A gay HIV-positive man says in court that a hospital denied him treatment and visitors, as the doctor remarked, “This is what he gets for going against God’s will.”    

Joao Simoes sued Trinitas Regional Medical Center in Union County Superior Court. He says that the hospital admitted him in August 2011, but that “requests for his lifesaving medication were not honored,” and his sister was denied visitation rights.

bebinn:

I’ve found new resources for people in need of access, funds, transportation, and lodging for abortions, so I’m compiling all my posts on the subject into one, for easy reference:

Need Help Paying for an Abortion? - National Network of Abortion Funds and The National Abortion Federation

Abortion Funds by State

National Abortion Funds (United States)

International Abortion Funds

Abortion funds cannot cover the entire cost of your abortion, but they will give as much as they can and help you find other funds and ways to pay for your abortion.

Some clinics, including Planned Parenthood, offer their services at a reduced fee for those who can’t afford the regular price. Contact the clinic nearest you to see if that’s an option.

Medicaid covers abortion in 15 states. Check to see if yours is one of them.

Fund Abortion Now has a checklist of ways to raise money for your abortion. If you’re running out of ideas, check it out.

The health insurance industry, often at or near the bottom of a consumer’s customer service experience when compared to other industries, is paying more attention and spending more money on improving how health plans interface with patients on the other end of the telephone, a web site or, lately, though an app.

Several big-name companies, including UnitedHealth Group (UNH), Cigna (CI) and Health Care Service Corp. are seeing gains in customer service ratings. Though health insurance companies still rank at or near the bottom of customer service experiences of most consumers, the Affordable Care Act may be spurring them to get better.

Insurance companies are taking steps to build their relationship with customers as health plans prepare to compete between each other on exchanges where benefit packages will be offered.

thepoliticalfreakshow:

As the landmark Supreme Court decision looms next month, Republicans have been privately considering a plan to reinstate some popular provisions of “Obamacare” if it’s struck down.

The revelation sent conservative advocates — who have demanded nothing less than total repeal — into a tizzy, which forced House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) to reaffirm his commitment to “repealing Obamacare in its entirety,” declaring that “[a]nything short of that is unacceptable.”

But more evidence is emerging that Republicans believe that’s not tenable.

Rep. Allen West (R-FL), a tea party darling, told ThinkProgress that he supports preserving three popular provisions of the Affordable Care Act — the same three that his party’s leaders are reportedly considering.

“You’ve got to replace it with something,” West said. “If people want to keep their kid on insurance at 26, fine. We’ve got to make sure no American gets turned back for pre-existing conditions, that’s fine. Keep the doughnut hole closed, that’s fine. But what I just talked to you about — maybe 20, 25 pages of legislation.”

This underscores the GOP’s no-win predicament and helps explain why the party has no replacement plan years after promising one. If they successfully gut “Obamacare” and leave it at that, they’ll face the blame for snatching away its popular benefits. But if they push to keep parts of the law, they’ll face the wrath of powerful conservative groups, which have repeatedly proven their clout at purging Republican lawmakers who buck the right’s demands.

“We would be very concerned about bills to resurrect parts of Obamacare,” said Dean Clancy, the top health care advocate for the influential conservative group FreedomWorks.

A Republican health care aide said members of his party recognize the dilemma.

“I do think some Republicans are finally starting to realize they could be the dog that caught the car,” the aide said.

The deeper problem with the GOP’s fall-back plan is that guaranteeing coverage regardless of pre-existing conditions is economically infeasible without a requirement, like the Affordable Care Act’s unpopular individual mandate, to bring young and healthy people into the insurance system. The idea is to spread risk and prevent costs from spiraling upward.

Health policy experts overwhelmingly accept this reality. And laws regarding pre-existing conditions without an individual mandate would infuriate the insurance industry. That’s why some of the policy-savvy Republicans recognize that supporting the pre-existing condition guarantee would not jibe with their promise of repeal.

“It’s a terrible idea,” No. 5 Republican Rep. Tom Price (GA) told Politico recently.

A Supreme Court decision on whether the health care law passes constitutional muster is expected by the end of June. If it’s struck down, President Obama and Democrats will face an enormous setback but can run against an activist conservative court in the November elections. For Republicans, the political reality is far trickier if they get what they want.

Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) will soon introduce legislation that would allow states to use federal funds they’re receiving through Medicare, Medicaid, and other health care programs to build a universal single-payer system. Advocates are describing the bill as a “lifeline” for advocates:

It would create a mechanism for states to request federal funds after establishing their own health insurance programs…. It would, for the first time, create a system under which a Medicare-for-all program could be rolled out on a state-by-state basis. In California’s case, it would make coverage available to the roughly 7 million people now lacking health insurance.

