Health: August 2009 Archives

Congresswoman Waters goes pretty easy on Rep. Lynn Jenkins, who you can see here spouting more racist talk at a local healthcare reform town hall. But I think she's right on point. Keith Olbermann seemed to want Waters to give a more dramatic performance of righteous anger, but people fighting for healthcare reform don't have the time to be distracted by these sideshows.

Asked to suggest the correct response to Jenkins' flagrant racist remarks, or apparent ignorance, Waters said:

The President and the White House are very careful not to let disagreements...disintegrate into racist confrontation. So what we are going to do is to attempt to allow her to defend her remarks in any way that she wants to, but the truth will come out. They will define themselves, they can't help it. What we should do is step back and watch them so that the American people can really see what we are really up against."

One of the first signs that Obama's healthcare reform efforts were headed southward was the backdoor deal the White House struck with the pharmaceutical industry earlier this summer. Big Pharma's promise to help “save” Americans $80 billion under the reformed healthcare system sounds generous, but more likely reflects how much companies felt like giving in exchange for maintaining their stranglehold on the market.

And now we learn that drug manufacturers are exporting this lust for profits to our 'trading partners' abroad. While poor Americans are crippled by high drug costs, folks in Guatemala don't get a public option, a town hall, or even a vote. Thanks to U.S. trade policies, they just get a bill for brand-name drugs that could cost as much as 850 percent more than a local generic version.

According to a study on the Central American Free Trade Agreement and Guatemala's prescription drug market, intellectual property regulations have drastically limited access to critical drugs like insulin and HIV/AIDS treatments. Center for Policy Analysis on Trade and Health (CPATH) analyzed Guatemala's pharmaceuticals market under CAFTA and found that drug companies have capitalized heavily on “data exclusivity” and patent rules that restrict the availability of generic medicines.

You, too, can join the movement!

For too long now, fire departments across the United States have been socialist organizations, resulting in taxes on the American people.

FACT: Most Americans never use the socialized services of the fire department. The Obama administration has been very clear about keeping the status quo when it comes to taxpayer-funded fire departments.

It is time to open the fire department up to private industry. We have the best fire departments in the world in the US, but that doesn't mean that anyone (even non-US citizens) should be able to dial up and have fires put out, etc. There are private companies (Halliburtion, Etc.) who could step in tomorrow and take over every fire department in America and charge the consumer directly.

Stop these "Government Redtrucks" from infringing on the rights of PRIVATE companies who can do it cheaper, and only for those who can afford it.

This is AMERICA. NO FREE FIRE SAFETY.

"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in asbestos and carrying a fire hose."

These folks are not to be messed with. Check them out at AngryTownHall.com

Senator Ted Kennedy, the “Lion of the Senate” who chose to devote his life to public service instead of running for President after 1980, has had the selflessness to die at what appears to be a most convenient moment for the healthcare reform movement.

I’m not trying to be a cynic here. I’ll miss Senator Kennedy’s voice in the Senate almost as much as I miss Senator Wellstone’s. But given that the media spotlight has abruptly swung away from the failings of healthcare reform to the death of Senator Kennedy, this is his parting gift to Barack Obama after already transferring Camelot’s legacy to the President’s shoulders. For the next month at least, the media will be consumed with Senator Kennedy’s death, his legacy, his replacement in the Senate, and ultimately, his state of health. Since Senator Kennedy was such a linchpin in the push to reform healthcare, his death will inevitably become a rallying cry for the left.

I can only quote the venerable Gandalf when I say, “All we have to do is decide what to do with the time that is given to us.”

Healthcare reform is supposed to expand coverage for all, but some advocates fear poor children will be left out.

The federal Children's Health Insurance Program, which Congress recently reauthorized, provides critical health coverage to poor children and pregnant women, including many kids whose parents don't qualify for Medicaid due to restrictions based on income or citizenship status. Historically, a large portion of enrollees have been Black and Latino children, often with poor health status.

The Democrat reform plan now in from House would essentially expand Medicaid, but also phase out CHIP. Within the next few years, reports Kaiser Health News, children in the program (now about 7 million) would be shifted into a health insurance exchange (a market-based system that might or might not include a public option).

Patients are expected to follow the doctor's orders, but for many immigrants who can't read or speak English easily, taking your daily medicine means finding a friend or family member to translate a prescription, or just making an educated guess. In New York City, a landmark law seeks to dismantle the language barrier at the pharmacy counter.

The new measure, just approved by the City Council, requires that pharmacies provide full language services to meet the needs of the city's myriad ethnic neighborhoods. That means counseling and translations of prescription labels in Spanish, Chinese, Creole, Polish... you get the picture. The law builds on existing civil rights laws, as well as recent legal settlements that advocacy groups have brokered with large chain pharmacies like CVS.

Click detail to see full image.

We all know the job cuts and housing losses in this recession keep reaching new and scarier heights. But check out the numbers of people receiving food stamps these days, via a new graphic from the folks at Good.

There are also new reports to contend with these days, like the latest that links food stamp usage with obesity, and it's making me extra angry. These sorts of conversations inevitably ignite vile and racialized "personal responsibility" attacks on poor people's bad decisions and lazy lifestyles. But the real issue is about access and availability.

The affordable food that fills the belly very often isn't the food that can keep the body healthy.For low-income communities of color, a very serious and well-documented "grocery gap" of food deserts exists. According to the USDA, 26 million people who live in low-income urban neighborhoods do not have a single supermarket within walking distance of their homes.

Which brings me to my one quibble with the infographic above. Beautiful as it is, I felt like it was a little idealistic in its representation of food and health for the very poorest who depend on public assistance.

