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Category: health care

  • High-Deductible Health Plans Make Income Inequality Worse

    Anyone holding a high-deductible health plan understands the dynamic: When it costs more for people to access health care, they’re going to think twice before using it. It’s a system designed to hold down costs by discouraging service.

    But there’s something even more insidious about such plans. For lower income California families already living paycheck to paycheck, a single medical need can sink them deeper into financial peril. This type of health care keeps poor people poor.

    That is precisely what worries Malissa Sanchez, whose employer in Los Angeles essentially forced a high deductible health plan (HDHP) on her in April when it eliminated a direct-payment system that previously allowed her to buy her own coverage.

    The post High-Deductible Health Plans Make Income Inequality Worse appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Single Payer Docs Now Want National Health Service

    A group of high profile single payer advocates now say single payer is not enough and are calling for a move toward a Veterans Administration (VA) style universal healthcare system. “We have long advocated for single-payer national health insurance,” the doctors wrote. “By eliminating private insurers and simplifying how providers are paid, single-payer would free up hundreds of billions of dollars now squandered annually on insurance-related bureaucracy. The savings would make it feasible to cover the uninsured and to eliminate the cost barriers that keep even insured patients from getting the care they need. And it would free patients and doctors from the narrow provider networks and other bureaucratic constraints imposed by insurance middlemen. We still urgently need this reform.”

    The post Single Payer Docs Now Want National Health Service appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • What You Need to Know When You Give Birth in a Country With Rising Maternal Mortality Rates

    by Adriana Gallardo

    ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

    The original version of this story, which was co-published with NPR, is available here. The version below contains updated links and statistics and has been condensed for clarity.

    In 2017, ProPublica and NPR launched a project shedding light on maternal deaths and near-deaths in the U.S. We explored better ways to track and understand preventable deaths, and the intergenerational trauma caused by childbirth complications and chronic racial disparities in who suffers from them. We heard from more than 5,000 people who endured, or watched a loved one endure, life-threatening pregnancy and childbirth complications, often resulting in long-lasting physical and emotional effects.

    These people who sent us their stories frequently told us they knew little to nothing beforehand about the potentially fatal complications that they or their loved ones faced. They wanted to help others. So we decided to publish some of their wisdom.

    They told us what they wish they had known ahead of their severe complications: How do I get medical professionals to listen? When are changes in my body normal, and when are they a warning? How do I navigate the postpartum period? In the years since, other readers have told us this advice was critical.

    Recent data shows maternal deaths, including deaths in the first six weeks after childbirth, rose in the first year of the pandemic. The increase puts the nation’s maternal mortality rate at 23.8 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2020, up from 20.1 deaths in 2019.

    If the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down Roe v. Wade, they’ll do so in a country where pregnancy and childbirth continue to become more dangerous. We’re republishing this advice today, in a shortened and easier-to-navigate format, because self-advocacy and community knowledge are important when systems fail.

    Choosing a Provider

    “A lot of data on specific doctors and hospitals can be found publicly. Knowing how your physician and hospital rates as compared to others (cesarean rates, infection rates, readmission rates) can give you valuable insight into how they perform. ‘Liking’ your doctor as a person is nice, but not nearly as important as their and their facility’s culture and track record.”

    — Kristen Terlizzi, survivor of a 2014 placenta accreta spectrum (a disorder in which the placenta grows into or through the uterine wall) and cofounder of the National Accreta Foundation

    “Key pieces of information every woman should know before choosing a hospital are: What are their safety protocols for adverse maternal events? No one likes to think about this while pregnant, and providers will probably tell you that it’s unlikely to happen. But it does happen and it’s good to know that the hospital and providers have practiced for such scenarios and have proper protocols in place.”

    — Marianne Drexler, survived a hemorrhage and emergency hysterectomy in 2014

    “If a birthing center is your choice, discuss what happens in an emergency — how far away is the closest hospital with an ICU? Because a lot of hospitals don’t have them. Another thing many women don’t realize is that not every hospital has an obstetrician there 24/7. Ask your doctors: If they’re not able to be there the whole time you’re in labor, will there be another ob/gyn on site 24 hours a day if something goes wrong?”

    — Miranda Klassen, survivor of amniotic fluid embolism in 2008 and founder/executive director of the Amniotic Fluid Embolism Foundation

    Preparing for an Emergency

    “A conversation about possible things that could go wrong is prudent to have with your doctor or in one of these childbirth classes. I don’t think that it needs to be done in a way to terrify the new parents, but as a way to provide knowledge. The pregnant woman should be taught warning signs, and know when to speak up so that she can be treated as quickly and accurately as possible.”

    — Susan Lewis, survived disseminated Intravascular Coagulation (DIC) in 2016

    “Always have somebody with you in a medical setting to ask the questions you might not think of and to advocate on your behalf if your ability to communicate is compromised by being in poor health. … And get emotional support to steel you against the naysayers. It may feel really unnatural or difficult to push back [against doctors and nurses]. Online forums and Facebook groups can be helpful to ensure you’re not losing your mind.”

    — Eleni Tsigas, survivor of preeclampsia in 1998 and 1999 and chief executive officer of the Preeclampsia Foundation

    “In case you ever are unable to respond, someone needs to step in and be your voice! Know as much thorough medical history as possible, and let your spouse or support person know [in depth] your history as well.”

    — Kristina Landrus, survived a hemorrhage in 2013

    “Also be sure your spouse and your other family members, like your parents or siblings, are on the same page about your care. And if you aren’t married, who will be making the decisions on your behalf? You should put things in order, designate the person who will be the decision maker, and give that person power of attorney. Other important things to have are a medical directive or a living will — be sure to bring a copy with you to the hospital. I also recommend packing a journal to record everything that happens.”

    — Miranda Klassen

    “Make a list of your questions and make sure you get the full answer. I went to every appointment the second time around with a notebook. I would apologize for being ‘that patient,’ but I had been through this before and I wasn’t going to be confused again. I wanted to know everything. Honestly, it was as harmful as it was helpful. I knew what I was getting into, which made it much scarier. The first time, my ignorance was bliss. I didn’t realize I almost died until two weeks after I had left the hospital. I didn’t even start researching what had happened to me until months later. The second time I was an advocate for myself. Medical journals and support groups were a part of every single visit. And thankfully, I was in good hands.”

    — Carrie Anthony, survived placenta accreta and hemorrhage in 2008 and 2015 as well as placenta previa in the second pregnancy

    “Write down what each specialty says to you. … They paraded in on a schedule, checked up on me, asked if I had any questions. I always did, but I regret not writing down what each said each time (along with names!). I got so many different answers regarding how I would be anesthetized, and on the day it all had to happen in an emergency, there were disagreements above me in the OR between the specialists. It was like children arguing on a playground and my life was in danger. Had I kept a more vigilant record of what each specialty reported to me, perhaps prior to the day I could have confronted each with the details that weren’t matching up.”

    — Megan Moody, survived placenta percreta (when the placenta penetrates through the uterine wall) in 2016

    “People should know that they have a right to ask for more time with the doctor or more follow-up if they feel something is not right. The OB-GYNs (at least in Pennsylvania) are so busy and sometimes appointments are quite quick and rushed. Make the doctors slow down and take the time with you.”

    — Dani Leiman, survived HELLP syndrome (a particularly dangerous variant of preeclampsia) in 2011

    “You have a legal right to your medical records throughout pregnancy and anytime afterwards. Get a copy of your lab results each time blood is drawn, and a copy of your prenatal and hospital reports. Ask about concerning or unclear results.”

    — Eleni Tsigas

    Getting Your Provider to Listen

    “Understand the system. Ask a nurse or a trusted loved one in the ‘industry’ how it all works. I’ve found that medical professionals are more likely to listen to you if you demonstrate an understanding of their roles and the kind of questions they can/cannot answer. Know your ‘silos.’ Don’t ask an anesthesiologist how they plan on stitching up your cervix. Specialists are often incredibly impatient. You need to get the details out of them regarding their very specific roles.”

    — Megan Moody

    “If your provider tells you, ‘You are pregnant. What you’re experiencing is normal,’ remember — that may be true. [But it’s also true] that preeclampsia can mimic many normal symptoms of pregnancy. Ask, ‘What else could this be?’ Expect a thoughtful answer that includes consideration of ‘differential diagnoses’ — in other words, other conditions that could be causing the same symptoms.”

    — Eleni Tsigas

    “They only listen if the pain is a 10 or higher. Most of us don’t understand what a 10 is. I’d always imagined a 10 would feel like having a limb blown off in combat. When asked to evaluate your pain on a scale of 1 to 10, when you are in your most vulnerable moment, it is very hard to assess this logically, for you and for your partner witnessing your pain. I later saw a pain chart with pictures. A 10 was demonstrated with an illustration of a crying face. You may not actually be shedding tears, but you are most likely crying on the inside in pain, so I suggest to always say a 10. My pain from the brain hemorrhage was probably a 100, but I’m not sure if I even said 10 at the time.”