“This is a huge deal,” said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, a Santa Monica advocacy group. “This is a lifeline for people who want to create a Medicare system at the state level.”

The bill could warm the hearts of liberals who expressed frustration with the Affordable Care Act’s more moderate approach of building on the existing health care system and should also satisfy GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. The former Massachusetts governor has sought to differentiate his 2006 health reform from Obamacare by rejecting a federal prescription for reform and promising to “pursue policies that give each state the power to craft a health care reform plan that is best for its own citizens.”

The ACA creates state flexibility by granting waivers to states that meet certain coverage standards and a bipartisan group of lawmakers has offered legislation expanding the provision by allowing states with innovative health care solutions to opt out of certain provisions beginning in 2014. Romney, meanwhile, has pledged to build on the ACA’s flexibility and grant states to the ability to opt out of the law entirely.

McDermott’s measure would go even further and encourage states to repurpose federal funds to build a universal single-payer health system of their own. If Republicans are truly interested in states rights, they will back it in mass.

I need to read more about the details, but this sounds like a plan we might want to get behind.

stfuconservatives:

animeaves:

hokarotsukino:

mscaptains:

STROKE: Remember The 1st Three Letters… S.T..R …
My friend sent this to me and encouraged me to post it and spread the word. I agree. If everyone can remember something this simple, we could save some folks.

STROKE IDENTIFICATION:
During a party, a friend stumbled and took a little fall - she assured everyone that she was fine and just tripped over a brick because of her new shoes. (they offered to call an ambulance)

They got her cleaned up and got her a new plate of food - while she appeared a bit shaken up, Ingrid went about enjoying herself the rest of the evening. Ingrid’s husband called later telling everyone that his wife had been taken to the hospital. At 6:00 pm, Ingrid passed away.
She had suffered a stroke at the party. Had they known how to identify the signs of a stroke, perhaps Ingrid would be with us today.

Some don’t die. They end up in a helpless, hopeless condition instead. It only takes a minute to read this…

STROKE IDENTIFICATION:

A neurologist says that if he can get to a stroke victim within 3 hours he can totally reverse the effects of a stroke…totally. He said the trick was getting a stroke recognized, diagnosed, and then getting the patient medically cared for within 3 hours, which is tough.

RECOGNIZING A STROKE

Remember the ‘3’ steps, STR . Read and Learn!
Sometimes symptoms of a stroke are difficult to identify. Unfortunately, the lack of awareness spells disaster.
The stroke victim may suffer severe brain damage when people nearby fail to recognize the symptoms of a stroke.
Now doctors say a bystander can recognize a stroke by asking three simple questions :

S * Ask the individual to SMILE ..
T * = TALK. Ask the person to SPEAK A SIMPLE SENTENCE (Coherently) (eg ‘It is sunny out today’).
R * Ask him or her to RAISE BOTH ARMS .

If he or she has trouble with ANY ONE of these tasks, call the ambulance and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher.

NOTE : Another ‘sign’ of a stroke is
1. Ask the person to ‘stick’ out their tongue.
2. If the tongue is ‘crooked’, if it goes to one side or the other that is also an indication of a stroke.

A prominent cardiologist says if everyone who gets this e-mail sends it to 10 people; you can bet that at least one life will be saved.

And it could be your own.

First reblog post that actually saves a fucking life.

This is a life-saving post.

the more you know

yeah don’t think that this can’t happen to you or someone you know if they’re young. my cousin’s wife is 33 and she had a stroke last year

I’ve had a stroke. It happens to people, and the more you know about this kind of stuff, the better.Because it could be important to know.

LIVE SAVING. WOOOAHH. REBLOG REBLOG REBLOG REBLOG REBLOG 

Had a family member almost die of one, so signal boosting because you never know when you could save a life.

Remember:

S * Ask the individual to SMILE ..
T * = TALK. Ask the person to SPEAK A SIMPLE SENTENCE (Coherently) (eg ‘It is sunny out today’).
R * Ask him or her to RAISE BOTH ARMS .

The number of Northern California hospital stays resulting in charges of $1 million or more rose sevenfold in the past decade, from 430 in 2000 to almost 3,000 during 2010, according to a Bee review of new data from the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development.

Most of those bills will be lowered significantly – up to 80 percent – following negotiations between hospitals and insurers. Even then, they will usually still cost more than a typical Sacramento home.

