Healthcare

Health Care Town Hall with US Senator Ron Wyden

Start: Mar 19 2008 - 12:30pm
End: Mar 19 2008 - 2:00pm

The public is invited to attend a community conversation on health care. Our US Senator Ron Wyden is interested in hearing about your personal experiences. Pringle Hall, 606 Church St. SE, behind Salem Memorial Hospital. Call 503.459.4555 if you have questions.

I wasn't going to review this book, but the issues that it brought to mind by its conclusion were more than enough to inspire me to write about it.

I could have called this review My Lobotomy, which is the title of the book and which I know is eye catching. But for me, the question that is asked of the author after a groundbreaking NPR story was done on him gets to the heart of why the book is so important and why I am writing this review. "How could this happen?" This is, sadly, a question that can be asked of many aspects of our society and which is too rarely asked.

I was browsing at my local library and saw the title My Lobotomy. When you see a title like that it's like when you hear the screech of brakes and the sound of metal hitting metal. You know there is a car wreck and you know there's something you probably shouldn't want to gawk at but you just can't help yourself. The title of the book is like that. I had no idea what the book was, but I felt compelled to check it out.

It sat around awhile until I had finished a few other books I was working on, but then I picked it up. It is largely the memoirs of Howard Dully who was, at age 12, given a "transorbital lobotomy" by none other than Dr. Walter Freeman, the man who made transoribital lobotomies chic. This is the third memoir I have recently read where it is clear that the author has such a literal mind that you know what you are reading is the solid truth as the author sees it. The first such memoir I read was Grief of my Heart (which I reviewed here), the memoirs of a Chechen physician who lived through the two Chechen wars. The Chechen/Russia conflict has so many twists and turns and distortions that when you read anything about it you have to look for the bias of the author. Yet this book rang true. My wife's comment on this book was that she felt the author was not very imaginative and that he was telling the brutal truth about what he lived through. I felt the same. The power of the story was enhanced by the fact the author seemed so literal. The second memoir I recently read that had that same literal, unvarnished truth feel to it was A Long Way Gone, the memoirs of a child soldier from Sierra Leone who now lives in New York. This is a book I have been meaning to review for months now but haven't gotten up the emotional energy to do so.

I long ago abandoned the notion of a life without storms, or a world without
dry and killing seasons. Life is too complicated, too constantly changing, to be anything but what it is. And I am, by nature, too mercurial to be anything but deeply wary of the grave unnaturalness involved in any attempt to exert too much control over the essentially uncontrollable forces. There will always be propelling, disturbing elements, and they will be there until, as Lowell put it, the watch is taken from the wrist. It is, at the end of the day, the individual moments of restlessness, of bleakness, of strong persuasions and maddened enthusiasms, that inform one’s life, change the nature and direction of one’s work, and give final meaning and color to one’s loves and friendships. Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison

There are for all of us certain moments in time or place when we say something changed our lives, for me it is most often music or the written or spoken word. When asked what attracts me most to someone, it is the way they speak, the words they choose to use, the way they romance me with their words, not by gender but merely by being, or it is in a certain phrasing or idea or the way words are written and woven, it’s often a sentence or two that stays with me long after I’ve closed the back cover of a book or novel, or even the last page because that last page is often read after the first four or five, it’s always been so for me, the need to know how something ends before it’s even truly begun.

I am continuing my leadup to election day 2007: TUESDAY NOVEMBER 6th.

In Oregon there are two ballot measures worth consideration:

Yes on 49: Healthy Oregon

This measure tries to balance environmental and development interests. It has been endorsed by the Audubon Society of Lincoln City, Audubon Society of Portland, Bicycle Transportation Alliance, Bike. Walk. Vote., Coalition for a Livable Future, Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon, Democratic Party of Oregon, League of Women Voters of Oregon, Oregon AFL-CIO, Oregon League of Conservation Voters, Oregon Natural Resources Council Action, OSPIRG - Environment Oregon, Sierra Club, Working Assets, AFSCME, American Farmland Trust, People's Food Co-op, Oregon Winegrowers Association, and many others. I have to say I consider this an AMAZING coalition. You can see the full list here. You can see a breakdown of what is in the measure here.

