A new survey of Americans currently enrolled in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace finds that most would not be able to afford even modest increases in costs. The poll comes as tax credits intended to help some on the program afford their health expenses are just weeks away from expiring. According to KFF, which administered the poll, if no action is taken to remedy the situation…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
A newly published study reveals that a certain kind of gender-affirming care for transgender kids and young adults likely lowers rates of suicidality among those populations.
The study, published in the Journal of Pediatrics, examined 432 patients between the ages of 12 and 20 years old who received treatment at an unnamed Midwestern academic medical center. Patients who were set to receive gender-affirming care filled out Ask Suicide-Screening Questions (ASQ) surveys prior to receiving hormone therapy (HT) treatment, then repeated the questionnaire at future visits.
The post Study: Gender-Affirming Care Lowers Suicide Risk For Trans Kids appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
In the first 18 months of the COVID-19 pandemic, tens of thousands of pregnant women were wheeled into hospitals where they fought for their lives and the lives of the babies they carried.
It took the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention until August 2021, eight months after the first vaccine was administered, to formally recommend the COVID-19 shot for pregnant and breastfeeding mothers. The CDC had found that pregnant women with COVID-19 faced a 70% increased risk of dying, compared with those who weren’t. They also faced an increased risk of being admitted to the intensive care unit, needing a form of life support reserved for the sickest patients, and delivering a stillborn baby. In recommending the vaccine, the CDC assured them that the shot was safe and did not cause fertility problems.
ProPublica examined the harm caused by the delay in rolling out and endorsing the vaccine for pregnant mothers. Federal officials at the time told us that they wanted to ensure “an abundance of evidence” before issuing guidance.
But a surprising turn of events this summer reversed that guidance.
In May, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Health and Human Services secretary and a longtime vaccine critic, announced on X that “the COVID vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women has been removed from @CDCgov recommended immunization schedule. Bottom line: it’s common sense and it’s good science. We are now one step closer to realizing @POTUS’s promise to Make America Healthy Again.”
The next month, Kennedy fired all 17 sitting members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and replaced them with a selection of hand-picked members. The committee has since shifted its guidance, encouraging people to decide on their own whether to get the shot and to consider individual risk factors.
Doctors and national medical organizations said the new guidance from the CDC has caused confusion among patients and could put pregnant women and their babies at risk of severe illness or hospitalization.
“COVID-19 infection during pregnancy increases the risk of preterm birth, preeclampsia, and stillbirth,” read a statement from the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine.
The organization, as well as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the nation’s leading professional organization for OB-GYNs, reiterated their recommendations that all those who are pregnant or breastfeeding receive the updated vaccine and booster, regardless of the trimester they’re in.
ProPublica found that though unvaccinated women faced devastating risks, the COVID-19 vaccine had been commandeered by disinformation and doubt. Pharmaceutical companies and government officials had not ensured that pregnant women were included in the early development of the vaccine, despite federal guidance on how to safely include pregnant and breastfeeding people in biomedical research.
The HHS’ communications director, Andrew G. Nixon, defended the federal government’s actions, saying in a statement: “ACIP’s recommendation applies to all individuals six months and older. It includes an emphasis that the risk-benefit of vaccination in individuals under age 65 is most favorable for those who are at an increased risk for severe COVID-19 and lowest for individuals who are not at an increased risk, according to the CDC list of COVID-19 risk factors.”
Pregnancy is listed as a condition that can increase risk.
In the midst of the backlash against the CDC’s guidance, a recent Harvard University study highlights a new risk of COVID-19 during pregnancy. In a rare look at the children of women who contracted COVID-19 while pregnant, the study found that they may be at increased risk for autism and other neurodevelopmental diagnoses by age 3.
Researchers, who followed the children via their medical records from birth through their toddler years, observed some initial developmental delays at 12 months and again around 18 months, said Dr. Andrea Edlow, one of the study’s senior authors and an OB-GYN at Harvard Medical School.
“We were seeing speech and motor delays, but we really didn’t know if they were going to be persistent or evolve into other diagnoses like autism, or if children were maybe going to catch up,” Edlow said. “But that, unfortunately, hasn’t been the case.”
Edlow treated many pregnant patients during the pandemic, including some who experienced a life-threatening condition known as a cytokine storm. They often had high fevers and severe inflammation for several days. The condition, she remembers thinking, couldn’t be good for the placenta or the developing fetal brain.
Edlow and her team studied more than 18,000 live births to mothers who delivered between March 2020 and May 2021. Of those, more than 800 had been diagnosed with COVID-19. What surprised them was that 16.3% of those babies received a neurodevelopmental diagnosis by three years, compared with 9.7% of the babies who were not exposed to COVID-19 in utero. That was a statistically significant finding. During the period covered by the study, the CDC had not yet come out with its formal recommendation for pregnant women to get the COVID-19 vaccine, and as such, most of the mothers were unvaccinated.
The children of mothers who contracted COVID-19 in the third trimester, a critical time for fetal brain development, and boys had an even higher risk. The male placenta and fetal brain, the researchers wrote, are more susceptible to a mother’s immune response to COVID-19 and other infections.
“I know it’s alarming,” Edlow said.
The researchers, she said, are not out to stoke fear. While the risk of autism is increased, Edlow said, the overall risk still remains low. The study underscores the importance of monitoring children born to mothers who had COVID-19 while pregnant for neurodevelopmental conditions.
Edlow encouraged pregnant women to do everything they can to avoid getting COVID-19, including wearing masks, avoiding crowded indoor spaces and getting vaccinated and boosted.
“COVID is a real problem that poses risk to the mom in pregnancy and to the child,” she said. “And it’s still worth preventing, even at this point.”
Dr. Naima Joseph worries about how the reversal of the COVID-19 vaccine recommendation for pregnant patients will affect the health of the country, particularly its most vulnerable residents, women and children.
She remembers standing in line during the pandemic to get her COVID-19 vaccine when her husband, who is also a doctor, turned to her.
“Are you sure you should be doing this?” he asked.
Joseph, a maternal fetal medicine doctor at Boston Medical Center who serves on ACOG’s Immunization, Infectious Disease, and Public Health Preparedness Expert Work Group, paused. She was pregnant with twins. Like so many mothers, what she cared about most in this world was protecting her babies, but she also treated many pregnant patients sick with COVID-19 who spent months fighting for their lives from a hospital bed. Some died or lost their babies.
“Yes,” she replied to her husband before getting the shot.
The post Amid Confusing CDC Guidance About Vaccines, Study Highlights New Risk of COVID-19 During Pregnancy appeared first on ProPublica.
This post was originally published on ProPublica.
Senate Republican Ron Johnson (Wisconsin) has said that the U.S. “can’t afford” to implement Donald Trump’s proposal to send out $2,000 checks to supposedly offset costs of tariffs — just days after the president wined and dined some of the richest people on the planet at an extravagant black tie dinner in the White House. “Look, we can’t afford it. I wish we were in a position to return the…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
A nurse at Pennsylvania’s York County Prison told a pre-trial detainee, Willie Cunningham, who was suffering from appendicitis that he had heartburn and gave him Pepto-Bismol, according to a lawsuit filed on November 14 by the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project. The suit was filed against York County, the facility’s then-medical provider, PrimeCare Medical, Inc., and three nurses who…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
A year ago, the federal Indian Health Service posted dozens of flyers on Facebook promoting flu and COVID-19 vaccine clinics across the Navajo Nation, where the pandemic had inflicted a staggering toll just a few years earlier.
The notices, featuring photos of smiling families and elders in traditional clothing, tied immunization to tribal values like community responsibility and made a clear case for getting the shots. “Vaccines are effective at preventing serious illness or hospitalization,” one of them said.
But this year, as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine critic, has put his stamp on federal immunization policy, IHS’ public messaging on vaccines has taken a stark turn.
In internal emails obtained by ProPublica, IHS officials have flagged terms such as “immunizations” and “vaccines” for additional scrutiny, deeming them risky “buzzwords” that require approval from agency public information officers to be used in social media posts, pamphlets and presentations for patients.
Through mid-October, IHS had published far fewer posts on Facebook promoting vaccine clinics this year than last, ProPublica found. And in those posts as well as other notices, it replaced language touting immunization’s benefits with wording that frames both routine childhood vaccinations and annual flu and COVID-19 shots as a personal choice, advising patients to consult health care providers about their “options regarding vaccines.”
Current and former IHS clinicians told ProPublica the changes threaten vaccine uptake in Navajo communities and have left medical practitioners who serve this population feeling censored.