    — Emily McLaughlin, survived a postpartum stroke in 2015

    “So many women do speak up about the strange pain they have, and a nurse may brush it off as normal without consulting a doctor and running any tests. Be annoying if you must, this is your life. … Thankfully, I never had to be so assertive. I owe my life to the team of doctors and nurses who acted swiftly and accurately, and I am eternally grateful.”

    — Susan Lewis

    “If you have a hemorrhage, don’t clean up after yourself! Make sure the doctor is fully aware of how much blood you are losing. I had a very nice nurse who was helping to keep me clean and helping to change my (rapidly filling) pads. If the doctor had seen the pools of blood himself, rather than just being told about them, he might not have been so quick to dismiss me.”

    — Valerie Bradford, survived a hemorrhage in 2016

    Paying Attention to Your Symptoms

    “I had heard of preeclampsia but I was naïve. [I believed] that it was something women developed who didn’t watch what they ate and didn’t focus on good health prior and/or during pregnancy. I was in great health and shape prior to getting pregnant, during my pregnancy I continued to make good food choices and worked out up until 36 hours before the baby had to be taken. I gained healthy weight and kept my BMI at an optimum number. I thought due to my good health, I was not susceptible to anything and my labor would be easy. So although I had felt bad for 1 1/2 weeks, I chalked it up to the fact that I was almost 8 months into this pregnancy, so you’re not supposed to feel great. … I walked into my doctor’s office that Friday and not one hour later I was in an emergency C-section delivering a baby. I had to fully be put under due to the severity of the HELLP, so I didn’t wake up until the next day.”

    — Kelli Davis, survived HELLP syndrome in 2016

    “Understand that severe, sustained pain is not normal. So many people told me that the final trimester of pregnancy is sooo uncomfortable. It was my first pregnancy, I have a generally high threshold for pain, and my son was breech so I thought his head was causing bad pain under my ribs [when it was really epigastric pain from the HELLP syndrome]. I kept thinking it was normal to be in pain and I let it go until it was almost too late.”

    — Dani Leiman

    “Know the way your blood pressure should be taken. And ask for the results. Politely challenge the technician or nurse if it’s not being done correctly or if they suggest ‘changing positions to get a lower reading.’ Very high blood pressure (anything over 160/110) is a ‘hypertensive crisis’ and requires immediate intervention.”

    — Eleni Tsigas

    “Please ask for a heart monitor for yourself while in labor, not just for the baby. I think if I had one on, seconds or minutes could have been erased from reaction time by the nurses. They were alerted to an issue because the baby’s heart stopped during labor, and while the nurse was checking that machine, my husband noticed I was also non-responsive. That’s when everything happened.”

    — Kristy Kummer-Pred, survived amniotic fluid embolism and cardiac arrest in 2012

    After the Delivery

    “My swelling in my hands and feet never went away. My uterus hadn’t shrunk. I wasn’t bleeding that bad, but there was a strange odor to it. My breasts were swollen and my milk wasn’t coming in. I was misdiagnosed with mastitis [a painful inflammation of the breast tissue that sometimes occurs when milk ducts become plugged and engorged]. The real problem was that I still had pieces of placenta inside my uterus. Know that your placenta should not come out in multiple pieces. It should come out in one piece. If it is broken apart, demand an ultrasound to ensure the doctors got it all. If you have flu-like symptoms, demand to be seen by a doctor. If you don’t like your doctor, demand another one.”

    — Brandi Miller, survived placenta accreta and hemorrhage in 2015

    “There is a period in the days and weeks after delivery where your blood pressure can escalate and you can have a seizure, stroke, or heart attack, even well after a healthy birth. You should take your own blood pressure at home if your doctor doesn’t tell you to. … Unfortunately, I went home from [all my postpartum] appointments with my blood pressure so high that I started having a brain hemorrhage. Not one single person ever thought of taking my blood pressure when I was complaining about my discomfort and showing telltale warning signs of [preeclampsia].”

    — Emily McLaughlin

    “The postpartum period is when a lot of pregnancy-related heart problems like cardiomyopathy emerge. If there is still difficulty breathing, fluid buildup in ankles, shortness of breath and you are unable to lie flat on your back, go see a cardiologist ASAP. If you have to go to an emergency room, request to have the following tests performed: echocardiogram (echo) test, ejection fraction test, B-type natriuretic peptides (BNP), EKG test and chest X-ray test. These tests will determine if your heart is failing and will save your life.”

    — Anner Porter, survivor of peripartum cardiomyopathy in 1992

    “Rest as much as possible — for as long as possible. Being in too big a rush to get ‘back to normal’ can exacerbate postpartum health risks. Things that are not normal: heavy bleeding longer than 6 weeks, or bleeding that stops and starts again, not producing milk, fevers, severe pain (especially around incision sites), excessive fatigue, and anxiety/depression. If you don’t feel like yourself, get help.”

    — Amy Barron Smolinski, a survivor of preeclampsia, postpartum hemorrhage and other complications in three pregnancies in 2006, 2011 and 2012 and executive director of Mom2Mom Global, a breastfeeding support group

    “Know that your preexisting health conditions may be impacted by having a baby (hormone changes, sleep deprivation, stress). Record your health and your baby’s in a journal or app to track any changes. Reach out to the nurse or doctor when there are noticeable changes that you have tracked.”

    — Noelle Garcia, survived placental abruption (placenta separating from the uterine wall during pregnancy) in 2007

    “If your hospital discharges you on tons of Motrin or pain killers, be aware that this can mask the warning signs of headache, which is sometimes the only warning sign of preeclampsia coming on postpartum.”

    — Emily McLaughlin

    Grappling With the Emotional Fallout

    “I wish I had known that postpartum PTSD was possible. Most people associate PTSD with the effects of war, but I was diagnosed with PTSD after my traumatic birth and near-death experience. Almost 6 years later, I still experience symptoms sporadically.”

    — Meagan Raymer, survived severe preeclampsia and HELLP syndrome in 2011

    “I recommend therapy with a female therapist specializing in trauma. Honestly, I avoided it for 8 months. I was then in therapy for 12 months. I still have ongoing anxiety … but I would be in a very bad place (potentially depression and self-harm due to self-blame) were it not for therapy. It was so hard to admit [what was happening]. I started to get a suspicion when I heard an NPR story about a veteran with PTSD. I thought … that sounds like me. And I started Googling.”

    — Jessica Rae Hoffman, survived severe sepsis and other complications in 2015

    “The emotional constructs our society puts around pregnancy and childbirth make the ideas of severe injury and death taboo. Childbirth is a messy, traumatic experience. … Many women don’t seek care even when they instinctively believe something is wrong because they’re supposed to ‘be happy.’ Awareness and transparency are so important.”

    — Leah Soule, survived a hemorrhage in 2015

    “I wish I had understood how significant the impact was on my husband. Emotionally, the experience was much more difficult and long-lasting for him than for me, and it continued to affect his relationship with both me and our baby for quite a while, at a time when I didn’t think it was a thing at all.”

    — Elizabeth Venstra, survived HELLP syndrome in 2014

    “I would suggest establishing yourself ahead of time with a doula or midwife that can make postpartum visits to your home, which can promote health even if everything goes smoothly. Many communities have those services available if you can’t afford them. [A doula] wasn’t covered through our insurance, but the social worker at the hospital arranged for someone paid for by [San Diego County] to come and do several checks on me and my son, which was very reassuring to both my husband and me.”

    — Miranda Klassen

    Other Resources

    Help us continue reporting on pregnancy and childbirth. Have you had an experience with prenatal genetic testing? Tell us here. We want to understand more about your interactions with genetic screening providers.

    This post was originally published on Articles and Investigations – ProPublica.

  • A Socialist Perspective On The Abortion Rights Struggle

    On the night of May 3, a US Supreme Court draft decision regarding the landmark Roe v. Wade decision was leaked to the press. As per the draft, penned by conservative Justice Samuel Alito, the Supreme Court is set to overturn the historic decision, eliminating the right to abortion for millions of women. In response, thousands have taken to the streets of US cities, demanding that the right to abortion be protected. Activists and the millions of women in the streets hope that this outpour can sway the final Supreme Court decision.

    Karina Garcia is an organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation and a writer for socialist feminist magazine Breaking the Chains. She has been organizing since she was 17 years old, when she founded a women’s rights organization at her high school.