Patients generally pay a small portion of million-dollar bills, but even that can leave them penniless. A recent national study in the American Journal of Medicine using 2007 data found that medical bills were a major factor in two-thirds of bankruptcy cases.

Fees not paid by patients are largely borne by society, as insurers and hospitals spread costs across customer pools.

It’s a hefty tab. Cumulatively, charges associated with Northern California million-dollar hospital stays in 2010 came to $5.2 billion. That’s 7 percent of all hospital charges from two-tenths of one percent of all hospital patients.

Northern California hospital officials say they are aware of the fallout caused by massive bills, and try to find solutions for patients to pay them. But they contend they can do little to reverse the trend.

To get a feeling for what being sick in America is really like, and to help us understand the findings of our poll with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health, NPR did a call-out on Facebook. We asked people to share their experiences of the health care system, and within 24 hours, we were flooded with close to 1,000 responses.

The stories, often lengthy and detailed, echoed what our poll found: Americans with recent first-hand experience of the U.S. medical system are more likely than the general public to say there are serious problems with the cost and quality of care.

From Oregon to Florida and Maine to Mississippi, Facebook respondents told wrenching tales of bankruptcies, missed diagnoses, medical errors, miscommunication, and treatment that was delayed or foregone because of its cost.

The vicious attacks on women’s health to which we’ve grown so accustomed on the national and state stages are trickling down to the local level, as municipal and county governments get in on the action. Thankfully, time and again, local citizens have mounted fast and furious responses, resulting in the type of swift and satisfying victories that sometimes feel unimaginable on the national stage.

Local officials around the country have been using the “no taxpayer-funding for abortion” mantra to quietly turn away money for family planning programs that provide vital services for their neediest constituents. These attacks tend to follow a pattern: a program that has been funded without debate for years is suddenly pegged by a politician as “controversial.” Fellow politicians fall in line and vote to defund the program before residents and public health officials have time to react.

But in a few instances, community members are stepping in to stop them once word gets out.

At last, a few encouraging stories.

He had to be named Bubba. He just had to fill every possible stereotype of the Southern good ol’ boy, the shallow, narrow-minded redneck who treats his women like he treats his dogs. Only he’s a state representative, elected to serve in the Mississippi congress — and Bubba Carpenter is proud to have stripped medical services from the women of his state.

[…]

Bubba let slip the naked truth about the Republican agenda. The video of his statement is on youtube, but I suspect it won’t be for long: they’re scrambling to hide it away right now. I suppose it’s good that they exhibit a little shame, but it seems to be embarrassment that they were caught openly expressing what they think, not shame at their callousness.

Republicans seem immune to criticism. In an angry speech last month, John Boehner, the House speaker, said claims that his party was damaging the welfare of women were “entirely created” by Democrats. Earlier, the Republican National Committee chairman, Reince Priebus, sneered that any suggestion of a G.O.P. “war on women” was as big a fiction as a “war on caterpillars.”

But just last Wednesday, Mr. Boehner refuted his own argument by ramming through the House a bill that seriously weakens the Violence Against Women Act. That followed the Republican push in Virginia and elsewhere to require medically unnecessary and physically invasive sonograms before an abortion, and Senate Republicans’ persistent blocking of a measure to better address the entrenched problem of sex-based wage discrimination.

On Capitol Hill and in state legislatures, Republicans are attacking women’s rights in four broad areas.

ABORTION On Thursday, a House subcommittee denied the District of Columbia’s Democratic delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, a chance to testify at a hearing called to promote a proposed federal ban on nearly all abortions in the District 20 weeks after fertilization. The bill flouts the Roe v. Wade standard of fetal viability.

Seven states have enacted similar measures. In Arizona, Gov. Jan Brewer signed a law that bans most abortions two weeks earlier. Each measure will create real hardships for women who will have to decide whether to terminate a pregnancy before learning of major fetal abnormalities or risks to their own health.

These laws go a cruel step further than the familiar Republican attacks on Roe v. Wade. They omit reasonable exceptions for a woman’s health or cases of rape, incest or grievous fetal impairment. These laws would require a woman seeking an abortion to be near death, a standard that could easily delay medical treatment until it is too late.

All contain intimidating criminal penalties, fines and reporting requirements designed to scare doctors away. Last year, the House passed a measure that would have allowed hospitals receiving federal money to refuse to perform an emergency abortion even when a woman’s life was at stake. The Senate has not taken up that bill, fortunately.