“It seems to me that they’re trying to put up barriers,” said Harry Brown, a physician and epidemiologist who left IHS in 2016 and now works for a tribally operated health facility in North Carolina. In a 26-year career with IHS, he said, he had never encountered an effort to stifle public health campaigns or restrict what medical providers said publicly about vaccines.
Aside from Brown, the health care providers who spoke with ProPublica didn’t want their names used, concerned it could endanger their jobs. One physician said the new IHS restrictions on vaccine-related speech factored into her decision to leave the agency this year.
“I can’t keep people safe,” she said in an interview just before she quit. “I don’t have any of the words anymore to say anything I need to say.”
IHS’ shift in vaccine messaging has not been previously reported but aligns with widely publicized changes within the Department of Health and Human Services under Kennedy’s leadership. In the past 10 months, as measles cases have hit their highest levels in decades, Kennedy has been tepid in endorsing the vaccine to prevent the disease while taking several steps critics predict will undermine public confidence in immunization.
He’s launched a federal probe into scientifically debunked links between immunizations and autism and canceled nearly $500 million in contracts and research grants for mRNA vaccines. This technology was central to the speedy development of the COVID-19 vaccine.
In June, he removed all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccine policy, replacing them with his own appointments, including several vaccine skeptics. Kennedy has also endorsed the founders of Idaho’s medical freedom movement, who helped persuade the state to ban vaccine mandates this year.
At IHS, the only branch of HHS that operates its own network of hospitals and clinics, the altered federal landscape on vaccine policy has had a more direct effect on patient care, clinicians said.
In a statement, an HHS spokesperson said the redrafting of IHS’ public messaging materials was designed to encourage “shared decision-making” between patients and their health care providers.
“The Indian Health Service continues to provide accurate, evidence-based information on vaccines and infectious-disease prevention,” the statement said. “Our focus remains ensuring Tribal communities have clear, trusted guidance and access to the care they choose.”
The statement didn’t address questions about what prompted the revamped messaging or concerns raised by doctors about its potential effect.
In a separate statement, Matthew Clark, the IHS’ deputy chief medical officer, insisted the agency’s approach to immunizations has remained consistent, even if its messaging about them has changed.
“We continue to advocate that every patient at every encounter be offered every FDA-approved and ACIP-recommended vaccine, when appropriate,” Clark’s statement said.
It’s not clear yet what effect the changes are having. Data hasn’t been released showing this season’s flu and COVID-19 vaccination rates for the Navajo Nation. Through September, the uptake rate for the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, known as MMR, for 2-year-olds has held steady at around 95%, the level of herd immunity needed to prevent outbreaks, IHS data shows.
Still, IHS clinicians said, the agency’s lack of public messaging about vaccines was especially notable during the winter and spring, when a measles outbreak emerged in Texas and then neared the reservation’s borders in New Mexico.
The outbreak had spurred alarm. Tribal health facilities, which operate independently from IHS, flooded Facebook with information about MMR shots at the end of February and urged residents to get themselves and their children vaccinated.
Yet two IHS doctors said that at about the same time, the agency installed its new restrictions on vaccine-related speech.
According to a March 13 email that Ryan Goldtooth, a public information officer at one Navajo Nation hospital, sent to colleagues, members of the group had been instructed to take down social media posts or flyers that contained the terms “vaccines (namely Measles)” and “immunizations” from the agency’s Facebook pages. “We cannot forward or post to the public,” the email said.
The email also said that the terms “immunizations” and “vaccines” had been reclassified “from low to medium-risk.” As a result, if clinicians used these words in public presentations and printed materials, they needed to be cleared by a public information officer first, Goldtooth wrote.
The email listed several other topics or types of information that could no longer be freely shared or talked about publicly. Starting from the date President Donald Trump returned to office, any information shared from a state health department, for instance, had to be removed from Facebook, the email said, without providing a reason. Any posts about executive orders also had to come down.
Goldtooth, who still works for IHS, did not respond to requests for comment about the email.
Laura Hammitt, the director of infectious disease programs for the Center for Indigenous Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, has worked closely with IHS staffers on vaccination efforts. Limiting what they can say about vaccines could harm their ability to respond to future outbreaks, she said.
“People are really trying to be compliant with changes required by the administration but also have a responsibility to care for their patients,” Hammitt said. “Those two things can seem to be at odds.”
The Navajo Nation, the country’s largest tribal jurisdiction with around 170,000 residents, has long been a focal point and challenge for IHS. The reservation is served by four of the agency’s 22 hospitals, but pockets within its 27,000 square miles of mountains and high desert have no cellphone service, internet access or electricity, creating hurdles for clinicians when it comes to communicating information and delivering care.
These structural issues had a devastating effect at the start of the pandemic, when the reservation’s rates of COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths were among the highest in the country. The virus claimed the lives of at least 2,300 Navajo citizens.
In the previous decade, vaccination rates among Navajos, especially for MMR and the flu, had regularly exceeded figures for the nation overall. They also exceeded rates for tribal communities in other regions served by IHS, which typically lagged behind the national average, according to the agency’s data. When the COVID-19 vaccine arrived in 2021, Native Americans’ uptake exceeded 60%, an effort bolstered by IHS public service messages and outreach.
On the Navajo Nation, IHS hospitals posted messages on their Facebook pages and circulated flyers that pushed community members to get the shots. “Protect yourself, protect your family, protect your elders,” the flyers said. Tribal members responded, arriving at clinics in droves, lining up in their vehicles to get vaccinated at hospitals and clinics.
For those who couldn’t travel to larger towns on the reservation that had health care facilities, teams working for IHS, the tribe and Johns Hopkins set up mobile clinics and made home visits to especially remote communities.
After the pandemic, IHS and tribal teams on the Navajo Nation sought to extend the COVID-19 shot success to routine vaccines. MMR immunization rates among 2-year-olds had dropped to 85%, but another coordinated effort restored communities on the reservation to prepandemic levels.
IHS was the engine driving the campaign, said Hammitt, the Johns Hopkins doctor. Agency flyers and Facebook posts retooled appeals used to promote COVID-19 shots to endorse the MMR vaccine, adding a call to protect “future generations.”
In the first few months of this year, however, the messaging began to morph again, with mentions of “measles” and “COVID” disappearing from IHS social media pages.
The weeks leading up to flu season and the new school year typically usher in a robust vaccine campaign in IHS hospitals. But this year, doctors took note of how few notices went out, they said, as New Mexico continued to contend with the measles outbreak that began in Texas and the Navajo Nation encountered a late-summer surge in COVID-19 cases.
One exception came in May, when IHS officials shared a New Mexico Department of Health alert on Facebook saying measles had reached Sandoval County, which overlaps with the eastern flank of the Navajo reservation. Another came that same month, when the IHS hospital in the town of Gallup, New Mexico, announced a clinic for people who wanted to get vaccinated for measles.
The IHS hospital in Shiprock, New Mexico, was the only facility to post a public service announcement about a back-to-school vaccine clinic for children. It included language telling patients to talk to doctors about their options and didn’t specifically mention measles, COVID-19 or any other infectious disease as such announcements had in the past.
Another measles outbreak surfaced in the Southwest in mid-August, this time just to the west of the Navajo Nation along the Arizona-Utah border. In early November, it had grown to at least 200 confirmed cases, according to Arizona and Utah health officials. IHS didn’t issue any advisories or notices on Facebook about this outbreak. The new approval processes for greenlighting public health alerts slowed down local administrators’ and hospitals’ response, the clinicians who spoke to ProPublica noted.
Several clinicians said the restrictions on vaccine-related speech alter the relationship between IHS doctors and patients, even if they apply only to public communications and not to one-on-one consultations.
“This is what we do for a living, and the most important thing we do is explain what’s going on to patients,” one of the doctors said. “If there is an external body interfering with that, as there is now, then that is shaping the fundamental trust between patients and the people trying to provide their care.”
The post The Indian Health Service Is Flagging Vaccine-Related Speech. Doctors Say They’re Being Censored. appeared first on ProPublica.
This post was originally published on ProPublica.
On Nov. 13, a small team of advocates for people with disabilities stepped through White House security and into the narrow, bustling corridors of the West Wing, unsure what to expect. They’d managed to get a short meeting with James Blair, who is one of President Donald Trump’s deputy chiefs of staff, in the hopes of preventing a planned policy change. In recent weeks, ProPublica and The Washington Post had reported that officials at the Social Security Administration were working on a proposed regulation that could result in at least 830,000 mostly older blue-collar workers being denied disability benefits.
