after two plus months in NYC we are home for three nights and it feels so good!

My sister and angel, who lives in the UK, planned to stop by for several days and as the doc was stretching out visits it worked our well. We are taking advantage of this moment in time.

Health care costs in the UK and the world cannot even be discussed, the US is so far behind! WTF are we thinking and doing in that respect, being stupid and lacking compassion comes to mind, but that is a whole different topic!

Relapse sucks, having a second allogeneic transplant is not for the faint of heart. Google is not your friend, the word curative is dismissed when discussing a second allo transplant. Hoping to be in that in small percentage that moves forward, hope becomes a favorite word in the cancer arena. All that being said my husband has a strong will and is doing well. They did detect a certain mutation, FTL 3, which makes things more complicated as the cancer is more aggressive.

Choices are an insurance policy with a drug Nexavar, which is FDA approved, that could cause could low counts and liver problems. The other choice is to hope that a second transplant, from the same donor, will wipe out any leukemia cells.

Still on the roller coaster of life and wishing all a safe journey.

But what a long strange trip it has been!

Lifting the Blockade Isn’t a Hamas Demand — It’s a Human Right

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/29/palestinian_journalist_mohamed_omer_lifting_the


"...AARON MATÉ: Mohammed, we have 30 seconds. The main issue for Hamas is ending the blockade of Gaza. Can you talk about why this is such a critical issue for Gazans who are willing to sacrifice their lives for the siege to be lifted?

MOHAMMED OMER: Remember that this is not a demand by Hamas. This is also a demand by the international community. The U.N. have always called on Israel to lift the blockade, to open the borders and make life possible. To lift the blockade, it’s pretty easy. It’s a pretty easy equation here. Israel will have to open the border. If you remember, in January 2008, when Palestinians knocked down the wall between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, there was not one single rocket that was fired into Israel. If that indicates to you something, it shows that Palestinians just want open borders, and they want lifting the blockade, and they want to enjoy their life, like the rest of the neighbors. And Israel is not giving the chance for the Palestinians to basically get in and outside of the Gaza Strip.

I’m afraid that we are going to have more radical generations in the Gaza Strip, and I fear the future of Gaza, and I fear the future of the West Bank, and I fear the future of the region, if the international community is not acting now to end the blockade and to end the aggression in Gaza and to make sure that people are safe and secure. There is nowhere safe. There is nowhere secure. We are being bombed constantly by Israeli F-16s and tank shells. And the international community is waiting. We are—the way the international community is dealing with the Gazans is unfortunately as numbers. Now it’s 1,200 people who were killed. That’s only a number. But each one of these numbers is a story. Each one of them is a memory. Each one of them is a whole narrative that we need to understand. We need to see the people. I have been to the cemetery yesterday, where a mother was screaming over the body of her son. And why? Because Israel targeted one of the graveyards, and she was collecting the bones of her own son who was killed some years ago. Imagine, if that’s something that’s happening anywhere in the world, what the reaction of the international community would be. But because it’s in Gaza, there is no reaction..."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025060206#post12

"...I have read too many times here that we need to try to reach out to... Drumroll please...... WHITE MEN! Not our base, and our voters, but we need to reach out to old white males and not say stuff that might make them anxious. Why? Because the board is full of them and some of them think that the nation is not paying attention to their problems ..."

Then in response to another poster ...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5060383

"After you old guys are gone the rest of us will make up the new majority ..."

Since then there seems to have been lots of back peddling, but those were the original comments directed at old, white men of DU. Sad that these type of comments will now be acceptable on DU.

we have to move past the "my team" mentality for the people to have a chance.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7303961

And Jane Hamsher today ...

"...I went on Ed Shultz last night, and Fox deliberately today after yesterday’s hubub. It scares the bejesus out of the DC establishment of both parties to think that the left and right might align against the corporate interests that dominate the massive giveaways that keep happening no matter who’s in power.

Good. They should be scared."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=3480169&mesg_id=3480169

"Millions of Americans are deep in medical debt. Unfortunately, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will throw a lifeline to very few. According to the Congressional Budget Office, even after health reform is fully implemented in 2014, 30 million to 36 million people will remain uninsured. And tens of millions who do have insurance will have coverage that is too limited to ensure financial protection against an expensive illness. Many families will remain just one serious illness away from bankruptcy.

Medical Bankruptcies

In 2001, we began studying medical bankruptcy along with our colleagues Elizabeth Warren and Deborah Thorne. We directly surveyed debtors soon after they’d filed for personal bankruptcy. Back then, illness and medical bills contributed to about 50 percent of all personal bankruptcies and involved about 2.2 million debtors and their dependents.[1]

By 2007, when we repeated our study nationwide, medical bankruptcies had risen to 62 percent.[2] Significantly, most medical debtors were middle class. They had owned homes, had attended college, and had held responsible jobs. Seventy-eight percent even had health insurance, mostly private coverage — at least when they first got sick.