Yes on 50: Healthy Kids

Measure 50 will fund quality health care for the children of working families not covered by insurance. It will strengthen programs to help smokers quit so that thousands of adults can live to see their kids grow up, too. And it will save taxpayers millions by cutting medical costs from secondhand smoke-related illnesses and reduce insurance costs for small businesses. Supported by American Cancer Society, Oregon PTA, Oregon State Fire Fighters Council, Oregon Alliance of Retired Americans, American Heart Association/American Stroke Association, Children First for Oregon, Oregon Nurses Association, Basic Rights Oregon, Planned Parenthood Advocates of Oregon, American Lung Association of Oregon, Oregon Alliance of Children’s Program, Coalition for a Healthy Oregon, National Council of Jewish Women (Portland Section), American Jewish Committee, Oregon State Public Interest Research Group, Women’s Rights Coalition, Stand for Children...pretty much everyone except big tobacco. Again, I am impressed with the coalition that has come together over this. Find out more here.

Now that the Republicans have once again shown themselves to be the Scrooge Party, denying millions of children health insurance because it would cost a mere week's worth of the Iraq war cost, MoveOn.org is once again initiating an ad campaign to counter right wing extremist propoganda. Here is the latest ad by MoveOn.org:

If you want to see this get on TV, please give a contribution to fight for children's healthcare in America.

Today, George Bush vetoed a bipartisan bill to extend healthcare to more American children. This bill was supported overwhelmingly by Democrats and moderate republicans (a dying breed, it seems), but was opposed by Bush and extremist right wing republicans.

Bush, the man who thinks American parents should use Emergency Rooms as their primary healthcare option for their children, once again shows he represents nothing but the most extreme right wing views.

The response from Families USA:

And MoveOn.org is leading the effort to get Congress to override Bush's mean-spirited, anti-families veto.

Lobby your Congressional Reps (from BOTH PARTIES), urging them to overturn Bush's veto of our children's health. And watch very carefully which Congressional Reps support American Children and which ones support Bush and the right wing extremists.

You can also read about what some Governors are doing about this denial of basic healthcare to American children.

Awhile back I wrote about an effort by New Hampshire's Democratic Governor, John Lynch, trying to lead a bipartisan effort to ensure quality healthcare for American children. At the end of that article, I mentioned my own Governor, Eliot Spitzer, was threatening to sue George Bush over healthcare.

Well, Spitzer was true to his word. While Bush and the "drown America in a bathtub" Republicans try to cut healthcare for Americans even further, Eliot Spitzer, joined by Governor John Lynch of New Hampshire, Governor Martin O’Malley of Maryland, Governor Jon Corzine of New Jersey, and Governor Rod Blagojevich of Illinois, are suing the Bush Administration for its failure to follow the law requiring provision of healthcare for America's children.

From the NY State Governor's website:

Governor Eliot Spitzer today announced that a group of states will be pursuing legal challenges against the Bush Administration for violating provisions of the federal State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which provides affordable health coverage for children in families that cannot afford to buy private health insurance.

The state action was triggered in August when the federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) arbitrarily imposed new rules that block states from expanding their children’s health insurance programs. Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, Washington, Arizona, California and New Hampshire will participate in litigation, either as plaintiffs or by filing supporting briefs, against the Bush Administration for violating the provisions of the SCHIP statute.

I have had several interesting discussions around here about global warming. Of course we get the foolish denial lobby drones who yammer “it’s a myth” despite the overwhelming scientific evidence, and I merely deal with them with a slap down, fools that they are. But there also is the legitimate discussions of what can we do—as a society, as individuals. We have a 10 year window according to top scientific and economic experts coming at the question from different angles. We have a 10 year window.

