Austin Business Journal | UT's Dell Medical School welcomes diverse second class mostly women Austin Business Journal Furthering its mission to transform medical education in the United States, Dell Medical School at the University of Texas on Monday began its second year of classes. More than half of the 50 newest students are female and nearly 20 percent come from ... |
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UT's Dell Medical School welcomes diverse second class mostly women - Austin Business Journal
Twenty-four-year-old Kalee Woody says that when she was growing up in Bronaugh, Missouri, she saw the small town slowly fading. Businesses closed, growth stagnated and residents had to drive to other places to see a doctor.
It is a town that, like many towns in rural areas of Missouri and other Midwest and Great Plains states, is recognized by the federal government as having a shortage of healthcare providers.
Now, Woody wants to help. She enrolled in medical school and will start classes in July at the just-opened Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences (KCUMB) campus in Joplin, Missouri, the first new medical school in the state in nearly half a century. Woody wants to serve someday in a rural community much like the one she grew up in where, as a doctor, shell also be seen as a pillar of the community.
They have so much contact with different people. They just get to know everyone, Woody says. Everyone knows them and, by association, they become a leader.
KCUMB is an osteopathic medical school, meaning that graduates emerge with a Doctorate of Osteopathic Medicine (D.O.) degree, rather than an M.D. degree. Osteopathic medical schools, whose numbers have doubled in the last 10 years, are in the middle of a push into smaller communities and some in the healthcare industry hope graduates could eventually help ease the current shortage of medical care in many rural areas.
Were going to have an opportunity to teach those students in a rural environment and show them how cool it really is to work there, says Darrin DAgostino, executive dean of KCUMB.
DAgostino says osteopathic schools take a more holistic approach than M.D. programs, which accounts for the high percentage of D.O.s 56% going into primary care instead of specialties, according to the American Osteopathic Association. Less than a quarter of new MDs go into primary care, according to researchers at George Washington University.
D.O.s are licensed in the same way M.D.s are and these days, the care provided by D.O.s and M.D.s is typically so similar that most patients wouldnt know the difference. But that hasnt always been the case.
At the root of osteopathic medicine is osteopathic manipulative treatment, a hands-on technique that looks like a cross between chiropractic manipulation and massage. There is evidence this can help treat some kinds of pain.
It sounds New-Age-y, but the idea dates back to the days of the Old West.
In the late 1800s, a former Kansas state legislator and civil war surgeon, Andrew Taylor Still, decided to reconsider basic assumptions about medicine after he watched three of his children die from spinal meningitis.
The therapeutic options were very different than we have available to us right now, and he thought that the available system of medicine simply didnt work, says Joel Howell, an M.D. and professor of the history of medicine at the University of Michigan, who has written about Still and the practice he invented.
Still eventually founded the first osteopathic school in Kirksville, Missouri, in order to teach his kind of medicine, which was based on a very different understanding of the body and human health.
He set out to devise an alternative healing practice based on this notion that manipulation of the spine could improve blood flow and thus improve health by allowing the body to heal itself, Howell says.
Osteopathic manipulation is now just one of the techniques that D.O.s are taught to use, along with mainstream treatments.
A recent burst of new osteopathic medical schools is part ofa decades-long effort to move osteopathic physicians into practice throughout the country. Many are in states like Arkansas, Colorado and Tennessee that have very small numbers of working D.O.s.
Howell says these newly minted physicians can probably help out a lot in medically underserved parts of those states, but they may have to do some public relations work first.
I think they should be prepared to explain what being a D.O. means, Howell says.
The bigger challenge may be acceptance from M.D.s, who still dominate medicine and make up the preponderance of doctors. Almost all of the most prestigious medical schools such as Harvard, Stanford and Johns Hopkins churn out M.D.s.
The general reception is that we ignore [osteopathic medicine,] Howell says. We dont know much about it; we dont do it. I think if pushed, most people would figure that for some kinds of illnesses, it doesnt do any harm, and it might well help.
Earlier in the summer, hundreds of curious Joplin residents turned out for the opening of the new KCUMB medical school. School and community leaders in this city of 51,000 in the southwestern corner of Missouri hope that in surrounding rural areas with a shortage of health care providers, patients wont care much about whether someones a D.O. or an M.D. just as long as theyre a doctor.
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Osteopathic Medical Schools Seek To Fill Rural Healthcare Gap - HPPR
Dean Olsen Staff Writer @deanolsenSJR
Efforts to test and distribute vaccines that are believed to treat and prevent genital herpes worldwide will continue after the June 22 death of the Springfield scientist who developed the vaccines.
Thats according to Agustin Fernandez III, chief executive officer of Springfield-based Rational Vaccines. He co-founded the company in 2015 with Southern Illinois University School of Medicine researcher William Halford, who developed the Theravax and Profavax vaccines. Halford died from a rare form of nasal cancer at age 48 at his Springfield home.
Seeing Bill pass away is giving me new urgency, said Fernandez, 41, a movie producer and director who lives in Los Angeles and New York. Were very focused on the mission of the company.
Fernandez said he and others associated with Rational Vaccines are grieving Halfords death.
But Fernandez said he and Halford made plans to ensure Halfords herpes vaccines made from live but weakened or attenuated herpes viruses would continue to be tested in clinical trials and offered to more patients suffering from the sexually transmitted infection after Halfords death.
Commitments of investments totaling $7 million to support the next three years of Rational Vaccines work have been made by venture capital organizations that include Thiel Capital and Founders Fund, both based in San Francisco, Fernandez said.
Officials from those organizations didnt respond to requests for comment.
Halford, whose vaccines were the product of his research at the Springfield campus of the medical school and produced by Rational Vaccines, had been the companys chief science officer.
Plans are in the works for scientific guidance of the company to be taken over by a research colleague of Halfords at SIU, Edward Gershburg, according to Fernandez and Gershburg.
Gershburg would become a part-time employee of Rational Vaccines and remain on SIUs faculty, Fernandez and Gershburg said.
Plans also call for the companys three-member laboratory staff to grow by as many as four employees by the end of the year, Fernandez said.
After a successful, small-scale clinical trial overseas in 2016 to test the safety of the therapeutic herpes vaccine, Rational Vaccines is planning a second safety-related trial for November, again in the Caribbean nation of Saint Kitts and Nevis, and involving about 40 patients, Fernandez said.
The company wants to set up a third trial to test the safety of Profavax in Australia in 2018 among about 40 patients, Fernandez said. More details were unavailable.
Overseas testing
Its unusual for American scientists to conduct clinical trials overseas, where regulatory systems to test new drugs and medicines can be less stringent. But Fernandez said Halford didnt want to wait decades before the regulatory environment in the United States and current scientific biases against the use of live-virus vaccines would allow his vaccines to be tested and considered for widespread use.
Results of the 2016 Caribbean clinical trial havent been published yet in any peer-reviewed scientific journals.
