From Children’s Defense League:

From AOL News:

What Stark said:

This statement, at first, seemed over the top to me. But upon further thought, over the top is what we need right now. Because nicey nice isn’t working. So kudos to Congressman Stark. Immediately the Republicans start the old “you dishonor our forces” crap. I’m sure Congressman Stark supports our troops just as much as Bonehead or anyone else in congress does. Probably more.

What Bonehead said:

I got news Bonehead. He’s not my commander in chief. I’m not in the military, nor are you, nor is Congressman Stark. I got more news. If our military wants to fight for our freedoms…..they’re in the wrong country. They need to come home and fight here.

Keith Olbermann talks to Rachel Maddox last night regarding Stark’s words.

I’m disgusted……I’m going swimming.

Kids pull wagons full of petitions this week asking President Bush not to veto insurance legislation.

Bush followed though on his promise to veto legislation that would have doubled the number of children covered by health insurance. No surprise here. Among Bush’s concerns; it’s a step toward universal coverage. And we can’t have that!

from The New York Times

Unless President Bush backs away from his threat to veto a significant expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, it will be incumbent on all Republicans in the House who value health care over ideological warfare to summon the courage and vote to override him.

The Senate approved the legislation with enough votes to overcome a veto. It also passed the House with a hefty margin but fell 24 votes short of a veto-proof majority. Although it will be an uphill battle, it may still be possible to bring another two dozen House members to their senses.

Any Republicans courageous enough to defy the president on this issue will find themselves in good company. The measure, which would increase federal funding for the program by $35 billion over the next five years, is the product of intense bipartisan negotiations that included prominent Republicans in the Senate, led by Charles Grassley of Iowa and Orrin Hatch of Utah. It has been endorsed by governors from both parties and by a wide array of organizations, including the American Medical Association and the chief lobbying groups for private insurance plans and for senior citizens.

The president objects to the size of the proposed funding increase, which is seven times what he had proposed. But the costs would be fully covered by an increase in tobacco taxes, which would bring health benefits of its own by discouraging smoking. He complains that the bill would encourage middle-class children to enroll in a program that was originally designed to cover low-income youngsters. The main effort and primary impact, however, will still be on low-income children.

Read more »

By DEE-ANN DURBIN and TOM KRISHER
The Associated Press

DETROIT - The signs were ready and picket assignments handed out as thousands of United Auto Workers at General Motors Corp. factories nationwide prepared to walk off their jobs Monday morning if no contract deal was reached.

Negotiators worked all night and still were at the bargaining table early Monday as the deadline approached. The UAW set an 11 a.m. Eastern strike deadline Sunday night.

“We’re getting activated right now,” Mike O’Rourke, president of Local 1853 at a GM plant in Spring Hill, Tenn., said Monday morning.

If no agreement was reached, bargaining committee members would clear the plant of unionized workers at 11 a.m., and many would head to the picket lines, O’Rourke said.

“We’ll have pickets out there,” said Chris “Tiny” Sherwood, president of Local 652 in Lansing. “Some will come out of work and grab a sign with us.”

The UAW hasn’t called a nationwide strike during contract negotiations since 1976, when Ford Motor Co. plants were shut down. There were strikes at two GM plants during contract negotiations in 1996.

rread more HERE

by Jennifer Loven
The Associated Press

Bush: Kids’ health care will get vetoed

WASHINGTON - President Bush again called Democrats “irresponsible” on Saturday for pushing an expansion he opposes to a children’s health insurance program.

“Democrats in Congress have decided to pass a bill they know will be vetoed,” Bush said of the measure that draws significant bipartisan support, repeating in his weekly radio address an accusation he made earlier in the week. “Members of Congress are risking health coverage for poor children purely to make a political point.”

At issue is the Children’s Health Insurance Program, a state-federal program that subsidizes health coverage for low-income people, mostly children, in families that earn too much to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough to afford private coverage. It expires Sept. 30.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers announced a proposal Friday that would add $35 billion over five years to the program, adding 4 million people to the 6.6 million already participating. It would be financed by raising the federal cigarette tax by 61 cents to $1 per pack.

read more HERE

By KEVIN SACK
The New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO - Since contracting polio at age 2, Yan Ling Ho has lived with pain for most of her 52 years. After she immigrated here from Hong Kong last year, the soreness in her back and joints proved too debilitating for her to work.

That also meant she did not have health insurance. Not wanting to burden her daughter, who was already paying her living expenses, Ms. Ho delayed doctors- visits and battled her misery with over-the-counter medications.

“Sometimes the pain was so bad, I would just cry,” she said. “I didn-t know what else to do.”

Last month, unable to bear her discomfort any longer, Ms. Ho went to North East Medical Services, a nonprofit community clinic on the edge of Chinatown, and discovered to her delight that she qualified for a new program that offers free or subsidized health care to all 82,000 San Francisco adults without insurance.

