Tag "Health care"
After a threatening call from Trump admin, Lisa Murkowski’s got backup.
After a threatening call from Trump admin, Lisa Murkowski’s got backup..
The Alaska Republican seems relatively unfazed about the phone call from Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke regarding her healthcare vote.
In the wee hours of Friday morning, hours after news of the call broke, Murkowski once again voted against a Republican healthcare repeal bill.
“The president wants to get a healthcare bill.
He’s gonna make calls,” Murkowski told the Alaska Dispatch News.
“I don’t have heartburn with that at all.” Others, though, certainly do.
Democratic Representatives Frank Pallone and Raúl Grijalva called for independent investigations of the calls to Murkowski and Alaskan Senator Dan Sullivan.
Grijalva called it “political blackmail.” The conservation group Western Values Project, citing the “disturbing calls,” also filed a Freedom of Information Act request for records of calls between Zinke and Senators Murkowski, Sullivan, Dean Heller, John McCain, Susan Collins, and Mike Lee as well as any July DOI correspondence mentioning several of those senators and healthcare.
Although Democrats and conservationists condemned the threats, they may bring some good news for the planet.
As Rebecca Leber notes in Mother Jones, Trump’s “penchant for revenge could potentially make him do something good for the environment.” Murkowski and Sullivan both want to expand oil and gas drilling in Alaska, a priority they shared with the administration — at least until yesterday.
Trumpcare and climate change will have the same victims
“They’re not seeing what they’re doing — how it’s going to affect actual human lives,” says Mays.
If passed, Americans with chronic health issues will likely be at risk.
According to environmental health advocates and experts, the most pronounced impact would fall on the same shoulders that climate change disproportionately affects: communities of color and low-income people.
And fifteen million people would lose Medicaid coverage under the current Senate proposal.
Cutting Medicaid in particular, he says, is “silly.” “I don’t know of a single healthcare organization — whether it be physicians, nurses, or hospitals — that supports what Congress is trying to do,” Balmes explains.
However, it makes it possible for states to allow insurers to offer plans that don’t cover “essential health benefits” — which can include everything from hospitalization to prescription drugs, maternity care to emergency health services.
“With health goes wealth,” says Amy Kyle, an environmental health research scientist at University of California, Berkeley.
“Emergency room care is not cheap,” says Balmes.
“Having access to primary care is a major benefit both for the people who live in fence-line communities and for society as a whole.” Until senators return from recess on July 10, the fate of the Senate bill will likely remain murky.
McConnell is currently trying to cobble together a version that will win enough Republican support to pass a bill.
Trump’s Energy Week Looks Like His Health Care Bill: A Disaster for America
Trump’s Energy Week Looks Like His Health Care Bill: A Disaster for America.
It’s an unfortunate coincidence that this week is the Trump administration’s so-called “energy week” and at the same time, a disastrous health care bill is being pushed by Trump’s allies in the Senate.
The Trump administration’s health care policy, combined with the energy policies they will speak about this week, would wreak havoc on the lives of Americans for years to come.
The legislation would make it harder for low-income people to afford health insurance and access frontline service providers—the same Americans that shoulder the heaviest burden from industrial pollution, environmental disasters and the effects of climate change.
And this health care bill is not a just policy.
In what amounts to a staggering transfer of wealth, the GOP health care bill slashes public services and forces ordinary Americans to absorb the costs in higher premiums or going without health care, to make room for tax cuts for the nation’s richest households.
Coal has major health impacts along its entire lifecycle.
And in all of this, the Trump administration is pushing increased fossil fuel production that will exacerbate climate change across the board, leading to increased heat-related illnesses, dangerous storms and other health and safety impacts that will impact millions of Americans who, if the current health care bill passes, may no longer have the insurance they need to pay their bills.
In the case of energy, Trump’s team seeks to continue massive subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, including the increased leasing of public lands to the industry for pennies on the dollar.
In conjunction with “energy week,” Trump has started pushing the phrase “energy dominance” to describe his goals for energy policy in the U.S.
Google’s AI Eye Doctor Gets Ready to Go to Work in India
Google’s AI Eye Doctor Gets Ready to Go to Work in India.