Rational Vaccines said in a news release in 2016 that the trial indicated Theravax could become one of the most effective therapeutic agents ever created for genital herpes.
On average, the 17 patients who received the three-shot therapeutic vaccine series self-reported a three-fold reduction in their number of days with herpes symptoms, the RV news release said.
Genital herpes affects about one in seven people in the United States and more than 400 people worldwide, with tens of millions living with symptoms such as chronic pain that arent addressed well with conventional medical treatments.
The stigma associated with herpes can lead to depression, suicide and social isolation, said Fernandez, whose former girlfriend had herpes.
He said he hopes positive results from the 2016 trial and other overseas clinical trials lead to clinical trials in the United States of Halfords vaccines in three to five years.
Therapeutic and preventive vaccines work by boosting patients immune systems.
'Something that works'
Richard Mancuso, 48, a resident of Brick, New Jersey, said his herpes symptoms first dropped dramatically and then stopped completely after he took part in the 2016 clinical trial.
Its important for people to know that theres something that works, he said.
Mancuso, a truck driver and Uber driver, said he created an online petition to get Congress to shorten the timetable for clinical trials of Halfords vaccines in America.
Mancuso said he became friends with Halford and said the scientists death hit him hard.
Its unfortunate that we didnt have a cure for the cancer that he had, Mancuso said. We really took a big hit with losing him. He just spent every waking moment on making people better, and he couldnt make himself better.
A proven treatment for herpes, as well as a preventive vaccine, would be lucrative, but Fernandez said Halford never cared about money. Bill just cared about people.
Halfords wife, Melanie Halford, 48, said her husbands cancer diagnosis in 2011, and the knowledge that his life likely would be shortened, made him more willing to consider forming a company and pushing forward with clinical trials overseas rather than waiting the 20 years a similar process might have taken in the United States.
It was a real leap of faith, said Melanie Halford, an SIU office employee who was married to William Halford for 25 years. I dont wish cancer on anyone, but undoubtedly it changed the course of his career.
William Halford said in a video made in Apriland made public by SIU last week, that his survival after an initial diagnosis of sinonasal undifferentiated carcinoma in 2011 did create a sense of personal urgency to move forward sooner rather than later.
The cancer kills half of sufferers within 24 months, Halford said on the video. When he was alive at the end of 2011 after months of chemotherapy, radiation and surgeries, Halford said he believed he might be around for a little bit longer.
Melanie Halford said she is personally devastated by her husbands death. She said she and their children, Justin, 22, of Chicago, and Kate, 20, of Bloomington, are comforted by Halfords scientific achievements even though his work often took him away from his family.
We take a lot of solace that his work goes on, Melanie Halford said.
His vaccine might go on to help a lot of people, she said.
She added that her husband, a native of New Orleans, never had a personal connection with herpes and became interested in the condition through a scientist he met while working as that scientists laboratory assistant in 1992 at Louisiana State University.
Melanie Halford said her husband felt tremendous satisfaction meeting patients in the 2016 trial who benefited from his vaccine.
Dr. Jerry Kruse, dean and provost of SIU School of Medicine, said William Halford was the quintessential scientist, for sure.
Gershburg said Halford was very passionate about what he was doing but didnt let preconceived opinions guide his research.
Gershburg, 49, pointed out that many vaccines powered by live, attenuated viruses are in use today through shots protecting against measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox and shingles.
Halfords fellow researchers at SIU supported his research and efforts to help patients, according to Donald Torry, chairman of SIUs department of medical microbiology, immunology and cell biology.
Halford got closer than most basic-science researchers when it comes to seeing the long-term benefits for patients, Torry said.
Hes a very careful scientist, and there were no shortcuts taken, Torry said, calling Halford a dear friend and colleague.
If the future clinical trials hold up, Torry said, this will affect millions.
Contact Dean Olsen: dean.olsen@sj-r.com, 788-1543, twitter.com/DeanOlsenSJR.
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Belleville News-Democrat | OTHS honors student attends national medical leaders conference Belleville News-Democrat Caraway, 16, who will be a junior this fall at O'Fallon Township High School, was nominated by Dr. Robert Darling, the Medical Director of the National Academy of Future Physicians and Medical Scientists to represent OTHS based on her academic ... |
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OTHS honors student attends national medical leaders conference - Belleville News-Democrat
This editorial first appeared in the Daily News 10 years ago on July 4th.
If the United States is, as British author G.K. Chesterton put it in 1922, a nation with the soul of a church, then Independence Day is the highest of our high holy days. We celebrate today not only the first step a bloody war would follow on Americas road to independence, but also the enduring ideas on which our country was founded.
If America itself is a kind of religion, then its creed is to be found in the Declaration of Independence. It is a celebration of liberty, of the unalienable rights of individual people, a declaration that the highest calling of government is to secure these rights.
We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
These words, whose elegance can be attributed largely to Thomas Jefferson, still have the capacity to inspire us, whether our roots in America are generations deep or date to last week. As Americans, we believe in freedom and independence. That belief, rather than ethnic commonality, generations on the same piece of soil or tribal loyalties, is what binds us together.
Do some Americans mean different things when they talk about freedom and liberty? Do politicians and blackguards exploit the terms, sometimes to promote a different agenda, sometimes to subvert liberty itself? Do Americans themselves sometimes exhibit confusion or partial understanding of what liberty means or should mean?
Yes to all. It took more than 80 years for slavery, a glaring contradiction of all the noble sentiments in the Declaration, to be abolished in the United States. Freedom has been invoked to sustain wars of aggression as well as wars of defense. Both friends and foes of freedom sometimes confuse liberty with license rather than responsibility.
Yet this land remains a magnet for people all over the world who dream of living in liberty and achieving prosperity not because of who they are but because of what they do. Despite the best or worst efforts of politicians and demagogues, liberty yet lives and holds out the promise of a better life to those who will accept the responsibilities that come with it.
As long as that sense of discovery and anticipation remains a part of our culture, and as long as we understand that liberty is a journey and not a final state, liberty will not die in this country.
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EDITORIAL: Liberty is a long journey for Americans - The Northwest Florida Daily News
On the eve of July 4, which is an obviously appropriate time, the D.C. Council announced a search to find the citys missing Liberty Bell.
It is only a replica of the original Liberty Bell, which is an icon of American independence and is on display in Philadelphia.
But it is a big bell, it is or at least it was our bell, and it is lost. It is equal in size to the original, the council said, and it weighs a ton. Literally.
According to the council, the 2,000-pound bell was given to the city by the federal government on July 20, 67 years ago.
It was presented in recognition of exceeding the sales goals for U.S. savings bonds. Apparently every state, every U.S. territory and the U.S. Treasury Department were given one of the bells.
At first, the D.C. bell was on display at the top of the steps of what was then the District Building, now the Wilson Building.
Later it was moved to a small park in front of the building.
