My advice for young progressives is to start advocating and sharing your ideas with the world. I am tired of young progressives who say that what they do or say will not make a difference. Young people have proven after the last election that we are extremely influential and we will fight for our convictions. Therefore, it is now our duty to continue our politically active reputation that we won after the election of Barack Obama. It is your job, as a young progressive, to become an active citizen! Whether that is writing to your Congressmen, participating in a political organization, going to DC to protest, or running for office, it is time to become active!
Today, conservative think-tanks Conservatives for Patients’ Rights and FreedomWorks unveiled what they see as a promising response to President Obama’s plan for health care overhaul. The user-friendly initiative, still in its beginning stages, is an iPhone application intended to give Americans impersonal access to quality health care.
“Now, Americans won’t need comprehensive health care reform,” FreedomWorks Chairman and former House Majority Leader Dick Armey concluded after extensive meetings with rich, publicly insured conservative legislators.
“We realized that our ‘Don’t get sick!’ plan was a bit insensitive, so we partnered with Apple and WebMD to propose something for the common folk,” proudly stated Rick Scott, a Conservatives for Patients’ Rights spokesman.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce supports the effort. “It’s totally consistent with free-market ideology. Therefore, it’s totally frickin’ rad and gonna fix stuff good! Ipso facto!” the U.S. Chamber of Commerce praised in a press statement issued earlier today.
The free application, which is still in development, will ostensibly analyze a user’s symptoms to determine a narrow set of potential diseases. To cover the costs of providing the service, the application will bludgeon the user with a series of obnoxious advertisements.
“For example, if you have a sore throat, an ad for Tropicana orange juice will pop up. Fatigue? How about a Monster energy drink?” Apple CEO Steve Jobs explained in a press conference earlier today.
FreedomWorks and Conservatives for Patients’ Rights hope lawmakers will adopt their idea into their final heath care reform plan. The application, believed to placate the nation’s 50 million angry uninsured, is expected to drive hoards of people willing to settle for less to the polls in support of conservative, government-hating candidates in 2010. The hope: big gains for right-wingers, a group desperately trying to reconnect with people in a hip, new way.
“If there’s one thing people love, it’s the technological substitution of a basic human need. For example, TV for friends, Twitter for conversation, or an electric car for moral substance. After noticing this, it was really just a matter of time,” Armey explained.
FreedomWorks leaders say their plan will stop any effort for a government-run public option dead in its tracks. “Capitalism rules, socialism drools,” Armey bellowed.
The user is expected to already have an iPhone. “What kind of a loser doesn’t already have an iPhone?!” Armey asked incredulously.
Program developers expect the application to be available sometime before Christmas.
Good New York Timespiece on liberal frustrations “despite being in what, on the surface, is a commanding political position.”
“On the surface” are the key words there. There is a well-documented tendency in the lefty blog-o-sphere, among political radicals, true blue progressives etc. to blame the Democrats, and specifically Obama, for squandering their “commanding political position” on moderate and incremental reforms. There certainly are some Democrats who hinder the process, Blue Dogs and Senate moderates mostly. They aren’t left-wing, and most have never claimed to be. But without them there would be no commanding majority. Without them we wouldn’t even be able to make incremental reforms.
And that is the chief reason our political system is so broken.
Arch-conservative Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) proposes, in the pages of the Advocate no less, that GLBTQ communities come out in favor of market solutions to health care reform, particularly for the the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
It will be interesting to see how Coburn, who has railed against GLBTQ people for years, would explain this attempt at outreach to his more reactionary constituents. It'd be even more interesting to see him explain his 2004 quote to the Advocate:
The gay community has infiltrated the very centers of power in every area across this country, and they wield extreme power ... That agenda is the greatest threat to our freedom that we face today. Why do you think we see the rationalization for abortion and multiple sexual partners? That's a gay agenda.
The health care debate and general political climate compound absurdity upon absurdity.
First we're told that our health care is only worth the time and effort if the remedy has no negative impact on the budget. No deficits allowed. The deficit risk defines your chances for health and longevity.