ACCESS TO HEALTH CARE Governor Brewer also recently signed a bill eliminating public funding for Planned Parenthood. Arizona law already barred spending public money on abortions, which are in any case a small part of the services that Planned Parenthood provides. The new bill denies the organization public money for nonabortion services, like cancer screening and family planning, often the only services of that kind available to poor women.

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas and the state’s Republican-dominated Legislature tried a similar thing in 2011, and were sued in federal court by a group of clinics. The state argues that it is trying to deny money to organizations that “promote” abortions. That is nonsense. Texas already did not give taxpayer money for abortions, and the clinics that sued do not perform abortions.

Last year, the newly installed House Republican majority rushed to pass bills (stopped by the Democratic-led Senate) to eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood and Title X. That federal program provides millions of women with birth control, lifesaving screening for breast and cervical cancer, and other preventive care. It is a highly effective way of preventing the unintended pregnancies and abortions that Republicans claim to be so worried about.

EQUAL PAY Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, the epicenter of all kinds of punitive and regressive legislation, signed the repeal of a 2009 law that allowed women and others to bring lawsuits in state courts against pay discrimination, instead of requiring them to be heard as slower and more costly federal cases. It also stiffened penalties for employers found guilty of discrimination.

He defended that bad decision by saying he did not want those suits to “clog up the legal system.” He turned that power over to his government, which has a record of hostility toward workers’ rights.

President Obama has been trying for three years to update and bolster the 1963 Equal Pay Act to enhance remedies for victims of gender-based wage discrimination, shield employees from retaliation for sharing salary information with co-workers, and mandate that employers show that wage differences are job-related, not sex-based, and driven by business necessity.

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE Last month, the Senate approved a reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, designed to protect victims of domestic and sexual abuse and bring their abusers to justice. The disappointing House bill omits new protections for gay, Indian, student and immigrant abuse victims that are contained in the bipartisan Senate bill. It also rolls back protections for immigrant women whose status is dependent on a spouse, making it more likely that they will stay with their abusers, at real personal risk, and ends existing protections for undocumented immigrants who report abuse and cooperate with law enforcement to pursue the abuser.

Whether this pattern of disturbing developments constitutes a war on women is a political argument. That women’s rights and health are casualties of Republican policy is indisputable.

Health care costs are projected to reach $20,728 this year for a family of four insured through the most common health plan offered by employers, according to the annual Milliman Medical Index.

The index includes the cost of health insurance and out-of-pocket costs, such as deductibles and co-pays.

This year, employers will pay an average of $12,144 toward the total cost, while employees will pay the remaining $8,584 through their share of the cost of health insurance and out-of-pocket expenses.

“When it comes down to it, that’s a lot of money for the typical family of four,” said Scott Weltz, a consulting actuary with the Milwaukee office of Milliman, an actuarial and consulting firm with an office in Milwaukee.

This year’s projected health care cost is up almost 70% from an estimated $12,214 in 2005.

[…]

But economists agree that the rise in the cost of providing health benefits has depressed wages over the long term.

The Milliman Medical Index, which does not include the cost of dental care, projects that health care costs will increase 6.9% this year. This is more than triple the current rate of inflation.

[…]

Nationally, total health care spending increased 3.9% in 2010 and 4% in 2009, the slowest rate of growth in more than five decades.

Part of the slowdown is attributed to the rise in unemployment and increase in people without health insurance. But an array of other factors also could be at work, from physicians becoming more conscious of costs to high-deductible health plans becoming more common.

Total health care spending is even higher than the figures in the Milliman Medical Index: $8,402 a person in 2010. That amounts to $33,608 for a family of four.

The index also doesn’t include what a typical family pays in state and federal taxes for government health programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. And though the percentage increase projected for this year is the lowest in the past decade, the total dollar increase is the largest: $1,335.

Jonathan Chait:

One of the hard facts about public opinion during the health-care debate was that, while the public quickly soured on health-care reform, it remained quite sweet on the concept of health-care reform. This is why Republican opponents took care to insist at all times they only opposed the particulars of President Obama’s plan, and wanted instead to reform the system their way, with all the popular things and none of the unpopular stuff. Republicans declared they had a “moral imperative” to reform the system, robotically insisting their plan was not merely to repeal health-care reform but “repeal and replace.” As Jonathan Bernstein notes, just last January, Republicans in Congress promised to have their all-gain, no-pain alternative ready and raring to go for the summer so they could move if the Supreme Court overturned Obamacare.

But, in a development that received almost no attention at all, Republicans quietly conceded last week that they aren’t going to replace Obamacare at all.