The advocates, led by Jason Turkish, co-founder of the Social Security disability rights group Alliance for America’s Promise, had sent the White House team ProPublica’s Oct. 31 article and other materials. The reporting showed that if the Trump administration enacted this regulation, the harm would disproportionately fall on some of the president’s most loyal supporters: 50- to 60-year-old coal miners, factory workers and other manual laborers, especially in West Virginia, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi and Alabama. The administration’s logic for cutting these workers’ eligibility was that even if they have a severe physical disability, they should be able, in the modern economy, to find a more sedentary job at a computer or perhaps driving for Uber or DoorDash. Disability advocates countered that people who’ve worked in grueling fields for decades, some of whom don’t have a high school education — and who grew up before the digital age — would face severe obstacles to such a career change, including age discrimination in the hiring process, the lack of desk jobs in rural areas and the difficulty of mastering unfamiliar skills at this point in their lives.
A few doors down from the Oval Office, Turkish and his colleagues turned a corner into Blair’s office. Sitting across from him was a second person, one the advocates hadn’t expected to encounter: Russell Vought, the powerful White House budget director. He looked displeased.
After several minutes of dialogue about the disability regulation, according to Turkish and another person present, Vought said, “I know that this is being written about.” But, he added, the rule change “isn’t going to be happening.”
It was a startling announcement from an often uncompromising senior official in an administration with little history of changing its mind in response to journalistic scrutiny and pressure from advocates for the vulnerable. But that’s what Turkish and three other sources say has happened: The Trump administration has decided not to pursue the disability cuts that it has been working on all year — and in fact since at least 2019, when officials during Trump’s first term were close to finalizing a similar regulation.
Turkish, who is also president and managing partner of one of the nation’s largest law firms that represents disability claimants and beneficiaries, said in an interview that Vought and Blair seemed to have absorbed the recent reporting on the issue. He said they acknowledged the anxiety that disabled workers were experiencing — people like Christopher Tincher, a former coal miner who lost his leg on the job at a wastewater treatment facility in Arkansas and was featured in ProPublica’s story. Both officials were unambiguous, Turkish and another person present confirmed, that the regulation would not proceed in any form.
Turkish’s takeaway is that in the West Wing, vulnerable Americans with disabilities like Tincher don’t get talked about enough. “To have his story read by senior White House staffers, to remember what this program is, to remember that Social Security disability is not partisan,” was crucial, Turkish said.
Afterward, they walked out together, back through the corridors, and Vought was walking in the same direction. He didn’t say another word the whole way, according to one of the people present.
Spokespeople for the Social Security Administration and the White House Office of Management and Budget did not respond to questions from ProPublica, including whether they would contest the advocates’ assertion that the planned regulation has been nixed. A top Social Security Administration official confirmed in a meeting yesterday that the regulation has indeed been called off, according to a person present. It’s not clear why officials have said this in meetings, including with advocates, but haven’t made any public announcement.
At the White House meeting, according to two participants, Blair told Turkish to go to Frank Bisignano, the commissioner of the Social Security Administration, and “ask him point blank” if the regulation is in fact no longer being pursued.
On Tuesday, Turkish said, he did just that and met with Bisignano. Also present at this second meeting were the longtime lobbyist Andrew Woods as well as Mark Steffensen, the Social Security Administration’s general counsel. Bisignano, according to both Turkish and Woods, asked them what the White House had said about the disability issue — and he, too, “decisively” confirmed that the regulation would not proceed.
The commissioner, they said, made clear that his focus is on modernizing the Social Security Administration, not cutting disability benefits. “I take him at face value,” Turkish said, adding that Bisignano may not have been actively involved in crafting or discussing the regulation and decided against pursuing it when it “reached his level.”
Turkish and Woods say Bisignano told them to convey to the disability advocacy community that “there is no daylight between this office and the White House with respect to us not moving forward” with the regulation. On Monday, Bisignano should be able to tell them that himself: He’s considering participating in a town hall with advocates and people with disabilities.
Turkish has told other advocates in a group email that his organization will “remain vigilant to ensure these assurances are honored.”
The regulation that the Trump administration had been drafting — which remains listed on a federal bulletin with a scheduled publication date in December — would have made two major changes to the Social Security Administration’s disability system, according to four officials from the agency who had knowledge of the plans. First, it would’ve modernized the job listings that Social Security’s disability adjudicators use to decide if there’s work available in the U.S. economy that a manual laborer could still do despite physical impairments. This proposed change, which would’ve updated severely outdated jobs data, arose from a bipartisan effort that’s been in the works since the Obama administration.
The second provision was the controversial one. It would’ve almost entirely removed age as a criterion in these decisions, making a disabled 50-plus-year-old no more eligible for assistance than a 20-something. This would have had collateral effects: Losing eligibility for disability would block such workers’ access to Medicare, which they’re currently eligible for at an earlier age precisely because they’re disabled. And if workers were to be increasingly denied benefits in their 50s, many would be forced to draw down any savings they have, which could lead them to apply for Social Security’s retirement benefits early, in turn diminishing their and their spouses’ benefits until they die.
New polling by a Trump-aligned firm has suggested that older Trump voters would overwhelmingly oppose such changes to disability eligibility. In the wake of Democrats’ strong showing in recent elections, two people with knowledge of the situation said that the administration may have been particularly sensitive to these views. As one lobbyist put it, it’s all about the “elevation of an issue, and getting it on the right desks.”
The post How the Trump Administration Abandoned Plans for a Major Cut in Disability Benefits for Older Workers appeared first on ProPublica.
This post was originally published on ProPublica.
Decades of progress in HIV treatment and prevention in the United States is being derailed by the Trump administration, public health experts say — and without reversing course, the damage will be devastating. Threats to key federal programs are unfolding just as science has significantly advanced how easily patients can treat and manage HIV — leaving experts deeply frustrated.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Chandra Hassan, an associate professor of surgery at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) College of Medicine, spent three weeks in Gaza in January 2024, treating patients who had survived tank shelling, drone strikes, and sniper fire amid Israel’s ongoing genocide. When Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis came under siege, Hassan and the MedGlobal doctors he was serving with were forced to flee. “We were evacuated when they bombed just across the street from the hospital [and] tanks were rolling in,” Hassan told Truthout.
When Hassan returned home to Chicago, he was eager to share his experiences and advocate for an end to Israel’s assault on Gaza, which has killed an estimated 68,000 Palestinians since October 2023.
The post Health Care Workers Spoke Out For Their Peers In Gaza; Then Backlash appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
US President Donald Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have made a show of criticizing insurance company greed as they stand firm against extending Affordable Care Act tax credits and offer ill-formed alternatives. But a report published Wednesday by the office of Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) explains how a scheme endorsed by Trump and some top Republicans would further enrich insurance…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Tierra Walker had reached her limit. In the weeks since she’d learned she was pregnant, the 37-year-old dental assistant had been wracked by unexplained seizures and mostly confined to a hospital cot. With soaring blood pressure and diabetes, she knew she was at high risk of developing preeclampsia, a pregnancy complication that could end her life. Her mind was made up on the morning of Oct.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
San Diego — As 40,000 AFSCME Local 3299 workers throughout the ten-campus University of California system launched a two-day strike on Nov. 17, two Communist Party members—Alvin, an AFSCME-represented employee at University of California at San Diego (UCSD), and another worker, an AFSCME retiree from UC San Francisco—shared their thoughts before they prepared to picket.
Pay, or lack of it, is the big issue. But so is disparate treatment on a class basis.
While the university system fails to settle contracts addressing the cost of living and affordability crises facing its most economically vulnerable patient care workers, it’s also handed out six-figure salaries and housing subsidies to multiple high administrators.
The post 40,000 University Of California Hospital System Workers In Two-Day Strike appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
Tierra Walker had reached her limit. In the weeks since she’d learned she was pregnant, the 37-year-old dental assistant had been wracked by unexplained seizures and mostly confined to a hospital cot. With soaring blood pressure and diabetes, she knew she was at high risk of developing preeclampsia, a pregnancy complication that could end her life.
Her mind was made up on the morning of Oct. 14, 2024: For the sake of her 14-year-old son, JJ, she needed to ask her doctor for an abortion to protect her health.
“Wouldn’t you think it would be better for me to not have the baby?” she asked a physician at Methodist Hospital Northeast near San Antonio, according to her aunt. Just a few years earlier, Walker had developed a dangerous case of preeclampsia that had led to the stillbirth of her twins.
But the doctor, her family said, told her what many other medical providers would say in the weeks that followed: There was no emergency; nothing was wrong with her pregnancy, only her health.
