The People's Record

The sickening cost of health care: Why Americans pay the highest health care costs in the world
March 18, 2013

Health care costs in the United States continue to skyrocket, with dire consequences ranging from personal bankruptcies to the growing national debt. Yet the even more outrageous fact is that these inflated costs—the highest in the world—produce health outcomes that trail countries which spend far less.

In a Time magazine special report titled “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,” published in February, investigative journalist Steven Brill pulls back the curtain to expose the price-gouging and profiteering that explains why health care in the U.S. costs so much.

Brill’s article details the devastating impact that health care costs—which are behind six in 10 personal bankruptcies—have on working-class people. As Time managing editor Richard Stengel pointed out, Brill “inverts the standard question of who should pay for health care and asks instead: Why are we paying so much?”

Barack Obama used the urgency of this crisis to press Congress to pass his health care law. But the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act does little to address rising health care costs.

On the contrary, it will almost certainly make things worse by requiring the uninsured to get coverage from for-profit companies and providing subsidies from taxpayer revenues to pay the premiums. Rather than challenging industry giants, Brill writes, “Obamacare enriches them. That, of course, is why the bill was able to get through Congress.”

Meanwhile, outsized health care costs—which continue to rise faster than inflation—are a central reason for big government deficits, which the very same politicians then use as a pretext to push for cuts in “entitlement” programs like Social Security and Medicare, by reducing payments for the former and raising the eligibility age for the latter.

However, as Brill points out, Medicare, the government’s universal health care system for the elderly, is one of the few bright spots in the current system. Whatever its flaws, caused by cuts and restrictions over the past few decades, it is still far more efficient than private insurance, it offers universal coverage while even Obama’s health care law will leave tens of millions of people uninsured—and it has mechanisms to keep costs down.

If Medicare, instead of being cut, was expanded to cover everyone and to provide even better care than it does now, it would save about $380 billion per year by cutting down on administrative waste, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine—and on top of that, it would actually improve health care.

Over ten years, that’s just about the same amount—$4 trillion—that Barack Obama’s deficit reduction commission proposes to save, with massive cuts to entitlement programs that dwarf proposed increases in taxes.

It’s true that government spending on Medicare has been rising much faster than inflation and is a major cause of government deficits. Medicare spending, after adjusting for inflation, increased fivefold from $110.2 billion in 1990 to $554.3 billion in 2011,according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). And that was after it nearly tripled in 10 years from $37.4 billion in 1980.

In fact, according to Congressional Budget Office figures, protected increases in health care costs are behind most of the expected growth in government debt.

While a significant part of this increase is the result of a growing and aging population, much of the increase in Medicare spending is being driven by increased health care costs overall. The CMS reports that total per capita health care spending in the U.S., adjusted for inflation, more than tripled from $2,854 in 1990 to $8,680 in 2011. Health care accounts for nearly one-fifth of the GDP in the U.S..

Other advanced industrial countries such as Germany have a significantly higher percentage of their populations over age 65. Yet they spend much less on health care than the U.S.—and achieve better outcomes.

In “Bitter Pill,” Brill examines hospital bills to expose how extreme price inflation generates massive hospital industry profits, while driving health care costs sky-high—a price that is ultimately paid by consumers.

According to Brill, hospitals charge patients different amounts for the same equipment and procedures, depending on what kind of insurance they have. While Medicare and Medicaid pay a set amount for each item, various insurers negotiate the rates they pay. Many insurers negotiate a discount off the “chargemaster”—a hospital’s list of charges for everything from aspirin and gauze to major procedures and cancer drugs that cost tens of thousands of dollars each.

Because hospitals use the chargemaster as a starting point in negotiations, these prices are much higher than the items actually cost. To cite one example, Brill points out a hospital that charges $24 for a niacin pill which costs about 5 cents in an ordinary pharmacy: a markup of 47,900 percent.

