6 May 2017. Ajamu Baraka: Healthcare is a Human Right, But You Have to Fight For It!

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12 November 2013. A Smile from the Russian Web… Putin vs Obama… VVP Over BHO

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I saw this little number on the Russian web. I support the Prez, as I realise what the alternative is. Do you want a Republican corporatist state? I don’t… and neither do most other people. After all, most folks have wised up to the Republican desire to gut Social Security and Medicare, and ramp up regressive taxes on working people (which includes most managers) so that the One Percent can pay their country club dues, buy their crappy McMansions, and sock the remainder in offshore accounts in the Caymans (they certainly don’t intend to invest it in the USA to create American jobs). Such people are criminals, and we must treat them as such. After all, Wet Willy Romney is a major tax evader and was a cowardly draft dodger in the Vietnam War (his corporate daddy bought him a bogus “clergy” deferment). He symbolises the New GOP… grasping, greedy, a bully, but cowardly at heart.

However, this is a good belly-laugh, and it illustrates why VVP won the tug o’ war over Syria. Ease on down the road, Vova!

BMD

Millions of Poor Americans to Be Out of Medicaid

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A significant effort to extend health coverage to Americans will leave out millions of uninsured… just the very kind of people the programme was designed to help. Not only are these people uninsured and impoverished, but they’re also unlucky to live in Republican-controlled states that’ve declined to expand Medicaid, an insurance scheme for the poor. About half of the country’s population, with about 68 percent of poor uninsured blacks and single mothers, live in the 26 states that rejected Medicaid expansion.

Dr H Jack Geiger, a founder of the community health centre concept, explained, “The irony is that these states that are rejecting Medicaid expansion… many of them Southern… are the very places where the concentration of poverty and lack of health insurance are the most acute. It’s their populations that have the highest burden of illness and costs to the entire healthcare system”. This disparity introduces the unpleasant racial issueheated healthcare law discourse into the . Surprisingly, race was rarely (if ever at all) mentioned in high circles’ disputes in terms of Medicaid.

Every southern state except for Arkansas rejected Medicaid expansion. Opponents of the expansion claim that they’re against it strictly on economic grounds, and that the demographic situation of the South… with poor blacks being the vast majority of the uninsured… makes it easier to make race “the topic of the day”. The law intended all Americans to have health coverage. For lower and middle-income earners, there are subsidies on the new health exchanges to help them afford insurance. An expanded Medicaid programme was supposed to cover the poorest American citizens. Overall, about 30 million uninsured Americans were to be eligible for financial aid. However, last year, a US Supreme Court ruling on the health care law allowed states to choose whether to expand Medicaid or not. Those states that preferred not to expand Medicare left about eight million impoverished and uninsured people without any medical assistance at all, excluding illegal immigrants and foreign-born residents.

3 October 2013

Voice of Russia World Service

http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2013_10_03/Millions-of-poor-Americans-to-be-out-of-Medicaid-3448/

Comment from the Original VOR Post:

What an ANTI-SOCIAL nation! Everything revolves around $$$. Sink or swim… you’re on your own. Exceptional country?

Vera Gottlieb

Editor’s Note:

I agree with Ms Gottlieb. Pre-repentance Scrooge was actually more generous… he did accept the union workhouse and the Poor Law. The Republican Party has a lotta goddamn gall. They shut down the government… in order to smash what they consider “socialism”. The GOP is chock fulla beans… single-payer healthcare was the brainchild of Prince Otto von Bismarck… AS A WEAPON AGAINST SOCIALISM. It shows you how dirt ignorant and downright stupid the Republicans are. The German healthcare system is one of the best in the world, and it’s utilised single-payer insurance since the last quarter of the nineteenth century. It served the Empire, it served the Weimar Republic, it served the Third Reich, it served the Bundesrepublik and DDR… it still serves today.

The Republicans aren’t only liars; they’re malicious and cruel, as well. There’s money for Medicaid expansion… stop the useless foreign wars and end the free ride for the rich. Slobberin’ Ronnie started it… after 30 years of Voodoo Economics, the top Five Percent are at 275 percent of their 1981 income in real terms (adjusted for inflation)… the rest of us are at 85 percent of the 1981 level in real terms. I think that some class warfare has gone on… the rich against the rest of us, and the Republicans are the willing whores of the moneyed class.