    The post A Socialist Perspective On The Abortion Rights Struggle appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • US Surpasses 1 Million COVID Deaths Since Pandemic’s Start

    The United States has reached a grim milestone: More than 1 million Americans have now perished due to coronavirus since the pandemic began two years ago.

    According to numbers compiled by NBC News, the one-millionth death from COVID-19 in the U.S. occurred Wednesday.

    Other measures vary on where the U.S. officially stands on COVID-19 deaths — The New York Times, for example, places total deaths due to coronavirus as of this week at 995,000, while worldometers.com says 1.02 million people in the country have died so far from the virus.

    Experts warn that these are conservative estimates and that the true death toll is probably much higher. Indeed, other figures have been revised this week, including the WHO’s estimate of global deaths due to COVID-19, which is now believed to be around 15 million,, a tripling of the organization’s previous figure.

    NBC News’s figures indicate that the daily rate at which Americans are dying from the virus has slowed compared to what it’s been in recent weeks, but it still remains in the hundreds. As of right now, around 360 Americans die daily due to COVID-19.

    The U.S. is also ahead of every other country in the world, in terms of the raw number of deaths it has seen since the pandemic began. Brazil, the country with the second-highest number of COVID-related deaths, has seen just over 660,000 deaths recorded, NBC News reported.

    Study after study has concluded that many of the coronavirus deaths in the U.S. could have been avoided through public health measures.

    The virus itself was politicized, in many ways, by far right figures and former President Donald Trump, who continuously downplayed the significance of the virus as his administration disseminated conflicting accounts over the pandemic. Trump, who sought reelection in 2020, saw the practice of mask-wearing to limit the spread of the virus as an affront to his presidency, and peddled fraudulent COVID-19 treatments that many of his supporters continue to promote.

    Trump’s actions bred public distrust over the efficacy of vaccines. According to a recent Economist/YouGov poll, the total number of Americans receiving at least three shots of a vaccine so far — indicating they’ve received a booster shot since completing their original vaccine series — is 55 percent. Among self-identified liberals in the poll, that number is much higher, at 68 percent; among conservatives, however, it’s lower, at 50 percent.

    But skepticism among conservatives isn’t the only reason why the coronavirus pandemic has been especially bad in the U.S., compared to other countries. The for-profit health care system in the country, too, has been credited with being largely responsible for many avoidable deaths in the U.S., as a more equitable system of health care (such as a single-payer model) could have helped more people survive the pandemic.

    According to a report from The Lancet last year, nearly 40 percent of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. could have been avoided, had a better health care system been in place before the pandemic started and disinformation about the virus from the former president and others been limited.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Joint Health Statement For First Meeting Of States Parties

    Representing physicians, nurses, public health professionals, and medical students worldwide, we speak with a united voice on the urgent need to eliminate nuclear weapons as a matter of global health and survival. Updated evidence on the catastrophic consequences of any use of nuclear weapons, the acute and growing danger of their use, and the impossibility of any effective humanitarian and health response following nuclear explosions on populations, should underpin the work of the upcoming 1st Meeting of States Parties (1MSP) of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).

    The TPNW is based upon a body of indisputable evidence, documented by scientists, health professionals, and experts in crisis management and response, that the consequences of nuclear weapons use are catastrophic, global, and without remedy.

    The post Joint Health Statement For First Meeting Of States Parties appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Democrats Have No Plan To Stop The Overturning Of Roe V. Wade

    The Supreme Court is on the verge of overturning Roe v. Wade. And yet, there is currently no cohesive national campaign from either the Democratic party or large reproductive rights organizations to fight back. Abortion activists and healthcare workers are becoming increasingly frustrated with this failure, often finding themselves at odds with their supposed advocates as they try to ensure access to abortion in states like Texas and Kentucky, which are already facing extreme limitations. “The Democratic Party has not had any substantial response to the recent attacks on Roe. Their statements and brief denouncements of these egregious abortion bans and restrictions have been toothless and weak, hardly even mentioning abortion services the majority of the time,” said Crystal*, an abortion care worker in Pennsylvania. “The only credit I will give to any Democrats are those who advanced legal abortion protections in their states, such as in Colorado. However, as these actions do not wholly address the loss of autonomy and access in vast regions of the United States, they are entirely inadequate.”

    The post Democrats Have No Plan To Stop The Overturning Of Roe V. Wade appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • PSL Statement: Supreme Court Declares War On Women And Abortion Rights — Take To The Streets!

    The Supreme court has declared war against women and our basic rights to control our own bodies. Now is the time to fight back. Millions of people going into the streets would make it clear that without justice there can be no peace. A heroic individual has leaked to the public the decision by the Supreme Court to end abortion rights by overturning the Roe v Wade decision, and the later Casey decision.

    The post PSL Statement: Supreme Court Declares War On Women And Abortion Rights — Take To The Streets! appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • 55,000 SEIU Members May Strike In Los Angeles. This Is Why I Am Voting Yes.

    “I am a worker at the Department of Mental Health in Los Angeles County, and I’m a member of SEIU Local 721. The Los Angeles Department of Mental Health is the largest mental health service in the U.S. Its annual budget is $3 billion. As one of the workers deployed by the county during the pandemic to work with people with severe disabilities at pop-up shelters in recreation centers, I am voting to strike, and it’s important for all other members of my union local to do the same.”

    The post 55,000 SEIU Members May Strike In Los Angeles. This Is Why I Am Voting Yes. appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Global Actions Condemn Big Pharma’s Vaccine Profiteering

    As major pharmaceutical executives and investors convened virtually on Thursday for their annual shareholder meetings, campaigners took to the streets in the U.S., the U.K., India, South Africa, and elsewhere to condemn major drug companies for hoarding technology and prioritizing profits over equitable distribution of coronavirus vaccines.

    Outside Pfizer’s U.K. headquarters, activists dropped mock sacks of money and positioned wheelbarrows full of fake cash near the building’s entrance to denounce the New York-based company’s opposition to tech transfer initiatives and other efforts to expand coronavirus vaccine production in developing nations, where billions have been denied access to the shots.

    Pfizer has also faced backlash for obstructing African countries’ attempts to study Paxlovid, the company’s oral anti-viral treatment for Covid-19.

    The post Global Actions Condemn Big Pharma’s Vaccine Profiteering appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Profile in Persecution: Dr. Abduljalil AlSingace

    Updated: Dr. Abduljalil AlSingace is a prominent Bahraini human rights defender, former university professor, and engineer, serving his life sentence since 2011. He was arrested and tortured by security officers following his participation in the 2011 pro-democracy protests at the age of 49 and was charged by the authorities with plotting to topple the government. On 27 March 2023, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention adopted an opinion on Dr. AlSingace, describing him as a human rights defender in Bahrain at the local and international levels who has received international recognition and awards for his work and writings. It also expressed “grave concern” for his deteriorating health as a result of his hunger strike in protest of ill-treatment, calling for his immediate and unconditional release and to ensure that he receives adequate medical care. Dr. Abduljalil has been on a solid food hunger strike for over three years at the Kanoo Medical Center, where he is detained, protesting the unjust and inhumane treatment in prison. Most recently, on 14 September 2024, AlSingace intensified his strike by refusing the vitamin and mineral solution he depends on for nutrition, opting to drink only drinking water, in protest against the denial of necessary medical treatment.

    On 17 March 2011, around 48 officers, some masked and in civilian clothing, arrested Dr. Abduljalil from his house without presenting an arrest warrant. Some of the officers were heard speaking in a Saudi accent. They dragged him in his “underwear and without his glasses”, holding him at gunpoint. Officers reportedly beat him inside his house and on the street. Then, they took him to a police station for a few hours and then moved him to AlQurain military prison where he was detained.

    During his interrogation, Dr. AlSingace was subjected to physical and psychological abuse. He was blindfolded and handcuffed, and officers brutally beat him. They hit his head with their fists and batons and sexually assaulted him. Officers also forced him to lick their shoes and stand for long periods despite his medical condition. Dr. Abduljalil has suffered from several chronic illnesses since his youth, including post-polio syndrome and a musculoskeletal condition, which has required him to use a wheelchair or crutches to walk. Officers would force him to stand without crutches and kick him on his healthy leg until he fell. He was also placed in solitary confinement for two months and was given very little food, which caused him to lose 10 kilograms. His cell was very small, with no light and cold temperature. Moreover, officers would verbally abuse him by cursing and degrading him, telling him he did not deserve to live. They also threatened him and threatened to rape his daughter and wife.

    As a result of the torture, Dr. Abduljalil gave a false confession and was sentenced to life imprisonment by the military National Safety Court in June 2011 on the charge of attempting to overthrow the government. He was imprisoned in Jau Prison where his health deteriorated due to mistreatment.

