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Sam Garchik - Mon 02 Jun 2008 10:10 AM CDT
atomburke - Fri 23 May 2008 03:49 PM CDT
salman - Fri 23 May 2008 06:28 AM CDT
megelso - Sun 11 May 2008 09:10 AM CDT
no4gman - Tue 29 Apr 2008 01:07 AM CDT
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Friday, November 26
Attempt to Stop Mandatory Mental Screening Fails
by
Linda Thieman
on Fri 26 Nov 2004 04:34 AM CST
 Attempt to Stop Mandatory Mental Screening Fails
WorldNetDaily.com
An
attempt by Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, to add language to the omnibus
spending bill in Congress to require parental consent for any
mental-health screening done to children with federal money has failed.
...Critics
of the mental-health screening plan say it is a thinly veiled attempt
by drug companies to provide a wider market for high-priced
antidepressants and antipsychotic medication, and puts government in
areas of Americans' lives where it does not belong.
(Click here to read the complete article.)
*For further information, click here.
Wednesday, November 24
Howard Dean: Global Suffering Demands Global Response
by
Trish Nelson
on Wed 24 Nov 2004 06:32 AM CST
 Howard Dean: Global Suffering Demands Global Response
SitNews.us
NOV 23, 2004
The Third World War
By Gov. Howard Dean, M.D.
The war in Afghanistan
was a victory for international morality, not only for taking away a
haven for terrorists, but also for ending the brutal suppression of the
rights of women that the Taliban had imposed.
Yet
before we congratulate ourselves too much, consider the tens of
thousands of women and men who have died as a result of a misguided
U.S. policy (the "gag rule") that denies family planning funds to any
organization that, in countries where abortion is legal,
provides abortion-related information or services (using private
funds), along with other reproductive health services. In some
countries, a third of the family planning clinics have closed as a
result of the withdrawal of U.S. funds.
Some
special interest groups are attempting to bring about a total ban on
U.S. funding for family planning services even by organizations
that abide by the gag rule by pumping out phony statistics and
misleading press releases implying that world population growth has
nearly stopped and is about to go into decline. Nothing could be
further from the truth. Net growth has slowed slightly, but the world's
population is still growing by 76 million per year - the equivalent of
adding a new U.S. population every four years.
The human suffering caused by these misguided policies and inadequate funding is staggering:
• 600,000 women and girls die worldwide every year from pregnancy and childbirth.
• 140,000 women bleed to death each year during childbirth.
•
75,000 women die each year trying to end their pregnancies. The
U.N. estimates that worldwide, 50,000 women and girls try to induce
abortions on themselves each day (18.3 million per year). Many of those
who survive face life-long, disabling pain.
•
Approximately 100,000 women die each year from infection, and
another 40,000 women die from the agony of prolonged labor. And those
are only the fatalities. UNICEF's statistics show that for every woman
who dies, 30 survive with gruesome injuries and disabilities. That's
more than 17 million women per year.
Add to
that the exhausting burden of repeated pregnancies and births, and you
have a global picture of suffering that demands global response.
(click here to read the entire story)
Saturday, November 6
Hey, Let's Outsource Health Care to India!
by
Linda Thieman
on Sat 06 Nov 2004 10:32 AM CST
 Hey, Let's Outsource Health Care to India!
by Susan Dentzer, Health Correspondent for "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" on PBS
The Washington Post
October 31, 2004
It's the Taj Mahal of Health Insurance Schemes
By Susan Dentzer
(Following
are excerpts from Susan Dentzer's response to a Washington Post news
story of an uninsured carpenter from Durham, N.C. who outsourced his
own heart surgery to India, at a cost of $10,000, including
transportation. He could not afford the $200,000 his surgery would have
cost in this country.)
Good
grief, why didn't someone think of this earlier! Forty-five million
Americans lack health insurance, and covering every one of them would
be costly. Why not outsource them all to India?
Opponents
will immediately say this idea is impractical. I say, don't be health
coverage girlie men! First, not all the uninsured would have to travel
to India to get health care. For example, when an uninsured person
first got the sniffles, he or she could pick up the phone and talk with
someone at a call center in, say, Bangalore. An Indian nurse making $10
a day would listen (sympathetically, of course) and offer advice.
For
those uninsured in need of hands-on medical care, here's an idea: What
if some of those failing U.S. airlines converted to running medical air
shuttle services between, say, New York and New Delhi, or Boston and
Bombay? Uncle Sam could hire them as private contractors, then pay them
to ferry the uninsured back and forth.