Just after Christmas, on his birthday, JJ found his mom draped over her bed, lifeless. An autopsy would later confirm what she had feared: Preeclampsia killed her at 20 weeks pregnant.
Walker’s death is one of multiple cases ProPublica is investigating in which women with underlying health conditions died after they were unable to end their pregnancies.
Walker had known that abortion was illegal in Texas, but she had thought that hospitals could make an exception for patients like her, whose health was at risk.
The reality: In states that ban abortion, patients with chronic conditions and other high-risk pregnancies often have nowhere to turn.
They enter pregnancy sick and are expected to get sicker. Yet lawmakers who wrote the bans have refused to create exceptions for health risks. As a result, many hospitals and doctors, facing the threat of criminal charges, no longer offer these patients terminations, ProPublica found in interviews with more than 100 OB-GYNs across the country. Instead, these women are left to gamble with their lives.
As Walker’s blood pressure swung wildly and a blood clot threatened to kill her, she continued to press doctors at prenatal appointments and emergency room visits, asking if it was safe for her to continue the pregnancy. Although one doctor documented in her medical record that she was at “high risk of clinical deterioration and/or death,” she was told over and over again that she didn’t need to worry, her relatives say. More than 90 doctors were involved in Walker’s care, but not one offered her the option to end her pregnancy, according to medical records.
Walker’s case unfolded during the fall of 2024, when the dangers of abortion bans were a focus of protests, media coverage and electoral campaigns across the country. ProPublica had revealed that five women — three in Texas alone — had died after they were unable to access standard reproductive care under the new bans.
ProPublica condensed more than 6,500 pages of Walker’s medical records into a summary of her care with the guidance of two high-risk pregnancy specialists. More than a dozen OB-GYNs reviewed the case for ProPublica and said that since Walker had persistently high blood pressure, it would have been standard medical practice to advise her of the serious risks of her pregnancy early on, to revisit the conversation as new complications emerged and to offer termination at any point if she wanted it. Some described her condition as a “ticking time bomb.” Had Walker ended her pregnancy, every expert believed, she would not have died.
Many said that her case illustrated why they think all patients need the freedom to choose how much risk they are willing to take during pregnancy. Walker expressed that she didn’t want to take that risk, her family says. She had a vibrant life, a husband and son whom she loved.
Under Texas’ abortion law, though, that didn’t matter.
On a hot September day, Walker was lying down with JJ after a walk with their two small dogs, Milo and Twinkie, when she started shaking uncontrollably.
Terrified, JJ called 911, asking for an ambulance.
As the only child of a single mom, JJ had always considered Walker his closest friend, coach and protector wrapped in one. In their mobile home, JJ was greeted each morning by his mom’s wide smile and upturned eyes, as she shot off vocabulary quizzes or grilled him on state capitals. He loved how fearlessly she went after what she wanted; in 2021, she had proposed to her boyfriend, Eric Carson, and the two eloped. She’d just been talking about moving the family to Austin for a promotion she was offered at a dental clinic.
At the hospital, JJ was shocked to see her so pale and helpless, with wires snaking from her head and arms.
To Walker’s surprise, doctors quickly discovered that she was five weeks pregnant. They also noted hypertension at levels so high that it reduces circulation to major organs and can cause a heart attack or stroke. That, and her weight, age and medical history, put Walker at an increased risk of developing preeclampsia, a pregnancy-related blood pressure disorder, said Dr. Jennifer Lewey, director of the Penn Women’s Cardiovascular Health Program and expert in hypertension.
“If I’m seeing a patient in her first trimester and her blood pressure is this uncontrolled — never mind anything else — what I’m talking about is: Your pregnancy will be so high risk, do we need to think about terminating the pregnancy and getting your health under control?”
As Walker’s first trimester continued, she kept seizing. Her body convulsed, her eyes rolled back and she was often unable to speak for up to 30 minutes at a time. Some days, the episodes came in rapid waves, with little relief.
For three weeks, she stayed at Methodist hospitals; doctors were not able to determine what was causing the spasms. Walker couldn’t get out of bed, in case a seizure made her fall, and this left her vulnerable to blood clots. She soon developed one in her leg that posed a new lethal threat: It could travel to her lungs and kill her instantly.
Carson watched over her during the day and her aunt Latanya Walker took the night shift. She was panicked that her tough niece, whose constant mantra was “quit your crying,” now seemed defeated. One evening, during Walker’s third hospitalization, when she was about 9 weeks pregnant, she told Latanya she’d had a vision during a seizure: Her grandmother and aunt, who had died years earlier, were preparing a place for her on the other side.
“You better tell them you’re not ready to go,” Latanya said.
“I don’t know how much more I can take of this,” Walker whispered.
The next morning, Walker called for a doctor and asked about ending her pregnancy for the sake of her health. “When we get you under control, then everything will go smoothly,” the doctor replied, Latanya recalled. The physician on the floor was not an OB-GYN with the expertise to give a high-risk consultation, but the Walkers didn’t realize that this mattered. By the time the doctor left the room, her aunt said, tears streamed down Walker’s cheeks.
Dr. Elizabeth Langen, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist in Michigan who reviewed Walker’s case, said a physician comfortable with high-risk pregnancies should have counseled her on the dangers of continuing and offered her an abortion. “The safest thing for her was to terminate this pregnancy, that’s for sure.”
During Walker’s many hospital and prenatal visits, 21 OB-GYNs were among the more than 90 physicians involved in her care. None of them counseled her on the option — or the health benefits — of a termination, according to medical records.
In Texas, the law bars “aiding and abetting” an illegal abortion. As a result, many physicians have avoided even mentioning it, according to interviews with dozens of doctors.
In her condition, Walker couldn’t fathom leaving the state. When her aunt suggested ordering abortion medication online, Walker was worried she could go to jail. She was spending so much time in the hospital; what if she got caught taking the pills?
At 12 weeks pregnant, she was admitted to University Hospital. Doctors there noted that even on anticoagulation medication, the clotting in Walker’s leg was so profound that she needed a thrombectomy to remove it.
“At this point, we’ve gone from ‘complicated, but within the realm of normal’ to ‘we’ve got someone with a major procedure in pregnancy that tells us something isn’t going well,’” said Dr. Will Williams, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist in New Orleans, where an abortion ban is also in place. “In my practice, we’d have a frank discussion about whether this is a person we’d offer a termination to at the point of thrombectomy.”
ProPublica reached out to five physicians who were involved in key moments of Walker’s care: the hospitalist on duty on Oct. 14, 2024, when she asked about ending her pregnancy; three OB-GYNs; and a hospitalist on duty at the time of her thrombectomy. They did not respond. The hospitals Walker visited, including those run by University Health System and Methodist Healthcare, which is co-owned by HCA, did not comment on Walker’s care, despite permission from her family. Although the Walkers have not pursued legal action, they have engaged a lawyer. A University Health System spokesperson said that it is the company’s policy not to comment on potential litigation.
In her second trimester, Walker’s seizures continued and her hypertension remained out of control. At an appointment on Dec. 27, at around 20 weeks, a doctor noted spiking blood pressure and sent her to University Hospital’s ER. There, doctors recorded a diagnosis of preeclampsia.
The experts who reviewed Walker’s vital signs for ProPublica said her blood pressure of 174 over 115 was so concerning at that point, she needed to be admitted and monitored. Most questioned her doctor’s choice not to label her condition as severe. The treatment for severe preeclampsia, which points to a problem with the placenta, is delivery — or, at 20 weeks, an abortion.
Instead, doctors lowered her blood pressure with medication and sent her home.
Three days later, JJ crawled into bed with his mom and fed her soup. “I’m so sorry,” Walker croaked. “It’s your birthday and it shouldn’t be like this.”
He told his mom it was okay. He hadn’t expected laser tag or a trip to Dave & Buster’s this year. Over the past few months, when his mom was home, he had tried his best to make things easier on her, walking the dogs when she was out of breath, checking in every hour or so with a hug. JJ knew that after missing so many days of work, she had lost her job. She was stressed about getting enough food for the house. He was relieved when he heard her snoring — at least she was resting.
That afternoon, when his stepdad was out grocery shopping and his grandmother was just getting back from dialysis, he cracked open the door to Walker’s room.
His mom was lying face-down in bed, as if she had fallen over while getting up. JJ ran over and tried to find any sign she was breathing. When he called 911, a dispatcher coached him to slide her to the rug and start CPR.
“I need you,” he shouted as he leaned over his mom, pressing down on her chest. “I need you!”
The anti-abortion activists who helped shape America’s latest wave of abortion bans have long seen health exemptions as a loophole that would get in the way of their goals. They fear such exceptions, if included in the laws, would allow virtually anyone to terminate a pregnancy.
