Posts tagged health care
Speakers' Corner
Our Little Soapbox
(Source: mywhitecoatisonfire.com)
No. Health care and dental care are not ‘human’ rights. You exist. That is it. You don’t get some special treatment because you exist. You work to be able to have that privilege to be healthy and get proper medical care. I will never be okay with paying for medical care for you. Ever. If you get fucked over in this world, no matter how hard you try, that is life. Sorry to say, but that’s what it is. I so strongly believe that if you TRULY want something so badly, you WILL get it. But only through hard work and determination, and to me that includes medical care, education and all the other government programs out there that provide something that isn’t the military.
That is what religion is supposed to be a bout [sic]. If you have a shitty life here, it’s not as big of a deal because what happens on this earth is temporary. We are not supposed to live for ourselves in a selfish manner. Even in pain. The afterlife is supposed to be granted by how we act here in this temporary place, and that any pain we may feel is nothing compared to our reward for doing the right thing later on.
Granted, I am not at all a religious person. I barely believe in the afterlife myself. But even without it, I don’t believe in paying for someone elses [sic] health care, living expenses or anything else using my tax dollars. It’s not supposed to be that way.
burnthestatic for this comment above on a link I posted, “Man Dies From Toothache, Couldn’t Afford Meds”
[…]
I would like to point out that the author of this comment is 17. So I’m sure she’s paid quite a bit in taxes, no? Whatever she’s paid, she wants them back.
As for me, I would love for my tax dollars to pay for those who can’t afford health care or dental care. I prefer that versus paying for the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people in Afghanistan and Iraq. I would love to pay for higher education for my fellow citizens in this country instead of paying for further weapons development and deployment by private contractors.
You point to the military as a specific example as a government program that’s somehow A-ok. Did you know that your tax dollars completely subsidize the medical and dental care of military members, their families and veterans? The best access to medical care I have ever had was when I was in the military.
Being healthy is a privilege? Well, here’s where you’re getting closer to correct, though not for the reasons you think. There’s many, many people who work hard, yet can’t afford treatment of any kind because they don’t make enough money. There’s a direct correlation between health, quality of live, and income level. The more cash money you have, the more likely you are to be healthy and able to have access to medical and dental care. So only the privileged are assured of being healthy.
Thomas Jefferson compared individual heath to a society’s liberty, writing, “Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society.” Thomas Jefferson would be disappointed in you, I imagine.
However, Karl Marx would not be shocked by your callousness. Marx wrote, “Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society.” It’s probably folks with similar beliefs to yours that inspired Marx.
You’re only 17. You have time to for your bubble to burst. And it’s fairly likely it will.
(via cognitivedissonance)
If you currently have access to safe water and [mostly] safe food, are able to drive from point A to point B on decent highways and freeways, have avoided dying (or just getting lost) while driving thanks to stop lights and street signs, go to a public school, plan to attend a state university, have banks that you can trust to put your money in without the bank closing and your money going with it, have ever used any sort of public transportation, fly on airplanes without dying in a plane crash due to a known and completely avoidable mechanical issue, don’t have to worry about Grandma living with you in her old age because her income is supplemented by social security, have avoided dying from plague and preventable communicable diseases thanks to public clinics and mandatory vaccines…hey, guess what! You’ve benefited from government services! And no amount of hard work, determination, and mad money-making skillz on your part could have magically made those services available to you!
I just get tired of these arguments from people who have no idea what the government does for them or all the ways they benefit. Because they are so accustomed to the comfort, safety, and freedom the government provides them (and no, I’m not talking about from the military), they completely take it for granted that these things are available to them. They think these things exist in a vacuum, or that if the government disappeared, these services would magically be available to them via the free market…even though there are plenty of examples of countries without a strong government presence where the free market has failed to provide these services—especially not in any way that is even close to being universal or serving anyone beyond a very, very small, ultra-wealthy elite—and virtually no examples where the free market has. (If you know an example, I welcome you to share them.)