The initiative, known as Healthy San Francisco, is the first effort by a locality to guarantee care to all of its uninsured, and it represents the latest attempt by state and local governments to patch a inadequate federal system.

It is financed mostly by the city, which is gambling that it can provide universal and sensibly managed care to the uninsured for about the amount being spent on their treatment now, often in emergency rooms.

After a two-month trial at two clinics in Chinatown, the program is scheduled to expand citywide to 20 more locations on Sept. 17.

read more HERE

By JUAN A. LOZANO
The Associated Press

HOUSTON - In a confrontation captured on videotape, a hospital security guard fired a stun gun to stop a defiant father from taking home his newborn, sending both man and child crashing to the floor. Now William Lewis says his baby girl suffers from head trauma because she was dropped.

“I’ve got to wonder what kind of moron would Tase an adult holding a baby,” said George Kirkham, a former police officer and criminologist at Florida State University. “It doesn’t take rocket science to realize the baby is going to fall.”

Lewis, 30, said the April 13 episode began after he and his wife felt mistreated by staff at the Woman’s Hospital of Texas and they decided to leave. Hospital employees told him doctors would not allow it, but Lewis picked up the baby and strode to a bank of elevators.

The elevators would not move because wristband sensors on each baby shut them off if anyone takes an infant without permission.

Lewis, who gave the video to The Associated Press, said his daughter landed on her head, but it cannot be seen on the video. He said the baby continues to suffer ill effects from the fall.

read more and see video HERE

from MEDIA MATTERS

On the August 7 edition of Fox News’ Hannity & Colmes, Sean Hannity answered Alan Colmes’ question, “Most people want national health care. Don’t they?” with a flat “No.” Colmes said he wanted guest Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster, to answer his question. Luntz did not answer whether the public wanted “national health care,” instead claiming that people want “control. What they want is the ability to determine their doctor, their hospital, their pharmaceutical plan, and their insurance company.” In fact, polling from May and June found that a majority of the public wants a national health insurance program. Moreover, one of those polls, conducted by a Democratic polling firm, found that a majority of likely voters favored universal health insurance even if it limited choices among health care providers.

Several polls taken in May and June found that a majority of respondents favored a government program to provide health insurance to all Americans:

* In a May 4-6 CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll, 64 percent of respondents said they “think the government should provide a national health insurance program for all Americans, even if this would require higher taxes.”

* In a May 31-June 5 poll conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International for the Kaiser Family Foundation, 53 percent of respondents said they wanted a presidential candidate to propose “a new health plan that would make a major effort to provide health insurance for all or nearly all of the uninsured,” even if it “would involve a substantial increase in spending,” in contrast with 21 percent in favor of a “new health plan that is more limited and would cover only some groups of the uninsured BUT would involve less new spending” and 17 percent in favor of “[k]eeping things basically as they are.”

read more and see video with Putz and Vanity HERE

For Mark Williams, it’s a simple business proposition: He can’t afford to sell medicine for less than what he paid for it.

But he says that’s what Washington expects him to do, come January.

“When I talk to other businesspeople and say that, they look at you cross-eyed, like, `No way,’” said Williams, the pharmacist-owner of the Medicine Shoppe in Kansas City, Kan., for the past 18 years. “But it’s going to happen.”

It’s a common warning from the nation’s community pharmacists, who have been watching their ranks dwindle in recent years. Now they’re looking for help from Congress, fearful that reductions in the amount the federal government reimburses them for Medicaid drugs will drive more of them out of business.

Yet much more than the livelihood of pharmacists is at stake.

If the changes proceed, critics warn, tens of thousands of Americans who depend on Medicaid could be denied life’saving drugs or forced to drive long distances to get them. Medicaid is the federal’state program that subsidizes health costs for 53 million low-income people and those with disabilities.

More at McClatchyDC

Giuliani’s plan for fixing America’s uninsured problem is to offer tax credits… to families, (with just a touch of “trickle down” thrown in for good measure). First off, what about the rest of us, Rudy? Should we continue keeping our fingers crossed and hope we don’t get sick? Secondly, would someone please tell me how offering tax credits to any group can’t be called “social”? Does Rudy believe tax dollars are pulled out of some magical elephant’s butt? The government operates on a finite amount of funds. If Rudy gives all these tax credits to “families”, then who the hell ultimately pays for it? I’ll tell you who. The rest of us - THE UNINSURED!

I’d like to note also that it appears Giuliani has his very own ‘Rove’ to help in his bid for king president. In his latest campaign, Rudy used two ‘S’ words… Socialized (as in socialized medicine) and Squeal (as in those no-good, squealing Democratic babies). A tactic bound to leave him looking like a squeaky-clean American, and his democratic opposition looking like “dirty, low-down commies”. Rudy should be told that trick only works on the stupidest of America’s stupid… and that Republicans have the votes of that twenty’something-percent already in the bag.