In Idaho, an anti-abortion leader testifying at a state Senate hearing suggested doctors would use health exceptions to give abortions to patients with headaches.
In South Dakota, a pregnant Republican lawmaker with a high risk of blood clots begged her colleagues to consider creating a health exception that would protect her; her bill never made it to a hearing.
In Tennessee, an anti-abortion lobbyist with no medical training fought and defeated an amendment to the state law that would allow a health exception to “prevent” an emergency. He testified in the state Capitol that the carve-out was too broad since some pregnancy complications “work themselves out.”
The refusal to entertain these broader exceptions is particularly consequential given the state of women’s health. Women are entering pregnancy older and sicker than they have in decades. The rate of blood pressure disorders in pregnancy has more than doubled since 1993; they now affect up to 15% of U.S. pregnancies. And they’re most prevalent in states with restrictive abortion policies, according to a 2023 study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. The burden of disease falls heaviest on Black women, like Walker, for an array of reasons: neighborhood disinvestment, poor access to health care and discrimination in the medical system. Cuts to Medicaid funding and changes to the Affordable Care Act are likely to exacerbate these problems, according to experts.
Other countries give pregnant women and their doctors far more control over the medical decision to terminate. Across Europe, for example, most laws permit abortion for any reason through the first trimester, when more than 90% of abortions occur. After that gestational limit, their statutes also tend to include broad health exceptions that can be used for chronic conditions, illnesses that develop in pregnancy, fetal anomalies and, in some countries, mental health.
U.S. abortion bans generally restrict interventions to a far more limited set of health risks, like a “life-threatening medical emergency” or “substantial and irreversible” harm to major organs. A small subset of lawyers and doctors argue that the law can and should be interpreted to cover patients with chronic conditions that are worsening in pregnancy. But the vaguely written bans threaten criminal penalties for performing an illegal abortion — in Texas, up to 99 years behind bars. In practice, few hospitals grant health exceptions, ProPublica’s reporting has found.
Dr. Jessica Tarleton, an OB-GYN who provides abortions in South Carolina, recalled how much changed at her hospital when the state’s ban was put in place: OB-GYNs who want to provide an abortion to a patient with a health risk now need to get a maternal-fetal medicine specialist to explicitly write in the chart that it is necessary, in compliance with the law. Not many doctors are willing to do so.
“Some people were not because of their personal beliefs, and some because they didn’t want to be involved in any kind of potential legal actions,” Tarleton said. “They didn’t want their opinion to have anything to do with a patient getting an abortion or not.”
Recently, for example, Cristina Nuñez sued two hospitals in El Paso for their inaction in her care in 2023. She had diabetes, uncontrolled blood pressure and end-stage kidney disease when she learned she was unexpectedly pregnant at 36. Doctors wrote in her medical record that “she needs termination based on threat to maternal life or health,” but Nuñez alleged that one hospital failed to find an anesthesiologist willing to participate. She remained pregnant for weeks, even as blood clots turned her right arm black, until an advocacy organization threatened legal action and she was able to obtain an abortion. The lawsuit is ongoing.
This year, Texas Republicans passed legislation with minor amendments to their ban after ProPublica reported the deaths of three miscarrying women who did not receive critical abortion care during emergencies. In the updated law, an emergency still needs to be “life-threatening” to qualify for an abortion, but it no longer needs to be “imminent.” Doctors expect that most hospitals still won’t provide abortions to women like Walker who have dangerous chronic conditions but no certain threat to their lives.
ProPublica asked Sen. Bryan Hughes, the author of Texas’ abortion ban, about how the specific complications Walker faced should be treated by doctors under the amended law. When her pregnancy began, would she be eligible for an abortion due to her health? Would she need to wait for a diagnosis of severe preeclampsia? Is there a reason the law doesn’t include an exception for health risks? ProPublica put the same questions to the 20 state senators who co-wrote the bipartisan amendment.
Only Sen. Carol Alvarado, a Democrat, responded. In her view, the amendment was far too narrow. But, she said, her Republican colleagues defer to the far right of their base and oppose broader exceptions.
“You can’t proclaim to be pro-life, but you’re passing laws that are endangering women and causing death,” she said. “We have to allow for more exceptions.”
After Walker died, her family felt bewildered by her medical care. The doctors had assured them that her baby was healthy and she would be fine. The autopsy found that the fetus was indeed healthy, at just under a pound and measuring 9 inches long. But it showed that Walker had hypertensive cardiovascular disease with preeclampsia, along with an enlarged heart, dangerously full of fluid, and kidney damage — signs that her condition had declined even more than she knew.
In Carson’s mind, the many doctors they saw cast the risks as challenges that would be overcome if his wife followed directions. “She was doing what they told her to do,” he said. He couldn’t understand how no one suggested ending the pregnancy to keep Walker safe. “Nobody said nothing.”
Latanya worried the law played a role. “They didn’t want to offer to end the pregnancy, because the government or someone says you can’t? So you’d rather let somebody die?” she said. “Now we are the ones that have to suffer.”
JJ couldn’t bear to stay in the home where he had found his mom, so he moved in with Latanya. Each day, he scrolls through old videos on the computer so he can hear Walker’s voice.
Latanya does everything she can to support him, but she knows she can’t erase his pain.
She recalls watching JJ steady himself at Walker’s funeral, to see her one last time. Until that point, he hadn’t cried.
When he finally faced the open casket where his mom lay holding her fetus, JJ sank to his knees, overcome. His aunt, uncles, cousins and grandmother gathered around him and rocked him in their arms.
The post “Ticking Time Bomb”: A Pregnant Mother Kept Getting Sicker. She Died After She Couldn’t Get an Abortion in Texas. appeared first on ProPublica.
This post was originally published on ProPublica.
The United States was scheduled for its regular review of its human rights violations by the United Nations Human Rights Council on November 7, but it refused to cooperate. As part of the process, activists in the US submitted a shadow report last April called “The Rights to Life and Health: How financing affects the right to health care in the US.” Clearing the FOG speaks with Martha “Marti” Schmidt, a human rights expert and activist, about the findings in the shadow report, the legal basis supporting the human right to health care, the problems with the current healthcare system in the United States and what type of system would honor our right to health care. Schmidt also discusses successful healthcare systems in other countries and the importance of showing solidarity with countries that are targeted by the United States.
The post The Legal Basis For And US Violations Of Our Right To Health Care appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
The following is based on a lightly edited post from Zayid Muhammad in support of the Nov. 28-Dec. 9, 2025 March for Mumia:
“Our struggle for freedom, justice and equality has always been a long, hard walk, to put it mildly,” says veteran voice for social justice Zayid Muhammad, chair of the Malcolm X Commemoration Committee.
Muhammad will be among the marchers on Nov. 28 when supporters for [Pennsylvania] political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal will begin an incredible 108-mile walk to protest medical neglect he faces and the medical neglect characteristically facing aging prisoners!
The walk is being simply called ‘March For Mumia’!
The post Long March For Mumia! appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
With her legacy on prominent display, Nancy Pelosi’s retirement announcement couldn’t have been better timed. When better to bid farewell to a historic party leader than during a bruising fight over a corner of the U.S. health care mess, where winning won’t improve a single person’s health care but will perpetuate trillions of dollars in subsidies for corporations?
There’s not much to say about the content of the reported deal to end the government shutdown that Healing and Stealing hasn’t already said. Several million people may no longer be able to buy coverage, which a huge portion of them won’t use anyway, because the enhanced subsidies don’t cover the extreme cost sharing that plagues ACA plans. Cutting the subsidies is cruel, and Congress should extend them, but it’s a fight to preserve an awful status quo.
The post ‘Pelosi’s Law’: Why Democratic Leaders Think They’re Winning By Losing appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
The new coalition “Students Rise Up” held actions in 100 cities at schools and where politicians were targeted on Nov. 7 to protest President Donald Trump’s attacks on higher education and address a range of issues impacting students.
Nearly 20 unions and organizations endorsed the actions, including the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), Ohio Students Association, New Hampshire Youth Movement, Students for a Democratic Society, Campus Climate Network, Gen-Z for Change, Indivisible, Jewish Voice for Peace and March for Our Lives. Sunrise Movement, whose executive director, Aru Shiney-Ajay, stressed in a Nov. 4 press release that “everyone deserves an accessible, affordable and quality education.”
