Category: Healthcare

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Domestic Policies Health Healthcare News Politics

No.


No.
The answer is no.

There should be no compromise over the Affordable Care Act. It is a duly passed law of the land that will make positive changes in the lives of millions of Americans. It will give them financial and wellness security. It will change, for the better, the way in which health care is delivered in this country. It’s already led to far-reaching changes in the way that hospitals, health care organizations, doctors and pharmaceutical companies operate.

Checkups and physicals are now free.
Children can stay on thei parents’ policies until age 26.
You cannot be denied insurance if you have a preexisting condition.

And for all of this, a minority in the government and in states where the greatest number of uninsured citizens live, who have convinced themselves that this law will lead to the untimely, government-sponsored deaths of grandmothers throughout the country, want to tie it to  a devastating shutdown of the federal government.

No.
The answer has to be no.

They tried to kill the bill altogether last week, using parliamentary shenanigans that went nowhere and incurred the wrath of Republicans who normally would go along with whatever the party wanted. Now all they want is to delay the Medical Devices tax, which supposedly Democrats fear will lead to higher costs and more backlash.

No.

Because it’s clear that the Republican extremists will not stop there. They tried a full kill. Now they want a delay? Does anybody think that they’ll stop at the Medical Devices tax? Is that the endgame? Will John Boehner, Ted Cruz and Eric Cantor stand side-by-side on a podium in triumphal mode because the Medical Device tax will be delayed? Oh, that’s in addition to approving the XL Pipeline and defunding the Consumer Protection Board and lowering taxes on the wealthy and everything else the Republican Party ran on and LOST in 2012? Will this make the GOP happy and go away?

No.

They want to whole thing gone, and if the Democrats fold on this they will rue that day because the rest of the bill will get flushed away later in October when the GOP decides to throw it in as a condition for raising the debt ceiling. That’s the danger.

So my message to the president and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and Dick Durban is to borrow another Republican idea from the halcyon days of bipartisanship of the 1980s:

Just say no.

If you don’t, you will have lost me and millions of others who feel the same way that I do.

You have been warned.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives and on Twitter @rigrundfest

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Healthcare News ObamaCare Politics

7 Corporate Haters of ObamaCare – Slideshow

McDonald's chief financial officer, Peter Bensen, said last year that Obamacare will cost the company $140 million to $420 million per year.
David Overton, CEO of the Cheesecake Factory, says that Obamacare "will be very costly" and "most people will have to raise prices or cheapen their product" in response.
CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey, said that Obamacare is "like fascism." He then retracted, saying he regretted making that comparison.
John Schnatter, CEO of Papa John's, says Obamacare will cost the company $0.11 to $0.14 per pizza. He maintained that Papa John's will continue to offer health insurance to all its employees.
Andrew Puzder, CEO of CKE, says that he plans to respond to Obamacare by selling cheaper meats and hiring more part-time workers. He also plans to build fewer restaurants in response.
McDonald's chief financial officer, Peter Bensen, said last year that Obamacare will cost the company $140 million to $420 million per year.
Boeing spokesman Joseph Tedino says Boeing lobbied unsuccessfully against a new Obamacare fee, and is generally concerned about Obamacare's costs.
Jimmy John's CEO, Jimmy John Liautaud says he plans to cut workers' hours to avoid having to offer them health insurance under Obamacare.
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contraception Healthcare News ObamaCare Politics

GOP Targets Contraception, Again!

“The country wants Congress to focus on jobs and the economy, not on pushing an extreme agenda against birth control,” – Dawn Laguens, EVP, Planned Parenthood Federation of America

House Republicans have included a so-called “conscience clause” in the government funding bill in a plan they approved early Sunday.

The House voted 231-192 on a bill that would delay much of the 2010 health care reform package for a year. The bill also would try to repeal a tax on medical devices that helps finance the health care law.

The stated purpose of the measure is to allow employers and insurers the opportunity to opt out of providing health care services that they find morally or religiously objectionable, reigniting the debate over a portion of the health care reform law that requires most insurers to cover women’s preventative health care, including contraception. The provision would allow them to opt out of coverage for the next year.

House Republican leaders confirmed that the provision was added into the one-year delay of Obamacare during a House Rules Committee meeting on Saturday evening.

Planned Parenthood Federation of America Executive Vice President Dawn Laguens called the move “desperate, misguided, and extreme”.