By Patrick Young

(This post originally appeared on Long Island Wins.)

I went to visit a Congresswoman's office last week in the Hudson Valley. Outside her offices were nine or ten protesters with signs warning that health care reform is the opening wedge for a "socialist" takeover of the United States.

With a comprehensive immigration bill likely to be introduced in the next 30-60 days, we should look at the health care donnybrook for lessons about the course immigration reform is likely to take.

1. The argument will not be about the issues. There were many legitimate areas of disagreement about health care reform. The impact on the deficit, whether a public option would kill the private health insurance option, and what the effect on care would be for those already covered were all important topics for discussion. But the issues that grabbed the nation's attention were "death panels", and whether or not Obama is a modern incarnation of Hitler.

The well-informed dismissed these nonsensical rantings, but the general public, while not believing them, did change its attitude towards reform because of them. The sight of thousands of Americans so upset about the proposed changes made many wonder if it was worth dividing the country over health care.

The same calculus will be in play over immigration reform. The "debate" will not be a debate at all. It will be an agonized screaming of primal fears tapping into the identity politics of the right. Most Americans will disagree with prognostications of racial suicide following comprehensive immigration reform, but they will wonder whether it is worth alienating so many Americans over an issue as peripheral to most voters lives as the fate of the undocumented.

Against a tide of lies and vitriol, President Obama is working hard to dispel popular myths about healthcare reform. Chief among them is the crackpot idea that universal health care actually means health care for everyone.

In a chat with right-leaning radio host Michael Smerconish this week, Obama set the record straight on Republican propaganda about insuring “the illegals”:

this has been an example of just pure misinformation out there. None of the bills that have been voted on in Congress and none of the proposals coming out of the White House propose giving coverage to illegal immigrants, none of them. That has never been on the table; nobody has discussed it.

So everybody who's listening out there, when you start hearing that somehow this is all designed to provide health insurance to illegal immigrants, that is simply not true and has never been the case.

So people, don't think for a minute that the government would act to prevent undocumented immigrants from dying of untreated diseases. Rest assured that hospitals will continue deporting them from hospitals, perhaps to die at the mercy of far worse healthcare systems, which they clearly deserve as a consequence of their lawbreaking.

How refreshing to finally see, in a few short seconds, a show of sense! Reason! Honesty! There is no arguing with wild and baseless and blatantly racist charges of "socialism" and "Nazi policies" and death panels. Everyone else take a cue from Barney Frank.

The healthcare system is intimidating and full of droves of wonkety wonks. Digging into the current debate often seems like it requires learning a whole 'nother language, and it feels like lobbyists' and politicians' aims are to deliberately obfuscate the landscape to ram through unjust policy. Throw that in with my longstanding disaffection towards DC politics and healthcare is just not my favorite topic of politics.

But now that the conversation threatens to be derailed by old white people in town hall meetings shrieking, "Socialized medicine!!! Death panels!!!?!?" I realized I can't afford to be uninformed about the debate. I needed healthcare reform 101, and so I turned to Lynne Nguyen, a community organizer in Seattle with Washington Community Action Network working on national health care reform. Read on for my very, very basic questions, and Lynne's helpful (and jargon-free!) analysis and explanations.

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RaceWire: Let’s start at square one. What is the public option?

Lynne Nguyen: The public option is an alternative to private insurers. It's a system managed by the government to pay health care providers for services. Medicare is an example of a public plan that's made specifically for seniors and those with disabilities.

If you think of healthcare responsibility and healthcare in terms of who is responsible for providing it, on one end you have the individual who pays for their insurance or pays into a system their employer provides. If you’re not employed you go buy yourself insurance. That’s the private market you have right now.

On the other end, you have the “single payer” system, where everyone is responsible. Everyone pays in. Everyone floats this big pool of people to pay for healthcare services. It really is a triangle. You have the person on top who gets coverage, just under that you have the entity who provides the actual healthcare service (doctors), and then you have the payer, in most cases it’s the insurance, but in the case of the public option, it’s the government. That is the crux of it.

Larry Wilmore on The Daily Show two nights ago lays out the racial ridiculousness the healthcare debate is devolving into. It's a funny bit to be sure, but the whole time I was watching this clip I kept shaking my head thinking, "If only! Wouldn't it be nice if the tables were turned and progressives and people of color really had this much power to wield!" I wanted to reach out to that poor woman sobbing for the America she misses to tell her: Lady, Don't you worry. People of color are getting exploited and getting unequal treatment everywhere! The America you long for is still here!

Sometimes it seems the only rational response (short of tearing my hair out) is to throw up my hands and laugh. Oh, America! You can be real ignorant, you big hulking behemoth of a country!

But Kai Wright, writing for The Root, helps make sense of what's happening right now.

If ever there was a “teachable moment” about race in modern America, now is it. With the birthers and the reparations conspiracy theories and the Nazi imagery at health care meetings, someone’s gotta explain why all these white folks are wilding out. We need an articulate, impassioned race man to clarify things.

The public reaction to Obama's choice for surgeon general reveals how race and lopsided moralism are insinuating themselves into the health care debate.

Many heralded Dr. Regina Benjamin's nomination as a breakthrough. Her background as an advocate for underserved communities in the South called attention to ground zero of a failed healthcare system. But within a few days, the public attention that Benjamin had drawn toward systemic health disparities was eclipsed by low-intensity character assassination about the nation's top doctor being too fat for the job.

Yes, tens of millions are uninsured, but the real question is, what's the ideal dress size for a surgeon general?