Then, as beautification work on Pennsylvania Avenue got underway, it became necessary to move the bell. Several other small monuments also required temporary relocation.
The other monuments were all eventually returned to their original sites, according to the council.
But not the bell. On Monday, atop its announcement, the council urged: Help Us Find the Liberty Bell.
The bell was at its site on April2, 1979. But, the council said, by July 30, 1981, it had been declared missing.
Meanwhile, it can not be concluded that the bell was hidden in plain sight. The council said the Liberty Bell it seeks is NOT the double-sized replica in front of Union Station. Nor is it the replica between the Treasury Building and the White House.
No tip is too small, the council said. Those with information can contact Josh Gibson at 202-741-0897 or jgibson@dccouncil.us.
As to where the bell might be, the value of the metal in it probably ought not to be ignored. Current prices for scrap brass or bronze are about a dollar per pound. At such prices, the bell, at least in theory, could bring about $2,000 in cash.
However, melting away the inscription on the bell would seem almost sacrelegious. The words come from the book of Leviticus, and read:
Proclaim Liberty throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants thereof.
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Missing: The District's Liberty Bell, lost since the early 1980s - The ... - Washington Post
Peggy Garner had a deeper and different understanding of liberty than Patrick Henry he who famously shouted Give me liberty or give me death. Peggy Garner had no liberty. She was a slave.
Patrick Henry detested taxation without representation by a distant British Parliament. Peggy Garner paid no taxes and had no liberty. Imprisoned on a plantation and a black female, she had perhaps the least liberty of all.
But when Peggy Garner escaped across a frozen river to Ohio with her four children perhaps she faintly heard Patrick Henry when hunted down by slave catchers. Give me liberty or give me death? Peggy chose death, wanting to kill her children and herself rather than be returned to slavery. She had killed just one child, slitting her throat, before being restrained.
Opposites help define each other, much as the meaning of light resides in total darkness. Peggy Garners act of desperation tells us what liberty means in a deeper and different way than even Jeffersons majestic claim that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
We get a deeper sense of the gradual, grinding progression of actualizing Jeffersons bold claim for all Americans when two centuries elapsed between a colonial editors shutting down his paper rather than pay the Stamp Act tax of 1764 and Martin Luther King, Jr.s soaring words on the national mall in 1963. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
And while black females were perhaps last in line for liberty and white males, particularly wealthy ones, first in line our liberty largely started with wealthy white males claiming those rights and then, with commoner whites and free blacks and some courageous women, fighting with guns, guts, and French help to secure freedom from British rule.
Two people illustrate the gradual trickle down progression of liberty over the next several centuries.
David Acheson immigrated to America from northern Ireland in 1788 with the clothes on his back and a letter of introduction from his minister. Nine years later, he was a successful banker, businessman, and politician who was invited to dine with President George Washington. The vast expanse of our new country soon from sea to shining sea opened up opportunities for those with ambition and talent to pursue their dreams, the American dream.
No one really wanted war. But Lincoln knew it was coming, perhaps unavoidable due to historical circumstance and economic pressures. Julia Ward Howe awakened around dawn at her Washington hotel and peered out the window. Having watched Union troops parade the day before, new words came to her for the rhythmic music of John Browns Body.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword; His truth is marching on.
David Achesons grandson of like name marched to those stirring words on his way to Gettysburg. He fell in battle a few hours later, giving his life that others might be free to live theirs more fully. His blood sacrifice and that of thousands more fulfilled the last verse of The Battle Hymn of the Republic As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.
A fighting feminist
Julia Ward Howe fought for womens rights and emancipation from a paternalistic culture her own husband was something of a tyrant for the next 50 years, being a fighting feminist before the phrase existed. Deep in her heart, she knew that one eternal truth that was marching on was that none of us are truly free until we all are free free to fully develop our God-given talents as both an act of self-fulfillment and a contribution to our national welfare.
For, as Peggy Garner, David Acheson, Julia Ward Howe, and many others knew, the freedom we celebrate on the Fourth of July must be for all people and for as long as we are willing to sacrifice blood and treasure to preserve it. God bless America and let us not let our liberty slip away. Many paid a high price for us to have it.
James F. Burns is a retired professor at the University of Florida.
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Liberty: Its pursuit burns ever more intensely for some - Herald and News
Half of Americans in a new Rasmussen poll said they believe the lines found in the Pledge of Allegiance, that the United States is a nation where there is liberty and justice for all. But the poll showed a sharp partisan split.
Three-quarters of Republicans said they think the U.S. has liberty and justice for all, 76 percent, while fewer than one-third of Democrats 30 percent said they believethat statement to be true.
Of those who said they have no party affiliation, 46 percent said they think the U.S. has liberty and justice for all.
The national poll of 1,000 adults was conducted June 28-29 and has a margin of error of plus or minus3 percentage points with a 95 percent confidence level.
While 49 percent of all those polled said they thought the U.S. has liberty and justice for all, men were somewhat more likely to say this 52 percent with 46 percent of women saying so.
Most black Americans told the pollsters that they do not think the U.S. has liberty and justice for all.
But the greatest difference by far was in the divide between Republicans and Democrats: 76 versus 30 percent.
On what is Democrats' low number based?
One Twitter user noted that Rasmussen didn't ask people how they would define "liberty" and "justice," with another musing that justice to some might mean free stuff, like "being given a phone."
The "Freedom in the World 2017" report by Freedom House gave the U.S. an 89 out of 100 rating for freedom, and rated the country's status as "free." The U.S. got a perfect score from Freedom House for freedom of expression and belief combining First Amendment freedoms of speech and of religion.
The 49 percent who think the country has liberty and justice for all is down from last year, when 53 percent said it does, but it is higher than in 2014, when just 46 percent affirmed that statement.
The same poll asked Americans if they would still live in the U.S. if they had a choice to live anywhere in the world. Seventy-five percent said they would, and 15 percent said they would choose to live elsewhere. But among those who said they disagree that the U.S. is a place with liberty and justice for all, just 57 percent said they would still live here if given the choice, with 43 percent saying they weren't sure or would live in another country if they could.
It's a strikingly high number, and seems to show many Americans, most of them Democrats, losing a feeling of attachment to the country, or love for the country.
On the first day of the Democratic National Convention a year ago, Donald Trump tweeted there was "not one American flag" on the "massive stage" in the convention hall until people started complaining.
An American flag was displayed on the video screen behind the stage, but as Polifact noted, there was no physical American flag on the stage the first day of the convention. An American flag was brought onto the stage for the Pledge of Allegiance, but was carried off afterward.
A May 31 Rasmussen poll showed only 68 percent of American adults said they think Americans should be proud of the history of the United States, while 16 percent said Americans should be ashamed of U.S. history and another 15 percent were undecided.
Only 56 percent of blacks said U.S. history is something of which to be proud.