I have expressed how one of my main motivators for personal action is my son. I would say my step-daughter as well, and that is also true. By my son is 2…and completely dependent on my for everything, so the need for me to care and act based on that care is so striking with my baby. So I look at my son and feel a huge responsibility. I consider the 10 year window to MITIGATE global warming’s effect on my son’s world. It is already too late to stop the effects. We would have to have acted when scientists first were telling us we should act. But we didn’t. So we now have a 10 year window to mitigate.

The analogy I use is I consider my great-grandparents and grand parents who worked hard so their children would have a better life. I feel I must work hard to give my children a life that isn’t significantly worse than mine. That is where we are, starkly and realistically. There are huge hurdles, but also huge opportunities.

Governor Bill Richardson has sent out a worthy email about the disgustingly negligent treatment of our soldiers when they are injured. He hits the nail on the head: we should be ashamed of the way Bush has sent our soldiers to fight in a war with no purpose and no exit strategy, and when they are injured in the course of this war, we do not take proper care of them. When I diaried about my disgust at the way this administration is viewed by the world and how badly Bush behaves abroad, I was accused of celebrating. But celebrating is not what I am doing. I am expressing anger at the embarassment we have to go through with this administration and with the Halliburton Republicans who support war profiteering over the suffering of our soldiers.

I am not endorsing Richardson, but I have highlighted things said and done by John Edwards, Tom Vilsack and Barak Obama. I am now happy to highlight something good being done by Bill Richardson.

Here is Governor Richardson's message:

We should be ashamed. When our government sends our military men and women to war, we enter into a covenant to provide care for the injured and protection for those in harm's way. Our soldiers have been sent into a war we cannot win with insufficient equipment; and now, when they return wounded in the line of duty, our government has failed to provide the quality care our service people deserve. Our government has broken the covenant, and shamefully failed our troops.

[This comment was posted on another blog I edit here. Due to space-time continuuum disconnects I wasn't able to ask the original commenter for permission to repost it here yet, but I know her well enough that I suspect she wouldn't mind. I suppose I could give it an intro and set up a context for it here, but then again -- is there really any need to?]

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It wasn't enough to attack a mosque. Now pilgrims have been attacked too. & some say it isn't a civil war?

I have to work 12 hours and I woke up in the middle of the night with insomnia because I'd heard Bush use the term "battlefield" twice, with no apparent emotion. There would probably BE no battlefield if not for his stupid decisions. Maybe he thinks we'd be battling in the middle of Nebraska cornfields if we weren't in Iraq. Yeah maybe that's it.

I started remembering being 12 years old and travelling across South Dakota with my mom & 3 younger siblings, to visit my dad at the VA in Rapid City. On the way, our bus had to stop for hours on the highway, because of a burning car. When we got to the VA, my dad had come out of electroshock and he didn't know me. I got presents that were supposed to be from him but I knew they were picked out by volunteers. People used to say "Roger can't hold down a job. He's shellshocked."

Well, considering the grim nature of the subject matter "terrific" is kind of a relative term in this context. But as with globalvillage's other pieces that she pushes out through the YouTubes, this video photomontage is very well done and extremely effective in getting its point across. The choice of music and selection of sequential images in this one is particularly striking:

While the politicians are pandering and the spinbots are shouting and every monkey in a red-white-and-blue suit is screeching "I support the troops! We support the troops!"... the torn and tattered veterans of the neocons' illegal and immoral war for conquest in the Middle East are being warehoused in Washington in conditions that most Americans would never even dream of letting their house pets live in, let alone their wounded warriors.

Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan's room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.

This is the world of Building 18, not the kind of place where Duncan expected to recover when he was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Iraq last February with a broken neck and a shredded left ear, nearly dead from blood loss. But the old lodge, just outside the gates of the hospital and five miles up the road from the White House, has housed hundreds of maimed soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.