February 14, 2015

If You Were a Repug...Your greatest fear is Clinton/Castro and 16 More Years

If you were a Republican (which some of us may well be, since we do not really know who is posting), one of your worst nightmares would be the thought of 16 more years of a Democrat controlling the DOJ, Health and Human Services, the military and especially the power of the veto to block stupid and harmful legislation.

So, if you were a Republican (which some of us almost certainly are, since meddling in the opposition's primary is something that has been done since the end of time--Pat Buchanan did not make it up in 1972, he just raised it to a high and illegal art) you would be absolutely terrified at the thought of the Clintons back in the White House, since Bill Clinton is incredibly popular, his wife is almost as popular and they proved their ability to weather any GOP shit-storm and emerge even stronger than before. And Julian Castro is smart, handsome, a great speaker and can draw on the support of the fastest growing demographic in the country.

If you were a Republican (and yes, I realize that at Some Other Sites even suggesting that some of us might not be what we claim to be would get me tombstoned--that is because Some Other Sites exists in a fantasy land where no one ever ever ever lied or was paid to post and if they are being paid to post---well that just generates more business for Some Other Sites) you would want to "crib death" (to quote one of Hillary's arch enemies in the MSM) the Clinton/Castro ticket. Because we all know (in our hearts) that it is a winning ticket. Absolutely fail proof. Hillary has been attacked by the Right Wing more than any other woman since Eleanor Roosevelt and she is still strong. Castro comes from a political family, so I seriously doubt there will be any skeletons in his closet--his political mom has been grooming him since kindergarten.

If you were a Republican (no, I am not talking to YOU. We all know that YOU are a good Democrat. I am talking to someone else) you would be careful this time around not to raise objections to Clinton that involve the use of the following words or phrases: Whitewater, Vince Foster, Cookiegate, Monica, and , of coure, witch, bitch, slut, cunt. Because those phrases are a dead give away that the hatred is coming from the right which hates Hillary first, last and in between for being a Strong Woman.

If you were a Republican (and you hated women, and hated Hillary Clinton with a special fury) you would pretend to be an ardent feminist and therefore you would say "I don't trust Clinton. I trust____" (Insert the name of another woman, preferably one who has indicated that she will not run). Which would have been a bit like saying back in 2012 "I just don't like Obama. Now if ____" (Insert the name of any African-American, for instance one who owns a pizza franchise) I would vote for ____" was a sneaky way of disguising the fact that you would rather die than see a Black man remain president of the United States.

Yes, I can hear the general outrage. "But I love____" (Insert the name of any woman who is not running). Yes, I know you love___" (Insert the name of any woman who is not running). I am not posting this about YOU. Your love is as pure as the driven snow. But that other person, who also professes to LOVE _____(insert the name of any woman who is not running)---well, maybe that person is not what he or she appears to be.

Luckily ____ (Insert the name of any woman who is not running) is probably too smart to have her head turned by all this clamor and acclaim from anonymous folks who swear, absolutely swear on a stack of Bibles cross their hearts and hope to die that they will donate a gazillion dollars to her campaign and volunteer for her 24-7 and vote for her six or seven times in the general and force all their neighbors to do the same. ____(Insert the name of any woman who is not running) knows what happened to poor Old McGovern. He was courted by the press and by the GOP--and as soon as he was the party nominee, the MSM went into overdrive trashing that war hero's rep. _____(Insert the name of any woman who is not running) does not really want to step into that trap which is a bit like the Tar Baby with some sharpened wooden spikes and dog shit thrown in for good measure. _____(Insert the name of any woman not running) knows that there is one woman who can take whatever the GOP and MSM dishes out and throw it back. With a smile.

Clinton/Castro 2016: Sixteen more years of Democratic control of the White House. It's what keeps the GOP awake at night.

#CLINTON-CASTRO%202016

February 11, 2015

Hillary, FDR, LBJ, McGovern, Watergate and Yellow Dogs

Hi. No links, just my two cents worth.

First, a disclosure. I supported Elizabeth and John Edwards in 2008, so I watched the Obama/Clinton wars with amusement rather than true interest. Either candidate was fine by me, and as a yellow dog democrat I was prepared to vote for my party's nominee.

Now, for some history. The modern Democratic Party got its start during the flooding of the Mississippi in the 1920s, when the Republicans lost the support of African-Americans by siding with landowners and whites who enslaved Blacks to work on the levees.