As the health care debate roils on in Congress, Americans everywhere continue turning to the media for facts and opinion about the bill currently in the forefront of US politics. But can your favorite news outlets be trusted to talk to you straight about health care reform?
Not necessarily, it would seem.
Perusing the job postings at Double X, Slate's "by women" news site, one comes across an editorial assistant position described thusly: "The position is an open-ended contract position, full-time, without benefits." That's right, no benefits for a full-time Double X employee, despite the fact that in the past the site has published morethana few articles in support of progressive health care reforms.
Double X's parent company, The Washington Post Company, also owns Newsweek, which in July ran a cover story by Ted Kennedy that extolled the merits of health care for all. Kennedy died five weeks later.
Elsewhere, at the left-leaning WNYC, a public and NPR-member radio station broadcasting from Manhattan, a recent hire who wishes to remain anonymous has confirmed that her job, too, comes without health benefits.
Even Gawker, which makes no bones about its distaste for conservative values, is rumored to have weak--or totally nonexistent--health care coverage for its many employees.
The hypocrisy is palpable. Call it the cognitive dissonance of the modern American progressive media outlet. One the one hand, the goal should be to give information you believe in to a deserving public. On the other: How to stay in business in an awful economy if every employee is treated fairly and given great benefits?
On Thursday September 17, 2009, President Obama held a health care rally at the University of Maryland. He spoke directly to students and young people about the importance of health care reform and addressed the impact that our broken health care system is having on this generation.
Campus Progress was in attendance and gathering pledges of support for Obama's health care plan from hundreds of young people as they stood in line to hear the President speak.
Many of our network members and students spoke to reporters about their concerns with the health care system and their reasons for supporting reform.
Other than a handful of anti-abortion protestors and anti-reform hecklers that thought dressing up for halloween was a good way to somehow get their message across, the rally attendees were all in support of the President's call for reform and excited to have him addressing the issue as it pertains to young people.
The New York Times ran a piece yesterday on a report that wealthy people outlive poor ones.
In 1980-82, Dr. Singh said, people in the most affluent group could expect to live 2.8 years longer than people in the most deprived group (75.8 versus 73 years). By 1998-2000, the difference in life expectancy had increased to 4.5 years (79.2 versus 74.7 years), and it continues to grow, he said.
After 20 years, the lowest socioeconomic group lagged further behind the most affluent, Dr. Singh said, noting that “life expectancy was higher for the most affluent in 1980 than for the most deprived group in 2000.”
“If you look at the extremes in 2000,” Dr. Singh said, “men in the most deprived counties had 10 years’ shorter life expectancy than women in the most affluent counties (71.5 years versus 81.3 years).” The difference between poor black men and affluent white women was more than 14 years (66.9 years vs. 81.1 years).
This news isn't particularly shocking; just one more statistic to prove the gap between the haves and have-nots in our country. This does prove one thing: Our government should be more concerned with how to provide quality, affordable healthcare to the economically disadvantaged.
At the Health Care for All panel, there were leading health care wonks: Jacob Hacker, who has released his own health care reform plan, Maya Rockeymoore from Global Policy Solutions, and Ezra Klein from The American Prospect.
Hacker spent a great deal of time talking about the underinsured -- those that have health insurance but have high deductibles and will delay treatment if they're sick. He talked about how these underinsured, presumably a politically successful demographic, look "just like us." The underinsured make more than $50,000 a year, are white, employed full time, and are well educated.
Rockeymoore, a woman of color, spent a great deal of time talking about how disproportionate health care costs are. She noted as she began Global Policy Solutions, she became an employer and noted that health care costs for women were much higher than those for men. Additionally, she noted that whites have the lowest uninsured rate in the country. Blacks are much more dependent on government-provided health care than whites. "The health care system," Rockeymoore said, "is broken."
Klein (full disclosure: Ezra is a friend of mine), fully endorses Hacker's plan, but notes that Hacker's component of controlling costs will be a "tough sell" in Congress, especially the Senate where "you need 60 votes." Klein called methods of discriminating "crazy."