    During his imprisonment, Dr. Abduljalil continued to experience discomfort in his left shoulder and pain in his left rib due to the beating he endured from the officers. Furthermore, his carpal tunnel syndrome further deteriorated because he was forced to stand on his leg with his hands raised and cuffed. His vision also deteriorated after being deprived of his glasses for over a month.  The prison administration has denied him access to the appropriate medical treatment. This medical negligence included withholding his prescriptions including medical devices. In June 2021, the Jau Prison administration refused to replace the rubber padding on his crutches, and therefore, he was forced to use the worn-out ones that were uncomfortable and made him slip repeatedly. Only after much international advocacy did the authorities accept to replace the paddings.

    Dr. Abduljalil’s health has been further jeopardized by the hunger strikes that he has gone on throughout his imprisonment, to protest against the degrading and harsh practices and restrictions implemented by authorities. In July 2021, Dr. Abduljalil started a hunger strike to protest the confiscation of a book he had been working on for four years, which focused on Bahraini culture and dialects.

    After 1,169 days, Dr. Abduljalil’s solid food hunger strike is still ongoing, and his health has deteriorated significantly. He was taken to the hospital several times before being transferred to the Kanoo Medical Center in July 2021, where he remains in solitary confinement and denied access to direct sunlight, new clothes, and physiotherapy for his physical disability. He has also been denied access to necessary medical examinations and information, including the results of MRI scans of his shoulder and head since October 2021. He has been denied treatment for several medical conditions, including arthritis, shoulder pain, poor vision, tremors, and prostate, dental, and skin problems. At the center, Dr. AlSingace is experiencing headaches, vertigo episodes, and shortness of breath. His hands are unusually cold and swollen, and he had to be given an oxygen mask after his oxygen levels dropped. He has lost over 20 kilograms, and his blood sugar level has dropped to 2 mmol/L. His hunger strike involves drinking tea, milk, and sugar, along with minerals and water. However, authorities have further reduced the portions of sugar provided to him under the pretense of a shortage. Doctors have neglected his situation, visiting him only once every 2 or 3 weeks, and his request for painkillers was being delayed. Because of this strike, Dr. AlSingace suffers from low white blood cell, red blood cell, and platelet counts.

    Dr. Abduljalil has been refusing to end his strike as long as authorities deny him his basic rights and fail to return his book as promised. His demands include giving his family his new passport and ID, allowing him to have video calls with his family, getting prescribed medication available outside Salmaniya Hospital and the Kanoo Medical Center, obtaining his MRI images from the military hospital, being provided crutches and a warm water bottle for his back, and receiving pictures of his family. 

    On 15 November 2021 and 30 December 2021, United Nations experts, specifically the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders, the Special Rapporteur on Persons with Disabilities, and the Special Rapporteur on Health issued two joint allegation letters urging Bahrain to release Dr. AlSingace and compensate for him by providing proper healthcare. Despite these appeals, Bahrain has ignored the concerns and continued to deny Dr. AlSingace his basic rights. 

    On 27 March 2023, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention issued an opinion on Dr. AlSingace’s case, expressing “grave concern” over his deteriorating health due to his hunger strike protesting mistreatment. The Working Group called for his immediate and unconditional release and to ensure he receives appropriate medical care.

    On 17 April 2023, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Gerard Quinn, stated that “As a human rights defender with a disability in detention, Dr. AlSingace faces additional risks. He should receive frequent medical check-ups and reasonable accommodations for his disability, including assistive technologies and specialized care. However, Bahraini authorities have not always provided these.”

    The authorities continue to deny Dr. AlSingace essential medical supplies prescribed by doctors, such as suitable crutches or replacements for the worn tips to prevent slipping in the bathroom, and a hot water bottle for joint pain relief. He is also being denied treatment for various medical conditions, including arthritis, vision impairment, tremors, prostate issues, dental problems, skin conditions, respiratory issues, and low blood cell counts. The authorities have further restricted his right to access information by banning English and Arabic newspapers and limiting the available TV channels. Since January 2024, Dr. AlSingace’s family has faced harsh conditions during visits, including disruptions to video calls with family members who cannot visit in person, and a ban on direct visits and communication with relatives beyond the first and second degrees, which he believes is a deliberate attempt to pressure him into refusing visits altogether.

    Recently, on 14 September 2024, after the Ministry of Interior delayed providing essential medications, Dr. AlSingace escalated his hunger strike by ceasing intake of the vitamin and mineral solution he relied on for nutrition, subsisting only on water. This drastic measure was intended to pressure authorities into supplying his medications, according to his family’s statement to Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB). Due to his refusal to take the solution, the nursing staff at the Kanoo Medical Center had to administer intravenous fluids to keep him alive. However, worsening health and difficulties with vein access forced him to stop using intravenous fluids as well. As a result, Dr. AlSingace is experiencing a severe drop in red blood cell count, posing a serious risk to his life. On 16 September 2024, two officers visited him and insidiously questioned his refusal to take medications, attempting to shift the blame onto him. He explained that the issue was the shortage and delay of medications. The family has urged the Ministries of Interior and Health, along with the Kanoo Medical Center’s administration, to take immediate action to provide the necessary medications and treatment, holding the relevant authorities fully accountable.

    Dr. AlSingace’s arbitrary arrest, torture, unfair trial, reprisals, and severe medical negligence are clear violations of the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), to which Bahrain is a party. Additionally, the inhumane treatment and conditions in his detention constitute a blatant violation of the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, known as the Nelson Mandela Rules.

    Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) urges Bahraini authorities to respond to the United Nations Special Procedures regarding Dr. AlSingace, who is imprisoned for his peaceful human rights activism. ADHRB demands the immediate and unconditional release of Dr. AlSingace and the prompt provision of necessary medical care, as stipulated by the UN Special Procedures. Additionally, ADHRB calls for the return of Dr. AlSingace’s confiscated book, which he worked on for four years in prison, to his family. ADHRB also demands an investigation into allegations of torture, mistreatment, retaliation, and severe medical neglect, to hold perpetrators accountable and compensate for the violations suffered. ADHRB warns of Dr. AlSingace’s worsening health due to lack of medical care and his critically dangerous escalating hunger strike, which is due to the ongoing denial of his basic rights in prison. The Ministries of Interior and Health, along with the Kanoo Medical Center administration, are held fully responsible for his declining health and any further deterioration. ADHRB also calls on the international community to intensify demands for Dr. AlSingace’s immediate and unconditional release and to ensure he receives urgent necessary medical care.

    The post Profile in Persecution: Dr. Abduljalil AlSingace appeared first on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

    This post was originally published on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

  • Thousands Of Bay Area Nurses Go On Strike Over Pay, Bonuses And Mental Health Services

    More than 4,000 nurses from Stanford health care are on strike in Palo Alto on Monday.

    Nurses from Stanford Hospital went on strike at 6:45 a.m. and nurses from Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital in Palo Alto went to the picket line at 7 a.m.

    The nurses say they are serious and united as they negotiate with Stanford Hospital and Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital for better pay, better staffing and more mental health support.

    The post Thousands Of Bay Area Nurses Go On Strike Over Pay, Bonuses And Mental Health Services appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Hey, Bernie, Make It A Real Single Payer Bill…No Profits

    Senator Bernie Sanders has announced that he is going to introduce his Medicare for All bill in the Senate—and hold a hearing.  This is most welcome news. As Bernie campaigned for the presidency, he elevated national single payer health care, an improved Medicare for All, into the public spotlight and onto the nation’s agenda. His advocacy for Medicare for All informed millions and lifted spirits building hope that a universal single payer plan is possible in the US. He has not done that well at writing legislation.  His most recent bill, the Medicare for All Act of 2019 (S. 1129), falls short of essential single payer principles and lets stand billions in profits that will undermine care and steal public funds.

    The post Hey, Bernie, Make It A Real Single Payer Bill…No Profits appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Nursing Home Owners Are Fighting New York Law That Prioritizes Patient Care

    The COVID-19 pandemic forced public attention somewhere it doesn’t often go: nursing homes. Since March 2020, more than 200,000 deaths from COVID-19 have been reported among residents and staff of long-term care facilities across the country. While congregate living spaces are inherently dangerous in a pandemic — especially ones full of medically vulnerable people — COVID’s spread through these homes was intensified by preexisting problems like understaffed facilities and overworked, underpaid employees.

    In some cases, this spurred action. Linking poor patient care to facilities’ spending priorities, New York State passed April 2021 legislation requiring nursing homes to spend at least 70 percent of their revenue on direct patient care (including 40 percent on patient-facing staffing), and banning them from paying out more than 5 percent in profits to owners and shareholders. Instead, the facilities must turn over to the state any surplus beyond 5 percent, which will be redistributed back to high-performing nursing homes. The law also addresses understaffing concerns by requiring facilities to provide at least 3.5 hours of direct nursing care to each resident each day.

