Tina Dupuy: Both Arizona and Kansas are considering bills giving your doctor the legal authority to withhold potentially crucial information about your health and, in this case, your child’s.
Health Care: Affordability Is Accessibility
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Tina Dupuy: If it’s out of your price range – it’s out of your grasp. It doesn’t matter if the pill is offered over-the-counter or in vending machines – if you can’t afford it – you can’t have it.
Bill O’Reilly: Viagra for Health, Contraceptives for Promiscuity
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Julie Driscoll: Republican women – with contraceptive needs themselves, and the uncomfortable feeling of watching a young woman, perhaps not unlike their own daughters, being flogged and villified by men for honesty and sincerity – also vote.
LA’s Redistricting War and the Health of Our Democracy
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Madeline Janis: I wanted to see working people, middle-class and especially poor people down at the “ropes,” pulling council members and their staff aside and talking about how things should be done. I wanted the “people” to learn how to own the place.
California State Senate Kills Universal Health Care Bill
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The Campaign for a Healthy California (CHC) today denounced the failure of the California Senate to pass SB 810, the California Universal Care Act. The bill died when it remained two votes short of passage.
Uniting Occupy and Labor Over Health Care
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Shamus Cooke: In order to unite all working Americans into a powerful coalition, Medicare for All should be demanded, so that all Americans will see their interests reflected in the fight.
Friday Feedback: Medical Marijuana a Mistake?
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Friday Feedback: This week Jack and Dusty comment on Kevin Sabet’s “The Case Against Medical Marijuana.” Maybe marijuana doesn’t lead to other drug use, but permissive attitudes in society DO lead to more drug use, and legalizing pot is absolutely a step along that path.
The Case Against Medical Marijuana
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Kevin Sabet: But smoked marijuana is not medicine, and it is not based on science. Anyone living with smoked medical marijuana in their state knows that it has turned into a sad joke.
A New American Political Morality
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Steve Hochstadt: Conservatives don’t say that the US isn’t rich enough to care for such people; they say all the time that we are the most prosperous nation ever. They say they don’t want to pay for them. That’s why I’m not a conservative.
A Vegetarian Suggestion
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Mark Dempsey: American’s health is so bad that even pre-teens are at risk for type II diabetes in increasing numbers. Cancer, heart disease and obesity stalk the land.
The Great Health Care Takeaway
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Shamus Cooke: Most workers now understand that there is a difference between apparently having health care and actually having health care: if you are technically “insured” but cannot afford doctor visits due to high deductibles and co-pays, you really aren’t insured.
Healthcare: What Democrats Should Have Learned By Now
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Robert Reich: Had the President and the Democrats stuck to their guns during the health-care debate and insisted on Medicare for all, or at least a public option, they wouldn’t now be facing the possible unraveling of the new health care law.
California’s Dangerous Docs Undisciplined
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Marian Wang: More than 700 doctors in California sanctioned for wrongdoing by hospitals and other health care organizations haven’t faced any disciplinary action from the California medical board.
Famine Strikes Again: Will America Respond?
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William Lambers: East Africa is in the throes of famine. U.S. relief efforts over the past century show that we have always been willing to respond to humanitarian crises.
Summer Single Payer Conference
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This one-day educational and skills-building conference will teach you all about the US healthcare system, its problems, and how to fix them.
Should Your Job Kill You?
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Diane Lefer: Given our economic woes and high unemployment, the importance of advocacy groups and community organizations becomes very clear. Without support and backup, workers are less likely to demand their rights and risk retaliation at the very time when employers want to cut corners
Beware of the Racial Demagoguery
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Carl Bloice: With public opinion across the political spectrum clearly opposed to slashing the healthcare and retirement programs, any negotiated settlement would be undemocratic.
Racism, Whiteness and the Health Disparities Industry
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Jessie Daniels: We need to begin to critically examine those who hold the most power and resources in society, that is at white people, for the ways that they contribute to and benefit from the inequality in health outcomes.
Arizona Considering Requiring Hospitals to Verify Immigration Status
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Andrea Nill: SB-1405 would require hospitals to conduct an immigration status check before admitting a patient for non-emergency care. If the person is in the country illegally, hospitals will be forced to report the patient to federal authorities.
Progressivism and a Tea Party Approach to State Government
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Walter G. Moss: Florida’s new governor, Rick Scott, is demonstrating why most of us who consider ourselves progressives dislike the politics of Tea-Party-backed candidates. For many of us, compassion and empathy are central political values, and Scott’s first budget proposal, unveiled on February 7th, reflects little of either value.
Why We Should Trade Broccoli and Asparagus for Hot Dogs and Apple Pie
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Robert Reich: The requirement that everyone purchase health insurance, or pay a fine doesn’t appeal to many Americans. They don’t like the government telling them they have to buy something. But the healthcare system can’t work without this mandate. Only if everyone buys insurance can insurers afford to cover people with preexisting conditions, or pay the costs of catastrophic diseases.
Why Has Every Pro-Repeal GOP Lawmaker Given Their Congressional Staff Taxpayer-Funded, Government Health Care?
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Lee Fang: Evan as they rip the bill as some sort of “monstrosity” of “socialism,” nearly every Republican lawmaker eagerly accepts government health benefits afforded to them as members of Congress.
Republican Assault on Health Care Could Backfire
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Robert Reich: If successful—either in Congress or in the courts—a Republican victory could turn into a Phyrric one by opening the way to the alternative model, based on the system Americans seem to prefer: payroll taxes and public insurance.
Bringing Democrats and Republicans Together over Food
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William Lambers: In a hyper-partisan age, is there anything that can bring Democrats and Republicans together? Yes: fighting global hunger. Drawing on the history of the postwar Marshall Plan, Lambers argues that food policy must be the foundation of all foreign policy.
California Nurses Strike Billion-Dollar Felon, HCA
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Linda Milazzo: Whatever the outcome of this strike, these nurses are standing up to their felon corporate employer and fighting valiantly for their rights and the rights of their patients. Their strike leaflet reads, “When we fight, we gain respect.”
Ask Not for Whom the Drug Tolls
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Wendy McElroy: A new slate of drugs now addresses a wide range of so-called disorders, or dysfunctions, that former generations considered environmental problems or lifestyle choices: from obesity to attention deficit, from erectile dysfunction to social anxiety (shyness), from menopause to alcoholism.
PCL offers monthly Open House Events on the 2nd Saturday at 2pm and 3rd Thursday at 6pm. Click here to learn more.
Pat Robertson: Words Matter
Nomiki Konst and Lindsay Bubar: After a broadcast last week, Pat Robertson’s millions of viewers now think it is acceptable to beat their wives. You heard that right. Robertson suggested that one of his viewers, having some challenges in his marriage, should beat his wife.