The post ‘Students Rise Up’ Actions Hit 100 Cities appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
It’s helpful to think of the U.S. health care system like a pie made up of different slices (Figure). The largest (blue) slice is employer health insurance, which covers 160 million workers and their dependents; individual non-group insurance (in orange) provides 24 million individuals and their families with patchy insurance (including the enhanced subsidies); Medicaid (in yellow) covers 65 million poor and low-income adults, children, and seniors; Medicare (in red) pays for medical care for 60 million seniors and people with disabilities; the Veteran’s Health Administration (in bright green) provides the best socialized medicine in the nation to 9.1 million qualifying veterans; and that leaves the rest, approximately 28 million Americans, in the (purple) slice of the uninsured.
The post Enhance The Subsidies And Let Insurance Industry Feed At Federal Trough? appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
We speak to The American Prospect’s David Dayen about what could be the end to the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, after seven Democratic Senators and one independent struck a deal with Republicans to pass a short-term government funding bill. “Why would you end this?” asks Dayen, echoing many in the Democratic coalition who believe the deal was a poor strategic move for the anti…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
“Our staffing in the ER is beyond dire now,” said Heather Fallon, a nurse in the emergency department at the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center in North Chicago who had long been dreading the arrival of Sept. 30, the day the fiscal year came to an end. That was the day she says she lost two nurses — and the facility lost nine staffers in total — whose contracts ended…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
“Our staffing in the ER is beyond dire now,” said Heather Fallon, a nurse in the emergency department at the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center in North Chicago who had long been dreading the arrival of Sept. 30, the day the fiscal year came to an end. That was the day she says she lost two nurses — and the facility lost nine staffers in total — whose contracts ended…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Nov. 10, 2025. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
Fury on the progressive left and among lawmakers who opposed such “capitulation” to the Republican Party erupted overnight after a handful of Senate Democrats joined with their GOP counterparts in a procedural vote on Sunday night to end the government shutdown without gaining any meaningful concessions.
With the support of eight members of the Democratic caucus—Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Dick Durbin of Illinois, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Angus King of Maine, Jacky Rosen of Nevada, and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire—Republicans in the upper chamber secured the necessary 60 votes needed to pass a cloture vote that paves the way for a deal critics warn does nothing to save Americans from soaring healthcare premiums unleashed due to the GOP spending bill passed earlier this year and signed into law by President Donald Trump.
“It is thoroughly disappointing that, while most Americans overwhelmingly oppose Republicans’ horrific budget, support the fight to curtail Trump’s authoritarianism, and want to protect healthcare, some Democrats failed to hold the line, and squandered an opportunity to score a popular and decisive win for the American people,” said Lisa Gilbert, co-director of the progressive watchdog group Public Citizen.
The deal will combine three separate funding measures into a single stopgap bill that will reopen the government and keep it funded through the end of January of 2026, but contains no restoration of Medicaid funding, fails to curb Trump rescissions that have devastated government agencies and programs, and does nothing to address Affordable Care Act subsidies other than a “meaningless” promised vote to extend them within 40 days—a vote nearly sure to fail in the Senate and likely not even taken up in the US House, controlled by Republicans.
“What the election showed is that the American people want us to stand up to Trumpism—to his war against working people, to his authoritarianism. That is what people wanted, but tonight that is not what happened.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)
“How absolutely pathetic,” declared the Justice Democrats, an advocacy group that focuses on assisting progressive challengers willing to take on more establishment lawmakers in office. “Your voters expect you to hold the line for their basic healthcare and food benefits. This is just surrender. Every Senate Democrat that joined Republicans to pass this sold the American people out and we should make sure they have no future in public office.”
“Let’s be clear — this proposal isn’t a compromise, it’s a capitulation,” said Rep. Jonathan L. Jackson (D-Ill.). “Millions would lose their health coverage, and millions more would face skyrocketing premiums. The Senate should reject this misguided plan. In the House, my vote will be HELL NO.”
For Gilbert, the shutdown exhibited exactly “how far Republicans will go to demonstrate subservience to their authoritarian leader, even at the expense of the most basic needs of ordinary Americans. Republicans have destroyed affordable healthcare access for millions of Americans, and have allowed the President to weaponize hunger against millions more of our most vulnerable people, all so that they can bully through a budget that’s catapulting us towards a dystopian future of stark inequality.”
While the shutdown may come to an end this week, Gilbert said it remains imperative that “everyone who cares about the well-being of Americans to use all the leverage they have to push back on Trump’s authoritarianism and his cannibalizing of the basic needs of Americans for the benefit of his corporate donors and billionaire friends.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who, like Sen. King of Maine, caucuses with the Democrats, called it a “very bad night” as he condemned the eight members of the caucus for making a “very, very bad vote” at a time when the political winds and the moral argument were clearly on the side of holding the line.
“What it does, first of all,” said Sanders in a statement following the vote, “is it raises healthcare premiums for over 20 million Americans by doubling, and in some cases tripling or quadrupling. People can’t afford that when we are already paying the highest prices in the world for healthcare. Number two, it paves the way for 15 million people to be thrown off of Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act,” citing a statistic that indicates over 50,000 people “will die unnecessarily each year” due to lack of adequate healthcare coverage.
“All of that was done,” continued Sanders, “to give a $1 trillion in tax breaks to the top 1%.” In a political context, Sanders noted that last week’s electoral wins in numerous races across the country showed that voters are in the mood to reward lawmakers who stand up to President Donald Trump and his allies in Congress, rather than give in to them.
“What the election showed is that the American people want us to stand up to Trumpism—to his war against working people, to his authoritarianism,” he said. “That is what people wanted, but tonight that is not what happened.”
Democrats in the House, who had backed their Democratic colleagues for holding the line over 40 days in the Senate, fumed over the failure to keep going.
“Americans have endured the pain of the longest government shutdown in history for a ‘deal’ that guarantees nothing on healthcare,” said Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.). “If Republicans wanted to vote to extend subsidies, they would’ve done it already. Capitulating is unacceptable.”
“What Senate Dems who voted for this horseshit deal did was fuck over all the hard work people put in to Tuesday’s elections.”
Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.)
Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader, voted “no” on the deal. Still, it’s widely understood he was the driving force behind putting the agreement together and privately supported the eight lawmakers—none of whom are facing reelection in 2026—to cross over.
“Schumer voting ‘no’ for a shutdown deal he facilitated every step of the way,” noted journalist Ken Klippenstein. “Just trying to keep his hands clean. Don’t fall for it.”
In the wake of the vote, others called for Schumer to resign or be primaried for capitulating to deliver practically nothing.
The surrender by Democrats in the Senate facilitated by Schumer, opined journalist Krystal Ball, “perfectly encapsulates why centrists are the problem for the party both substantively and electorally. After romping nationwide victories, the worst members of the Democratic caucus decided to abandon the healthcare fight, which hurts Americans and demobilizes their own base.”
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
When veterans and their families gather at commemorative events on Nov. 11, many who use the benefits and services of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) will be wondering whether they can still rely on that federal agency.
Among those worried about the agency’s future — and their own — are the 100,000 former service members who comprise one-third of the workforce in the largest public health care system in the country.
These veterans work at nearly 1,400 VA-run hospitals and clinics nationwide. Every day, they help the nine million men and women who have service-related medical conditions or qualify for VA coverage because of financial need or recent deployment in combat zones.
The post This Veterans Day, The VA Faces Multiple Threats appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
Health care activists in the U.S. have a huge struggle to get the corporate media to take the human right to health seriously. The corporate media reports on some injuries and deaths, but their doom and gloom scenarios typically conclude nothing can be changed in this private, insurance-controlled system, which doesn’t work for the people.
Despite the difficult time we’re in, with millions lacking access to health care, it’s an opportunity for health care activists to increase efforts for a public, not for profit, universal system in the U.S. One way is to use the international human rights system organized through the United Nations to broadcast our message to the rest of the world and to shame the U.S.
The post The United States Violates The Human Right To Health appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
On Wednesday, a group of more than 600 physicians, physician assistants and nurse practitioners held a one-day strike against their employer, Minneapolis-based Allina Health. The primary and urgent care providers work at over 60 clinics in Minnesota and Wisconsin and are organized with Doctors Council SEIU Local 10MD.
The Doctors Council said this event is the largest private-sector strike among healthcare providers in United States history, as well as the first ever in Minnesota. Matt Hoffman, family medicine physician at Allina, explained: “After 20 months of bargaining, we are striking for a primary care system where doctors, nurse practitioners and physician assistants have the time and resources to give our patients the best possible care.”
The post Allina Health Doctors Hold One-Day Strike appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
What Happened: More than two dozen Democrats in the House are pressing the Trump administration to reverse a new policy at the Department of Veterans Affairs that makes it harder for male veterans with breast cancer to get health coverage.