FDR then courted Blacks--and labor and all the other groups that make up our modern Democratic Party--during his New Deal, when it was Us against the Banksters. LBJ, a veteran of the New Deal cemented the modern party by working like a yellow dog himself to pass the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act and Medicare.

That is my Democratic Party, the one of jobs for all, equal opportunity for all, the one that believes that the key to economic success is a strong middle class with strong purchasing power and a voice at the table, the one that believes that no child should live in poverty and no one should die of a treatable disease for lack of health insurance.

Hillary did not have to become a Democrat. With her background, she could just as easily have become a Republican. However, she worked on the McGovern campaign in 1972. She worked to prosecute Dick Nixon on the Watergate committee. She supported her (Democratic) husband Bill when he was governor and president. She was a (Democratic) senator for that blue-est of blue states, New York, and she very graciously supported her nominee rival in 2008 in the general election and was his Secretary of State.

Now, I am going to go back in time a little bit. To 1980. Had Ted Kennedy acted like Hillary in 2008, would the outcome of the general have been different? Let's go back further. 1968. Had Humphry's rivals gotten behind him, would we have had the Killing Fields in Cambodia?

You call it "inevitability". I call it Solidarity. Looking forward to the primary. It is how we show the world how Democrats do things---by discussion and consensus. But I am not about to stay home in November 2016 as a "protest" and I am never, ever going to dismiss a candidate for being too popular and too electable.

February 9, 2015

No Matter How Much Money You Make, You and the Poor Have Something in Common

Yes, you, the one with platinum plated health insurance through your job. You, the one with all those millions of dollars in the bank and the sound real estate investments (property is always a good bet). You, the socially responsible one who runs the organic farm and makes pretty good money doing it--enough that you could afford "silver" insurance through the ACA. You, the retired teacher with Medicare and a supplemental.

It does not matter if you have health insurance. If there is no place nearby where you can use that insurance in an emergency, you could die.

Just like Portia Gibbs in North Carolina. Four days before her heart attack, the local hospital closed, a victim of lack of funding. So, when Ms Gibbs had her heart attack, it took a Medevac helicopter more than an hour to arrive. She died just as the helicopter was about to lift off. Would she have survived had there been a closer ER?

“Before, she would have been given nitroglycerin, put in the back of an ambulance and been to a hospital in about 25 minutes,” said Belhaven Mayor Adam O’Neal. “In that hour that she lived, she would have received 35 minutes of emergency room care, and she very well could have survived.”

http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/07/28/4036141_rural-hospital-closures-strand.html?rh=1

The pace of rural hospital closures has accelerated in recent years. And while many factors are to blame, one of the biggest is the decision by some states to reject the Medicaid expansion. Take a look at the map of closures in this article and you will see the pattern.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/11/12/rural-hospital-closings-federal-reimbursement-medicaid-aca/18532471/

Texas and the Deep South have been especially hard hit. Texas and most of the Deep South rejected the Medicaid expansion. They claimed it would cost taxpayers too much money. They did not mention that rejecting the expansion might cost taxpayers their lives.

When hospitals close, people die. Not just one or two people here or there. Here is a study from California about the effects of ER closures.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/05/health/emergency-room-closures/index.html

They found that 4 million of those admissions were to hospitals located near another emergency department that had closed. Patients at the affected hospitals were more likely than patients at unaffected hospitals to be black, Hispanic, female and under the age of 65; they were also more likely to be uninsured or on Medicaid, and to be sicker overall.

Even after adjusting for the different patient and hospital characteristics, however, the researchers found that among inpatients at hospitals affected by an emergency room closure, 5% were more likely to die than patients at other hospitals. The increase in the risk of death for affected adults under 65 was even greater: their risk of dying in the hospital increased by 10% compared with similar patients who were not affected by a closure.

And heart attack, stroke and sepsis patients faced a 15% greater risk of dying in the hospital if there had been a closure nearby, when compared with similar patients at unaffected hospitals.

Keep in mind that the people 15% more likely to die made it to another hospital. If you can not get to the closest hospital because your disease will kill you in 60 minutes after presentation---like, say for instance, a heart attack, the number one killer in the country--- and the closest ER is 90 minutes away, your chance of death is 100%.

Do you hear that? The silence? That is how your heart monitor would sound if they bothered to hook you up to one after you arrived at the closest rural ER by ambulance thirty minutes after dying. But they won't bother. You'll be pronounced DOA, and once you are dead, you will not be able to raise your voice and demand that your state officials do something to improve your access to care. You will be as voiceless as all the poor folks that no one seems to notice got left out of so called "universal healthcare."