    “The goal is here to not only protect people in nursing homes but to dissuade bad actors from coming into this business,” Sen. Gustavo Rivera, New York Senate health committee chair, said in a statement.

    But just before the law was set to go into effect on January 1, 2022, a collection of 239 nursing homes filed a federal lawsuit aiming to block the law, calling it unconstitutional for New York to “confiscate” their excess profits. Notably, much of the complaint outlines how the law — if it had been in effect in 2019 — would have diminished the plaintiffs’ profits by a total of $824 million.

    After the lawsuit was filed, Gov. Kathy Hochul repeatedly delayed the law’s implementation, citing the pandemic and nursing homes’ ongoing staffing problems. But in April, she allowed the law to go into effect.

    Now it is up to the state of New York to enforce the law — and the court to decide whether it is constitutional.

    Strapped for Cash While Turning Huge Profits

    It is clear that many nursing homes fail to provide the level of care patients deserve. But there is a central disagreement over the cause of the problem. Nursing homes routinely say they are barely staying afloat and unable to afford sufficient staff. In a 2020 survey, 55 percent of nursing homes claimed they are operating at a loss and 72 percent said they could not make it another year at their current rate.

    In fact, one of the main goals of the powerful nursing home lobby is to increase federal Medicaid and Medicare payments, which make up the bulk of nursing home revenue. (In a recent quarter, 68 percent of nursing home revenue came from Medicaid, which pays a per diem for long-term residents. Another 10.9 percent came from Medicare, which is paid out at a higher rate for patients receiving higher-level, shorter-term care after a hospital stay.)

    But advocates say nursing homes are skimping on critical services in order to make massive profits for owners and investors. And they have new ammunition in the form of the recent lawsuit.

    Departing from the usual claims of barely scraping by, the 239 named plaintiffs allege in the lawsuit that a profit cap would remove hundreds of millions in profits. Advocates like the LongTerm Care Community Coalition (LTCCC) say these claims only prove these facilities have been making money all along — the funds just haven’t been reinvested into patient care.

    “It was shocking,” said LTCCC Executive Director Richard Mollot. “To actually divulge how much money they’re making, above a fairly nominal requirement, was really shocking to me.”

    Using the 2019 profits reported in the lawsuit, LTCCC calculated that the facilities could have used those profits to pay annual salaries and benefits for an additional 5,600 full-time registered nurses.

    So are nursing homes reaping profits or struggling to provide basic care? Their financial structures lie at the heart of this discrepancy. Over the past two decades, many nursing homes throughout the country have restructured their businesses by splitting their operations and real estate into separate LLCs. This allows them to shield their valuable real estate assets from financial threats like patient lawsuits.

    Many go a step further and spin off into multiple sub-companies, called “related parties,” that bill each other for services, often at high rates. Around the country, nearly three-quarters of nursing homes do business with related parties. Many nursing homes are owned by publicly traded corporations (although this is banned in New York) or private equity firms. Private equity investment in nursing homes jumped from $5 billion in 2000 to more than $100 billion in 2018; currently, 5 percent of nursing homes are owned by private equity firms. However, “Roughly 70 percent of the nation’s 15,400 nursing homes are for-profit,” as Maureen Tkacik points out in The American Prospect.

    “​​Sometimes, investors would buy a nursing home from an operator only to lease back the building and charge the operator hefty management and consulting fees,” The New York Times found in a 2020 investigation of private equity-owned nursing homes. “Investors also pushed nursing homes to buy ambulance transports, drugs, ventilators and other products or services at above-market rates from other companies they owned.”

    For example, a 2018 Kaiser Health News investigation found that Allenbrooke Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Memphis, Tennessee, reported a $2 million deficit and was often short of basic supplies like diapers and sheets. Meanwhile, the facility was paying out millions to other companies owned by the two Long Island men who owned Allenbrooke and 32 other nursing homes.

    And Brooklyn-based Joseph Schwartz grew Skyline Healthcare, his nursing home empire, from six facilities to more than 100 between 2015 and 2017. No oversight bodies intervened as he continued purchasing new homes, even as his facilities received complaints of neglect and mismanagement, drew fines, and some even lost Medicare and Medicaid certification. Today, he faces a host of charges and lawsuits; among them, Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge alleges Schwartz lied on Medicaid reports in order to siphon $3 million to other companies he owns.

    A 2020 analysis found that nursing homes purchased by private equity firms had 10 percent higher short-term mortality, which the authors equated to 21,000 lives lost over a 10-year period. Spending at these facilities was also 19 percent higher than similar nursing homes.

    An attorney specializing in nursing home finances told California Sunday that this financial structure allows nursing homes to make plenty of profits, but then “to go to the state legislature, to Senate sub-hearings, and say, ‘I have all these nursing homes, and they barely break even. We need more Medicare money. More Medicaid. We need bigger reimbursements. You guys are killing us!”

    The American Prospect dug into the facilities that joined the New York lawsuit, finding that 8 of the 40 most profitable ones on the list are co-owned by members of a single family, and that 25 others are owned by their “business partners or closest associates.” Many of the most profitable facilities in the lawsuit are similarly owned by extremely wealthy, often interconnected individuals.

    In fact, around the country, a relatively small network of individuals and families own massive nursing home empires. “In New York, it’s almost like, frankly, like a mafioso, with these family groups that are somehow related,” said Mollot.

    Some of the facilities joining the lawsuit have been identified by the state as Special Focus Facilities, meaning they have a history of serious quality issues. And seven were among the 11 sued by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York in June 2021, for allegedly overbilling Medicare between 2010 and 2019. According to that lawsuit, the nursing homes “systematically kept patients at the facilities longer than necessary” and “systematically put patients on higher levels of rehabilitation therapy than necessary based on their actual clinical needs.”

    The Pandemic Shed Light on Longstanding Problems

    The New York law that recently went into effect was included as part of last year’s state budget, amid outrage over the Cuomo administration’s mishandling of COVID-19 in nursing homes.

    In March 2020, as New York became the epicenter of the pandemic, the state required nursing homes to admit sick people from hospitals. Soon after, then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo bowed to industry lobbyists and inserted a special protection into the 2020 state budget, shielding nursing homes, hospitals and health care providers from COVID-related lawsuits.

    What’s more, multiple audits show that Cuomo’s Department of Health undercounted the state’s total nursing home COVID death toll, by not counting 4,100 nursing home residents who died outside their facilities in hospitals.

    “Instead of providing accurate and reliable information during a public health emergency, the Department conformed its presentation to the Executive’s narrative, often presenting data in a manner that misled the public,” State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said in a March 2022 audit.

    Over the ensuing two years, the pandemic has forced a closer look at nursing homes in New York. Legislators repealed the special liability protections in March 2021, unleashing a flood of dozens of lawsuits from families seeking to hold nursing homes accountable for their loved ones’ COVID-19 deaths before the two-year statute of limitations expires. Although it was initially unclear whether the liability repeal would be retroactive, a Supreme Court judge in Buffalo recently allowed a suit to move forward on behalf of a woman who died in a nursing home in April 2020.

    There has also been renewed concern over the nursing home staffing crisis. Currently, only Washington, D.C. requires nursing homes to provide 4.1 hours of direct nursing care each day, in line with minimum standards recommended in a 2001 report by the Centers of Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). The Biden administration recently proposed a set of nursing home reforms, including instituting a federal minimum staffing requirement (which would be set by CMS following a new research study) for all nursing homes that receive federal funding.

    The nursing home industry is pushing back against Biden’s proposal, just as it pushed back against New York’s newly mandated 3.5 hours of direct nursing care a day. The industry claims staffing minimums are impossible to meet because the workforce simply does not exist. “New York does not have enough qualified workers to meet the mandate and it fails to provide enough funding to pay for the costs of the mandate,” the New York State Health Facilities Association said in a statement regarding New York’s bill.

    But advocates say, if anything, New York’s law does not go far enough, and that understaffing stems from low salaries, poor working conditions, burnout and a lack of dignity on the job. National turnover rates for nursing home staff are around 100 percent, meaning that about as many people leave in a given year as are employed at a facility.

    “If you’re not meeting 3.5 hours, I don’t see how you’re not neglecting your residents,” said Mollot, noting that the originally introduced version of the legislation required 4.1 direct care hours per day. “Essentially, if you’re not providing 4.1 hours of direct care time, to me, that’s fraud in one of two ways: Either you’re not providing the care that residents need, or you’re retaining residents who don’t need to be in a nursing home. Because if they need to be in a nursing home, they need 4.1 hours… It’s not a warehouse.”