The demand, issued in a letter to VA Secretary Doug Collins, follows a ProPublica story last week that revealed the change.
Previously, breast cancer among men was on a list of conditions that the VA presumed were connected to a veteran’s military service. As we reported, the department removed the disease from that list in a memo signed by Collins in September. The directive cited an order that President Donald Trump issued on his first day in office titled: “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”
As a result, in order to get coverage through the VA, the roughly 100 male veterans who are diagnosed with breast cancer each year must now prove their disease was connected to their military service, a burden that has often been hard to meet.
Separately, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut and the ranking member of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, introduced a bill on Tuesday that would require the government to disclose when it is changing benefits for veterans exposed to toxins.
What They Said: Democrats, led by Rep. Mark Takano, the ranking member of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, blasted the VA for the change.
“It is clear with this decision that VA has callously put political calculations and adherence to unscientific executive orders above its obligations to provide care to veterans,” the representatives wrote in the letter.
Meanwhile, Blumenthal said in a statement that transparency in the process is overdue — something his legislation would provide. “This measure guarantees essential information to veterans,” said the senator, whose announcement cited ProPublica’s story. “This is especially critical as the VA is reportedly rolling back coverage of conditions without scientific evidence.”
The VA defended its new policy. “Male breast cancer is a serious condition, and VA will continue to provide care and benefits to any Veteran who can show a service connection for it,” said VA press secretary Pete Kasperowicz. “We also encourage any male Veterans with breast cancer who feel their health may have been impacted by their military service to submit a disability compensation claim.”
Background: That process, however, can be onerous — a fact that drove Congress and the Biden administration to pass the Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics, or PACT, Act, which streamlined the path to coverage for veterans exposed to toxic substances such as Agent Orange.
Last year, the VA added breast cancer among men to the list of covered diseases. The law directs that “reproductive cancer of any type” be covered. Officials added breast cancer for men under that category after a working group of experts reviewed the science. It’s that decision that prompted the Trump administration to object as part of its effort to root out “gender ideology” in government.
“The Biden Administration falsely classified male breasts as reproductive organs,” Kasperowicz said in a prior statement to ProPublica. On Wednesday, he reiterated the point: Democrats “may wish to ignore the details of the PACT Act as it’s written, but the law simply states that VA must presume service connection for ‘reproductive cancer,’ and male breast cancer is not a reproductive cancer.”
Why It Matters: Collins has long insisted that the administration’s changes at the VA will not affect care. “Veterans benefits aren’t getting cut,” he said in February. “In fact, we are actually giving and improving services.”
But experts say the new policy on breast cancer in men could result in delayed or even missed care for veterans — even as research has shown the disease is particularly deadly for men and that its prevalence among them has been increasing.
In addition to insisting that the VA reverse its decision, House members in their letter demanded to know what, if any, evidence the agency relied on. “The PACT Act is the law — not a suggestion,” the letter states. “And it requires VA to follow the evidence, not executive orders that distort science for politics.”
Meanwhile, Blumenthal’s bill — the Presumptive Clear Legal Assessment and Review of Illnesses from Toxic Exposure Yields (CLARITY) Act — would require the VA to create a website detailing its decisions about covering illnesses related to exposure to toxic substances.
The post Trump’s VA Made It Harder for Male Veterans to Get Treatment for Breast Cancer. Lawmakers Want to Fix That. appeared first on ProPublica.
This post was originally published on ProPublica.
On October 21, Elevance Health (the rebrand of for-profit health insurer Anthem) announced its third quarter results. Operating revenue went up 12% from the same three-month period last year, and profits as measured by normal accounting rules rose 17%. UnitedHealth Group, the nation’s largest insurer, went one better, raising its expectations for how much profit it will make this year, as it eased Wall Street’s worries by increasing the premiums it will charge for coverage in 2026.
Please let the anxious folks at the Wall Street Journal know. They’ve been so worried.
Over the past year, older Americans, low-income people who enroll in private Medicare and Medicaid insurance plans, and people covered by health insurance purchased from the Affordable Care Act exchanges have been doing something that private insurance companies and their Wall Street investors find disturbing: They’re actually going to the doctor and getting the healthcare they need.
The post Don’t Worry, Wall Street Journal, Health Insurers Are Profitable! appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
It’s never been easy to qualify for Social Security disability benefits. Christopher Tincher knows this firsthand.
Tincher began his working life in a coal mine in Aflex, Kentucky, as a teenager in the 1980s. As mines across the region shuttered, he turned to scraping grills at a Hardee’s, then cleaning office buildings at night, then stocking shelves and changing tires at a Walmart in Arkansas. Later, he was hired by a nearby town’s wastewater department. Often, he had to wade into sewage to fix equipment and clean out feces, needles and tampons entering the treatment facility.
In 2017, some of that liquid got into his work boots, which didn’t fit properly and had caused blisters to form. It soaked into his flesh, infecting his right foot all the way to the bone. Doctors cut his leg off below the knee so the infection wouldn’t spread.
Tincher was now a manual laborer on one leg, but he was denied disability benefits by the Social Security Administration the following year. On average, 65% of applicants are rejected, though some successfully appeal.
In Tincher’s case, it was partly because he was 48, and the agency’s rules give priority to disabled workers in their 50s, who are officially deemed to be nearing advanced age and therefore less able to switch careers or develop new skills.
Tincher got a prosthetic leg and went back to work, this time for a medical supplies delivery company. He did this for seven years, frequently in pain, he said. His other leg was almost always in a cast, due to further infected blisters and diabetic nerve damage, and his eyesight was rapidly deteriorating.
This February, he applied for disability again. He was desperate; he was in a wheelchair, and he’d had to move in with his son’s family in Cabot, Arkansas, because he couldn’t pay the rent on his trailer. And there just weren’t other, less physically demanding jobs available locally for someone with his experience: “About the best job I could’ve got would’ve been a door greeter at Walmart, but I don’t think they have those anymore,” he said.
Tincher is now 55, and reaching that age marker helped him qualify, in June, for just over $1,500 a month in Social Security Disability Insurance benefits. A three-time Donald Trump voter, he was approved just in the nick of time.
That’s because the Trump administration is rewriting the disability eligibility rules, ostensibly to modernize the program, in ways that will make it even harder for aging blue-collar workers like Tincher to get benefits. Hundreds of thousands just like him would become ineligible for aid.
These changes would fall disproportionately on some of Trump’s most loyal supporters in red states. Most affected would be 50- to 60-year-olds without a high school or college education who have, for decades, toiled in physically grueling jobs, including coal mining, logging, and factory and construction work. The five states where the highest proportions of people rely on these benefits are West Virginia, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi and Alabama. Unlike New York, California and a few others, these states do not have their own disability insurance programs for workers to turn to amid federal cuts.
“The Trump administration does not think that simply being 50 years old is a disability,” said a senior administration official who would speak only on condition of anonymity. In the 1970s, when the current rules were written, the official said, many more jobs involved manual labor, but in the internet age that isn’t true anymore. Workers in their 50s with physical injuries are thus receiving disability benefits “when they don’t need to be,” given that they could get a more sedentary job in the modern economy.
The administration has also justified cuts like these on fiscal grounds: The federal budget deficit is massive, the Social Security retirement system could become insolvent in less than a decade and savings need to be found.
But the disability program is paid for, via payroll taxes, by its own trust fund, separate from the one for the retirement program. So reductions in disability payments would not help the retirement system stay afloat. Indeed, cutting eligibility for disability could result in more disabled workers claiming retirement benefits early, actuarial experts note, which would only increase pressure on the retirement system. Meanwhile, the money in the disability fund, which is projected to remain solvent through at least the end of this century, would just sit there, unused.
The Trump administration’s upcoming proposed regulation would make two hugely consequential changes to the Social Security Administration’s disability system, according to four SSA officials with knowledge of the plans. First, it would modernize the job listings that Social Security’s disability adjudicators and judges use to decide if there’s work available in the U.S. economy that a manual laborer could do despite physical impairments — like a low-skilled desk job at a computer or driving for Uber or DoorDash. Second, the new rule would almost entirely remove age as a criterion, in most instances making a 50-plus-year-old like Tincher no more eligible for assistance than a 20-something.
Under the current system, eligibility for benefits ticks up at ages 50, 55 and 60, as workers become more medically vulnerable and less adaptable. Disability adjudicators use a series of grids that consider an applicant’s age, work experience and education level to determine whether they may have the skills to do another, less strenuous job. (The adjudicators make a yes-or-no decision on eligibility; each person who qualifies then receives a set amount based on their lifetime earnings. Once the person starts receiving Social Security retirement benefits, they no longer receive disability payments.)