Hospitals also gouge patients by charging multiple times for the same procedure. In the article, Brill quotes Patricia Palmer, who is paid to negotiate with hospitals on behalf of patients to lower exorbitant bills:

First, they charge more than $2,000 a day for the ICU, because it’s an ICU and it has all this special equipment and personnel. Then they charge $1,000 for some kit used in the ICU to give someone a transfusion or oxygen…And then they charge $50 or $100 for each tool or bandage or whatever that there is in the kit. That’s triple billing.

For the un- or underinsured, tragic illnesses can be a financial catastrophe. The terminally ill can even be forced into an impossible choice: whether to extend their lives and leave their families with a crippling debt, or give up time with their families to avoid burdening them financially.

This was the choice faced by Steven D., who Brill profiles in his article. After being diagnosed with terminal cancer, Steven’s wife Alice, who earns about $40,000 a year, racked up over $900,000 in debt to pay for treatment to keep her husband alive for an extra 11 months. Although Alice was able to get Medi-Cal (Medicaid) coverage and hired an advocate to negotiate with the hospital, she still ended up owing $142,000, more than three times her yearly salary. Not only did she have to cope with losing her husband, but she was left financially crippled as well.

When pressed by Brill, hospital administrators weren’t able to give a plausible explanation for the chargemaster rates, except to say that they are only a starting point and patients aren’t actually expected to pay them. The grim irony is that it is the uninsured patients—those among the least likely to be able to afford it—who are charged full chargemaster prices. And many don’t know negotiation is an option.

Full article

Here are just a few of the largest budget cuts from the sequester that went into effect on March 1. $85 billion will be cut in 2013 with $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction over ten years.

Health care

• $20 million cut from the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Programs 
• $10 million cut from the World Trade Center Health Program Fund 
• $168 million cut from Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration 
• $75 million cut from the Aging and Disability Services Programs

Housing

• $199 million cut from public housing 
• $96 million cut from Homeless Assistance Grants 
• $17 million cut from Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS 
• $19 million cut from Housing for the Elderly 
• $175 million cut from Low Income Home Energy Assistance

Disaster and Emergency

• $928 million cut from FEMA’s disaster relief money 
• $6 million cut from Emergency Food and Shelter
• $70 million cut from the Agricultural Disaster Relief Fund at USDA
• $61 million cut from the Hazardous Substance Superfund at EPA
• $125 million cut from the Wildland Fire Management
• $53 million cut from Salaries and Expenses at the Food Safety and Inspection Service

Obamacare

• $13 million cut from the Consumer Operated and Oriented Plan Program (Co-ops)
• $57 million cut from the Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control 
• $51 million cut from the Prevention and Public Health Fund 
• $27 million cut from the State Grants and Demonstrations 
• $44 million cut from the Affordable Insurance Exchange Grants program

Education

• $633 million cut from the Department of Education’s Special Education programs 
• $184 million cut from Rehabilitation Services and Disability Research 
• $71 million cut from administration at the Office of Federal Student Aid 
• $116 million cut from Higher Education 
• $86 million cut from Student Financial Assistance

Immigration

• $512 million cut from Customs and Border Protection 
• $17 million cut from Automation Modernization, Customs and Border Protection 
• $20 million cut from Border Security Fencing, Infrastructure, and Technology

Security

• $79 million cut from Embassy Security, Construction, and Maintenance 
• $604 million cut from National Nuclear Security Administration 
• $232 million cut from the Federal Aviation Administration 
• $394 million cut from Defense Environmental Cleanup

Source

Public need over greed: The outcry at new NHS privatisation plan
February 28, 2013 

A quietly announced piece of legislation has attracted a storm of criticism from both Liberal Democrats and GPs (Doctors, General Practitioners), and garnered over 190,000 signatures in but a few days to stop it.

SI 257 is a new amendment to the controversial Health and Social Care Act passed early last year. Upon its implementation on April 1st, all National Health Service contracts in England will be opened up to “compulsory” competition, and making whatever a monitor regards as an “unnecessary” barrier to competition illegal.  

Many fear that this new amendment will force privatisation on communities, despite reassurances from ministers that the final decision will lie in the hands of local people.