    Meanwhile, two other states recently joined New York as the first states attempting to improve nursing home quality by preventing owners from siphoning off profits. In Massachusetts, a new rule instituted by the governor requires nursing homes to spend 75 percent of revenue on resident care, and a recent New Jersey law requires 90 percent.

    “If they’re not able to pull so much money away from care and spend it on staffing and actual services, it should make a big difference,” Charlene Harrington, an expert in nursing home reimbursement and regulation, told Fortune, referring to the three state rules capping profits. “I would expect the quality of care would improve substantially.”

    “I think that people really saw what was going on, and how much of it wasn’t a standalone issue, because of the pandemic,” said Mollot, of the bills seeking to limit profits and improve care. “The residents are dying. I don’t care if you’re 90 or 100 or older. You don’t deserve to suffocate to death, in pain, because no one’s caring for you, because they were sloppy in their care.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The U.S. Spent 7.5 Times More On Nuclear Weapons Than Global Vaccine Donations

    Since the pandemic began, the United States has spent 7.5 times more money on nuclear weapons than on global vaccine donations. Stated another way, the money put towards global vaccine donations has amounted to just 13% of the money put toward nuclear weapons. The comparison shows that, even during a shared international crisis, in which an outbreak anywhere threatens people everywhere, the U.S. political apparatus is far more willing to fund instruments of death than vaccines that protect life.

    The post The U.S. Spent 7.5 Times More On Nuclear Weapons Than Global Vaccine Donations appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Look Up Nursing Home Staff COVID-19 Vaccination Rates

    by Ruth Talbot

    ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

    On Thursday, ProPublica added staff COVID-19 vaccination data to the Nursing Home Inspect project.

    The virus has killed more than 150,000 nursing home residents and staff since the beginning of the pandemic. Experts say that staff vaccination is a key part of protecting residents from outbreaks in their homes, but thousands of workers remain unvaccinated despite a federal COVID-19 vaccination mandate for health care employees. Some of those unvaccinated workers are claiming medical exemptions, which doctors say should be rare.

    Nursing Home Inspect already lets the public, researchers and reporters search deficiency reports and other data across more than 15,000 nursing homes in the United States. Now, users can quickly compare staff COVID-19 vaccination and booster rates across states and between nursing homes.

    Each state page allows users to sort homes by vaccination rate, making it easy to identify homes in your state with very low or very high vaccination rates. For each nursing home, a chart allows users to see how the home compares with both state and national averages.

    Additionally, we have removed the COVID-19 case and death count data from the database because the figures were reported cumulatively and do not provide an accurate picture of recent outbreaks.

    If you write a story using this new information, or you come across bugs or problems, please let us know!

    This post was originally published on Articles and Investigations – ProPublica.

  • Biden to End Trump-Era “Conscience” Rule Allowing Medical Personnel to Deny Care

    The Biden administration aims to revise a controversial rule, crafted under former President Donald Trump, that would have allowed doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other workers in the medical field to refuse service to individuals if they claimed that serving them would conflict with their religious beliefs.

    The “conscience rule,” which was announced in 2018 by the Trump administration and finalized in 2019, has never been enforced; federal judges blocked its implementation, noting that it could have profound and disturbing repercussions for many groups of people. Still, President Joe Biden’s plan to reverse the rule is significant, as it will ensure that such restrictions won’t be imposed in the near future, rendering the policy moot and unenforceable regardless of its judicial outcomes.

    Politico was the first to report on the rule’s reversal, stating on Tuesday that a spokesperson from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had told them that the change was coming soon.

    “HHS has made clear through the unified regulatory agenda that we are in the rulemaking process,” that spokesperson told the publication.

    Changes to the rule could happen as soon as the end of this month, they added.

    The rule, had it been enforced, would have granted a wide range of workers in the health field the ability to deny care to customers or patients for myriad reasons, including bigoted ones, so long as they cited a religious or moral justification for their discrimination.

    The Trump administration claimed the rule was necessary to ensure that such workers wouldn’t be “bullied out” of their professions for discriminating against people or refusing to provide certain types of care.

    The rule could have allowed pharmacists to deny the filling of prescriptions to customers seeking certain types of birth control, for example. It also could have granted doctors and nurses the ability to turn away patients seeking abortions, STI or HIV services, or gender-affirming care, all on the basis of their religious beliefs. Critics also contended that the Trump-era rule would have allowed doctors to turn LGBTQ patients away from their doors altogether.

    The decision to rescind the rule comes as many GOP-led state governments aim to restrict health care choices, particularly abortion.

    “As state politicians continue to strip people of their sexual and reproductive rights and freedoms, it’s imperative that the Biden-Harris administration revoke this discriminatory policy and help ensure people can access the health care and information they need when they need it,” said Jacqueline Ayers, the senior vice president of policy, organizing and campaigns for Planned Parenthood. “We look forward to seeing the details of the new rule and are excited about this step forward.”

  • Gross Negligence In For-Profit Prison Health Care

    By law, people in prison have a right to get the health care they need. In the late 1970s, the U.S. Supreme Court decision Estelle v Gamble set the standard for medical rights of prisoners. But prison authorities are being criminally negligent in not providing adequate health care to incarcerated people.

    As the jailed population ages, 40% have chronic health conditions. The cost of providing health care has skyrocketed and local, state and federal governments have contracted with for-profit prison health care companies as a way of tightening their budgets. 

    Private companies give a per diem rate for basic and specialty care – which would be lower if services were publicly provided. The negotiated per diem rate creates a huge profit incentive.

    The post Gross Negligence In For-Profit Prison Health Care appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Liberal Cities Are Not Immune to Mounting Attacks on Abortion Rights

    An anti-abortion group that masquerades as progressive in an attempt to gain a following in liberal cities suddenly surged into mainstream news headlines this spring after the Washington Metro Police Department recovered five fetuses from the apartment of anti-abortion activist Lauren Handy.

    Handy is a member of the group “Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising” (PAAU), which announced its formation in September 2021. The group claims to be “pro-BIPOC” and “pro-LGBTQ,” but in practice, the group’s actions align with a violent, right-wing anti-abortion tradition.

    After a few months of invading clinics and harassing patients at clinic entrances on the East Coast and West Coast with little press coverage, PAAU received national attention in late March after the fetuses were found at Handy’s apartment. Handy was one of nine anti-abortion activists who were charged on March 30 with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, for an incident in October 2020 wherein the activists chained themselves to the entrance of a D.C. abortion clinic. The police investigated Handy’s apartment after receiving a tip about potential biohazard materials being stored there, according to their statement.

    At a press conference to address the findings, PAAU appeared alongside Randall Terry, the founder of the notorious anti-abortion group Operation Rescue. Operation Rescue has been linked to the murder of abortion providers such as George Tiller. Terry called on “cowardly Christians” to act against what he described as the “violence” of abortion. Terry is one of many non-progressive allies that PAAU has aligned with in its short existence.

    Before this gruesome and shocking story made headlines, we were well-aware of Lauren Handy and PAAU. We’re members of NYC for Abortion Rights, a group of socialist feminist organizers who are building a grassroots movement for free abortion on demand. As a part of that work, we regularly defend clinics in our area from a range of anti-abortion groups, most recently PAAU. PAAU’s leadership reflexively claims to be “atheist” and liberal,” and they employ terminology like “Abortion Industrial Complex” and “Big Abortion.” They use the language of abolition and social justice to talk about abortion, casting fetuses as “the unborn,” which they frame as a marginalized group. Unlike many other anti-abortion organizations, PAAU is only active in liberal cities and states, where counterprotests against abortion are more likely to take place. These are also the cities and states that might be safe havens for abortion access if Roe v. Wade is overturned.

    Shortly before news broke of Handy’s arrest, we encountered PAAU outside Manhattan’s Planned Parenthood on Bleecker Street. Members were beating on bucket drums and chanting, “We are clinic invaders and yours is next!”

    Terrisa Bukovinac (left), is the founder and executive director of Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising. The group claims to be “pro-BIPOC” and “pro-LGBTQ,” but in practice, the group’s actions align with a violent, right-wing, anti-abortion tradition.
    Terrisa Bukovinac (left), is the founder and executive director of Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising. The group claims to be “pro-BIPOC” and “pro-LGBTQ,” but in practice, the group’s actions align with a violent, right-wing, anti-abortion tradition.