Google is poised to begin a grand experiment in using machine learning to widen access to healthcare.
If it is successful, it could see the company help protect millions of people with diabetes from an eye disease that leads to blindness.
The software examines photos of a patient’s retina to spot tiny aneurisms indicating the early stages of a condition called diabetic retinopathy, which causes blindness if untreated.
The country is one of the many places around the world where a lack of ophthalmologists means many diabetics don’t get the recommended annual screening for diabetic retinopathy, said Lily Peng, a product manager with the Google Brain AI research group.
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In India, Google is working with the Aravind Eye Care System, a network of eye hospitals established in the late 1970s and credited with helping reduce the incidence of blindness caused by cataracts in the country.
Aravind helped Google develop its retinal screening system by contributing some of the images needed to train its image parsing algorithms.
Peng said today that Google has just finished a clinical study in India—meaning the technology was used in real patient care—with Aravind.
Work is now under way on getting the technology into routine use with patients, she said.
Haugh: Energy Lags Other Industries on Employee Consumer Health Education
Haugh: Energy Lags Other Industries on Employee Consumer Health Education.
U.S. energy employers should focus more resources toward educating its employees about how to be better healthcare consumers.
“I was surprised to see that 36 percent of all medical plans are now CDHPs (Consumer Directed Healthcare Plans) and 24 percent of all employees who are enrolled in medical plans in the energy industry are participating in CDHPs in 2017,” Haugh told Rigzone.
“In 2014, we only had 9 percent of employees participating in these types of healthcare plans.” CDHPs have higher deductibles and higher out-of-pocket maximums than PPOs (Preferred Provider Organization plans).
It allows employees to have “more skin in the game,” says Haugh.
“So based on the movement toward CDHPs, I’m a little surprised that there’s not a greater commitment by employers in the energy industry to educate employees more on how to be consumers,” he said.
“If workers were given the tools and resources to determine the course of action they need to take for their illnesses, they could save themselves some money as well as the company,” he said.
Compared to other industries in the U.S., the energy industry is behind when it comes to engaging, educating and providing services to employees on how to be better consumers, said Haugh.
“It’s a dynamic cultural shift that needs to take place where wellness is a part of safety,” said Haugh.
“It should support senior management who has that as a part of its company culture.”
MIT Should Do Better
MIT Should Do Better.
He has funded the campaign to discredit the overwhelming scientific evidence confirming global warming, backed the effort to replace the ACA with legislation that could deny affordable healthcare to over 25 million Americans, and has infected America’s democratic system with millions of dollars to elect candidates who support his political agenda and business interests.
MIT has taken money from David Koch to finance the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.
While this research could be important for humanity, should MIT advertise and glorify the Koch name?
And how ironic it is that MIT has an institute dedicated to cancer research named after the Koch family while the Koch brothers fund efforts to deny affordable healthcare to millions of Americans!
I well remember that MIT, my alma mater, took pride in its courageous faculty such as Noam Chomsky and Franco Modigliani, who spoke out against the Vietnam War, and Norbert Weiner who would not engage in or publish research that could land in irresponsible hands.
It was a democratic MIT that allowed protests on campus in the 1960s.
What has happened to the MIT that I was so proud of?
The United States and the world needs institutions such as MIT to stand up against those who use their financial power to undermine scientific findings and deny basic human rights, especially when humanity faces existential threats from global warming and millions of Americans are in need of affordable healthcare.
MIT should do its part and lead by example.
Stefanik wants more details on health care effort
Author: Matthew Hamilton / Source: Times Union Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-Essex County, will wait to see legislative language before she commits to
Poll: 50 Percent Have Little to No Confidence in GOP Health-Care Push
Author: Mark Murray / Source: NBC News Half of Americans say they have little to no confidence that Republican efforts to repeal
Health takes back seat in GOP’s health budget
Author: Brian Dickerson / Source: Detroit Free Press Our elected representatives in Lansing are hard at work on Michigan’s health budget. And
Health care talks see progress though path forward unclear
Author: Lauren Fox, Deirdre Walsh and MJ Lee / Source: CNN Trump calls for healthcare vote again 02:56 Washington (CNN)The President and
