Healthcare

By Linn Washington, Jr.

So, some black folks are bashing Princeton Professor Cornell West for his sharply phrased critiques of President Barack Obama’s failure to specifically address crisis- proportion problems in a long-suffering segment of American society: the black community.

Black supporters of the first African-American president echo the rationale advanced by Obama himself that he is the president of all Americans so addressing issues specific to African-American would be inappropriate.

However, that view side-steps the critical issue of the very American right to criticize a U.S. President.

Compounding the First Amendment criticism issue is the reality that Obama has addressed issues important to specific groups, including gays and women. He has even been addressing the issues of his political adversaries, the Republicans, like his embracing their demands for deficit reducing austerity by slashing services to the most needy.

Health Care in Cuba and America - by Stephen Lendman

Under Article 50 of Cuba's Constitution:

"Everyone has the right to health protection and care. The state guarantees this right:

-- by providing free medical and hospital care by means of the installations of the rural medical service network, polyclinics, hospitals, preventative and specialized treatment centers;

-- by providing free dental care;

-- by promoting the health publicity campaigns, health education, regular medical examinations, general vaccination and other measures to prevent the outbreak of disease. All the population cooperates in these activities and plans through the social and mass organizations."

Chavez: Alive, Well, and Recuperating in Caracas - by Stephen Lendman

Responding in longer form to erroneous reports of his death, Mark Twain now is quoted saying, "Reports of my death death were greatly exaggerated."

Recently, major media managed (made up) news suggested that Hugo Chavez is seriously ill and close to death. Recuperating from illness, yes. Potentially terminal, absolutely not. From Caracas, Eva Golinger's July 1 article explained - headlined, "Chavez Overcomes Health Issue: Alive and Well, Despite Myths," accessed through the following link:

http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/6317

More on her article below.

Throughout his tenure, major media in America, other Western countries, and Venezuela mercilessly bashed Chavez. In fact, they've shamelessly vilified him with slanderous pejoratives, while ignoring his popular support for over 12 years for providing vital social services fast disappearing in America and other Western countries.

And yes I do realize there are 'Gold Star Children' who have lost Mothers, especially in these two long conflicts, not minimizing the fact that many of the women soldiers killed were possibly Mothers as they all were Daughters, Sisters or Nieces and Aunts, the greater numbers killed still in war are male.

CBS sought out a message with meaning for Fathers Day, that aired June 17 2011, and I totally agree with the one they found which among many messages it should send ties our long war of choice, Vietnam where this Country said it would remember the lessons of, to both current wars of choice, Afghanistan and Iraq, lessons forgotten five minutes after Vietnam and so many DeJa-Vu's of then repeated with many enhanced and coming on faster.

"The Politics of Cancer" - by Stephen Lendman

University of Illinois School of Public Health and Chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition Professor Emeritus Samuel S. Epstein chose the above title for his award-winning 1978 book, updated 20 years later in his important work titled, "The Politics of Cancer Revisited." More about both books below.

Epstein is an internationally recognized cancer expert and its avoidable causes, especially exposure to industrial carcinogens in air, water, food, consumer products, pesticides, prescription drugs, and workplace environments.

His decades of activities, public advocacy, awards, and distinctions are too numerous to mention. He also authored or co-authored a dozen books, as well as hundreds of peer reviewed articles on public health related issues, ones seldom getting enough mainstream attention if any.

Notice how the congressional tepublicans, and especially their cult like followers, never mention the Wars after rubber stamping everything but Veterans Care and even Military Care related to while talking about the growing budget problems they created when they controlled it all. Even now gaining back the House and a few more in the Senate, to continue obstruction, they have sought to cut area's of the Veterans Admin budget!

June 3, 2011 - Even as the wars wind down in Iraq and Afghanistan the financial cost of taking care of veterans continues to mount and could reach a trillion dollars in coming decades

 

Please sign this letter to the Senate Democratic Caucus asking them to support the DNC Afghanistan Withdrawal Resolution and Sanders' American Health Security Act of 2011 (S.915).