Why are so many middle-class, privately insured Americans swamped by medical costs? The reason is that private coverage has holes — unaffordable deductibles and copayments, as well as brief or nonexistent coverage of medical services like physical therapy. Moreover, since illness often reduces work-related income, families may experience a double whammy, as medical bills arrive just when the paychecks stop..."

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2013/june/medical-debt-a-curable-affliction-health-reform-won%E2%80%99t-fix

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2012/august/its-time-for-single-payer

Still relevant IMHO ...

"Regardless of whether you are elated or disappointed with June’s historic Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, it is certainly no panacea for the problems facing U.S. health care.

So it’s clear we need to do the right thing: the creation of a national, universal, publicly funded health care system, free of the corrupting power of profit-oriented health insurance, and at the same time capable of passing constitutional muster. In short, the right thing is an expanded and improved Medicare-for-All program, otherwise known as single-payer."

Don’t be so shocked. For the last 30 years, we have tried all the alternatives, and none of them have worked. We have experimented with HMOs, PPOs, high-deductible health plans, health savings accounts, pay-for-performance, capitation, and disease management. These ideas have been promoted in various iterations, often with great fanfare, by public and private payers alike, yet none of them have shown long-term success at bending the cost curve. And the promise of the latest reforms du jour, such as Accountable Care Organizations and Patient-Centered Medical Homes, is speculative at best.

American health care is unique among the world’s democracies in that it was never planned in terms of enabling legislation or explicit constitutional authority. As others have stated, our employer-based insurance system, which now covers about 160 million Americans, was an accident of history. Its lineage can be traced to FDR’s wage and price control policies during World War II, where employers were permitted to offer workers health insurance in lieu of higher wages as a job inducement..."

Show me where we tried to institute the Obama HC plan for negotiating Medicare prices, I have no problem losing, but I need to see where there was an attempt instead of a back room deal.



Can you point to the speeches after the inauguration where an attempt to sell this part of the HC plan was made to the people? That Medicare should be allowed to negotiate prices like the VA does, it was in the Obama/Biden HC plan before the election.

Show me the attempts and speeches after the election instead of just blaming the other side.

Could we save another 220 billion in addition to the 80 billion using VA prices...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=8667526&mesg_id=8667647

From a speech just before the election - "Enough is Enough..."
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=7735693&mesg_id=7736086

"And we are tired of watching as year after year, candidates offer up detailed health care plans with great fanfare and promise only to see them crushed under the weight of Washington politics and drug and insurance lobbying once the campaign is over.

That is not who we are, that is not who we have to be, enough is enough, it time for us to change."

Newport News - October 2008

for a pre-existing condition? I never knew this extended to disability insurance under the ACA and we're going through this now.

"...But Obama’s mother had full coverage for the disease — her battle was to get disability insurance payments for her out-of-pocket expenses — according to “A Singular Woman,” a biography of Dunham by Janny Scott, who covered the campaign as a reporter for the New York Times."

via email from AAMDS.

"It’s likely you have now heard that a well-known television personality – Robin Roberts, anchor of Good Morning America – has publicly announced that she has been diagnosed with MDS. The news is on TV, in the papers, Web sites, blogs, and coursing through social media.

...At AAMDISIF, we know that even though the diagnosis of a well-known person can call extra attention to a rare disease, after a while the story subsides and fades from prominence. We encourage you to take this current opportunity to bring up the story to others, in person and online – and be ready to refer them to www.AAMDS.org..."

http://www.aamds.org/mds-news

"What Can You Do?

•Donate blood
•Donate platelets
•Sign up for the bone marrow registry
•More ways to get involved"

http://www.aamds.org/about/MDS/treatment/transplantation

A little over two years ago my husband was diagnosed with MDS which rapidly progressed to AML and he had a stem cell transplant in October of 2010.

Rep. Matsui, whose husband died of complications from MDS, has been lobbying for increased research funding.
https://www.aamds.org/sites/default/files/MatsuiElectronicDearColleague.pdf

"Dear Colleague:

Please join me in sending the attached letter to the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense in support of additional programmatic funding for research into bone marrow failure disorders. Since 2008, the Bone Marrow Failure Disease Research Program at the Department of Defense has funded cutting edge research into myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS), aplastic anemia, and paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (PNH), all of which occur when stem cells inside the bone marrow stop making enough healthy blood cells. In the past five fiscal years, Congress has appropriated nearly $17 million for research into bone marrow failure diseases. This research is increasingly important to the U.S. Armed Services, as recent data indicate that service personnel who were deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan may have been exposed to environmental factors associated with bone marrow failure diseases.

Bone marrow failure diseases can strike any person of any age, of any gender and any race, in any neighborhood, anywhere in the world. They are life-threatening diseases that currently affect tens of thousands of men, women, and children every year. By studying Armed Forces personnel who have been diagnosed with these conditions, we can gain a much better understanding not only of what causes bone marrow failure diseases, but also of how to protect our troops - and the general public - in the future.

We are committed to finding cures for these tragic illnesses, and we request your support to ensure that the fiscal year 2013 Defense Department appropriations bill provides a continuation of funding for the Bone Marrow Failure Disease Research Program..."