The latest in a long line

This is not the first time privatisation has been on the cards for the NHS. Prime Minister David Cameron argued in Prime Minister’s Question Time that current privatisation plans are merely a continuation of New Labour’s health reforms which included the introduction of Private Funding Initiatives, which resulted in the department debts of up to £150 million.

The Health and Social Care Act, passed in March 2012, allowed for 49 percent of contracts to be bid upon by private companies. The result was a wave of buy-ups of NHS services, with some 400 NHS contracts worth over a quarter of a billion pounds going to private providers.

However, the bill only passed through thanks to reassurances to the Liberal Democrats from the then Health Secretary Andrew Lansley that “there is absolutely nothing in the bill that promotes or permits the transfer of NHS activities to the private sector.” Services such as Manchester’s patient transport were up for grabs, though GPs and other frontline services were to remain in the public sphere.

Public backlash

Since the discovery of the amendment, GPs have begun campaigning for its repeal. Senior GP Dr. David Wrigley has urged clinicians and NHS staff to back his campaign to bring about a new parliamentary debate on the “forced privatization” of the NHS, citing the former Health Secretary’s promises to maintain local choice on whether to use competition.

GP action culminated in one retired doctor standing in the recent Eastleigh by election, as a candidate from the NHS Action party. The Liberal Democrats, the Conservative party’s coalition partner, have also been raising concerns over the bill, so much so that government sources have said that the current Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt was prepared to review the regulations to satisfy the liberals amid fears of a fresh rebellion over health reforms.

There has also been a quick social media reaction despite the BBC’s near total silence on the issue, with one petition on the 38 Degrees protest website garnering over 190,000 signatures since the amendment went public.

How will this affect patients?

Luckily, the current reforms contain nothing about having to pay for services. Healthcare looks set to stay universal for all. The real issue in contention is how this will impact the quality of healthcare. The fear is that the introduction of a for-profit healthcare system will lead to a proliferation of the “penny pincher” attitude that the service has become notorious for. It even more so removes the objective of the service away from care and instead towards private profit.

There’s also the potential that it could lead to a full-scale market system and the end of the NHS. After deregulation of public transport during the 1980s, private bus companies initially provided free services, similar to private companies within the NHS today. However, eventually these services were dropped, just as public and free gas, electricity and railways eventually were.

There is also the issue of democracy and accountability. Such privatisation plans were not on the Conservative manifesto during the 2010 election, and even ran with the election tagline “We’ll cut the deficit, not the NHS”.

A recent YouGov poll found that 4 out of 5 voters across the political spectrum do not want any more markets in the NHS. These measures are not what the majority people voted for or want.

Also, when the HSCA was first passed its measures were far less extreme (as mentioned earlier), and passed under the assumption that it was to be the limit of privatisation. However, this new extension of the act will not and has not been debated in parliament, and only merited a passing mention in today’s Prime Minister’s Question Time.

- Christopher M.

(Source: thepeoplesrecord.com)

Thousands protest privatization of healthcare in Spain
February 17, 2013

It was the third “white tide” demonstration in Madrid, named after the colour of the medical scrubs many protesters wear.

But it was the first time cities other than the capital took part, including Barcelona, Cuenca, Murcia, Pamplona, Toledo and Zaragoza.

Protesters marched carrying banners saying “Public health is not to be sold, it’s to be defended”.

Health care and education are administered by Spain’s 17 semi-autonomous regions.

Some indebted ones, like Madrid, have announced the part-privatisation of some services, with some people openly suspicious that the move is more a political-motivated ploy than an attempt to cut costs.

Civil servant Javier Tarabilla, 31, said Spain’s welfare state was being dismantled to be handed over to the private sector.

“This is pillaging of our public services, looting something we’ve all contributed to through taxes, to give it to private companies to run for profit,” he said.

