COVID-19 & Healthcare

NY Times: What We Don’t Know Is Killing Us

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The New York Times in an editorial opinion today makes the point that What We Don’t Know Is Killing Us:

In one of the 23 executive orders on gun control signed this month, President Obama instructed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other federal science agencies to conduct research into the causes and prevention of gun violence. He called on Congress to aid that effort by providing $10 million for the C.D.C. in the next budget round and $20 million to expand the federal reporting system on violent deaths to all 50 states, from the current 18.

That Mr. Obama had to make such a decree at all is a measure of the power of the gun lobby, which has effectively shut down government-financed research on gun violence for 17 years. Research on guns is crucial to any long-term effort to reduce death from guns. In other words, treat gun violence as a public health issue.

But that is precisely what the National Rifle Association and other opponents of firearms regulation do not want. In the absence of reliable data and data-driven policy recommendations, talk about guns inevitably lurches into the unknown, allowing abstractions, propaganda and ideology to fill the void and thwart change.

Paranoid gun worshipers jeopardizing public health

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Ask any cop or medical professional and they will tell you that gun violence is a health care epidemic in this country. And it is not just suicides, accidental shootings and intentional shootings, but the use of guns to threaten and intimidate in cases of domestic violence, and other instances of assault and battery.

The NRA convinced members of Congress to prohibit any federally funded research into gun violence as a health care issue back in the 1990s. Willful ignorance allows the NRA and the weapons manufacturers it represents in Congress to argue in the abstract because they have prevented the collection of any hard scientific data for this health care epidemic. It is easy to argue that "there is no evidence" when one has prevented scientific research into the empirical evidence.

When President Obama announced his gun violence policies recently Gun Violence Fact Sheet (.pdf), it included this provision:

PRESERVE THE RIGHTS OF DOCTORS TO PROTECT THEIR PATIENTS AND COMMUNITIES FROM GUN VIOLENCE: Doctors and other mental health professionals play an important role in protecting the safety of their patients and the broader community. The administration is clarifying that no federal law in any way prohibits doctors or other health care providers from reporting their patients' threats of violence to the authorities, and issuing guidance making clear that the Affordable Care Act does not prevent doctors from talking to patients about gun safety.

Gov. Brewer’s beneficence really motivated by immigrants?

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The Arizona media has given Governor Jan Brewer props for her decision to support Arizona's participation in the expanded Medicaid provisions of the Affordable Care Act ("ObamaCare"). Governor Brewer was cast as a beneficent leader bestowing mercy on the unfortunate in need of medical care.

Now we learn that Brewer's beneficence may have really been motivated by immigrants (but of course). Sarah Kliff at Ezra Klein's Wonkblog writes, Arizona could make the Medicaid expansion an immigration fight:

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s decision to participate in the Medicaid
expansion was a puzzling one: Why would one of the nation’s most
conservative governors opt into an Obamacare program that most of her
Republican colleagues have rejected?

New budget memos
from the state provide some insight: Opting out of the Medicaid
expansion had the potential to give immigrants better access to health
care than American citizens.

This small quirk in the Affordable Care Act that Arizona stumbled on
could significantly reshape the politics for governors weighing whether
to sign up for the health law’s Medicaid expansion.

The dilemma raised by Brewer’s budget advisers is this: Turning down
the Medicaid expansion would mean giving low income, legal immigrants
access to private insurance subsidies unavailable to American citizens.

Of austerity and cookies (video)

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Tax-wallstby Pamela Powers Hannley

These days, you can't turn on the TV or radio without hearing a "news" story or pundit "analysis" about the battle over deficit reduction by budget cuts or revenue generation.

Republicans want to balance the budget on the backs of the middle class and the poor by cutting "entitlements" (ie, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment, Pel Grants, food stamps, and whatever programs are left of Johnson's War on Poverty). Heaven forbid that they would consider taxing the rich, taxing financial transactions, raising the income cap for Social Security benefits, or anything like that. 

Austerity is their battle cry. After the jump, watch this video featuring John Nichols of The Nation explaining the hoax of austerity.

PDA People’s Inauguration live– NOW

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by Pamela Powers Hannley The People's Inauguration– sponsored by Progressive Democrats of America (PDA)– is live streaming now here. Great stuff– War on Poverty, immigration reform, organizing the unemployed, Robin Hood Tax, eminent domain for economic development. Jesse Jackson, Randy Parraz, Congressman John Conyers, and labor leaders just spoke. Randy Parraz: "Change is coming to … Read more