Americans over age 40 were more likely than younger people to think Americans should be proud of their history. Just 61 percent of those under 40 agreed, while 39 percent either disagreed or were undecided.
A Gallup survey released in July of 2016 showed that only 36 percent of liberals said they are extremely proud to be American. The number for all Americans in the survey was 52 percent, a big drop from the 70 percent recorded in 2003.
A Gallup poll from June 2017 showed that 4 percent of the world's population, 147 million people, would move to the U.S. if they could. More people said they would move to the U.S. than the next four countries of choice combined.
Originally posted here:
Just 30 Percent of Democrats Say US Has Liberty and Justice for All - LifeZette
Happy Independence Day to all the Americans reading today!
In 1776, a brave new document was executed in order to begin implementation of a new nation with a system of governance that, at the time, was unique to anything else that had been tried before it. It was a grand experiment in human thought and the advancement of individual freedoms that changed the world forever. What is most incredible about it is that it didnt just pop into existence. It took years of fighting, arguing, brutal disagreement, even wars between parties, and lots of negotiation in order to have something that has ultimately performed so well. Last week, I wrote in my column all about where nearly everyone agrees. There was even a picture of children holding hands in a circle, and the whole thing was, admittedly, annoyingly cumbaya and why cant we just get along. This week, its all about why disagreement is good. That is, particularly disagreement in government and amongst politicians.
Basic intuition tells us that if no one disagrees and an idea is wrong, then everyone is wrong. The necessity of even quiet dissenting voices can not be understated. At one time, the world was considered by the majority of people to be flat (and unfortunately, there are still too many people who believe it). At one time, it was considered by most people that flying was to be kept to the realm of the birds, and humans just have no ability to get to the skies. If it werent for forward thinkers around the globe, the world might still be stuck in feudalism everywhere. We need rebels and renegades and people who are outcast thinkers just as much as we need people who pull back the reins on those rebels and outcasts so as to not make radical changes with the ease of the wind.
The vast majority of modern constitutions are written in such a way as to purposefully cause discord amongst branches of government and amongst individual political leaders. In my humble opinion, the best systems of governance foster disagreements and long, laborious, and tedious delays of gridlock. They also foster many political parties usually five or more.
People often criticize the US and its long process to get bills passed, along with the courts ability to re-invent them through reinterpretation. It might take years for disputes on law to make their way through the court system, and it might take years for new law to be passed by the legislature and the executive branch. Europe is often criticized for having so many political parties that it becomes difficult to find enough agreement to build a coalition to get something done. They also have systems of checks and balances that draw out the process and re-invent law.
Gridlock is a very good thing. It should be incredibly hard to change the law of the land. In the US, the average time it takes for a bill to make its way through various committees, then to the floor for a vote in both legislative branches, then to be accepted by the President is about 347 days basically one year. It is essentially the same amount of time in Canada and the UK. In the rest of Europe, it takes slightly longer, due to the presence of more diversity in political parties. As a consequence, a nation cannot suddenly become a different entity overnight. In most of the worlds republics, an idea cant suddenly leap through the process without lots of debate and forethought to become law in a matter of a couple of days. It takes a lot of diligence in a real republic to make changes, and we dont suddenly have pure insanity so quickly.
Please forgive this metaphor, but if government is a necessary evil, then one which is constipated on new law is far superior to one that passes new law as if its on laxatives. You get the picture. While I am not happy that the US has chosen to ignore its Constitution and that it has decades of layers of liberty-dousing feces of laws and intrusions, I am thrilled that it has taken decades to ignore the Constitution so much. It may not be a perfect document, but adherence to it would create the most liberty-minded government in existence. The fact that it takes so long get things back to the liberty once fostered is a small concession to the fact that it took so long to destroy those liberties.
So, this Independence Day, I am celebrating the fact that not only was the grand experiment started on this day, but also the fact that it exists through healthy doses of disagreement. And, I am celebrating the existence of glorious gridlock. Individual liberties deserve the careful consideration it takes and the difficulty of gridlock to be reduced. It should be exceptionally difficult to impede on liberty or to consider new law. Rather than complain about the speed of government, I celebrate it. Political gridlock is truly a very good thing. Dissenting voices force such careful consideration, and I am grateful to those voices.
This post was written by Danny Chabino.
The views expressed here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect our views and opinions.
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Red Dirt Liberty Report: Gridlock is Glorious - Being Libertarian
Former West Indies wicketkeeper, Devon Thomas, will be back in Leeward Islands colours this year, when he suits up for the Hurricanes in Cricket West Indies (CWI) Professional Cricket League (PCL) following a two-year stint with the Jamaica Scorpions.
This has been confirmed by Cricket Operations Manager for the Leeward Islands Cricket Board (LICB), Vernon Springer, who said the Antiguan is amongst 10 players contracted for this years tournaments.
He explained: The protected 10 for the Leeward Islands Hurricanes is Rahkeem Cornwall, Montcin Hodge, Jahmar Hamilton, Terrance Warde, Nkrumah Bonner, Chesney Hughes, Jeremiah Louis, Gavin Tonge, Keacy Carty and Devon Thomas is returning back to the Leeward Islands Hurricanes and just to elaborate, he has done his medical for the Hurricanes and he did that on Saturday.
Thomas, after being named amongst 10 protected players by the LICB in 2016, opted instead, to return to the Jamaica Scorpions.
In a similar move in 2015, Thomas reportedly asked that he be removed as one of 10 players protected by the Leewards and chose to enter the PCL Draft but was not picked up by any of the franchises.
The player, in May of this year, was back in the headlines after he pulled out of an Antigua & Barbuda senior squad set to play in the LICB tournament.
Springer said the players decision not to feature in the Leeward Islands tournament earlier this year, does not affect his eligibility for a contract and that his allegiance would have been to the team he was contracted by at that time.
Devon Thomas was contracted by the Jamaica Scorpions which meant that had to be priority over playing for Antigua & Barbuda in a Leeward Islands tournament so he would have had to execute his duties as a contracted player in Cricket West Indies professional season for the Jamaica Scorpions, the Leeward Islands Cricket Board official said.
Thomas, in his last season with the Jamaica Scorpions, amassed 493 runs in the 4 Day competition with a highest of 114. The Antiguan also scored two half centuries in his 19 innings.
This years tournament is slated to bowl off in November.
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The race for marine territory across Asia continues, as Japan registers hundreds more islands
As well as the four main islands of Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu, Japan is comprised of a further 6,848 smaller islands and islets along its archipelago. However, in recent months, the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has announced that a further 273 uninhabited islands have been absorbed into Japanese ownership, along with any fish stocks and/or natural gas stores which may be contained within their waters. Many of the islands some are tiny and little more than a few rocks sticking above the sea were already identified, but this confirms their legal status and Japans commitment to defending them as sovereign territory, says Ra Mason, Lecturer in International Relations and Japanese Foreign Policy at the University of East Anglia.