Source

40 years after Roe v. Wade: The struggle that won legal abortion
January 22, 2013

In February 1969, leading feminist and author Betty Friedan addressed the founding conference of the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL, later renamed the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, and now known as NARAL Pro-Choice America):

Yesterday, an obscene thing happened in the city of New York. A committee of the state legislature held hearings on the question of abortion. Women like me asked to testify. We were told that testimony was by invitation only. Only one woman was invited to testify on the question of abortion in the state of New York—a Catholic nun. The only other voices were those of men.

It is obscene that men, whether they be legislators or priests or even benevolent abortion reformers, should be the only ones heard on the question of women’s bodies and the reproductive process, on what happens to the people who actually bear the children in this society.

Apparently eager to revive an old tradition, when the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform convened a hearing on the requirement in the new health care law that contraception be covered in insurance policies, legislators invited an all-male panel to testify.

In 2012. How did we get back here?

Supporters of reproductive rights breathed a huge sigh of relief when most of the worst anti-woman candidates went down in flames in the last election, along with right-wing ballot measures. Yet 40 years since abortion was legalized with Roe v. Wade—and 47 years after the Supreme Court decision legalizing birth control—reproductive rights remain under a sustained and relentless attack.

Over the course of 2012, 42 states and the District of Columbia enacted 122 provisions related to reproductive health and rights, the Guttmacher Institute reported. One-third of these new provisions, 43 in 19 states, sought to restrict access to abortion services. Today, According to Guttmacher, “55 percent of U.S. women of reproductive age now live in one of the 26 states considered hostile to abortion rights.”

For millions of women across the country, access to safe, legal abortion is no longer a reality. The inevitable consequence has been the rise of DIY abortions and an increase in women going to emergency rooms after suffering complications from back-alley procedures.

In the past 40 years, the anti-choice movement has made dramatic progress, not only in the laws, but in popular consciousness—it has successfully reframed the issue into a debate on the rights of fetuses, not those of women. The right’s agenda doesn’t stop with abortion, but extends to abstinence-only education, restrictions on birth control and a general desire to return to 1950s-era gender relations. This is not an agenda shared by the majority of Americans, and yet it continues to gain ground.

It wasn’t always this way. On the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, it’s worth reflecting on the context in which this landmark court decision was won—and what kind of lessons pro-choice activists can learn for today’s battles.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

ROE v. WADE marked a tremendous victory for women’s ability to control their own bodies. It literally saved an untold number of lives—of women who were no longer forced to seek out unregulated providers or attempt dangerous methods of self-inducing, such as coat hangers or douching with bleach.

The death toll from unsafe abortions before Roe is unknown, but some estimates put it as high as 10,000 each year. A University of Colorado study done in the late 1950s reported that 350,000 U.S. women experienced postoperative complications from illegal abortions every year.

The victims of unsafe abortion were disproportionately poor women and women of color, who lacked the resources of their wealthy and better connected counterparts. In New York City, before 1970, when abortion was legalized there, Black women accounted for 50 percent and Puerto Rican women for 44 percent of all deaths from illegal abortions.

By the early 1960s, there was a growing sentiment among physicians for abortion law reform, in part as a response to the scores of women flooding into emergency rooms and in part from the fear of being prosecuted for performing abortions. Physicians were joined by liberal members of legal establishment, as well as various family planning and population control organizations. These groups took a slow and cautious approach, focused on education and lobbying, and appealing primarily on the basis of physicians’ rights to professional autonomy.

In the years to follow, however, another factor eclipsed the others, altering the terms of the debate.

The women’s liberation movement of the late 1960s and early ’70s was an outgrowth of an overall radicalization in society, kicked off by the civil rights movement. At its height, the women’s liberation movement was about far more than just abortion. It involved a diverse array of activists, organizing around many demands, from equal employment to fighting sexual objectification.

Naturally, many in the movement saw lack of control over reproduction as a central feature of women’s economic and social oppression. While the leadership of some of the main women’s groups, dominated by white, middle-class women, were cautious about embracing the abortion fight, they were outvoted by their members.

The popular slogan of this era, “Free abortion on demand,” reflected a recognition that legalization alone wasn’t enough if poor women couldn’t afford to get access to abortions. Freedom of choice also meant being able to have children if one desired, which meant demanding access to free child care. The movement embraced demands against the ugly history of forced sterilization of women of color.

