COVID-19 & Healthcare

Obama campaign ad: ‘Republican Women for Obama’

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The Obama campaign has released a new ad, "Republican Women for Obama." Republican women share their history with the Republican Party and how the party's views are no longer aligned with their own. They don't support Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan and share how Romney and Ryan are wrong for women.

As they share:

"If you truly believe in a small government. That government shouldn't be deciding what I can and cannot do with my own body."

"There is no way on God's green earth that I would consider voting Republican."

"I don't even want to think about them having control—as a woman I don't."

"If you're a conservative woman, and you believe in small government, then Barack Obama is your candidate because he's keeping the government out of the decisions that should remain between you and God, and you and your own conscience."

Video below the fold.

3 good reports on Paul Ryan’s ‘Kill Medicare’ Plan

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

There are 3 good reports this week on the Paul Ryan "Kill Medicare" Plan, none of which seem to get reported in the "lamestream" Arizona newspapers. Arizona's newspapers are failing miserably to inform their readers.

The first report comes from the New York Times, Costs Seen in Romney’s Medicare Savings Plan: Patients Would Pay More if Romney Restores Medicare Savings, Analysts Say:

Romney-pinocchioMitt Romney’s promise to restore $716 billion that he says President Obama “robbed” from Medicare has some health care experts puzzled, and not just because his running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, included the same savings in his House budgets.

The 2010 health care law cut Medicare reimbursements to hospitals and insurers, not benefits for older Americans, by that amount over the coming decade. But repealing the savings, policy analysts say, would hasten the insolvency of Medicare by eight years — to 2016, the final year of the next presidential term, from 2024.

While Republicans have raised legitimate questions about the long-term feasibility of the reimbursement cuts, analysts say, to restore them in the short term would immediately add hundreds of dollars a year to out-of-pocket Medicare expenses for beneficiaries. That would violate Mr. Romney’s vow that neither current beneficiaries nor Americans within 10 years of eligibility would be affected by his proposal to shift Medicare to a voucherlike system in which recipients are given a lump sum to buy coverage from competing insurers.

For those reasons, Henry J. Aaron, an economist and a longtime health policy analyst at the Brookings Institution and the Institute of Medicine, called Mr. Romney’s vow to repeal the savings “both puzzling and bogus at the same time.”

Marilyn Moon, vice president and director of the health program at the American Institutes for Research, calculated that restoring the $716 billion in Medicare savings would increase premiums and co-payments for beneficiaries by $342 a year on average over the next decade; in 2022, the average increase would be $577.

Beneficiaries, through their premiums and co-payments, share the cost of Medicare with the government. If Medicare’s costs increase — for instance, by raising payments to health care providers — so, too, do beneficiaries’ contributions.

WaPo Editorial: The repugnant code behind Todd Akin’s words

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The Washington Post editorializes today, The repugnant code behind Todd Akin’s words:

LITTLE WONDER that Rep. Todd Akin, the Republican nominee to represent Missouri in the U.S. Senate, is trying to back away from his comments about abortion and rape. So ignorant and offensive were his remarks that members of Mr. Akin’s own party, including its presidential standard-bearer, issued strong condemnations,enoug though it took them a while to get strong h. Mr. Akin was utterly unconvincing in explaining that he “misspoke.” It is scary that someone so ill-informed could hold elective office or have a chance of becoming a senator.

[Note to Editors: Have you actually met the members of Congress? Todd Akin is neither unique nor the most ill-informed and extreme member of Congress. There are more where he came from.]

The comments, first aired Sunday on St. Louis’s KTVI-TV, bear repeating, if only to underscore Mr. Akin’s alarming worldview. Responding to a question about whether he would ease his opposition to abortion to allow exceptions for women who have been raped, the six-term congressman said, “It seems to me, first of all, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

Screenshot-7It’s idiotic, to borrow the phrase of GOP strategist Mike Murphy, to say — citing doctors, no less — that women’s bodies contain some hidden defenses that can kick in to prevent pregnancies. To suggest there are different categories of rape — some real and awful and others that are not — is loathsome. [See last paragraph of opinion below.] Even from someone who would liken student loans to Stage 3 cancer, as Mr. Akin once did, the comment was stunning in its stupidity and insensitivity.

At first, Mr. Akin issued a statement saying that he “misspoke” and his “off-the-cuff remarks” didn’t “reflect the deep empathy I hold for the thousands of women who are raped and abused every year.” The explanation was hard to square with the fact that opposition to abortion has been a core tenet of his time in office — the issue isn’t new to him, in other words — and that he expounded on his thoughts during a lengthy interview with KTVI’s Charles Jaco.

As calls mounted for him to withdraw from the Senate race and the National Republican Senatorial Committee announced it would not spend any money to help elect him, Mr. Akin apologized Monday on former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee’s radio show, calling his remarks “a very, very serious error.” Indeed.

The GOP war on women: define ‘legitimate’ rape

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The Christian Taliban's candidate for U.S. Senate in Missouri, culture warrior Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO), sparked a firestorm of controversy on Sunday with an interview he gave to a local television station. Todd Akin On Abortion: 'Legitimate Rape' Victims Have 'Ways To Try To Shut That Whole Thing Down' (VIDEO):

In an interview with KTVI-TV on Sunday, the GOP Senate nominee was asked if he supported abortion in the case of rape.

"From what I understand from doctors, that's really rare," said Akin said of pregnancy caused by rape. "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let's assume maybe that didn't work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist."

Watch the video (below the fold).