Essentially, the designation of 273 new islands is all about facing up to Chinese expansionism, he explains, which is currently not as expansionist as is being portrayed in certain sections of the Japanese and Western media. This action should be understood in the context of the Abe administrations broader policy shift towards a more muscular and assertive role in the sphere of international security. He points out that the heavily armed Japanese Coast Guard is being used assertively to patrol waters as far afield as the Gulf of Aden and Straits of Malacca. As such, the designation of these islands acts as a further justification to expand and maximise the Coast Guards roles, range and reach in and around Japan, with an obvious eye to defending land outcrops close to or within disputed territories.
Image: ESA
Japan is not the only Asian nation keen to expand its geographical reach within the region, as the ongoing disputes over the Spratly and Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands make quite clear. The Philippines, for example, has recently adopted the same tactic, with the National Mapping and Resource Information Authority announcing last year that the country possessed a total of 7,641 islands, 534 more than had previously been recorded.
This was published in the July 2017 edition of Geographical magazine.
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This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Artificial intelligence is already being put to use in the U.K.'s National Health Service (NHS), with Googles AI firm DeepMind providing technology to help monitor patients. Now I have discovered that DeepMind has met with Genomic Englanda company set up by the Department of Health to deliver the 100,000 Genomes Projectto discuss getting involved.
If this does indeed happen, it could help bring down costs and speed up genetic sequencingpotentially helping the science to flourish. But what are the risks of letting a private company have access to sensitive genetic data?
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Genomic sequencing has huge potentialit could hold the key to improving our understanding of a range of diseases, including cancer, and eventually help find treatments for them. The 100,000 Genomes Project was set up by the government to sequence genomes of 100,000 people. And it wont stop there. A new report from the U.K.s chief medical officer, Sally Davies, is calling for an expansion of the project.
Genetic data could be made available to Google. Creative Commons
However, a statement by the Department of Health in response to a freedom of information (FoI) request I made in February reveals this decision has already been made. The department said in this response that the project will be integrated into a single national genomic database. The purpose of this will be to support care and research, and the acceleration of industrial usage." Though it will inevitably exceed the original 100,000 genomes, we do not anticipate that there will be a set target for how many genomes it should contain, the statement reads.
The costs of sequencing the genome on a national scale are prohibitive. The first human genome was sequenced at a cost of $3 billion. However, almost two decades later, Illumina, who are responsible for the sequencing side of the 100,000 Genomes Project, produced the first $1,000 genomea staggering reduction in cost. Applying machine learning to genomicsthat is, general artificial intelligencehas the potential to significantly reduce the costs further. By building a neural network, these algorithms can interpret huge amounts of genetic, health, and environmental data to predict a persons health status, such as their level of risk of heart attack.
DeepMind is already working with the NHS. As part of a partnership with several NHS trusts, the company has built various platforms, an app and a machine learning system to monitor patients in various ways, alerting clinical teams when they are at risk.
But its been controversial. The company announced the first of these collaborations in February 2016, saying it was building an app to help hospital staff monitor patients with kidney disease. However, it later emerged that the agreement went far beyond this, giving DeepMind access to vast amounts of patient dataincluding, in one instance, 1.6m patient records. The Information Commissioners Office ruled recently that the way patient data was shared by the Royal Free NHS Foundation Trust violated UK privacy law.
A person poses with a magnifying glass in front of a Google search page in this illustrative photograph taken in Shanghai March 23, 2010. Reuters
Googles ambitions to digitise healthcare continue. I received a response to an FoI request in May which reveals that Google and Genomics England have met to discuss using Googles DeepMind among other subjects to analyze genomic data.
Davies insists that data could be anonymized. The Department of Health always promise that medical data used in such initiatives will be anonymized, yet one of the reasons that Care.data (an initiative to store all patient data on a single database) was abandoned is that this was shown to be untrue. I have also shown that the department has misinformed the public about the level of access granted to commercial actors in the 100,000 Genome Project. In particular it said the data would be pseudonymized rather than anonymized, meaning there would still be information available such as age or geographical location.
What would genomic information add to Googles already far-reaching database of individual information? A hint lies in its self-confessed aspiration to organise our lives for us. The algorithms will get better, and we will get better at personalization,"according to Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Googles parent company Alphabet. This will enable Google users to ask the question, what shall I do tomorrow?, or what job shall I take?."
With personalization as their ultimate goal, Google intend to use the machine learning algorithms which track our digital footprint and target users with personalized advertising based on their preferences. They also want to analyze health and genomic data to make predictions such as when a person might develop bipolar disorder or tell us what we should do with our lives.
Let us not forget that data, genomic or otherwise, is the oil of the digital era. What is stopping genomic information from being captured, bought and sold? We cannot assume that people will make life choices based upon their genetic profile without undue pressurecommercial or governmental.
As for how genomic data might be used and what decisions will be taken about us, the mass surveillance by government agencies of their own citizens is a chilling reminder of the way information technology can be used. There is something unpalatable about everything being connected and everything being known.
When it comes to genetics, the implications are particularly frightening. For example, there is evidence of a link between genes and criminality. We know that 40 percentof sexual offending risk is down to genetic factors. A single national knowledge base as the one the U.K. government is aiming to create might therefore be used for broad genetic profiling. Although early intervention programs that buy into genetically deterministic notions of crime genes are reductive, serious debate about policies involving genetic information will no doubt happen soon.
We can already see the beginnings of this in the United States. The bill Preserving Employee Wellness Programs Actwhich has received strong backing from Republicans and business groupswould allow companies to require employees to undergo genetic testing. The results would be seen by employers, and should employees refuse to participate they would face significantly higher insurance costs.
Too much personalization is likely to be intrusive. The challenge, then, will be to harness the potential of genomics while introducing measures to keep government and big business in check. The U.K. House of Commons Science and Technology Committees inquiry on genomics and genome editing was cut short (due to the recent snap general election). Its recommendations for further lines of enquiry include creating a quasi-independent body, which could be more attuned to broader, social and ethical concerns. This might introduce more balance at a pivotal time for the future of human genetic technologies.
Edward Hockingsis a PhD candidate in bioethics at theUniversity of the West of Scotland
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Google Could Soon Have Access Sensitive Genetic Patient Data We Should All Be Worried - Newsweek
July 4, 2017 Genoeconomics looks for genetic ties to life outcomes and economic behavior. Credit: Janice Kun
When Daniel Benjamin was just beginning his PhD program in economics in 2001, he attended a conference with his graduate school advisers. They took in a presentation on neuroeconomics, a nascent field dealing with how the human brain goes about making decisions.
Afterward, as they took a stroll outside, they couldn't stop talking about what they had learned, how novel and intriguing it was. What would be next, they wondered. What would come after neuroeconomics?