Nonetheless, legalization of abortion became a central issue that the movement rallied around. Activists adopted tactics of direct action and civil disobedience from the civil rights movement.

One of the most influential and visible forms of direct action came in the form of abortion referral services. Patricia Maginnis founded the Society for Human Abortion (SHA) in California in 1962 and became one of the first grassroots advocates for abortion law repeal.

Soon, women began approaching her, asking for the names of physicians who would perform abortions, so she began researching providers in Mexico and publicly distributed lists with their information. She then began distributing leaflets and conducting “do it yourself” abortion classes, which were so popular that they were soon taking place across the country.

As SHA leader Lana Clark Phelan reflected, “Really, our major accomplishment was in talking about abortion—saying the word out loud rather than using euphemisms. And from our little first meetings, there was such an influx of interest. I would get more than 500 letters a day asking for help.”

In Chicago, members of the Women’s Liberation Abortion Counseling Service, which became known as “Jane,” took their referral service one step further and learned how to perform abortions themselves, which they could offer to low-income women at reduced cost. In the process, they created an alternative feminist health care service dedicated to empowering women to take control of their own bodies.

Both SHA and Jane saw their work as not only providing a needed service, but making a powerful political statement.

Despite the anti-choice movement’s attempt to claim religion for their side, religious groups were also central in the abortion referral movement. The Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion was formed in 1967 by Rev. Howard Moody and other clergy members, many of them previously active in the civil rights movement. The response was so great that within a year, it had expanded to a national network, involving thousands of clergy and rabbis.

Full article

5 Anti-abortion states to watch in 2013
January 8, 2013

Spaniards protest against healthcare privatization
January 7, 2013

Thousands of Spanish medical workers marched through downtown Madrid on Monday to protest against budget cuts and plans to partly privatize their cherished national health service.

The march is part of a series of such demonstrations, described as a “white tide” because of the color of the medical scrubs many protesters wear. Participants on Monday walked behind a large banner saying, “Health care is not to be sold, it’s to be defended.”

Monica Garcia, spokeswoman for the Association of Medical Specialists of Madrid, which initiated the march, said her organization would continue to protest “the loss of our public health care, a national heritage that belongs to us and not to the government.”

She said the regional government was trying “to obtain economic benefit” from a system it had not invested in.

Health care and education are currently administered by Spain’s 17 semi-autonomous regions rather than the central government.

Many regions are struggling financially as Spain’s economy has fallen back into recession, having never recovered from a real estate crash in 2008. Some regions overspent in the good times but are now unable to borrow on financial markets to repay their huge debts, forcing them to make savings and even request rescue aid from the central government.

The region of Madrid proposes selling the management of six of 20 large public hospitals in its territory and 27 of 268 health centers. It argues that’s needed to fix the region’s finances and secure health services.

Doctor Agustin Reverte, 31, said privatizations would lead to less diagnostic tests on patients who will be attended by fewer medical staff, reducing the overall quality of the service.

“Those in government have money, so they don’t care if they have to pay for health care,” said Aurora Rojas, a 55-year-old nurse. “But the rest of us who just have a regular salary will not be able to afford decent treatment,” she said.

Source

Jailed for $280: The return of Debtor’s Prisons
December 10, 2012

How did breast cancer survivor Lisa Lindsay end up behind bars? She didn’t pay a medical bill — one the Herrin, Ill., teaching assistant was told she didn’t owe. “She got a $280 medical bill in error and was told she didn’t have to pay it,” The Associated Press reports. “But the bill was turned over to a collection agency, and eventually state troopers showed up at her home and took her to jail in handcuffs.”

Although the U.S. abolished debtors’ prisons in the 1830s, more than a third of U.S. states allow the police to haul people in who don’t pay all manner of debts, from bills for health care services to credit card and auto loans. In parts of Illinois, debt collectors commonly use publicly funded courts, sheriff’s deputies, and country jails to pressure people who owe even small amounts to pay up, according to the AP.