This letter will be distributed to the members of the Senate Democratic Caucus on June 7, as part of the June 7 Rally and Lobby Day with the Nurses. (If you can't make it to DC for the rally and lobby day, then please mark you calendars for the June 7 National Call-in Day.)

Many of our allies in the progressive movement have endorsed and signed this letter: we hope you'll join them. Sign here.

Our goal is to gather at least 25,000 signatures between now and midnight, June 5. Click here to sign, and then please post this to your Facebook page and forward this email to your like-minded friends and family members. (Remember to remove the "Unsubscribe" link at the very bottom before you send the forward.)

Bin Laden is dead; the Afghanistan mission is accomplished. It is time to bring our troops and war dollars home and start addressing the very real hardships facing Americans, including providing comprehensive healthcare for all and the spiraling costs of healthcare.

In solidarity,
Tim Carpenter, National Director of PDA

P.S. If you're coming to DC for the Rally and Lobby Day with the Nurses, join us for a pre-rally benefit for the Healthcare NOT Warfare campaign on June 6 at Busboys and Poets!

Vermont Enacts Conditional Universal Healthcare Coverage - by Stephen Lendman

Numerous previous articles discussed Obamacare, described accurately as a rationing scheme to enrich insurers, drug companies and large hospital chains in lieu of universal single payer coverage.

Obama hailed its March 2010 passage as answering "the call of history." In fact, Ralph Nader was right calling it a "pay-or-die system that is the disgrace of the Western world," costing double what other Western countries spend and delivering less, rationing care to enrich corporate providers while making a dysfunctional system worse.

Under it, junk insurance policies leave millions underinsured. Costs remain out-of-control. Insurers can still deny care by delaying, contesting, preventing or over-charging people from accessing it. Yet everyone must be covered or penalized if opt out, a provision many states are contesting as a lawless unconstitutional infringement.

Firedoglake and Physicians for a National Health Program

Vermont has enacted a law that will put the state on a path towards achieving a universal health care system. The people, many in the state legislature and the governor of Vermont have expressed a desire to go even further to a universal single payer health care system, one which will guarantee coverage of medically necessary care and will control health care costs. If achieved, this will serve as an important model for our nation.

SIGN ON

Occupational Lung Diseases in Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans

ScienceDaily (May 18, 2011) — A session presented May 18 explored the inhalational exposures and respiratory outcomes of military deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan. Presenters reviewed current knowledge on complex inhalational exposures, epidemiologic studies, animal toxicology studies, and clinical lung findings in U.S. military men and women who are returning from Southwest Asia.

Here's the news as I received it in an Email from Thom Hartmann's radio show on Wednesday:

"Vermont is one step-closer to becoming the first state to set up a truly universal, single-payer health care system. The Vermont Senate passed the new healthcare bill yesterday - following in the footsteps of the state House that passed the bill last month. Now - it just needs to be signed into law by Governor Peter Shumlin who's already expressed his support for the measure. There IS one last step though - Vermont would need to secure a waiver to opt out of Obamacare in order to build its own healthcare system.

Leadership in Washington recognizes the damage our soaring health care spending is doing to our entire economy. Although their rhetoric differs, recent budget proposals from both Republicans and Democrats mistakenly place the blame on Medicare and Medicaid. Cuts to and privatization of these important public insurances will place us on a dangerous path that will leave health care costs soaring and more patients unable to afford necessary care.

Medicare and Medicaid must be left out of the discussion entirely until leadership has the courage to address the real reasons why our health care costs are rising, the toxic environment created by investor owned insurances and the profit-driven health care industry.

The Vermont Senate is on board with single-payer healthcare. Too bad Washington, D.C., isn't, and Obama insisted that last year's healthcare bill effectively block state initiatives.