"The human genome project had just been completed, and we decided that even more fundamental than the brain would be genes, and that someday this was going to matter a lot for social science," said Benjamin, associate professor (research) of economics at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Science's Center for Economic and Social Research (CESR). Indeed, his excitement that day was the foundation of a visionary academic path.
Fast forward to today. Genoeconomics is now an emerging area of social science that incorporates genetic data into the work that economists do. It's based on the idea that a person's particular combination of genes is related to economic behavior and life outcomes such as educational attainment, fertility, obesity and subjective well-being.
"There's this rich new source of data that has only become available recently," said Benjamin, also co-director of the Social Science Genetic Association Consortium, which brings about cooperation among medical researchers, geneticists and social scientists.
Collecting genetic data and creating the large data sets used by economists and other social scientists have become increasingly affordable, and new analytical methods are getting more and more powerful as these data sets continue to grow. The big challenge, he said, is figuring out how scientists can leverage this new data to address a host of important policy questions.
"We're ultimately interested in understanding how genes and environments interact to produce the kinds of outcomes people have in their lives, and then what kinds of policies can help people do better. That is really what economics is aboutand we're trying to use genetics to do even better economics."
The mission at hand
Only a handful of economists are working with genetics, but this brand of research is perfectly at home at CESR. The center, founded three years ago, was conceived as a place where visionary social science could thrive and where research could be done differently than in the past.
"Being in a place where that's the shared vision is pretty rare," said econometrician Arie Kapteyn, professor (research) of economics and CESR director. "There's no restriction on which way you want to go or what you want to do. It doesn't mean that there are no restrictions on resources, but it's the opportunity to think about your vision of what's really exciting in social science research. Then being able to actually implement it is absolutely fantastic."
The mission of CESR is discovering how people around the world live, think, interact, age and make important decisions. The center's researchers are dedicated to innovation and combining their analysis to deepen the understanding of human behavior in a variety of economic and social contexts.
"What we try to do is mold a disciplinary science in a very broad sense," Kapteyn said. "Because today's problems in society, they're really all multidisciplinary."
Case in point: Benjamin's work combining genetics and economics.
The flagship research effort for Benjamin's CESR research group deals with genes and education. In a 2016 study, the team identified variants in 74 genes that are associated with educational attainment. In other words, people who carry more of these variants, on average, complete more years of formal schooling.
Benjamin hopes to use this data in a holistic way to create a predictive tool.
"Rather than just identifying specific genes," he said, "we're also creating methods for combining the information in a person's entire genome into a single variable that can be used to partially predict how much education a person's going to get."
The young field of genoeconomics is still somewhat controversial, and Benjamin is careful to point out that individual genes don't determine behavior or outcome.
"The effect of any individual gene on behavior is extremely small," Benjamin explained, "but the effects of all the genes combined on almost any behavior we're interested in is much more substantial. It's the combined information of many genes that has predictive power, and that can be most useful for social scientists."
Learning about behavior
While the cohort of researchers actively using the available genome-wide data in this way is still somewhat limited, Benjamin says it is growing quickly.
"I think across the social sciences, researchers are seeing the potential for the data, and people are starting to use it in their work and getting excited about it, but right now it's still a small band of us trying to lay the foundations.
"We're putting together huge data sets of hundreds of thousands of peopleapproaching a million people in our ongoing work on educational attainmentbecause you need those really big sample sizes to accurately detect the genetic influences."
As CESR works to improve social welfare by informing and influencing decision-making in the public and private sectors, big data such as Benjamin's is a growing part of that process, according to Kapteyn.
"What big data reflects is the fact that nowadays there are so many other ways in which we can learn about behavior," he said. "As a result, I think we'll see many more breakthroughs and gain a much better understanding of what's going on in the world and in social science than in the past.
"I think we're really at the beginning of something pretty spectacular. What we are doing is really only scratching the surfacethere's so much more that can be done."
Explore further: Scientists find genes associated with educational attainment
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Can genetics play a role in education and well-being? - Medical Xpress
At a rally and parade in the border town of McAllen, Texas on Independence Day, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) clashed with a group of protesters who booed, heckled, and attempted to question him about his support for a bill that would repeal the Affordable Care Act.
According to the Texas Tribune, Cruz attempted towork the crowd and shake hands while avoiding the protesters, who held up signs reading Were pissed, No Medicaid cuts and No transfer of wealth 4 our healtha reference to the massive tax cuts for the wealthyin the Senate GOPs health care bill.Other protesters held signs attacking Cruz for his positions on immigration and climate change.
Cruz, who is running for reelection and fending off a challengefrom Rep. Beto ORourke (D-TX), acknowledged the loud protest when he took the podium to speak Tuesday morning.
I will say you have a right to speak, and I will always defend your right, he said, according to the Texas Tribune. He ended his speech, however, with a dig at the protesters, calling them our friends who are so energized today that they believe that yelling is a wonderful thing to do. When later asked by a reporter about the demonstrators, he dismissed them as a small group of people on the left who right now are very angry.
Cruzwrapped up his appearance by riding through the streets of McAllen in a vintage convertible.
After canceling a planned vote on their health care bill last weekafter a wave of defections from the far-right and center of the GOP caucus, only two Republican senators are holding town halls over the July 4 recess: Sens. Jerry Moran (R-KS) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA).Lacking a forum in which to question and confront their representatives, citizens are organizing through progressive advocacy groups like the Town Hall Project to confront Cruz and other lawmakers whenever and wherever they appear in public. The health care repeal effort, which could come up for a vote as early as this month, is a top item on their agenda.
According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the Senates Obamacare repeal bill would cause 22 million more people to be uninsured in 10 years than if current laws were left in place, as cuts to Medicaid and subsidies for low-income people price many out of the health care insurance marketplace entirely.
Cruz is currently pushing an amendment that would make the bill even more conservative. The proposal, which Republican leadership is weighing seriously, would allow states to sell cheap, bare-bones insurance plans that dont cover essential health benefits like prescription drugs, hospital visits, mental health services and maternity care.
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Ted Cruz Clashes With Health Care Protesters At July 4 Celebration - TPM
Independence Day, a day to remember and celebrate our nations quest for and ultimately our achievement of freedom from a monarch who had lost touch with the goals and aspirations of those who settled here, has less meaning for those struggling for their survival in todays America.
The 29 million Americans who lack health insurance of any kind surely do not have independence, as they live in fear of illness or injury for which they have no coverage. Should they fall ill, they will not have the same ability as insured Americans to seek out treatment, because their options for coverage will be limited.
Healthcare is a ticket to independence for all of our citizens. It ensures our ability to be get an education despite the physical or mental hindrance that any child faces.It enables us to pursue and succeed at any chosen career.It allows seniors to hold on to their independence after a serious medical event or a chronic health condition.
And of course it generates economic activity that provides tremendous stimulus to the economy.