Under the law, debtors aren’t arrested for nonpayment, but rather for failing to respond to court hearings, pay legal fines, or otherwise showing “contempt of court” in connection with a creditor lawsuit. That loophole has lawmakers in the Illinois House of Representatives concerned enough to pass a bill in March that would make it illegal to send residents of the state to jail if they can’t pay a debt. The measure awaits action in the senate.

“Creditors have been manipulating the court system to extract money from the unemployed, veterans, even seniors who rely solely on their benefits to get by each month,” Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said last month in a statement voicing support for the legislation. “Too many people have been thrown in jail simply because they’re too poor to pay their debts. We cannot allow these illegal abuses to continue.”

Debt collectors typically avoid filing suit against debtors, a representative with the Illinois Collectors Association tells the AP. “A consumer that has been arrested or jailed can’t pay a debt. We want to work with consumers to resolve issues,” he said.

Yet Illinois isn’t the only state where residents get locked up for owing money. A 2010 report by theAmerican Civil Liberties Union that focused on only five states — Georgia, Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Washington — found that people were being jailed at “increasingly alarming rates” over legal debts. Cases ranged from a woman who was arrested four separate times for failing to pay $251 in fines and court costs related to a fourth-degree misdemeanor conviction, to a mentally ill juvenile jailed by a judge over a previous conviction for stealing school supplies.

According to the ACLU: “The sad truth is that debtors’ prisons are flourishing today, more than two decades after the Supreme Court prohibited imprisoning those who are too poor to pay their legal debts. In this era of shrinking budgets, state and local governments have turned aggressively to using the threat and reality of imprisonment to squeeze revenue out of the poorest defendants who appear in their courts.”

Some states also apply “poverty penalties,” including late fees, payment plan fees, and interest when people are unable to pay all their debts at once, according to a report by the New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. Alabama charges a 30 percent collection fee, for instance, while Florida allows private debt collectors to add a 40 percent surcharge on the original debt. Some Florida counties also use so-called collection courts, where debtors can be jailed but have no right to a public defender.

“Many states are imposing new and often onerous ‘user fees’ on individuals with criminal convictions,” the authors of the Brennan Center report wrote. “Yet far from being easy money, these fees impose severe — and often hidden — costs on communities, taxpayers, and indigent people convicted of crimes. They create new paths to prison for those unable to pay their debts and make it harder to find employment and housing as well to meet child-support obligations.”

Such practices, heightened in recent years by the effects of the recession, amount to criminalizing poverty, say critics in urging federal authorities to intervene. “More people are unemployed, more people are struggling financially, and more creditors are trying to get their debt paid,” Madigan told the AP.

Source

18 US veterans kill themselves each day
September 5, 2012

The month of July set a record high for the number of suicides in the U.S. military. An Army report reveals a total of 38 troops committed suicide last month, including 26 active-duty soldiers and 12 Army National Guard or reserve members — more soldiers than were killed on the battlefield.

The reasons for the increase in suicides are not fully understood. Among explanations, studies point to combat exposure, post-traumatic stress, misuse of prescription medications and personal financial problems. Army data suggest soldiers with multiple combat tours are at greater risk of committing suicide.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta addressed the issue in June at the annual conference on suicide prevention in the military, saying, “Despite the increased efforts, the increased attention, the trends continue to move in a troubling and tragic direction.” We speak with Marguerite Guzmán Bouvard, whose new book is called “The Invisible Wounds of War: Coming Home from Iraq and Afghanistan.”

AMY GOODMAN: The month of July set a record high for the number of suicides in the U.S. military. An Army report revealed a total of 38 troops—26 active-duty soldiers, another 12 National Guard or reserve members—are believed to have committed suicide in July, the highest rate recorded in a month since the Army started tracking detailed statistics on such deaths. More U.S. soldiers died in July by taking their own lives than on the battlefield.

We recently spoke to Iraq War veteran  Aaron Hughes  about suicides in the military.

