. No matter when I go, he is there. I finally asked how.

Tim explained he works from 10 a.m. until 11 p.m., 13 hours a day, seven days a week. That comes to 91 hours a week.

 

On a good day, he makes $100. There aren’t enough good days.

 

No benefits.

 

No health insurance.

 

Then there’s Linda. Once or twice a week, she serves me breakfast at the family-owned restaurant in Nashville where she’s worked 19 years, 10 hours a day, six days a week, from open to close.

 

Ten years ago, within sight of her home, her son was killed in a car wreck. Five years ago, cancer killed her husband. And took her health insurance.

 

The cheapest health insurance Linda could find was $2,000 a month. Her paycheck barely covers her mortgage; tips sometimes cover everything else. There’s sure not $24,000 a year for health insurance.

 

Restaurant servers are only one group of working people needing health care security. Others include the self-employed, many construction workers, temporary staff, clerks, workers in small businesses and even employees of the world’s largest, most profitable retailer.

 

Which Tennesseans need expanded Medicaid for health insurance?

 

Not unemployed single mothers and their young children — they have TennCare health insurance.

 

Not retired senior citizens — they have Medicare health insurance.

 

Not convicted felons in prison or murderers on death row — we already pay for their health care.

 

Not the politicians — the governor and his family, the commissioners and their families, the legislators and their families, members of Congress and their families. All these politicians have access to government health insurance.

 

But what about working people? The Tennesseans without health insurance are working people.

 

So, if the politicians and the prisoners, the lawmakers and the lawbreakers, have government-provided health care, what’s wrong with working women and working men having health care?

 

Folks like the Nashville waiter and the Nashville and Knoxville waitresses.

 

Many states are accepting federal funds to provide health care for working citizens near the poverty line. Tennessee has not.

 

Turning down 100 percent federal funding for three years to expand Medicaid means our federal tax dollars will be sent as far as California and New York and as close as Kentucky and Arkansas. We will fund all the states choosing to enable health care for working citizens.

 

Some 330,000 Tennesseans in working families — including 80,000 children — could qualify for the federal government paying the full cost of their health care for three years. After the three years, we could opt out if we didn’t want to pay, at most, 10 percent.

 

Will Tennessee accept the federal funding to expand Medicaid coverage to include working people?

 

Unless our Republican governor — like nine other Republican governors — and Republicans in the Legislature act, Tennesseans will pay taxes for other states to get health care, but our working women and men will do without.

 

No benefits.

 

No health insurance.

 

The public servers are depending on the public servants. The waitresses and the waiters and many other workers are waiting to see.

 

May they wait no more.

The Burgeoning State of the Military Police State

Humanity is Drowning in Washington's Criminality

Op-ed news lays it out:  The military police state is in charge and getting worse.  Click to read the story.

Trans-Pac 'Trade Deal' Is Globalized Takeover of America

...and very few Americans have even heard of it....

Link to Hightower: http://www.hightowerlowdown.org/node/3402

If U.S. takes this deal, foreign corporations who set up shop in America would not have to live by our laws.