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Healthcare ObamaCare

Obamacare: 94 percent will pay below-forecast premiums.

Jonathan Chait writes: The Obama administration today released the final numbers on the premiums in the state health exchanges. This is the single most important piece of data we have to gauge the plausibility of the exchanges, which are the crucial mechanism of Obamacare. The premiums are not spin, they are the collective judgment of the marketplace. The conservative judgment of Obamacare has been a ceaseless litany of doom — rate shock, fumbling bureaucracy, unreasonable regulations. If that indictment were true, insurers would be charging higher rates than the administration initially forecast. Instead, the premiums are clearly lower than forecast — 94 percent of customers in the exchanges will have the chance to pay below-forecast premiums.

In 2010, conservatives were highly confident that the inherent awfulness of Obamacare was such that premiums would rise. James Capretta, writing at National Review, criticized the Congressional Budget Office for issuing “rosy premium scenarios.” Capretta argued “this CBO analysis is terribly optimistic … the premium estimates are based as much on judgment as analytics, and CBO’s judgment is clearly on the optimistic side.” Too optimistic! Clearly! Conn Carroll, then at Heritage, enthusiastically endorsed Capretta’s critique.

But now we know the CBO’s forecasts of the premiums were not too optimistic but too pessimistic. Surely this might budge their evaluation of Obamacare, even a teeny bit, right? Their response? Total silence

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Cancer Healthcare

Staring Down The Enemy – Breast Cancer

Updates on what’s happening on the breast cancer frontlines. Use what you can, pass the rest on.

MUTATED HEREDITY

BRCA1 and BRCA2 are human genes that belong to a class of genes known as tumor suppressors. Mutation of these genes has been linked to hereditary breast and ovarian cancer.
A woman’s risk of developing breast and/or ovarian cancer is greatly increased if she inherits a deleterious (harmful) BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation. Men with these mutations also have an increased risk of breast cancer. Both men and women who have harmful BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations may be at increased risk of other cancers.
Genetic tests are available to check for BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations. A blood sample is required for these tests, and genetic counseling is recommended before and after the tests.
If a harmful BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation is found, several options are available to help a person manage their cancer risk.

source: national cancer Institute

DON’T NAME NO CANCER AFTER ME!

HER2-positive breast cancer is a breast cancer that tests positive for a protein called human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2), which promotes the growth of cancer cells. In about 1 of every 5 breast cancers, the cancer cells make an excess of HER2 due to a gene mutation. This gene mutation and the elevated levels of HER2 that it causes can occur in many types of cancer — not only breast cancer. This is a gene mutation that occurs only in the cancer cells and is not a type of mutation that you can inherit from a parent.

HER2-positive breast cancers tend to be more aggressive than other types of breast cancer. They’re also less responsive to hormone treatment.

Women with HER2 positive metastatic breast cancer whose cancer grows despite other standard therapies have a new treatment option available. (see WITH A BULLET)

source: mayo clinic online

WITH A BULLET…

A new ‘magic bullet’ drug called ado-trastuzumab emtansine was approved by the FDA and is giving hope to thousands of women suffering from one of the most deadly forms of breast cancer, HER2-positive. The FDA’s decision was announced in a Feb. 22 news release by the medicine’s developer, Genentech, a member of pharmecutical giant the Roche Group.
The medicine, aimed at an aggressive form of the disease, is expected to offer several months of quality ‘extra’ life and drastically cuts the debilitating side effects of traditional therapy.

In earlier trials, patients found that remission time was on average five months longer when given the drug as ‘first-line’ treatment at an early stage of the incurable advanced HER2-positive form of the disease.

The latest study involved women suffering from HER2-positive who had already been treated with Herceptin, but whose cancer had spread elsewhere. In those cases remission was extended ‘significantly’. Updated results announced back in October 2012 revealed that the medicine also was associated with a significantly longer rate of overall survival, the time a person lives from the beginning of the study until death from any cause. Overall survival increased nearly six months, from a median of 25.1 months to 30.9 months.

There are also fewer side effects with the drug. Fewer than five per cent of the women given T-DM1 in the earlier study lost their hair, compared with 65 per cent in the control group using traditional chemotherapy.

Other side effects such as diarrhea were also reduced. And half as many of the most serious side effects, requiring hospitalisation, were reported among those given the drug.

T-DM1 teams up the Herceptin antibody with a powerful chemotherapy agent DM1. The two are fused in a way that is more effective.