AARON HUGHES: Every day in this country 18 veterans are committing suicide. Seventeen percent of the individuals that are in combat in Afghanistan, my brothers and sisters, are on psychotropic medication. Twenty to 50 percent of the individuals that are getting deployed to Afghanistan are already diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, military sexual trauma or a traumatic brain injury. Currently one-third of the women in the military are sexually assaulted. It’s clear that these policies of the global war on terror has had a profound effect on the military, my brothers and sisters, while simultaneously perpetuating a failed policy. And unfortunately, we have to live with that failed policy on a daily basis, and we don’t want to be a part of that failed policy anymore.

Full interview

“Support our troops” really does end when they are no longer soldiers. 

Latinos, blacks more likely to suffer health disparities due to wealth inequality
August 24, 2012

A recent study found that health disparities among Latino, black and white children -– but when adjusted for socioeconomic factors, differences had more to do with class than race.

Researchers interviewed more than 5,000 fifth graders in Los Angeles, Houston and Birmingham, Ala. They measured 16 health behaviors and outcomes including use of tobacco and alcohol, exercise habits, helmet use and obesity.

Black children (20 percent) were more likely than Latino children (11 percent) and whites (5 percent) to have witnessed a gun threat or injury.

Latinos were 15 percent and blacks 12 percent more likely than whites to be obese.

Latinos and blacks got less exercise and had poorer physical and psychological health.

However, when adjusted for income and education of children’s families, differences significantly shrunk.

Most of the disparities between Latinos and whites disappeared and the rest were reduced after adjusting for socioeconomic status.

Where a child went to school played a big role in what researchers found. Even within the same neighborhood, schools played a significant role.

The report said:

The child’s school was the most important mediator of disparities between black children and white children for 11 of 16 measures, whereas socioeconomic status was the largest mediator of disparities between Latino children and white children for 10 measures.

But, in the end, what does it really mean to “adjust?” The fact remains that children of color are growing up with poor physical and psychological health.

Source

Capitalism is literally killing us.

Court: Texas can cut off Planned Parenthood funds
August 21, 2012

A federal appeals court ruled late Tuesday that Texas can cut off funding for Planned Parenthood clinics that provide health services to low-income women before a trial over a new law that bans state money from going to organizations tied to abortion providers.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans lifted a federal judge’s temporary injunction that called for the funding to continue pending an October trial on Planned Parenthood’s challenge to the law.

State officials sought to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood clinics that provide family planning and health services to poor women as part of the Texas Women’s Health Program after the state’s Republican-led Legislature passed a law banning funds to organizations linked to abortion providers. No state money goes to pay for abortions.

The appeal’s court decision means Texas is now free to enforce its ban on clinics affiliated with abortion providers. Planned Parenthood provides cancer screenings and other services — but not abortions — to about half of the 130,000 low-income Texas women enrolled in the program, which is designed to provide services to women who might not otherwise qualify for Medicaid.

The ruling is the latest in the ongoing fight over Texas’ efforts to halt funding to clinics affiliated with abortion providers. The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has said that the new state rule violates federal law. Federal funds paid for 90 percent, or about $35 million, of the $40 million Women’s Health Program until the new rule went into effect. Federal officials are now phasing out support for the program.

Gov. Rick Perry has promised that Texas will make up for the loss of federal funds to keep the program going without Planned Parenthood’s involvement. State officials have said ending the program would result in more unplanned pregnancies that would cost the state much more than self-financing the program.

In a statement, Perry called Tuesday’s ruling “a win for Texas women, our rule of law and our state’s priority to protect life.”

“Texas will continue providing important health services for women through this program in spite of the Obama Administration’s disregard for our state law and unilateral decision to defund this program,” the governor said.

Perry’s office referred questions about continued funding for the Women’s Health Program to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, which said it would move to begin enforcing the ban.

Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said the case “has never been about Planned Parenthood — it’s about the women who rely on Planned Parenthood for cancer screenings, birth control and well-woman exams.”

“It is shocking that politics would get in the way of women receiving access to basic health care,” Richards said in a statement.