Insisting they absolutely must replace it was necessary in order to make their totalistic opposition to health-care reform palatable. The political dynamics are such that you can loudly promise to craft an alternative a million times, and then quietly take back that promise in a small article published in The Hill.

Huge majorities of the public support, in the abstract, the idea of universal coverage. But they turn much more negative when presented with specific measures to offset the costs, like taxes or cuts to Medicare. Republicans have been claiming to support the general goal of expanding coverage but simply opposing any specific measure to do so. But conservatives actually oppose the idea of universal health insurance on moral principle. They tend not to concede this straight out, but the belief pops up from time to time.

The central argument against Obamacare was that it cost too much, and, regardless of what the Congressional Budget Office forecast, would doubtless increase the deficit. Paul Ryan has insisted over and over that the cost-control methods put in place by the Affordable Care Act would certainly fail because they entailed bureaucracy. As it happens, health-care costs have slowed dramatically, and there is strongly suggestive evidence that health-care reform has helped drive the slowdown. James Capretta, an adviser to Ryan, wrote a blog post disputing this conclusion. I find his reasoning unpersuasive, but that’s really beside the point. The interesting thing is Capretta’s fallback position, which is that he opposes Obamacare even if it succeeds in controlling health-care costs beyond its most ambitious goals:

… in the unlikely event that we could stop worrying about unaffordable premium increases, federal health spending would still be unaffordable because of the massive rise in enrollment scheduled for Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare’s new premium-subsidy entitlement program. There’s no getting around the fact that the federal budget is overloaded with entitlement promises that must be scaled back even if health spending rises only commensurate with the economy.

Is there no getting around the “fact” that the government cannot cover the 50 million uninsured Americans? It’s not a fact at all. It’s an ideological preference. What Capretta is conceding is that the facts don’t matter to him at all. He doesn’t think government should guarantee health insurance as a right. He’ll oppose any universal coverage plan on affordability grounds, but should those grounds prove incorrect, he’ll oppose it anyway.

Likewise, Andrew Ferguson has a piece in the Weekly Standard on an unrelated topic. (Political psychology, if you must know.) Ferguson defends his fellow conservatives’ various misapprehensions, including the misapprehension that Obamacare increased the deficit. In Ferguson’s view, of course it increased the deficit:

It’s perfectly reasonable for conservatives to assume that offering health insurance to 43 million people will cost a lot of money, and thereby increase the deficit; and it’s perfectly reasonable to distrust notoriously mistaken budget forecasters who say it won’t.

Obviously it costs money to cover 43 million people, or even the 30 million people actually covered by Obamacare. But there are ways to offset those costs such that it does not increase the deficit, by raising taxes or cutting other spending, which Obamacare in fact did. Now, it is surely possible that those projections would prove incorrect. But what Ferguson is defending is the supposition that increasing the deficit is an inherent feature of any universal coverage scheme. This obviously is not the case, but his offhand statement is telling. They may debate over the particulars, but the particulars don’t ultimately matter. Conservatives just don’t want to lay out the resources to provide universal coverage. They think of health insurance the way I think of flat-screen televisions — a nice thing to have, and something I’d like everybody to have, but not something to which everybody is entitled. I’d like to see conservatives defend that philosophical position openly rather than couch it in easily cast-aside particulars.

So what do you do when you’re accused of hitting up sick patients in the hospital to pay their bills — sometimes even before they get treatment?

Well, if you’re Chicago-based Accretive Health, under fire by not only the Minnesota Attorney General but key members of Congress and possibly the Obama Administration, you fight fire with fire. You line up your own set of political defenders.

[…]

So now Accretive is upping the ante. It has enlisted a veritable who’s who in health policy to come up with “national standards for how hospitals and other providers interact with patients regarding their financial obligations.” In other words, how aggressive can debt collectors be without running afoul of federal law, various or regulation or good public relations.

The group includes some well-connected heavy-hitters, including former Bush administration Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt and Medicare chief Mark McClellan, former Senate GOP leader Bill Frist,. There some prominent Democrats too, including former Clinton Administration HHS Secretary Donna Shalala and former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle.

For all of Accretive’s alleged misdeeds, however, the collection of outstanding bills is a serious one for hospitals, particularly as they await the Supreme Court’s decision about the 2010 health law. Hospitals agreed to take significant reductions in Medicare payments with the expectation they would make that money back when currently uninsured patients whose care now goes unpaid would gain coverage.

Should the high court strike down the requirement for most people to obtain insurance, however, that could leave hospitals in a financially difficult spot.