Hacker Rockeymoore, and Klein are all saying that health care, as it is today, is an injustice and it is, at it's core, about a kind of discrimination. Insurance companies, while going after a higher profit margin, are trying to minimize risks by saying no to those with pre-existing conditions, with lack of employment, with less of a social safety net. Usually, this means the poor, the non-white, and the poorly educated. These are the ones that are paying the greatest costs for our broken health care system.
The great discussion around universal health care has to do with mandates. If a health care plan doesn't include individual mandates, is it really universal? The Urban Institute says no. It seems that massive health care reform that doesn't include mandates could be disastrous, "[V]oluntary measures alone would leave large numbers of people uninsured."
This is something I've been thinking about for a long time. Whenever we are ready to implement massive universal health care reform, I just don't see it following through without individual mandates. Of course, we should make sure it is affordable, but I've just met too many young people that don't see the point in buying health insurance because they're young and healthy. These "young and healthy" people would serve as the foundation for making health care affordable for the rest of us. Meanwhile as a message to the proudly uninsured: You never know when you will suffer a terrible accident or sudden illness that will leave you devastated and massively in debt.
Photo by Flickr user Chandra Marsono used under a Creative Commons license.
I really don't want to sound insensitive about something I literally have no experience with, but is it really worth writing an entire news story about how the HPV vaccine shots hurt? I mean, I haven't gotten the shot, but I've gotten hepatitis shots somewhat recently, and sure, the injection site was sore for about a day and for a few hours I didn't have full movement in my arm, but it wasn't anything for the AP to get all excited about. Here's how the AP describes the standard reaction to the vaccine:
The pain is short-lived, girls say; many react with little more than a grimace. But some teens say it’s uncomfortable driving with or sleeping on the injected arm for up to a day after getting the shot.
It doesn't seem like girls are having a special reaction to this shot or that it is significantly different from other vaccines. Is it really any surprise that the media would focus on the painfulness of a shot that is given nearly exclusively to teenage and pre-adolescent girls? I think it's pretty irresponsible for the AP to breathlessly report a 180 person increase in vaccine shot related fainting among girls in the past year, especially when 100 percent of the new cases came from this new vaccine that was only mandated and prescribed this year.
PS: Amanda Marcotte has a good cultural/feminist analysis of the entire "shots hurt" story.
In the United States, approximately two-thirds of all high school seniors have engaged in sexual intercourse.1 According to the Department of Health and Human Services, approximately one in four persons will become infected with a sexually transmitted disease (STD) by the age of twenty-one.2 Additionally, the United States has one the highest rate of teenage pregnancy of any industrialized nation with about forty percent of woman becoming pregnant before the age of twenty.3 While there has been no conclusive evidence that abstinence-only based sexuality education programs either prevent the onset of intercourse or reduce the frequency of intercourse, the United States government currently finances three federal abstinence-until-marriage programs.4 By prohibiting State governments from promoting the use of contraceptives in their school sex education programs in order to receive Federal funding, the United States government is endangering the welfare of its citizens. According to a report entitled “School-Based Programs to Reduce Sexual Risk Behaviors” commissioned by the Division of Adolescent and School Health within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “Because incidence of pregnancy and STDs among teenagers is so great, these consequences involve not only the individuals involved and their families, but overall welfare dependency, unemployment, and medical costs in the United States.”5 In 2002, there were an estimated 750,000 pregnancies (450,000 live births) among 15-19 year old girls.6 With the proper use of a condom, chance of pregnancy can be reduced by 98%.7 Furthermore, sexually active teenagers have the greatest chance of becoming infected with an STD than any other age group.8 With about 9.1 million persons between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four being infected every year in the U.S., almost half of all new STD cases occur among young people.9 According to the CDC, at the end of 2003 somewhere between 1,039,000 and 1,850,000 people in the United States were living with HIV/AIDS.10 Of the approximately 40,000 new cases each year, about half occur with persons under twenty-five years old (usually infected through intercourse).11 With the use of a condom, the chance of infection from intercourse with a person with HIV-AIDS is reduced by 80 to 87%.12 In 1981, Congress passed the Adolescent Family Life Act (AFLA) “to promote chastity and self discipline” among adolescents by funding “family-centered” programs. The Act, sponsored largely by political conservatives, was used to almost exclusively fund religious and right wing groups that often maintain (without any significant scientific proof) that dissemination of safe sex practice information hastens the initiation of sexual activity and the frequency of intercourse among youths. Allegedly, many of these groups, including Sex Respect and Teen-Aid, relied on “scare-tactics” and misinformation about disease and pregnancy prevention in order to promote their abstinence-based initiatives. In 1983, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit against the program on the grounds that it violated the seperation of church and state as required by the U.S. Constitution. In 1993, the case between the challengers and the Department of Justice Counsel for the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) reached an agreement in which certain requirements must be met before the granting of funds through the AFLA to any sex education program. These stipulations include having AFLA grantees submit their curricula to the DHHS for “consideration of whether the curricula teach or promote religion and whether such materials are medically accurate.”13 A 2004 report from the office of Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) found that two-thirds of government-funded abstinence-only programs contain misleading or inaccurate information pertaining to abortion, contraception, genetics, and sexually transmitted infections. The report prompted the Government Accountability Office to investigate the claims, releasing a report in 2006 supporting Waxman’s findings.14 In 1996, Congress attached an additional abstinence-only Federal program to a welfare reform law. According to Title V of Section 510 of the Social Security Act, “Neither the State nor any of its sub-awardees may use Federal or matching funds under this award to promote the use of contraception.” All federally funded sex education programs must adhere to this requirement.15 Over $1.5 billion have been allocated to these federal and state programs since 1996. President Bush has requested $242 million for the funding of abstinence-only programs in his FY2008 budget. Since states are required to match federal funds for abstinence-only programs, some states are forced to divert money away from more comprehensive, medically accurate sex education programs. Eleven states have refused to accept such federal programs because of these terms.16 In 2007, Congress authorized an extensive year-long study by the Mathematica Policy Research, Inc found that students who participated in federal abstinence-only programs were just as likely to engage in pre-marital sex as those students who did not. They were also found to engage in sexual-risk behaviors at the same mean age and have the same approximate number of sex partners as students who did not participate in the federally funded programs. Another study focusing on individuals engaged in virginity pledge programs (promoting chastity until marriage) found that, although many did delay the onset of sexual activity, many of these youths (88%) still engaged in premarital sex but were less likely than non-pledgers to use contraceptives at first intercourse or to get tested for STDs.17 Relying on evaluations of twenty-three separate national surveys, the “School-Based Programs to Reduce Sexual Risk Behaviors” report by the CDC found that comprehensive school sex education programs covering topics such as abstinence, conception, pregnancy, STD, and HIV-AIDS did not lead to an increase in sexual activity. Programs designed to promote the use of contraceptives, such as condoms, also did not increase the onset or frequency of sexual activity. “Indeed, all of them either delayed the onset of intercourse or had no effect upon the initiation of intercourse. Furthermore, of the four studies that focused on program impact on the frequency of intercourse, none found significant increases in sexual activity, and one found a significant decrease among the relatively small proportion of youths who initiated intercourse after program implementation.”18 It is estimated that only 10% of school districts in the U.S. have comprehensive sexuality programs that promote not just abstinence but the use of contraceptives and safe sex practices.19 The CDC “School-Based” report stated that two studies it analyzed indicated that some comprehensive programs reduce the onset of sexual activity, limit the number of sexual partners, and increase the use of contraceptives. “Logically they should also reduce pregnancy, births, STD, and HIV rates.”20 It is the responsibility of the American government to ensure the general welfare of its citizens. When the federal government blatantly disregards rigorous scientific data in order to promote ineffective morality-based sexuality programs in state school systems, that government can be held accountable for actually harming the lives of its citizens.
Via Kaiser's Health 08 site. A new Associated Press poll shows that voter concerns about health care are "essentially tied" with concerns about Iraq among progressive voters in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. This could be that because things are "better" in Iraq lately, voters are starting to turn to issues like health care -- something that affects the day-to-day quality of life for people in America.