The regulation that would undo this framework is slated to be formally proposed by December, according to a federal bulletin, although that deadline could push into next year, multiple officials said. The draft, which is based in large part on a plan that the first Trump administration tried to enact in 2020 before running out of time, still needs to be reviewed and edited by the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. After that, it will undergo the standard process of allowing the public to submit comments and objections.
But in its current form, the regulation would slash at least 830,000 people’s eligibility for disability benefits, according to an initial estimate from the Urban Institute, an economic policy think tank. As many as 1.5 million could lose eligibility over the next decade, including the widows and children of workers. Disability attorneys and experts familiar with who most relies on the program contend that the numbers could be considerably higher.
Separately, the Trump administration is preparing a proposed regulation that would eliminate or sharply cut the Supplemental Security Income benefits of roughly 400,000 extremely poor and disabled people. This second regulation would reduce support for adults and children with severe disabilities who are living in low-income households, as well as elderly people living with their adult children on tight budgets.
Barton Mackey, a spokesperson for the Social Security Administration, confirmed in a series of emailed statements that the Trump administration is working on what he called “improvements to the disability adjudication process.” These changes would ensure that the disability system “remains current” and can be more efficiently administered, Mackey said, while also promoting “dignity in work.” (Mackey did not respond to a question about the change to the SSI program.)
Further “speculation on any proposed rule prior to it being published,” he said, “only serves to misguide public discourse and stoke fear in those who rely on disability benefits for economic stability.”
White House spokesperson Kush Desai, in response to detailed questions, said that “President Trump will always protect and defend Social Security for American citizens” and pointed to Trump’s recent remarks commemorating the 90th anniversary of Social Security.
Retirement benefits — the largest and most popular of Social Security’s programs — would not be cut under the new regulation. But union leaders and advocates for older Americans said that the likely changes to disability eligibility for aging workers would undermine the financial and retirement security of working-class people and their families. Those who are denied benefits in their 50s would be forced to draw down any savings they have, which could lead them to apply for Social Security’s retirement benefits at age 62 instead of 67. That, in turn, would diminish their and their spouses’ monthly benefit amount by up to 30% until the day they die. Losing eligibility for disability would also block these workers’ access to Medicare, which they’re currently eligible for at their age precisely because they’re disabled.
Disability benefits frequently save recipients from bankruptcy, foreclosure and homelessness, according to research by University of Chicago economists and others.
George Piemonte, a former president of the National Organization of Social Security Claimants’ Representatives, has spent 30 years working on disability cases across the South. He emphasized that that’s where these disability cuts would be most acutely felt. “They call it modernizing the program, but that’s political speak,” Piemonte said. “This is a matter of life and death. If these workers don’t get their benefits, some of them are not even going to live to retirement.”
Social Security officials under both Republican and Democratic administrations have long agreed that the disability program needs to be modernized in some practical ways.
For example, disability adjudicators continue to use a Dictionary of Occupational Titles, created in the 1930s and last updated in 1991, to determine whether there are jobs that exist in “significant” numbers in the national economy that an applicant with declining “residual functional capacity” could still do. The DOT, as it is called, is almost comically outdated: It includes “pneumatic tube operator” but not web designer. (Reporting by The Washington Post has helped bring attention to these issues in recent years.)
Under President Barack Obama, the Social Security Administration and the Bureau of Labor Statistics undertook a yearslong effort to replace the DOT with what would be called the Occupational Requirements Survey, an updated catalog of modern occupations as well as the levels of physical exertion and cognitive difficulty that each job can entail. Field economists surveyed employers across the country, asking how often their employees typically had to climb stairs or lift items of various weights and so on. That detailed dataset now exists, but it isn’t widely used yet; the new regulation would require its implementation.
“So, the technical part of all this has sort of already been accomplished,” said David Weaver, a former top Social Security Administration official who helped to develop the survey, known as the ORS, during the Obama years. (Weaver is now a professor of statistics at the University of South Carolina.)
“But,” he added, “conservative economist types want to also make it harder for certain workers to get disability benefits, which would be a policy choice.” The complexity of the potential changes — the draft of the Trump regulation is hundreds of pages long and has been called the “mega reg” by insiders — has helped to mask this, Weaver and others said.
“Simplifying and Modernizing the Disability Adjudication Process” is how Mark Warshawsky headlined his written remarks when he testified in 2023 before a congressional subcommittee examining the issue. Warshawsky, an architect of the disability overhaul during the first Trump administration as the deputy commissioner for retirement and disability policy at the Social Security Administration, testified that the current system wrongly “presumes a workforce with low levels of education which is largely involved in physical labor, works long hours, has little flexibility in work schedules, low adaptability, little access to assistive technology, never works from home, and retires early fairly often.” He also said that increasing eligibility starting at age 50 is not very scientific; for starters, it’s unfair to 49-year-olds. (Warshawsky, who is now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, declined an interview request from ProPublica.)
Warshawsky was unable to get the disability regulation across the finish line before Trump lost the 2020 election. But Russell Vought, the powerful head of Trump’s Office of Management and Budget and one of the originators of Project 2025, picked up on this first-term agenda item and has pursued it again this year.
The disability restructuring was “Russ Vought’s No. 1 priority for the Social Security Administration from Day 1,” said Leland Dudek, who was acting commissioner of the agency from February to May. In February, Dudek said, his staff met with Vought’s staff on multiple occasions; together, they “dug up what was done four years ago,” he said, indicating that the new proposed rule will be similar to a 2020 draft that was leaked to the press. (The senior Trump administration official said that Dudek is “disgruntled” and that the disability changes are no more of a priority for Vought than the rest of the administration’s “deregulatory agenda.” In the past, Vought has publicly pressed for fewer veterans and others to receive disability benefits.)
To opponents of the forthcoming regulation, including many still inside the Social Security Administration, Warshawsky and Vought’s conception of the modern economy neglects the fact that workers like Tincher grew up in a different world. They started their working lives at a time when most people didn’t have personal computers, when it wasn’t as common to get a high school education and when physical labor offered a path to eventual retirement security. To switch the rules now pulls the rug out from under them just as they’re reaching their most vulnerable years, officials and experts said.
“I believe disconnects occur when more highly educated policy people do not fully understand or appreciate what workers in physically demanding, labor-intensive occupations, such as longshoremen, have gone through,” said Steve Rollins, who was deputy associate commissioner of the Social Security Administration’s Office of Disability Policy during the latter years of the first Trump administration and associate commissioner through the Biden administration. Rollins oversaw the agency’s work on modernizing the disability program from 2019 to 2024.
What’s more, vocational experts said in interviews, even if 50- or 60-year-old former coal miners or factory workers are denied the disability benefits they say they need, they’re still likely to retire early, a finding backed by recent research. After all, if they try to get a desk job — assuming one is available in their rural or exurban community — they may feel they don’t have the education or training for it, and they may also be subject to age discrimination in the hiring process. As Michelle Aliff, a certified rehabilitation counselor who testifies at Social Security disability hearings nationwide as an impartial vocational expert, put it: “An oil field roustabout in his 50s isn’t going to just sit down at a computer for work without additional training.”
The Trump administration’s plan to transform the U.S. disability system, once finalized, would interact with other cuts to the social safety net that the president and Republicans in Congress have already authored. For example, under legislation dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and signed into law by Trump, work requirements will be added to Medicaid; people with disabilities will largely be exempt, but the best way to establish eligibility for that exemption is to qualify for Social Security’s disability program, which would become harder under the new rule. A disabled worker could instead turn to Obamacare’s individual exchanges for insurance coverage, but Republicans are allowing the tax credit that makes those premiums affordable to expire.
Tincher feels lucky he applied when he did. Being approved for disability has meant his copays are covered, he can finally afford groceries and he has time to help watch over his grandkids. Still, he also feels a tinge of guilt. “I wish every day I could still work,” he said. His dad, a coal miner, once told him to work until the day he died. “Having to ask for help is hard especially for men to do, men of my generation.”
All Tincher would say to the officials pushing the changes to the disability program, he said, is “you don’t know until you’re here, at this point in a working life.”
The post Red State Workers Could Lose Out on Disability Benefits as Trump Administration Rewrites Eligibility Rules appeared first on ProPublica.
This post was originally published on ProPublica.
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump made an unusual plea for a bipartisan replacement of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), as the program announced drastic increases in premiums this month. “We have to fix health care, because Obamacare is a disaster,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One during a flight this week to South Korea. Trump has frequently attempted to repeal the health…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