The new drug combination seeks out and attaches itself to cancerous cells, switching off the growth signals that encourage cancer to spread, while calling on the body’s immune system to attack and remove it. The drug then penetrates the cell’s outer layer and delivers the chemotherapy directly inside the cell to destroy it from within.

After the FDA approval, Genentech changed the medicine’s name from trastuzumab emtansine to ado-trastuzumab emtansine to avoid potential confusion, since both Kadcyla and Herceptin’s generic names begin with trastuzumab, a company spokesperson said.

source: daily mail online and living beyond breast cancer

A LIGHTER NOTE: “FOR MEDICINAL PURPOSES ONLY”

DOING THIS:

WILL GET YOU THIS:

Shown are fluorescence images of uncompressed (left) and compressed (right) colonies of malignant breast epithelial cells. Compressed colonies are smaller and more organized. (Images courtesy of Fletcher Lab)

Researchers at the UC Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have put the squeeze — literally — on malignant mammary cells to guide them back into a normal growth pattern.

The findings, presented Dec. 17, 2012 at the annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology in San Francisco, show for the first time that mechanical forces alone can revert and stop the out-of-control growth of cancer cells. This change happens even though the genetic mutations responsible for malignancy remain, setting up a nature-versus-nurture battle in determining a cell’s fate.

“We are showing that tissue organization is sensitive to mechanical inputs from the environment at the beginning stages of growth and development,” said principal investigator Daniel Fletcher, professor of bioengineering at Berkeley and faculty scientist at the Berkeley Lab. “An early signal, in the form of compression, appears to get these malignant cells back on the right track.”

source: news center berkley edu.

A WONDERFUL NEW HORIZON

For decades, researcher Mina Bissell pursued a revolutionary idea — that a cancer cell doesn’t automatically become a tumor, but rather, depends on surrounding cells (its microenvironment) for cues on how to develop. She shares the two key experiments that proved the prevailing wisdom about cancer growth was wrong.

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Domestic Policies Healthcare News Politics Teaparty

Cruz Missal

It’s not enough for Ted Cruz to be wrong, because he is. It’s not enough that he’s offensive, because he is. And it’s not enough that he’s a hypocrite, because he is. The worst part is that he has the whole package, and he’s terribly difficult to listen to. But Ted Cruz represents much more in our era of divided, extremist, conservative government: It’s the end of the line. When people like Ted Cruz make speeches that reference Nazi Germany and compare the present administration to it, you know that the GOP has gone gonzo overboard. This is not a governing party anymore–it’s a collection of conspiracy theorists who happened to win votes in gerrymandered districts and in states where the majority of uninsured people in the United States live, but who have convinced themselves that getting health insurance amounts to treason.

The conservative movement has reached its apogee and is now in its slow, painful, destructive decline. It will bring a good part of the country down with it, but the good news is that at its worst, it only controls the House of Representatives. If it shuts down the government next week, it will lose that in 2014 and if it runs an ultra-conservative in 2016, it will lose that election too.

I’ve heard many pundits and political science professors say that we live in a center-right leaning country, and at this time I’m inclined to believe it. The problem for the Republicans is that they are not center-right: They are far right and represent a minority of the country. Most people don’t want radical change of the sort that the far right is promoting. Many people oppose the health care law for good reason, but to say that it will drag down the economy and that it’s the death knell of our way of life is irresponsible and hyperbolic.

But I guess Ted Cruz had to happen. Even members of his own party are abandoning him. If the shutdown is to be avoided, Democrats in the House will need a bill to support. This is not good for John Boehner or any of the farther rightists.

But it’s the best thing to happen to the country in a while. Perhaps things are finally looking up.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives and on Twitter @rigrundfest

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Healthcare ObamaCare

ObamaCare Explained – Even a Two-Year Old Will Understand – Video

Okay. So apparently some of you have complained that it was too complicated to understand Obamacare. Maybe you’ve listened to the Republicans talk about the 2000+ pages of the law and the government red tape it entails. Well complain no more (and while you’re at it, switch off the Republican commentators spewing non factual talking points). Below is a video explaining all the intricacies of the law and how it will or will not affect you.

So simple, even your two-year old will understand.

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Health Care Healthcare women

Fox Expert – “Women Have The Breasts,” So They Should Pay More for Health care

A Fox News medical expert on Tuesday argued that President Barack Obama’s administration was wrong to force gender equality for health insurance rates because men “only have the prostate,” while women “have the breasts, they have the ovaries.”