    When we talk about PAAU and similar threats with other New Yorkers, we hear the same refrain: “Wow, I didn’t know this happened in New York.” There’s a great deal of complacency — an assumption that abortion rights in liberal cities like New York City will forever be enshrined in law, and that the threat to reproductive justice and autonomy only exists in red states. What this complacency fails to take into account is that the “pro-life” movement is extensive and well-funded. Many of its activists are perfectly fine with breaking the law and risking arrest in order to prevent pregnant people from accessing safe abortions; they have the infrastructure, funding and organization to take those risks, and face little consequences from law enforcement.

    Those who are somewhat acquainted with the history of abortion in the U.S. will recall the bad old days of the 1980s and ‘90s, when opponents of abortion access would attempt to physically storm clinics to prevent patients from entering — and clinic defenders would link arms to stop them (not to mention the murder and stalking of abortion doctors and the bombing of clinics). The passage of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) act in 1994, which made it a felony to obstruct the entrance of a medical clinic or impede its operations, put a temporary damper on this type of aggression. But it’s coming back.

    Some might imagine the police will protect abortion seekers. However, trusting in the New York City Police Department to enforce abortion rights is a losing strategy. We have never once seen cops help patients enter the clinic safely or even enforce the FACE Act as anti-abortion activists congregate right in front of the clinic doors. In fact, when asked why they aren’t enforcing the FACE Act, police often say they don’t know what it is. We have often witnessed police simply escorting the anti-abortion activists as they lead their march to harass patients.

    PAAU isn’t the only anti-abortion organization active in major cities. Love Life is a far right evangelical organization dedicated primarily to overthrowing reproductive rights. Founded in North Carolina by the sons of Flip Benham — a notorious anti-abortion figure with a record of stalking abortion doctors — the well-funded nonprofit has opened offices in New York City, specifically with the view of combating what it describes as “the abortion capital of the world.”

    Here’s what members of Love Life said to their viewers on a livestream from outside Manhattan’s Bleecker Street Planned Parenthood: “People ask us, ‘why don’t you stay in church and pray?’ Because we are called as Christians to go to where the heart of the evil is — where abortion takes place.”

    Love Life has repeatedly conducted “sidewalk counseling,” or harassment of abortion patients, outside the Bleecker Street Planned Parenthood.

    These types of actions are not simply led by a marginal fringe. The Archdiocese of New York has organized “prayer walks” to abortion clinics and sidewalk counseling for the past several years. These are often led by Father Fidelis Moscinski. Moscinski is a leading figure in a national network of “Red Rose Rescuers” — a campaign of clinic invasion where participants trespass into abortion clinics, harass abortion patients, and refuse to leave.

    Moscinski has been arrested in several cities doing this — though not in New York, yet. In a recent video, Moscinski and a fellow anti-abortion activist reminisced fondly about the days when activists would chain themselves to clinic entrances — and urged viewers to consider risking arrest to participate in Red Rose Rescues. They call this “civil disobedience.”

    Two summers ago, NYC for Abortion Rights members literally linked arms with Planned Parenthood volunteers outside the Bleecker Street clinic as members of an anti-abortion group attempted to storm the doors. “I’ve been doing this for thirty years,” one of the volunteers said. “This hasn’t happened since the ‘90s.” PAAU has been replicating these tactics, engaging in “Pink Rose Rescues” in many cities.

    If Roe falls — which seems increasingly likely — we can’t just blithely assume that reproductive rights will be unassailable in cities like New York City. The anti-abortion movement has established a presence here too. We need to be prepared for the anti-abortion movement to escalate the tactics it is engaging in already — bussing and flying demonstrators here to harass patients and blockade clinic entrances. Instead of 50 anti-abortion activists outside the clinic, we need to be prepared for there to be hundreds of them.

    Though there is limited research on the topic, evidence suggests that clinic harassment is harmful for patients and providers alike. A 2013 study published in the journal Contraception found that for patients who had a more difficult time deciding to get an abortion, encountering protesters was especially upsetting. As clinic harassment has ramped up post-Trump, a more recent study conducted with Louisiana abortion patients found that anti-abortion protesters often physically block clinic access and cause anxiety, though they have a minimal effect on the decision to get an abortion by patients who’ve decided to undergo the procedure.

    For providers, clinic harassment taxes already limited resources to protect patients and employees from aggressive anti-abortion protesters. Clinics often need to hire security and engage with local police departments, which can stress both patients and providers. In the same 2013 study, researchers surveyed a sample of clinics across the U.S. and found that 83 percent of clinics that reported the presence of protesters reported that their staff have to regularly comfort patients who encounter protesters, and the remaining 17 percent occasionally provide comfort to patients who’ve encountered protesters. This emotional labor from clinic staff puts further strain on already taxed clinic resources. According to a 2020 report by Abortion Care Network, the number of independent abortion clinics in the U.S. has decreased by 34 percent since 2012. Nikki Madsen, the executive director of Abortion Care Network, partially attributed clinic closures to the increasing cost of maintaining security to protect the clinic from protesters and the difficulty in hiring clinic staff due to safety concerns.

    As the fight against abortion access has gained strength in the courts and state legislatures, it has intensified on the ground. According to the National Abortion Federation’s Violence and Disruption Statistics for 2020, abortion providers reported an escalation of aggressive behavior from protesters. In 2020, providers reported 115,517 picketing incidents, which was down from 2019’s record 123,228 reported incidents. As anti-abortion extremists succeed in banning abortion in conservative states, we are concerned they will take their fight to abortion safe havens on the coasts. Those of us working to protect abortion access in our liberal states must be prepared to counter these extremists effectively.

    There is certainly debate about to what extent street-based clinic defense is useful, even among supporters of abortion rights. However, in our work, these tactics have proven to be essential. We impede the anti-abortion demonstrators as they march, delaying them from reaching the clinic; we disrupt the livestreaming in front of the clinic that many organizations depend on to build their base. But most importantly, we resist anti-abortion activists’ attempts to shame and intimidate abortion patients through symbolically claiming the streets as well as the bodies of pregnant people. Directly resisting them shows that we will not surrender our bodily autonomy so easily.

    Insisting that abortion is a solely medical issue with no political valence, insisting that it can be solely defended by the courts and upheld by law enforcement, and insisting that the anti-abortion movement will be content with overturning Roe and leaving abortion up to the states are all losing tactics. People in blue states who are interested in preserving reproductive rights must build a grassroots movement to defend them. The anti-abortion movement already knows that ground-level action works; it’s time we learned it too.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • New GOP laws ‘will devastate abortion access across large parts of the nation’

    Common Dreams Logo

    This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on April 14, 2022. It is shared here with permission under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.

    After Florida’s GOP governor on Thursday signed a 15-week abortion ban inspired by a contested Mississippi law that could soon reverse Roe v. Wade, pro-choice advocates warned of impacts across the region, given that the Sunshine State has long been “an oasis of reproductive care in the South.”

    The Center for Reproductive Rights—which is helping challenge the Mississippi law—similarly pointed out that “Florida has been a critical haven for abortion access in the South, and this ban will decimate abortion access for Floridians and the entire region.”

    With Gov. Ron DeSantis’ support, Florida’s law is set to take effect this summer. His signature came after Republican state legislators in Kentucky on Wednesday overrode their Democratic governor’s veto of a similar bill and GOP Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt on Tuesday signed a near-total abortion ban.

    In a tweet about the recent developments, the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute said the latest state-level bans “not only violate the rights and autonomy of people seeking essential care, but will devastate abortion access across large parts of the nation.”

    The Center for Reproductive Rights—which is helping challenge the Mississippi law—similarly pointed out that “Florida has been a critical haven for abortion access in the South, and this ban will decimate abortion access for Floridians and the entire region.”

    Florida “allows abortions up to 24 weeks, the limit defined in the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade,” HuffPost explained as the measure moved through the Legislature earlier this year. “For hundreds of miles, other states have much more restrictive policies—if you headed west from Florida, you’d have to go all the way through the deep South and Texas to New Mexico to find a similar level of reproductive care and accessibility.”

    As HuffPost reported:

    The legislation is modeled directly after the 15-week abortion ban in Mississippi that was debated in front of the Supreme Court last month in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The Mississippi law threatens to move the federal gestational limit allowed in Roe from 24 weeks to 15 weeks. Mississippi has also asked the conservative Supreme Court majority to overturn Roe altogether. Although the decision in the case is not expected until June, many experts and advocates believe that Roe will either be gutted or overturned.

    The Florida ban would go into effect on July 1, 2022, likely weeks or even days after the Supreme Court rules in that case.

    Highlighting that Florida joins not only Kentucky but also Arizona in recently banning abortions after 15 weeks, NARAL Pro-Choice America president Mini Timmaraju noted Thursday that “this is a shameless step towards what could be a terrifying new future for reproductive freedom in the country.”