By Dave Lindorff

I am 62 and have just reached the age where I could apply for Social Security retirement benefits. Of course, I’d be crazy to do that and collect some $700 a month for the rest of my life, when I could keep working and wait until I’m 70 and get $2000 a month.

But the point is, I’ve arrived. I’m a “senior.” And now I’m paying a lot more attention to what the Right and its paymaster, the corporate lobby, are trying to do, not just to my retirement plan (which is Social Security. period), but also to Medicare, the program upon which my medical care will depend once my wife decides to retire from her university job.

By John Grant

The battle over the meaning of a traumatic experience is fought in the arena of political discourse, popular culture and scholarly debate. The outcome of this battle shapes the rhetoric of the dominant culture and influences future political action.

--Kali Tal, Worlds Of Hurt: Reading the Literature of Trauma

There’s a major struggle for meaning going on in America now that centers on war trauma among returning soldiers and veterans of our wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and, now, Libya.

Obama’s Deficit Plan Starts at the Center Right; Where Will He End Up?

By Kevin Zeese

President Obama announced the outlines of his deficit plan, leaving a lot up for negotiation. He planted his poll at the center right and where he ends up, with his history of compromising to bring right wing Republicans and Democratic corporatists together, can only be worse.

Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the Republican chairman of the U.S. House Budget Committee, unveiled two proposals this week which if enacted would constitute a mortal threat to our nation’s health – particularly to the health of our seniors and our most vulnerable populations.

The first proposal, Senate Joint Resolution 10, would amend the Constitution by imposing rigid and arbitrary restraints on federal spending. The second, his fiscal year 2012 federal budget resolution (misleadingly and eerily called “The Path to Prosperity”), would essentially kill the Medicare program and gut Medicaid, among its other nasty effects.

Both proposals should be emphatically rejected.

Dear Friends,

Yumi Kikuchi & Gen Morita are our good friends who live in Japan. They are anti-war & anti-nuclear activists who have done so much good work, both in Japan & internationally on these issues. Yumi & Gen translated "ADDICTED To WAR" into Japanese and were responsible for over 70,000 copies being sold in Japan. They also put Japanese subtitles on my film “What I’ve Learned About U. S. Foreign Policy” and screened it at the first ever Tokyo Peace Film Festival, which they organized. I could go on & on listing many of the things they have done to promote Peace in the world. Below is what they are asking us to do to help them now.

Frank Dorrel
Veterans for Peace, Chapter 007 Los Angles, CA
-----------
The petition can be accessed through Yumi Kikuchi's blog below or contact her at yumik@fine.ocn.ne.jp

You Can Help Japan : STOP HAMAOKA and TOKAI Nuclear Power Plants Now

Cleaning up our environment is not only related to climate change, it means cleaning up the damage done, and in many cases known to be damaging by the businesses and corporations who caused it, all around us, especially that which kills over time, shorter times!

By Dave Gram, Associated Press

MONTPELIER, Vt.—Every Vermonter could sign up for state-financed health insurance under a bill passed by the House on Thursday that would put the state on a path to a single-payer health care system by the middle of this decade.

"This bill takes our state one step closer to a system that ensures that all Vermonters have access to the care they deserve and contains costs," House Speaker Shap Smith said shortly after the House passed the bill 92-49.

The measure now goes to the Senate, where it is expected to pass, but with some possible changes.

Physicians for Social Responsibility Calls for a US Moratorium on New Nuclear Reactors, Citing Medical Risks

Warns Any Radiation Exposure Is Unsafe

Washington, DC - March 19, 2011 – Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) today called for a nationwide
moratorium on new nuclear reactors in the United States and a suspension of operations at the nuclear reactors with a similar design as those involved in the disaster in Japan, as well as those on fault lines. PSR cited the medical risks associated with any level of radiation exposure regardless of how small. Lower doses result in less chance of harm than higher doses, but any dose level can put an individual at risk.