I would love to say this is just the ignorance of a 17-year-old girl, but unfortunately, it isn’t. I’ve heard people twice or thrice her age make similar comments—people who are old enough to know better, but who live a sheltered enough existence, they’ve never had to consider seriously what a world without these government services would look like, or even what sort of biases on their end are inherent to make such claims possible. It is, almost exclusively, a bunch of people who have lived their entire lives in these sheltered, upper middle class, white bread communities where they don’t know anyone who actually struggles from paycheck to paycheck, and therefore assumes the problem of the underclass is laziness, even though most of the people who struggle (there’s a reason they’re called the working class) work far harder than anyone in the upper middle class, what with their cushy, air conditioned offices and 8-hour workdays. They think they shouldn’t have to give back to their communities at all, unless maybe they go to church, and then, they should only give back to the “deserving” communities, which as best as I can tell, generally means people who go to their church, arts programs they enjoy and children with cancer. It’s a bunch of judgmental assholes sitting on their pile of money and privilege, thinking they are so far above it all, because they “work hard,” even though the fact of the matter is, they have never worked half as hard as most poor people work just to stay afloat. Of course, they don’t know that, because they don’t know anyone who isn’t like them. They assume that because they started out in families with money, with parents who went to college, with the expectation that they would go to college and someday make money too, with the safety net of their parents’ money to fall back on if they ever get into any sort of trouble, that this somehow makes them the virtuous class. It’s a fucking joke to anyone who’s ever lived in any other community.
Spoiled, selfish, sheltered children throwing tantrums because someone suggests they might have to share or that they might not be as “special” as they were raised to think they are, because having money is not a sign of virtue.
(via robot-heart-politics)(via robot-heart-politics)
BBC News - Gay men blood donor ban to be lifted
The lifetime ban on blood donations by homosexual and bisexual men will be lifted in England, Scotland and Wales. Ministers have agreed to let men who have not had sex with another man in the past 12 months to donate from November. The restrictions were put in place in the 1980s to prevent the risk of HIV contamination. However, the latest medical evidence presented to a government panel argued the ban could no longer be justified.
Man Dies From Toothache, Couldn't Afford Meds
A 24-year-old Cincinnati father died from a tooth infection this week because he couldn’t afford his medication, offering a sobering reminder of the importance of oral health and the number of people without access to dental or health care.
According to NBC affiliate WLWT, Kyle Willis’ wisdom tooth started hurting two weeks ago. When dentists told him it needed to be pulled, he decided to forgo the procedure, because he was unemployed and had no health insurance.
When his face started swelling and his head began to ache, Willis went to the emergency room, where he received prescriptions for antibiotics and pain medications. Willis couldn’t afford both, so he chose the pain medications.
The tooth infection spread, causing his brain to swell. He died Tuesday.
Before anyone criticizes this man for choosing pain medication over antibiotics (as I’ve seen some people do), let’s think about two things:
- If you were in severe pain, and probably not thinking clearly, what would you do?
- Why should we live in a society where this is a choice someone must make?
How is this just? Health care is not a luxury, nor should dental care be a luxury. People do not deserve to die because they cannot afford an antibiotic prescription.
(via robot-heart-politics)
This might disturb you at first, but remember: the free market is always right, so clearly we’ve collectively made a rational choice here. We’ve decided that although our healthcare costs are far higher than in Europe, this is worth it in return for far higher death rates from hospital infections.
USA!
VIP State Health Care Exposed, or “GOP Tea Party Hypocrisy of the Day”
Last year, political neophyte Rick Scott spent $73 million of his own money to bring the tea party’s anti-government, pro-privatization agenda to the Florida governor’s office. Today, the former executive pays just $30 a month for health care—and lets taxpayers cover the rest…
Scott and his dependents pay one-fifth what a janitor in the state Capitol pays for health insurance… and less than 3 percent of what a retired state trooper pays for life-saving coverage.
This is disgusting.
(Source: Mother Jones)
Man robs bank to get medical care in jail - Yahoo! News
Some people who need medical care but can’t afford it go to the emergency room. Others just hope they’ll get better. James Richard Verone robbed a bank.
