Health

The Art of School Lunch

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“My hopes were that the viewer would just take a minute or two to find out who these people were.” -Kai Klaassen
I love it when I am given the chance to examine carefully the face of a true hero – the eyes, the laugh lines, the stress creases of someone known for being brave, accomplished, influential or wise. I also love pie. How wonderful to indulge two passions at once. On a recent trip to Mission Pie, a local “farm to table” café in my neighborhood in San Francisco, I had the pleasure, over a slice of walnut pie, of admiring Kai Klaassen’s recent portraits of lunchroom employees of the San Francisco United School District.

Health

No Cause for Celebration

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In anticipation of the coming passage of a “Health Care Reform” bill, we are already hearing a great deal about “not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.” Liberal Senators like Tom Harkin are hawking the idea that we’ll get the public option, or the expansion of Medicare, “next time.” Make no mistake about it. Such homilies are as empty as Obama’s reference to “Fat cats.” The bill marks a turning point in the history of American social reform, and it is a negative one.

General News

Health Care Reform Compromise May Actually Work

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I owe an apology to all you Tikkunistas out there for my prolonged silence on health care issues at such an important time. My organization has received two new health care grants through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and I am snowed under with work. Coincidentally, I am also snowed under with snow which knocked out my internet and made it difficult to retrieve children from various undisclosed locations. However, I’m back. I hope to blog soon about some of my personal adventures in healthcare reform.

Environment

Rush Connects Tobacco Liars and Climate Change Liars

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As I channel-surfed from Green 960 (Air America) to Hot Talk 560 in the car this morning, I stopped on 560 long enough to listen to Rush Limbaugh ranting about the climate change “hoax” he says we’ve all been duped by and the tobacco industry’s lies way back when claiming that there was no proof that smoking caused cancer. I found it strange that Rush was connecting the two together, and wondered if he realized that the folks that lied about smoking back in the day happen to be the same folks that have been lying about global warming. Back when my mother was smoking three packs a day, doctors and scientists started to connect the dots between smoking and cancer. Tobacco companies hired their own scientists to refute the evidence. Tobacco industry executives even testified before Congress that there was no proven connection between cancer and smoking.

Health

Delink health insurance from employment

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My wife Debi Clifford wrote this today to our two senators (Feinstein and Boxer) and our newly elected Representative, John Garamendi. It’s easy enough to sign the form letters and petitions but she’s been wanting to find time for a while to write this one that gives her own experience. Here are links for writing your own personal emails to your Representatives and Senators, and some guidelines for how to do it. If you want to snail mail the letter, do it to their offices in their home state, not to Washington, where mail to Congress is subject to all kinds of security delays. Dear Congressman Garamendi
PLEASE SUPPORT THE PUBLIC OPTION and do not support the trigger proposal.

Health

What are YOU grateful for?

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Please use the comments to let us know! If I stop to think what I have to be grateful for the list gets way long. Here are a few of the things that could very well be filling my heart as I hold hands with my family around the Thanksgiving table on Thursday, though I know I won’t say even this starter list because the meal will get cold if I do. Just saying “thanks for our health” will cover a lot of this, but how inadequately! I am grateful for:

still having a job in this recession.

Health

On Mammograms

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The current debate over the age at which women should begin taking mammograms is a good example of the kind of pseudoscience that may be introduced once costs becomes a guiding consideration in health care decisions. As I have argued previously, health care is the one thing we should not economize about. Of course, there may be health care necessities that we cannot afford, in which case we should try to figure out how to afford them, for example, through taxation. But the first thing we should do is to be clear as to what the desirable health care options are. Most current versions of the health care plan avoid all the real ways to preserve best procedures while lowering costs.

Culture

Dispatches from the Front Line: The War on Drugs

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If the war on drugs needed a spokesperson, it could hardly do better than select Chico Marx in Duck Soup, saying “Who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?” Sadly for the drug war effort, increasing numbers of both people and governments are starting to believe their own eyes. And what they see is that the war has been futile and counterproductive, causing over half the incarcerations in the US, with no measurable decrease in the amount of drugs consumed. But the war fights back, shooting messengers who speak truth to power. It’s enough to make you reach for a ….

Health

Is the Proposed Health Bill Worse than Nothing?

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Dr. John Geyman thinks so. Whether or not you agree, it’s worth considering his argument. He writes:
The negatives far outweigh the positives, and adopting this bill would delay real reform for years to come. Despite a chorus of accolades about the bill by its supporters, even comparing it with the historic importance of Social Security and Medicare, this monster bill instead bears the heavy imprint of corporate stakeholders who themselves are largely responsible for out-of-control health care costs. After months of lobbying and campaign contributions to legislators crafting the legislation, their multiple conflicts of interest and political compromises, this bill ends up being a bailout for the insurance industry and a bonanza for stakeholders in the medical industrial complex.

Christianity

Right-wing Christians Celebrate Anti-Abortion Add-on to Health Bill

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The Religious Right is cheering last night’s passage of the Stupak amendment, which threatens women’s reproductive rights by severely limiting insurance companies’ ability to cover the cost of abortions. “This is a huge pro-life victory for women, their unborn children, and families,” announced the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian public policy group that lobbied hard for the amendment. “We applaud this House vote.” The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops also played a major role in persuading lawmakers to adopt the amendment, which 64 House Democrats and 176 Republicans voted to attach in their last-minute wrangles over the Affordable Health Care for America Act. John Nichols raised serious concerns about the Catholic bishops’ involvement, writing this in his post for the Nation:
The tortured final negotiations put serious cracks in Thomas Jefferson’s “wall of separation” between church and state, as abortion foes such as Pennsylvania Democrat Jason Altmire openly acknowledged that they would not vote for health-care reform legislation unless they were told it was appropriate to do so by Catholic bishops in their home districts.