So, use your voice while you still have one.

February 8, 2015

The War for Universal Healthcare Has Only Just Begun

Here are how I see the stakes in the next election. We, in Texas---and in a lot of other so called "Red" states--are still suffering from a massive uninsured problem. Take kids. We are supposed to have universal health coverage for kids, right? Not true. A state can offer Medicaid and SCHIP, but if it throws up barriers and makes the process all but impossible to navigate and tells inquiring parents "You don't qualify" over the phone when they really do, that state will not have universal coverage of kids. Texas is one of the states with shamefully high rates of qualified kids who lack coverage. Other red states are the same.

Then there are the millions who would have qualified for the Medicaid expansion---had the state not decided to "opt out"---an innocuous sounding little phrase which really means "let poor folks die and let the rural hospitals that serve them go out of business so that no one living in the country can get timely emergency care while residents of big cities continue to pay high taxes to fund healthcare for the poor but who cares about residents of Texas big cities they are all Democrats anyway?" Yes, that is what "opt out" really means---death to the rural poor and death to everyone who lives in the country who has an emergency---like the little girl who choked on a grape and was rushed to the local ER only to find that the local (rural) ER had closed so she died. What? You thought the GOP was the party of family values and lower taxes? Silly rabbit. In urban areas in red states, we are being taxed twice, once to pay for health care for our local uninsured and once to pay for everyone else's health care. Meaning it is not about the money. Red states love them some free federal money. It's about the possibility that some brown or black person might get a timely coronary stent and survive a heart attack. And as for the children---the GOP is only about family values if it is their own children. If the village plans to take care of someone else's kids, then the village is a commie-pinko plot that must go.

Speaking of the village, we know who believes in the power of villages. We know who is not afraid to stand up to tyrants abroad and capitalists at home when women and children are being victimized. That's right. Mom. Our next president needs to have a healthy dose of "mom" because the kids in this country need someone to raise them out of poverty and women need someone to make pay parity more than just a great sounding law. And no, you do not have to be a woman to possess inner "mom." You just have to believe in your heart that a village or state or country is only as healthy as its most unfortunate citizens. What does the Evil-anti-mom believe? That having a certain level of unemployment, a certain level of childhood poverty and a certain level of pay disparity is important in keeping the rich rich.

Oh, I almost forgot the folks who have ACA but can not afford to use it. That must be because everyone else has forgotten them, too. You remember that lifetime cap that was supposed to keep people from spiraling into endless debt because of a catastrophic illness? Guess what happens if you stick that cap up front as a deductible? People can no longer afford to use their ACA except in an emergency. And you might be surprised at how many people think that angina--chest pain---and mini strokes are not true emergencies. People with a $5000 deductible (and yes, there really are people out there with plans like that, even though some folks claim that they exist only in the same imaginary realm as the Easter Bunny) will refuse any and all testing/specialty evaluation and treatment if it costs more than a Band-Aid and a $4 prescription as long as they are capable of dragging themselves to work. By the time they can no longer drag themselves to work, it is often too late. ACA makes sure that the hospital gets paid for their end of life care, but it does not save lives. Well, I guess it does, in a way. It keeps the hospital open so that people who have better insurance will be able to use it for their own preventive care. But it does not cut down that pesky ER wait that can stretch to hours in a typical urban hospital, because so many uninsured and under-insured people still have to use the ER as their primary care doctor, since it is the only doc in town that does not demand payment at the time of service.

The ACA is failing folks with so called "expensive" diseases like HIV, too, by forcing them to pay more for medications they need in order to survive.

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2015-01-health-drug-coverage-discriminate.html

"Eliminating discrimination on the basis of preexisting conditions is one of the central features of the Affordable Care Act (ACA)," said Doug Jacobs, MD/MPH candidate at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and lead author of the study. "However, the use of formularies to increase costs and dissuade those with preexisting conditions such as HIV from enrolling in the plan threatens to at least partially undermine this goal of the ACA."

I saw something really scary for the first time last week. A woman with HIV who used to be on medications but has been off for a year, because she could not afford to see a doctor or buy her meds under her plan and now she is extremely ill. When is the last time that happened? I can't remember. I hope I never ever see it again. Please make sure that it never happens again. Please make giving ALL folks insurance that they can use a priority in the next election.