“Look, it’s not bias, I’m not saying this as a man,” Fox News Medical A-Team contributor Dr. David Samadi told the hosts of Fox & Friends. “They go through a lot of preventive screenings, they give birth, they have the whole mammogram, the Pap smear. Guys, we don’t like to go to doctors, right? Seventy percent of health care decisions are made by women. In my own practice, I see it’s the women who bring the guys, who say, go get screened.”

“Yeah, but shouldn’t that earn us a discount?” Fox News host Gretchen Carlson interrupted. “Basic fact that we are responsible for getting our men to come to the doctor? And what about the fact that women, because they do all this preventative care, maybe their health issues end up costing less than men’s, who don’t go to the doctor until it’s a crisis and a big deal.”

“Yes, that’s a good point, except that, you know, women live longer,” Samadi asserted. “Women live until age 81 and men live only until 76. So, we’re using the health care system much less.”

“In this case, it’s not equal,” co-host Brian Kilmeade agreed. “You have a better time on Earth than we do, you’re here a lot more. You have six years of heaven, where you just have no men around.”

Carlson pointed out that women were blamed for maternity costs, “but men and women have babies together.”

“I agree with you that it’s a shared responsibility,” Samadi said. “But just the way the system are — in my field, we only have the prostate. Women have the breasts, they have the ovaries, they have the uterus. They get checked in every part.”

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Health Healthcare News

BAYER AND US GOVERNMENT KNOWINGLY GAVE HIV TO THOUSANDS OF CHILDREN

Everyone has heard of Bayer aspirin, it is a household name. Bayer AG also manufactures numerous other products, from pesticides to medicine for hemophiliacs called Factor 8.

In 1984 Bayer became aware that several batches of this Factor 8 contained HIV. They knew this because there was an outbreak of HIV among hemophiliac children, and this outbreak was traced back to Bayer.

Unable to sell their Factor 8 in the US, Bayer, with the FDA’s permission, (yes that’s right, the FDA allowed Bayer to potentially kill thousands) sold this HIV infected medicine to Argentina, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, and Singapore after February 1984, according to the documents obtained by the NY Times. The documents showed how Cutter Biological, a division of Bayer, shipped more than 100,000 vials of unheated concentrate, worth more than $4 million, after it began selling the safer product.

h/t – fitlife

Categories
Domestic Policies Healthcare News Politics Wisconsin Union Bashing

The State of the Unions

There’s been a lot of talk recently about workers. You know, the people who do the work in this country and who expect to be paid a livable wage while earning a little respect from employers and customers. The problem is that somewhere along the way, the conservative revolution has been glorifying the wealthy while bashing the people who actually create the wealth. I’m not saying anything new, but a spate of reports have caught my eye and I’m going to go out on a limb and say that if present trends continue, we could have another revolution, but this one will be messy.

First up are those pesky fast food workers, you know, the ones who serve the most meals in the country. They are holding one-day walkouts to protest the unlivable minimum wage, $7.25 an hour or about $30,000 per year if full time, that many of them can’t really live on. Add in the lack of health care benfits and you have the fixin’s of a major problem. Since many of the jobs being created these days are not full time, more people are earning a wage that doesn’t support even a minimal existence.

So what to do? In DC, the City Council voted to require Wal-mart to pay its employees at least $12.50 per hour in all of its city stores. Wal-mart was considering building six stores in DC, but now that they actually have to pay a livable wage, they’re threatening not to build three of them. This wage would also apply to other big box stores. Keep in mind that Wal-mart makes billions of dollars a year, as do other retailers such as Home Depot and Target, and they all pay their executives millions of dollars in salaries. But of course, they couldn’t lower some of those high paying jobs just a little bit to cover the hourly workers. That would send the wrong message. Like, we care about our employees.

And it’s not just in the United States. Amazon is currently finding that European governments (those darn socialists!) are pushing back against Amazon’s attitude towards unions and the right to organize. Amazon is going to lose this battle, just as Google lost the privacy battle over its mapping service that also scooped up private information. In Europe, they take privacy and union rights seriously and that’s complicating big American businesses who are used to allies on the right allowing companies to bust unions and pay people very little (while telling workers that they should be happy to just have a job).