"Judge Nichols had sent letters this week to the homes of more than 800 households with children in public schools, strongly recommending that the children be immunized Saturday at the courthouse, where health department workers had set up tables to process paperwork and give shots, or that parents prove that the children had already been immunized in accordance with state law."
You know how conservatives like to blame uninsured illegal immigrants for the rising costs of health care? Well, the Economic Policy Institute released this graph that shows change in the share of the uninsured with and without post-2000 immigration increases.* Don't you love it when you can point to a graph to prove your point?
* This post originally said this was a change in overall health care spending.
Every couple of months, a presidential candidate comes up with a new proposal for how they plan to solve the health care crisis -- 46.5 million Americans are uninsured. The 18-34 age group makes up the largest percentage --39 percent -- of the total uninsured. So even if you're currently covered under some kind of student health care plan, that coverage will evaporate the day you graduate. That's why you should care about what the candidates say about health insurance.
The only problem is, health care plans are confusing. One way to get around this is to look at health08.org and look at their side-by-side comparison tool for what each candidate is proposing.
Yesterday, in a display of cynicism and extreme ideological rigidity, President Bush held a press conference to say that he will Veto a bill that expands the popular S-CHIP (State Children's Health Care Program) because it will lead us to the dreaded socialized medicine that all these crazy liberals are talking about. He added that the plan raises taxes (it doesn't, unless you smoke cigarrettes) and that it covers children whose parents make as much as $83,000 a year (good!). The program is set to expire on September 30th, so the need to reauthorize is urgent. The President says he supports a reauthorization, but does not want to expand the program. Under Bush's plan, there will still not be enough money to cover all of the children eligible of SCHIP coverage.
Americans shouldn't be fooled by Bush's despicable press conference yesterday. This is a bipartisan bill that passed with a veto proof majority in the Senate. Conservative stalwarts such as Orrin Hatch and Charles Grassley adamantly support SCHIP expansion. Yet, President Bush is so tied to his market based ideology that he will be denying millions of innocent American children access to Health Insurance. This bill is not socialized medicine, though some of us wish it was. It will simply add funding to a succesful, popular program, that allows states to invest in the health of its children. Expanding coverage to lower/middle income Americans is exactly the right thing to do. Millions of middle class Americans cannot afford health insurance because they are squeezed by declining wages and high energy prices. All of this while hedge fund managers are swimming in dollar bills. It is only sensible to take this moderate action, to make sure that 13 million children are no longer punished by their parents' income level.
Even worse, Bush tried to blame this on the Democrats in Congress, saying that he wants to extend the program, while his opponents are "playing politics." Give me a break. Expanding health insurance to children in a bipartisan, cost effective way is the furthest from playing politics that you can get. Playing politics would be if you threatened to veto a bill simply because you are so fundamentally against the idea of government health care that you can't think clearly. He should be ashamed of himself. As should any member of Congress who votes to uphold the President's veto.
At last! Employer-provided health insurance costs about $12,000 for the average family, of which about $3,000 is paid by the worker.
The Washington Post reported that although the rise in costs this year is the smallest since 1999, it still continues to outrun average wages and consumer prices.
The study cited in the article also showed that people are more nervous about the rising cost of health insurance than they are about not being able to pay their mortgage or losing their jobs. With costs rising like they are, main concerns might turn in to an "all of the above" sort of situation.
Please remember that Campus Progress' terms of use do not allow promoting or endorsing any particular political party or candidate for office. Posts or comments that do this will be deleted.
My advice for young progressives is to start advocating and sharing your ideas with the world. I am tired of young progressives who say that what they do or say will not make a difference. Young people have proven after the last election that we are extremely influential and we will fight for our convictions. Therefore, it is now our duty to continue our politically active reputation that we won after the election of Barack Obama. It is your job, as a young progressive, to become an active citizen! Whether that is writing to your Congressmen, participating in a political organization, going to DC to protest, or running for office, it is time to become active! 
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