By Missy Comley Beattie

It’s blue here in Kentucky, true blue, a landscape of royal blue, this altar to basketball and home to the Kentucky Wildcats whose devotees are historically and hysterically frenzied for victory.

The same day I awakened to breaking news of breaking tectonic plates, breaking nuclear reactors, and breaking hearts, I left my sister Laura's house for exercise and heliotherapy. An elderly woman pushed her walker in the middle of a street, a man entered his house with a giant box of Pepsi Cola attached to his arm, and another person was at his mailbox. All were costumed in Big Blue fan-ery.

On Sunday, the Cats defeated the Florida Gators to win the SEC tournament. Often, during the action, we zipped to CNN’s coverage of Japan’s tsunami, earthquakes, and maybe-yes, maybe-no, Chernobyl-like meltdowns.

Zombied
by Missy Comley Beattie

My hands are curved, poised above the keyboard. I’m staring at a document, blank except for the cursor that’s blinking to the rhythm of an Annie Lennox song, “Love is a Stranger.” My eyes are focused on this small vertical mark that, at other times, could be a soporific. Just not now. Because the Lennox lyrics are bitter.

It’s savage and it’s cruel
It shines like destruction
Comes in like a flood
And it seems like religion
It’s noble and it’s brutal
It distorts and deranges
And it wrenches you up
And you’re left like a zombie

This describes love but it could be the tune of our times, as harsh as the world in which we live.

<------- Remember these? They were a big joke and joy for a group still calling themselves republicans and happened as the Country were sending Military Troops into war once again, wars that still continue, and never a real apology for their joke. I'll bet some of them still have some handy to be used and laughed about when their need arises to do so as they wave the flag and condemn others who don't agree with them. Oh and while they seem to get joy about Soldiers being wounded in our wars and awarded the "Purple Heart" these were pointed directly at a brother In-Country Vietnam Navy Veteran, my tour there, as a Navy GunnersMate 3rd, was my last year of my four '70-'71.

This is what's needed.

Abusers appear when we are most vulnerable. Mistaking their sweet nothings for REAL somethings, we slowly allow harmony to lose its last three letters.

Among the most calculating manipulators are the men and women we elect to represent our interests—but don’t. They have a vast menu from which to select their tactics.

They speak to our individualism and, then, tell us what all they’re doing on our behalf.

They demand our loyalty. Our servitude.

They juggle fear and hope, throwing sounds to our ears and images to our eyes, pushing beyond the bearable so gradually that the once unthinkable becomes commonplace.

They encourage us to shop and travel but to ALWAYS be alert, and report anything suspicious. “If you see something, say something,” Fascism Security Chief Janet Napolitano says, promoting the psychology of fear with a four-pronged campaign that includes locally run “fusion centers” for intelligence sharing. Fusion?

While I respect Senator Murray and was happy she was picked to take over from Senator Akaka on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee her attack is another disconnect in what Agencies can do with what Congress, the peoples representatives, gives them as I wrote a short note to her yesterday. The Veterans Admin. has been underfunded, and in many times politically run, since Korea as they moved funds from the Korean Vets to our brother 'Nam Vets and ignored what we were even telling the Country, i.e. PTSD, Agent Orange, Gulf War Syndrome and more. The Country hasn't wanted to fund the results of their wars and Congress follows that bid especially the tax cutters of which just recently they extended the 'Non Sacrifice', especially for the wealthy many making wealth off these wars and readily pony up big campaign contributions, cuts now over the whole decade of these two conflicts.

Lisa DeJong, The Plain DealerHeather Morris Bowser: "I know there are other Vietnam War veterans' kids like me in America. We need to find each other. We need to break the silence."

January 31, 2011 - Listen to Plain Dealer columnist Connie Schultz and Heather Morris Bowser discuss the legacy of Agent Orange {I have a player below to listen or visit this link} with WCPN FM/90.3's "Sound of Ideas" host Mike McIntyre.