I am certainly not advocating fighting in the streets, but over time, as people find it difficult, if not impossible, to earn a living wage, and politicians turn a blind eye to them, then what other recourse will people have? Social media and elections will help, but gerrymandered Congressional districts almost ensure that anti-worker politicians will continue to be reelected. The gap between wealthy and not wealthy in this country is as large as it’s ever been, and that, in part, is why the economy is not growing a robustly as it should. Let’s solve this problem before more people become desperate.

And yes, that’s a warning.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives and on Twitter @rigrundfest

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Domestic Policies Healthcare News Politics

The Endgame

Here’s what’s clear: the success of President Obama’s second term will come down to the next few months of 2013 and early 2014 in the form of immigration reform, the success of the health care law, and the rising economy. There probably will be no grand bargain on the debt (thank heavens), tax reform is a long way off, and the Republicans don’t believe enough in real science to have a discussion about energy and the environment. So we’ll have to be happy from small victories.

The health care law is the most important. The GOP has staked its past, present and future on the law’s failure, (and has threatened to shut down the government rather than accept it) but that’s probably not going to happen. Will there be problems? You bet, and the right wing will loudly report each and every example of someone who has to pay more, or accept coverage that they don’t need or want, or how doctors and hospitals are suffering, but in the end, the law will cover more people and result in a healthier society.

It might even result in more people finding less costly insurance through the exchanges than through their employers. That would be a tremendous coup because then businesses will be relieved of the pressure of covering their employees and people will not have to stay in terrible jobs simply for the benefits. I don’t see this happening quickly, but if the market (you remember the market. This is a law all about the market.) makes it less expensive to buy from the exchanges, then that’s what people will do. betting against health insurance is a losing proposition.

Immigration reform will probably not pass the House in its Senate version, but I do have a sneaking suspicion that a more comprehensive bill than the House purports to disdain will come out of the legislature. The Republicans can talk tough, but I do think that they see the electoral graffiti on the wall and understand that passing nothing will do them great harm. Perhaps the gerrymandered districts will allow them to keep the House, but that’s a flimsy wall to hide behind for a party that’s lost the popular vote in all but one national election since 1992.

The Republican Party is clueless, but it’s not, you know, clueless.

During the past presidential election cycle, I wrote repeatedly that the conservative wave was crashing and that the GOP would become dangerously radical. I hate to say that I was right, but we are now living in the extremist bubble and it’s not going to pop for another two or four years. During that time we can look forward to more attempts at voter suppression, curbs on reproductive rights and a call to eliminate or severely cut back on social programs such as food stamps, unemployment compensation and Medicare. If the Democrats can hold the line against the tide, they can slowly turn the country back in a less dangerous direction. Then we can truly address the problems we have in a pragmatic, sensible manner.

Until then, we’ll be playing defense.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives and on Twitter @rigrundfest

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Health Healthcare

Obesity is now Classified as a Disease

Obesity rates in the United States remain unacceptably high, and the epidemic persists in affecting Blacks and Hispanics disproportionately.

Obesity is now classified as a disease. This was the final decision at the annual meeting of the American Medical Association (AMA), the organization that represents doctors nationwide.

Despite their own Council on Science and Public Health releasing a report earlier in the meeting which indicated that obesity was not a disease process, the AMA House of Delegates took the bold step to vote in opposition to this report.

Taking away the blame

For persons who struggle with their weight and the physicians that care for them, this designation of obesity as a disease is seen as a victory. Currently, there are very few resources available to those with obesity as this entity has been viewed as self-induced. The current dogma suggests that obesity can be cured with proper diet and nutrition.

Many persons believe that if you are eating the right foods in the proper portion sizes and following a dedicated exercise regimen, you will never become obese. However, science has taught us that while this may be the case for some persons, there is not a “one size fits all” approach to obesity.

Studies have shown that hormones in the body such as leptin and ghrelin play a role in the weight status of an individual. These hormones are just a few of the hormones that regulate energy balance in the human body. Leptin, a hormone that is primarily produced by fat, circulates in the bloodstream and communicates with the brain whether or not the body has had enough to eat.

For persons that have a higher leptin level, they will tend to eat more as their body does not sense that there is enough food or energy on board. The leptin level varies from person to person.

Some studies suggest that blacks are more likely to have a higher leptin level than whites. One such study indicated that leptin levels were much higher in black women, even after controlling for factors such as weight. The authors suggested that further research into leptin is needed to investigate racial differences in obesity-related diseases.

h/t – thegrio

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