This freedom is, however, in peril, not only for those currently without coverage, but also for the many millions more that will lose them under the bill offered to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) by the Senate Republicans, and the House bill that came before it.
The ACA, flaws and all, created independence for millions of Americans. Many of the newly insured sought treatment for a physical or mental condition for the first time in years.
Some people who had stayed in jobs that limited their mobility and their contentment because they feared losing medical coverage due to a pre-existing condition, became free to pursue new opportunities and greater success, and in this way, healthcare in general, and the ACA in particular, has supported that concept that our nation embodies every day, but particularly on Independence Day: The pursuit of happiness.
Under the Senate bill, 22 million Americans would lose their health coverage by 2026, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). That is on top of the 29 million who dont currently have it. The devastation from the bill, however, would be even broader than the sheer number of people no longer covered, as innovative state initiatives to expand coverage and fill in gaps would be placed in jeopardy.
The Senate bill also takes aim at Essential Health Benefits, the minimal level of coverage that health plans must meet under the ACA. Comprehensive health benefits would be put at risk for all Americans, not just those that have gotten coverage under Medicaid and private healthcare as a result of the ACA.
Those requiring mental health and substance abuse care are particularly victimized by the Senate budget. Those with private coverage could lose mental health benefits since they would no longer be deemed essential.
Worse still are the cuts to Medicaid, which are projected to be enormous by the CBO $772 billion through 2026. Medicaid is the single largest payer of mental health services in the nation, and it is also playing a major role in responding to the nations opioid epidemic. Medicaid substance abuse programs have filled a gaping need during this crisis. As a nation, we cannot walk away from these commitments.
What began as campaign rhetoric to fix the shortcomings of the ACA and ultimately strengthen the law has devolved into a budget-cutting free-for-all. These cuts that fund the House and Senate bills give tax breaks to the wealthy and simultaneously remove independence for everyone else, and that is a troubling concept not only on the Fourth of July, but on any other day as well.
Gerard A. Vitti is the founder and CEO of Healthcare Financial, Inc., a company that assists individuals in obtaining healthcare benefits.
The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.
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Life, liberty, and the pursuit of healthcare coverage - The Hill (blog)
USA Today Network April McCullum, The Burlington (Vt.) Free Press Published 9:08 p.m. ET July 3, 2017 | Updated 9:10 p.m. ET July 3, 2017
Sen. Bernie Sanders delivered a speech on the Senate floor last night regarding Republicans' health care plan, June 20, 2017. Courtesy Office of Sen. Bernie Sanders
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., addresses an audience during a rally Friday, March 31, 2017, in Boston. Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., made a joint appearance at the evening rally in Boston as liberals continue to mobilize against the agenda of Republican President Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)(Photo: Steven Senne, AP)
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has delayed his single-payer health care bill in order to leverage his national platform against the Republican health care proposal.
In an exclusiveinterview, Sanders answered questions about the health care bill, a federal investigation into the now-defunctBurlington College and President Trump's attacks on the news media.
Doctors, nurses, health care workers and patients who will lose access to health care or see costs rise attend a rally against the GOP health care bill at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, Calif., on July 3, 2017.(Photo: Reed Saxon, AP)
Sanders called the Republican proposal to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act "a disaster for working families," and said he has delayed his own single-payer health care legislation to focus on stopping the bill.
The Senate Republican health care proposal would leave an additional 22 million people uninsured by 2026, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and defund Planned Parenthood and cut Medicaid.
Sanders said the reductions would harm families of nursing home patients who rely on Medicaid.
"This legislation is the most dangerous and harmful piece of legislation I have seen since I have been in the United States Congress," Sanders said. "It is a disaster for working families, and we have got to do everything we can to see that its defeated."
Read more:
Senate health care bill negotiations: These are the big issues on the table
McConnell: Senate will stick with working on health care bill
Fact check: Spinning the CBO uninsured Americans estimate
Sanders recently traveled to Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia to rally opposition to the bill, and he said he hopes to takeanother trip next weekend.
Sanders has promised since at least Marchto introduce a single-payer health care bill, which he calls"Medicare for all."
The bill has no chance of passage in a Republican-controlled Congress, Sanders acknowledged but the senator said the bill is written and gaining momentum.
"Right now we are focusing all of our energy on trying to defeat this terrible piece of legislation," Sanders said, "and I did not want to conflate or confuse the two."
President Trump participates in the Celebrate Freedom Rally at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington on July 1, 2017.(Photo: Olivier Douliery, EPA)
Speaking the day after President Trump posted on Twitter an altered video of himself wrestling and punching the CNN logo, Sanders said he was concerned about attempts to intimidate the news media.
"It's an outrage," Sanders said. "I think it basically encourages violence in this country at a time when there are a lot of unstable people walking the streets of America. And I think it is a very clear goal, a clear effort on the part of Trump to intimidate not just CNN, but to intimidate the media. His goal is for them not to expose what he does."
Sanders regularlylambastesthe "corporate media," a criticism that dates at least to his 1980s days as mayor of Burlington.
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As a presidential candidate, Sanders often used his rallies to speak pointedly at or about reporters, accusing them of ignoring what he viewed as the most importantissues in favor of political dust-ups.
Sanders referred to media coverage by Politifact, The Hill and Seven Days at three pointsduring the telephone interview to underscore his claims on health care and Burlington College. He said his critique of media is distinct from the president's aggressive stance.
"You know, every politician, every public official will have differences with the media in terms of how they cover a story. Right? Thats natural," Sanders said. "But I have never suggested ever that mainstream media is fake, that everything they write is a lie, that you shouldnt believe anything they write."
(Photo: Blaine McCartney, AP)
Sanders continues todefendagainst allegations that his wife, Jane, misrepresented the finances of Burlington College to secure financing to support a2010 real estate deal on the Burlington waterfront.
Jane Sanders left the school in 2011and the college closed in 2016 under a "crushing weight of debt," mostly from the property deal. College officialshave saidthe Justice Department and FBI are looking into the land deal, whileBernie and Jane Sanders have denied any wrongdoing.
"When she left Burlington College, the school was in better shape financially and academically than it had ever been," Sanders said in Monday's interview.
He dismissed the allegations against Jane Sanders as an attack from political operatives who cannot win elections based on issues.
"How do you win elections? What you do is you make very ugly personal attacks against public officials," Sanders said, "and thats often in the form of 30-second TV ads, but second of all, you go after them on so-called legal areas."
A publiccomplaint by Charlotte attorney Brady Toensing, a Republican state official, alleges that Sanders' office pressured People's United Bank into securing the loan for Burlington College. The news organizationsSeven Days and VTDigger havereported that the claim was based on hearsay shared by House Republican Leader Don Turner, R-Milton.
Sanders said he did not believe he'd met Toensing prior to the public complaint about Burlington College.
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Bernie Sanders slams GOP health care bill, calls Trump CNN tweet 'an outrage' - USA TODAY
The GOP view towards womens health is a bit confusing.