Giuliani offers health care plan

Calls for tax credits for private care rather than ’socialized medicine’

Republican presidential hopeful, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, poses for a photo during a surprise campaign stop at R.M. Heath Supermarket in Moultonborough, N.H., Monday.

ROCHESTER, N.H. - Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani on Tuesday offered a consumer-oriented solution to the nation’s health care woes that relies on giving individuals tax credits to purchase private insurance.

Critical to Giuliani’s plan is a $15,000 tax deduction for families to buy private health insurance, instead of getting insurance through employers. Any leftover funds could be rolled over year-to-year for medical expenses.
[...]

“Government cannot take care of you. You’ve got to take care of yourself,” he said. “As more of us do that, the cheaper it will become and the higher in quality it becomes.”
[...]

Giuliani used his appearance to continue criticizing the Democratic candidates, contending that their plans amount to socialized medicine.

“We’ve got to solve our health care problem with American principles, not the principles of socialism,” he said. “I know Democrats will say this is unfair, I know they’ll squeal… But I’m a realist. I face reality, which is: if you take more people and have government cover it, it’s called socialized medicine.”

Source: MSNBC.com

Also in this article:

This from someone that has free doctor visits for life, and probably has more money than God. Hey, I’m against frivolous lawsuits of any kind myself. All they do is joke up the system, thus slowing it down to a snails crawl. But I have a feeling that, in Rudy’s mind, just compensation for being maimed for life by a doctor would amount to free coffee for a month at the plaintiff’s closest Starbucks.

People, we REALLY need to run Lobbyists out of D.C.!

By Richard Wolf
USA TODAY

The Social Security Administration faces a record - and rapidly growing - backlog of appeals by people who claim they are too disabled to work. Through June, it had just over 745,000 cases pending, and the wait for a hearing averaged 17 months, also a record.

Claimants in some parts of the country must wait up to 31 months, according to the agency. “People have died waiting for a hearing,” Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue says.

The agency says the backlog doubled in six years and could reach 1 million by 2010.

FEELING PAIN: Delays can lead to personal havoc; wait times in your city

Astrue is trying to reduce the waits, but Congress has provided nearly $1 billion less than President Bush sought over the past six years. Field offices have lost more than 2,300 workers in less than two years, leaving the agency with its lowest staffing level since the early 1970s. The agency froze staffing levels for nine months last year after threatening furloughs.

read more HERE

United Press International

LONDON, July 27 (UPI) — Doctors are prescribing antibiotics for up to 80 percent of cases of sore throat, respiratory tract infections and sinusitis, found a British study.

Although prescriptions of antibiotics for respiratory tract infections declined during the 1990s, primary care physicians still continue to prescribe antibiotics for a high proportion of infections even if the causes of the symptoms are likely to be viral — which cannot be treated by antibiotics, according to the study published in a supplement to the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy.

This practice is hindering efforts to prevent the spread of antibiotic resistance, whereby disease-causing bacteria become unresponsive to the most commonly used drug treatments, according to Dr. Douglas Fleming, a member of the United Kingdom’s Specialist Advisory Committee on Antimicrobial Resistance.

The researchers searched for all consultations between 1998 and 2001 for conditions that might have resulted in an antibiotic prescription.

The most common causes of antibacterial prescribing identified in the study were upper respiratory tract infection, lower respiratory tract infection, sore throat, urinary tract infection, otitis media, conjunctivitis, vague skin infections, sinusitis, otitis externa and impetigo.

Another fine example of this administration’s incompetence, as it trickles down to Veteran’s Affairs Medical Center. Yet, NO ONE will be held accountable for this latest breach of personal security. - JS

WASHINGTON (AP) - More than a quarter of the computer equipment at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Washington could not be found by investigators, government auditors reported Tuesday.

Three other VA facilities showed slightly better results but still could not locate between 6% and 11% of their equipment, including computers, hard drives, monitors and other devices. In all, the four facilities audited by the Government Accountability Office reported more than 2,400 missing items originally worth $6.4 million.

Aside from decrying potentially wasted tax dollars, lawmakers said the report raises fresh questions about the security of the agency’s information, including sensitive medical records and Social Security numbers.

The audit follows a series of computer data security breaches at the agency that exposed millions of veterans and medical providers to possible identity theft.

“It has a very corrosive effect on trust in the VA in general,” said Rep. Tim Walz, D-Minn. “I think all of us up here are sensing the frustrations of our constituents and our veterans.”

For the audit, the GAO sampled equipment inventories at medical centers in Washington, San Diego, Indianapolis and at VA headquarters offices.

The auditors said much of the equipment that could be found was not where inventory records said it should be. Equipment often was moved or set aside for discard without documentation. As a result, it was difficult or impossible to determine what had happened to the missing equipment, the report said.

Equipment slated for disposal - some containing sensitive records - often sat unprotected in storage rooms for months or years, the report said.

“Essentially no one was accountable for IT equipment,” it said.

read more at USA TODAY