The case began when Planned Parenthood sued, saying the new Texas law violated its rights to free speech. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott countered by arguing that lawmakers may decide which organizations receive state funds.

A federal judge in Austin ruled in May that the funding should continue pending the trial on Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit, saying there’s sufficient evidence the state’s law is unconstitutional.

But the three-judge appellate panel disagreed, unanimously finding that Planned Parenthood was unlikely to prevail in future arguments that its free-speech rights were violated.

Abbott cheered the decision Tuesday, noting that it “rightfully recognized that the taxpayer-funded Women’s Health Program is not required to subsidize organizations that advocate for elective abortion.”

“We are encouraged by today’s decision and will continue to defend the Women’s Health Program in court,” Abbot said in a statement.

The ruling comes as conservative groups across the nation try to pass and enforce laws to put Planned Parenthood out of business and make getting an abortion more difficult. Earlier this year the same court upheld a new Texas law requiring doctors to perform a sonogram and provide women with a detailed description of the fetus before carrying out an abortion.

Richards said the decision left Planned Parenthood “evaluating every possible option to protect women’s health in Texas.”

Source

Unacceptable. Free abortions on demand & without apology!

Texas spends $25 million rebuilding mansion as Gov. Perry seeks education, healthcare cuts
July 13, 2012

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is getting set to return to his official residence in downtown Austin after a $25 million rebuilding, even as he asks state agencies to say how they can cut spending 10 percent in the next budget.

Perry, the former Republican presidential candidate who in 2011 signed a two-year plan that shortchanged schools by $5 billion, will decamp this month from a rental home to resume life in the high-security governor’s mansion. A June 2008 arson fire destroyed much of the two-story brick home built in 1856.

Perry, 62, has made limits on spending a central theme of his years at the helm of the second most populous U.S. state, and stressed fiscal restraint as a national candidate. While Texas revenue is 14 percent above last year, the governor has asked agencies not to seek bigger budgets and to show how 10 percent cuts would affect operations. This week, Perry refused to expand Medicaid to serve more low-income residents.

“I find it interesting that a state that can’t provide children’s health care or taking care of the poor can always find an unexpected $25 million laying around for a favored project,” said Bill Aleshire, a lawyer and former Travis County commissioner in Austin. Lawmakers approved the funding in 2009.

“Of course the mansion needed to be repaired — I just don’t get the same sense of frugality” that’s applied to state spending for other purposes, said Aleshire, a Democrat.

For their $21.5 million, plus $3.5 million in public donations, taxpayers got inch-thick longleaf pine floors, an added wing and a geothermal heating and cooling system that required digging 40 350-foot (107 meter) wells. The cost of restoring the 25-room house would be enough to pay for almost 11 million student lunches at Austin’s high schools.

Perry spokeswoman Steffany Duke didn’t respond to questions about the beefed-up security at the home. Those measures led to closing Colorado Street to cars in front of the mansion, raising the height of a brick perimeter wall and adding a guardhouse to screen visitors.

A statement on the governor’s website says that “the integrity of the preservation process, strong collaboration and transparency and a high-quality, cost-efficient restoration are the top priorities” for the group that led the rebuilding. The reopening of its public spaces will add to an area that includes the state Capitol, which attracts 1.5 million visitors a year.

The project introduced fire sprinklers, access for the handicapped to public spaces and, with the 1,500-square-foot addition, expanded the living quarters in the house that has served 40 governors. Perry and his wife, Anita, moved out of the building in October 2007, to make way for renovations that also relocated the mansion’s historic contents, including furniture, artwork and light fixtures — sparing them from the blaze that engulfed the structure less than a year later.

In the intervening years, the Perrys stayed in a 6,400-square-foot, five-bedroom home that rents for $8,500 a month in a gated city neighborhood.

During negotiations to set the two-year budget through August 2013, Perry pressed lawmakers for deeper spending cuts and limits on using reserve funds to bridge a deficit projected to be at least $15 billion. The final spending plan called for $5 billion less for schools than had been mandated, based on previous funding and student population.

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The high cost of “low” prices…