The Senate bill, Better Care Reconciliation Act cuts funding to Planned Parenthood.
Eighty percent of Planned Parenthoods work is preventing pregnancy. The bill further eliminates protections of essential health benefits which would ensure access to preventive health services including well woman care and contraception as well as maternity care.
Every single medical group agrees that TrumpCare is a disastrous plan. Rep. Pete Olson (R-Texas) laughed about prenatal care coverage because he cannot have a baby, therefore he does not understand why it should be covered.
We already know that Republicans would like to end all access to abortion. Now it seems they would like to end all access to pregnancy prevention. Worse, it seems they would like to end safe pregnancy care and care for the children that will result from lack of access to pregnancy prevention.
Lack of access to contraception and prenatal care will mean more special needs children. That is a fact. So they are creating a system that will ensure children that will need expensive specialty care and they are taking away coverage for it.
That is quite special.
As far as I can tell every single person alive today got here through a mother for that reason alone we should cover maternity care. It is called a social contract.
We went through these arguments before passage of the Affordable Care Act how quickly the 13 white men who designed the BCRA forgot. If women have access to affordable maternity care, and contraception without cost sharing, it is good for all.
Mr. Olson What if I do not want to pay for your earlier heart attacks, nor your Viagra, nor your prostate disease?The whole idea of insurance is a risk pool. Im sorry I have to explain that to you.
After seven years of hand wringing over Obamacare, to come back with a bill that deconstructs Medicaid and aims its arrows at women lays clear that the war on women never stopped.
Supercharged by a president who hurls insults over Twitter, the Republican party has discarded an allegiance to right to privacy and small government where women are concerned. For us, apparently the decisions over our bodies cannot be a private one between a woman and her physician the one with the training instead it apparently belongs to politicians.
The peril of this path awaits. BCRA will do harm. It is a bill that will kill. Instead we could look to solutions.
The answer to rising premiums and deductibles and out-of-reach prescription drug costs, is not to rip away coverage to the most vulnerable in our society.
For all its faults, ObamaCare was based on RomneyCare the plan in place in Massachusetts at the time.
TrumpCare has no model to base itself after.
This is not American exceptionalism unless it is a race to the bottom.
We could look around the world and see that covering all citizens and reining in costs is achieved by single payer or some sort of government control.
That is achievable.
For many, particularly on the right, a single payer system in not palatable. So what if we were to form a hybrid system?
We know from all the data we have that preventive services save money. That seems like something we want everyone to have access to. It certainly seems appropriate that true emergencies and traumas be covered (since many in Congress seem to think that is how everyone has access to care anyway).
What if we expand Medicare to cover those services for everyone?
That would not raise the Medicare tax dramatically.
For the rest of care insurers could develop existing Medicare A advantage plans, which already sell across state lines. These could be tailored to different levels of need, much as Congress has been pulling their hair over.
There would need to be stipulations to allow insurance to remain affordable as it is in the rest of the world. It would have to go back to being not-for-profit. No more shareholders.
Caps on executive salaries and strict controls over what can be charged. While this may seem a difficult sell, it is better than eliminating care to our most vulnerable or the alternative destroying an entire industry what the two extremes far right and far left propose.
We would need to allow Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices just as governments do in the rest of the world.
If pharmaceutical companies balk tell them to stop spending money on direct to consumer advertising. Why that is allowed is an anathema to me. The myth of high prices to pay for research has been exposed. They have had decades of record profits.
Lastly look at reimbursement appropriately be consistent in imaging costs and ensure that primary care can stay viable given that it is the most cost effective. Stop the unfunded mandates and the plethora of prior authorizations for everything even generic medications.
Given the amount of training involved, why not trust physicians instead of burning them out?
We need consistency in pricing for high end technology and procedures. Families should not fear bankruptcy due to a medical condition.
Allowing Medicare to set a pricing standard will ensure this to occur.
It is time to remember that we can learn from others and yes we can make America great again.
Dr. Cathleen London is physician based in Maine who developed a cost-effective alternative to the standard EpiPen in response to skyrocketing prices. London has been an on-air contributor on Fox News and local television stations around the nation. Her healthcare innovations have been featured in the New York Times.
The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.
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The Republican healthcare plan bad medicine for women and the poor - The Hill (blog)
The campaign to make people sick to make rich people wealthier never sleeps. Axios tells us how:
Senate Republicans have asked the Congressional Budget Office to analyze Sen. Ted Cruz's proposal for further health insurance deregulation, and they've asked for one estimate of a health care bill that includes his changes and one that doesn't, according to a GOP aide familiar with the discussions.
Oh, they're very cute, they are. Keep submitting proposals until you get a CBO score you can plausibly use to con the country, the elite political press, and the mind of Susan Collins into thinking you're "moderating" the bill. Even trim the massive tax cut a bit, full in the knowledge you can get that back when it's time to produce a phony "tax reform" plan. Do it over what is essentially a four-day holiday weekend.
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The only variable in the calculation is the number of uninsured that will allow the big con to proceed. 20 million? 19? How many millions of American families will have to suffer so that Paul Ryan's sommelier will be kept properly busy for the next few years? How many millions of the sick and suffering will have to become sicker and suffer more before the TV pundits and op-ed cowhands declare that Mitch McConnell's genius has produced a "compromise"?
If you're going to wind up with a celebration-related injury, I suggest you do it this weekend. Labor Day may be too late.
This 21st Century Modern Presidency Is a Sh*tshow
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July 3, 2017, 1:53 p.m.
Supporters of a stalled single-payer healthcare bill returned to the Capitol in Sacramentoon Monday to express their anger that Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) shelved the measure more thana week ago.
Backers of the bill, SB 562, disrupted a separate hearing on the Assemblyfloor by unfurling a banner from the gallerybefore being escorted out. They also attended a hearing of the Assembly Rules Committee, the panel in whichRendonheld back the bill, holding up signs on which they'd written personal healthcare stories. And asmall contingentstaged a "sit-in" near Rendon's office, chanting "SB 562."
Rendoncalled the bill "woefully incomplete" and has shown no appetite to advance the bill, but Pilar Schiavo, an organizer with Healthy California, an advocacy group backing the measure, said supporters plan to keep up the pressure.
"We continue to build. There is incredible grassroots movement around this," Schiavosaid, adding of the enthusiasm around single-payer, "it's too late to put it back in the box."
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BBC News | Chief medical officer calls for gene testing revolution - BBC News BBC News Cancer patients should be routinely offered DNA tests to help select the best treatments for them, according to England's chief medical officer. Prof Dame Sally ... UK medical chief vows to spread 'genetics dream' Cancer breakthrough: Treatment could be personalised to YOU by using your genes All cancer patients should have their DNA tested to save lives, Chief ... |
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Chief medical officer calls for gene testing revolution - BBC News - BBC News