The more
I think about this idea, the better I like it. Just imagine all the
problems it would solve: No more overcrowded emergency rooms choked
with uninsured patients. No more worries about a nursing shortage; by
transferring our patients to India, we'd outsource nursing care there,
too. Hospitals and doctors here would be freed up to do what makes most
sense for them economically: treat well-insured patients at steep
prices - even to the point of giving them care that they probably don't
need! Perform the most lucrative elective surgeries on relatively
healthy patients, rather than giving high-cost care to the sickest loss
leaders!
We all
know the uninsured are a terrible problem, an embarrassment, really,
for such a rich country as ours. Every other major industrialized
nation has figured out how to provide health coverage to most, if not
all, of its citizens. At last, here's a twist on globalization that
could really work for everybody. So let's get started. Who says
Americans can't take care of their own?
Friday, November 5
ENVIRONMENT: The Bush Administration's Swift and Steady Sabotage
by
Linda Thieman
on Fri 05 Nov 2004 05:00 AM CST
 ENVIRONMENT: The Bush Administration's Swift and Steady Sabotage
American Progress
Last
week, the Washington Post reported thirty-four Superfund projects in 19
states will go unfunded this year. The Environmental Protection Agency
acknowledged that Superfund, which is the government's toxic waste
cleanup program, is now nearly bankrupt. Why are these crucial sites
being neglected? Carol Browner, the administrator of the EPA from
1993-2001, explains, "Because the fees that are used to pay for these
cleanups are no longer being collected." In a sop to the oil industry,
the Bush administration ended the tax on corporate polluters that
funded the program by refusing to ask Congress to reinstate the fee oil
and chemical companies paid that generated the money for cleanups. This
is part of an overall pattern of a swift and steady sabotage of
environmental safeguards.
THE ENVIRONMENT AT A GLANCE:
A new study by Knight Ridder, for example, found that the steady
improvement in air and water quality of the past three decades "has
stalled or gone in reverse in several areas" since January 2001.
Specifically, Superfund cleanups of toxic waste fell by 52 percent;
fish-consumption warnings for rivers doubled; the number of beach
closings rose 26 percent; civil citations issued to polluters fell 57
percent; asthma attacks increased by 6 percent; and there were
"record-low" additions to national parks, wilderness, wildlife refuges
and the endangered species list. (For a look at how Iowa stacks up with
health, safety and the environment, check out American Progress' new
interactive map.)
LETTING THE INMATES RUN THE ASYLUM:
The Washington Post reports that the chemical industry has given $2
million to the EPA for a study supposedly "exploring the impact of
pesticides and household chemicals on young children." (For those of
you keeping track, the American Chemistry Council is the same group
that fought against the finding that wood treated with arsenic
shouldn't be used in playground equipment.) The EPA already has a $572
million research budget; no word on why the agency needed to take money
from the chemical industry to conduct an independent study. The EPA
admits the money means "We will seek their opinions." Carol Henry, a
vice president at the American Chemistry Council, also acknowledges the
association has set up a board of hand-picked academics and industry
officials to be a "resource to investigators," adding, "We'll give them
our guidance." (The administration has a track record of allowing
corporations to call the regulatory shots; check out this comprehensive
report about the special interest takeover.)
DRILLING AWAY THE WILDERNESS:
George W. Bush has claimed, "I guess you'd say I'm a good steward of
the land." Not really. According to the Los Angeles Times,
environmentally damaging policies put in place by Secretary of the
Interior Gale Norton take away the safeguards which for decades have
protected potential wilderness areas. Even more egregious, the
administration claimed that the Department of the Interior "is barred –
forever – from identifying and protecting wild land the way it has for
nearly 30 years." In effect, "The administration is giving industry
virtual carte blanche to look for oil and gas wherever it wants outside
of existing parks and wilderness areas." The Washington Post points out
that Bush has "approved about 70 percent more drilling permits on
public lands during the first three years of his administration" than
the three preceding years. And, writes the New Yorker, "By stripping
away restrictions on the use of federal lands, often through
little-advertised rule changes, the Administration has potentially
opened up sixty million acres, an area larger than Indiana and Iowa
combined, to logging, mining, and oil exploration."
GLOBAL WARMING:
A top NASA climate expert yesterday joined a long line of scientists in
criticizing the Bush administration for its disregard of science. Dr.
James E. Hansen, who has twice briefed Vice President Dick Cheney's
task force on global warming, charged, "In my more than three decades
in government, I have never seen anything approaching the degree to
which information flow from scientists to the public has been screened
and controlled as it is now." Hansen also "said the administration
wants to hear only scientific results that 'fit predetermined,
inflexible positions.'" Specifically, he charged the White House edited
reports that outline the potential dangers of global warming to make
the problem appear less serious. "This process is in direct opposition
to the most fundamental precepts of science," he said. "This," he
warned, "is a recipe for environmental disaster."
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