Preemie birth preventive medicine spikes from $10 to $1,500
ATLANTA – The price of preventing preterm labor is about to go through the roof.
A drug for high-risk pregnant women has cost about $10 to $20 per injection. Next week, the price shoots up to $1,500 a dose, meaning the total cost during a pregnancy could be as much as $30,000.
That’s because the drug, a form of progesterone given as a weekly shot, has been made cheaply for years, mixed in special pharmacies that custom-compound treatments that are not federally approved.
But recently, KV Pharmaceutical of suburban St.Louis won government approval to exclusively sell the drug, known as Makena (Mah-KEE’-Nah). The March of Dimes and many obstetricians supported that because it means quality will be more consistent and it will be easier to get.
None of them anticipated the dramatic price hike, though — especially since most of the cost for development and research was shouldered by others in the past.
“That’s a huge increase for something that can’t be costing them that much to make. For crying out loud, this is about making money,” said Dr. Roger Snow, deputy medical director for Massachusetts’ Medicaid program.
“I’ve never seen anything as outrageous as this,” said Dr. Arnold Cohen, an obstetrician at Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia.
“I’m breathless,” said Dr. Joanne Armstrong, the head of women’s health for Aetna, the Hartford-based national health insurer.
Doctors say the price hike may deter low-income women from getting the drug, leading to more premature births. And it will certainly be a huge financial burden for health insurance companies and government programs that have been paying for it.
The cost is justified to avoid the mental and physical disabilities that can come with very premature births, said KV Pharmaceutical chief executive Gregory J. Divis Jr.
Indiana Bill Would Force Doctors To Tell Women That Having An Abortion May Lead To Breast Cancer | Huffington Post
Hundreds of protesters rallied at the Indiana statehouse on Tuesday in opposition to restrictive abortion measures that would, among other things, require doctors to tell pregnant women about a controversial theory that says having an abortion could lead to an increased risk of breast cancer. […]
[House Bill 1210] would also require physicians to inform a pregnant woman seeking an abortion that the fetus could feel pain and require patients to view an ultrasound. A patient could get out of doing so only if she stated her refusal in writing. [read more]
Abortion causing breast cancer isn’t “controversial”. There is no evidence to show that breast cancer is caused by abortion or that abortion/pregnancy/miscarriage increases the risk of breast cancer. In case I’m not being clear enough: abortion does NOT cause breast cancer.
So this bill is requiring doctors to lie to their patients. When did the US turn into such a fucking joke?
And you know what? Even if abortion did cause breast cancer, it doesn’t matter. People know smoking is the leading cause of lung cancer and still choose to smoke. If someone is really making the argument that because an abortion could increase the risk of breast cancer and THAT is why abortion should be illegal, then they should make cigarettes illegal, french fries, barbecue, an oral sex (ignoring the fact that we now have Gardasil to reduce throat cancer caused by HPV and that the GOP originally didn’t want to clear Gardasil for use because it might make women more promiscuous, clutch your pearls!!!!!).
The anti-choice movement only pretends to care about the incubators…I mean…pregnant women when it’s convenient for them.
Love,
Rabble
(Source: pantslessprogressive, via stfuantichoicers)
Arizona Bill Could Close University Ob-Gyn Program
The bill, which is on its way to the state senate, says in part,
public monies or tax monies of this state or any political subdivision of this state or any federal funds passing through the state treasury or the treasury of any political subdivision of this state or monies paid by students as part of tuition or fees to a state university or a community college shall not be expended or allocated for training to perform abortions.
That means that not only can the University of Arizona and other state schools not use state money to train abortion providers — students can’t pay for that training themselves either, even if they want to. And according to State Rep. Matt Heinz, since the University of Arizona College of Medicine’s ob-gyn program would no longer be allowed to teach abortion, it would likely lose its accreditation (the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education requiresabortion training). He told Cronkite News, “Two hundred residents who are currently actively training will actually have to leave. Their training will be forfeited and it will be like the program never existed.”
This is…ugh. I can’t even.
(Source: robot-heart-politics)