For Orthodox people here in the American diaspora, it means that Rod Dreher, Victor Potapov, Terrence Mattingly, James Paffhausen, Patrick Henry Reardon, Joseph Honeycutt, Alexander Webster, John Whiteford, and Josiah Trenham (and all those like them) are enablers of evil. They all support the Republican Moloch. HH doesn’t approve of the Republican War on the Poor… neither does Bart, for that matter (Pope Francisco gives a hearty “Amen”). The Church is FOR government single-payer healthcare. After all, HH IS friends with Gennady Zyuganov and Fidel Castro… he’s NOT friends with grasping filth like Mitch McConnell, Darrell Issa, John Boehner, and Rand Paul. Reflect on that…

BMD    

US Budget Cuts Hit Cancer Patients

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Cancer clinics in the USA began turning away older patients as the federal mandatory budget cuts known as “the sequester” slashed Medicare reimbursements for potentially life-saving chemotherapy drugs. Ted Okon, the executive director of the Community Oncology Alliance (COA), told RIA-Novosti, “Some practises are right now being forced to send patients elsewhere for treatment. Other practises are in total disbelief, and will be hit over the head in a week or so when payment claims they put in to Medicare come back with a two-percent cut.” Okon called the sequester cuts “a blunt axe” wielded with little thought.

A study conducted by COA two weeks before the sequester cuts on Medicare took effect found that they’d force nearly three-quarters of cancer clinics to turn away new Medicare patients or send all Medicare patients to hospitals for more expensive treatment. Doctors at the Zangmeister Center, a cancer treatment facility in Columbus OH, will meet Friday to discuss how to handle the cuts, Dr Mark Thompson told RIA-Novosti, saying, “We’ll probably start directing patients to the hospital for care, but if we shift patients to hospitals for care, it’ll cost the government way more to have them treated. The last thing this country needs is moving expensive care like cancer care into an even more expensive setting, like hospitals”.

A study conducted by health care consultants Milliman for the US Oncology Network found that chemotherapy cost around 600 USD (18,970 Roubles. 462 Euros. 391 UK Pounds) per month more when administered in a hospital than when a clinic like Zangmeister or a doctor’s office provided the treatment. The Milliman study found that about 8 million of the almost 14 million Americans living with cancer are over age 65, and that around half of cancer care expenditures are for Medicare recipients.

The way Medicare reimburses doctors for cancer treatment costs is complicated. The US government typically pays back to oncologists and clinics the price of a chemotherapy drug, plus six percent to cover the costs of storage, staff needed to administer the drugs, and other expenses. However, the sequester cuts apply across the board, including to the cost of the drug. That means that, if a practice buys a drug for 100 USD (3,160 Roubles. 77 Euros. 66 UK Pounds), it only gets 98 USD (3,099 Roubles. 75 Euros. 64 UK Pounds) back. Dr Thompson said, “That puts us at risk of not being able to pay our bills. That might not seem like a big loss, but we buy millions of dollars of these drugs, and across a lot of drugs, that’s a lot of money. Oncologists can’t continue to buy drugs and to get paid less than they cost us. We’ve been trying not to shift patients (to a hospital for care), but we’re going to have to look at that now”.

Okon said that part of the problem is that few expected the sequester cuts to be applied to Medicare, saying, “Everyone was taken by surprise that this was implemented, even the government committee in charge of Medicare reimbursements. Now, we’re like deer in the headlights, and we don’t know what to make of it”.

4 April 2013

Karin Zeitvogel

RIA-Novosti

http://en.ria.ru/world/20130404/180449058/US-Budget-Cuts-Hit-Cancer-Patients.html

Editor’s Note:

Let’s keep this simple and to the point. The Republican Party has proven that its leadership and congressional delegation are soulless filth… only intent on funding pointless inordinately-expensive warmongering in foreign parts and massive tax breaks for the feckless affluent effluent. “Death Panels” exist today… and the Republican Anti-Life (but they’re Anti-Abortion!) Greedsters cheer them on. Their real (and godless) view is, “If they can’t afford their care, they should die and decrease the surplus population”. The pre-Spirits Mr Scrooge would’ve held them in contempt. He, at least, didn’t cover his greed with smarmy religious maunderings.

Orthodox people should beware the Far Righties amongst us. Paffhausen, Potapov, Webster, Dreher, Freddie M-G, Mattingly, Josiah Trenham, and John Whiteford are all cheerleaders for the Republican death angels. That leaves a nasty taste in my mouth… as it should in yours, as HH is FOR state-funded single-payer healthcare, and has said so on many occasions. It’s time to take our Church in the USA back from these troglodyte phonies. God won’t bless us until we do.

BMD