    “Anti-choice politicians across the United States, emboldened by the Supreme Court’s anti-choice supermajority, are clamoring at the opportunity to enact abortion bans like Mississippi’s,” she added. “No matter what kind of ban, let’s be clear: They are all meant to take away people’s freedom to make their own decisions about pregnancy and parenthood and impose one-size-fits-all restrictions.”

    Laura Goodhue, executive director of Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates, was similarly critical, charging that “by signing this cruel piece of legislation, Gov. Ron DeSantis has taken away Floridians’ freedom to control their own bodies.”

    “The so-called ‘Free State of Florida’ will never be truly free so long as politicians like DeSantis are able to impose their beliefs on the rest of us,” she said. “This is a full-scale assault on patients and their healthcare providers.”

    Some critics emphasized that Florida’s looming law—which has no exceptions for rape or incest and limits abortions to protect the life and health of the pregnant person—will disproportionately impact marginalized communities.

    As Kara Gross, legislative director and senior policy counsel at the ACLU of Florida, put it: “Gov. DeSantis and the Florida Legislature’s shameful abortion ban would push abortion care out of reach for countless Floridians.”

    “It is not always possible for people to obtain an abortion within the arbitrary timeframe provided in this bill, even if they’ve been trying to get one for weeks,” she pointed out. “There are already so many barriers to abortion care, especially for young people, those with fewer resources, and those who live in rural areas.”

    “Make no mistake: If this abortion ban goes into effect, it would have devastating consequences for pregnant people, especially those who are not able to afford to travel out of state in search of the essential healthcare they need,” Gross said, vowing that her group “will take swift legal action to protect Floridians’ rights and defend against this cruel attack on our bodily autonomy.”

    State legislation resembling Mississippi’s 15-week ban as well as a Texas measure that empowers anti-choice vigilantes to sue anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion after six weeks—before many people know they are pregnant—has bolstered calls for Congress to codify Roe into federal law.

    The Women’s Health Protection Act would do just that. Although all but one Democrat in the US House of Representatives passed the bill shortly after the Texas law took effect last year, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) in February joined with the upper chamber’s Republicans to block it.

    The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights tweeted Thursday that “restrictive abortion laws are yet another way in which healthcare access is denied to those who face systemic oppression in this country—and that is why we urgently need the Women’s Health Protection Act.”

    This post was originally published on The Real News Network.

  • Tell Us About Your Experience With the Liver Transplant System

    by Max Blau

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    Every year, thousands of Americans facing liver failure try to get new organs. Many of these are successful. But some experiences with the liver transplant process go wrong. The chances of success often depend on which hospital replaces your liver, according to data from the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients.

    Problems with liver transplants can occur before a transplant, during surgery or after the procedure. Medical experts said that issues might stem from failing to document that a donor’s blood type is compatible with the recipient or medical errors during surgery. There is also evidence that a disproportionate number of people of color do not get the help they need. We hope this questionnaire can help us make a more complete list of when, how and why problems occur.

    We want to speak with patients who have faced adverse outcomes, as well as family members who lost loved ones to the medical process. We also want to speak with medical providers or regulators familiar with the process to better understand how it works.

    Will you help ProPublica reporter Max Blau learn about the liver transplant process? If you have insights that could help guide our reporting, please fill out our brief questionnaire below.

    OUR COMMITMENT TO YOUR PRIVACY: We appreciate you sharing your story, and we take your privacy seriously. We are gathering these stories for the purposes of our reporting, and we will not publish your name or information without your consent.

    We are the only ones reading what you submit. If you would prefer to use an encrypted app, see our advice at propublica.org/tips. You can message Max Blau on Signal at 224-436-2120 or max.blau@propublica.org.

    This post was originally published on Articles and Investigations – ProPublica.

  • New York Increases Funding of Mental Health Care for Kids, Including Cash Governor Says Will Reopen Hospital Beds

    by Abigail Kramer, THE CITY

    This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with THE CITY. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

    Mental health programs for children and adolescents will get a major infusion of funds in New York state’s new $220 billion budget, which passed Saturday after contentious negotiations over criminal justice issues.

    Legislators approved significant reimbursement rate increases for community-based mental health programs, as well as bonuses for frontline workers. The budget also includes $10 million to address staffing and capacity shortages at state-run psychiatric hospitals, though it does not earmark funds to reopen beds that were shut down under a “Transformation Plan” rolled out by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. A measure proposed by the state Senate that would have committed New York to restore 200 state-run beds died in budget negotiations.

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    As THE CITY and ProPublica reported in March, New York has closed nearly a third of state-run psychiatric hospital beds for kids since 2014. Children in mental health crisis sometimes wait months for admission to the remaining beds, our investigation found.

    “Governor Hochul has made addressing mental health issues a major priority for her administration,” wrote Jim Urso, a spokesperson for the governor, in an emailed statement. “With this level of meaningful and targeted investment, we can get those struggling with mental health issues the help they need.”

    Some lawmakers say the investments do not go far enough. “Kids are languishing in emergency rooms or in acute care hospitals, waiting for the state beds,” said Assemblymember Aileen Gunther, who chairs the state Assembly’s mental health committee.

    “We were flush with money this year,” Gunther continued. “We spent it on ‘Let’s give some money to the Buffalo Bills stadium before we make sure that every child has access to mental health care.’”

    In all, the new state budget for the fiscal year through March 31, 2023, allocates $4.7 billion in operating funds to the state Office of Mental Health — a bump of nearly $800 million from the previous fiscal year. Funding will go up for a wide range of programs that serve children and adolescents, including residential treatment programs, crisis intervention teams for kids experiencing mental health emergencies, programs that bring mental health care into kids’ homes and a statewide initiative to integrate mental health providers into pediatricians’ offices.

    The new money is intended to fill deep holes. In February, Gov. Kathy Hochul echoed what mental health care providers and advocates have contended for years: “For too long our mental health care system suffered from disinvestment,” she said.

    As a result, mental health programs face chronic staff shortages, and children often sit on long waitlists for basic treatment — a problem that started before the COVID-19 pandemic but only grew worse as demand for kids’ mental health care spiked, our investigation found.

    In a major shift, the budget makes hundreds of thousands of kids newly eligible for services like in-home therapy and planned respite care. These programs have historically been available only to low-income children on Medicaid, but will now be expanded to the nearly 390,000 kids on Child Health Plus, which covers children and adolescents whose family incomes are too high for Medicaid or who aren’t eligible for Medicaid because of their immigration status.

    In theory, the expansion of eligibility is a big win for kids, said Alice Bufkin, the associate executive director for policy and advocacy at the advocacy group Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York. But nonprofit mental health providers have struggled to serve the children who were already eligible, and they’ll need a lot more financial help to hire staff and serve additional kids, Bufkin said.

    “We are at such a deficit in terms of capacity after years of underinvestment in the mental health system. We absolutely want to work with state leaders to build on these new investments and to recognize that there is a lot of work to be done to make sure kids can actually access the services they need,” Bufkin said.

    “We’re on Life Support, and We Need to Be Resuscitated”

    Like other health care providers, mental health programs in New York have faced critical shortages of staff during the pandemic. As THE CITY and ProPublica reported, state-run psychiatric hospitals are so short on nurses and social workers that many beds sit empty for months, even as acutely ill kids wait to get in.

    Meanwhile, outpatient and community-based mental health programs — which struggled to stay fully staffed even before the pandemic — have seen an exodus of employees in the past two years. “We’re on life support, and we need to be resuscitated,” said Harvey Rosenthal, the CEO of the New York Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services, at a New York State Assembly hearing on the mental health workforce in November.

    That’s in large part because public and nonprofit providers can’t pay competitive salaries to clinical and other frontline staff, providers say. For many positions, community-based mental health organizations say they’re competing for employees with — and losing out to — fast food restaurants and retail outlets.

    The new state budget attempts to stanch the bleeding, in part by doling out one-time bonuses to frontline health care workers, including mental health providers. Hochul proposed these spending measures as part of her plan to increase the size of the state’s health care workforce by 20% over five years.

    “So to stop the hemorrhaging of health care workers,” Hochul said in her budget deal announcement Thursday, state officials need to stop talking about how “we owe them a debt of gratitude and pay them some of that debt. That means dedicating in this budget $1.2 billion for frontline health care worker bonuses.”

    The budget also includes a measure, long sought by mental health agencies and advocates, that will provide a 5.4% cost-of-living adjustment in payments to service-providing agencies licensed by the state, including mental health and addiction programs. Under New York law, agencies that provide such services under contract with the state are supposed to receive a COLA every year, tied to inflation. However, the state budget has deferred the COLA nearly every year since the law was enacted in 2006 — a fact that has infuriated mental health advocates.

    “For every year of his tenure, former Governor Cuomo robbed State-contracted human services workers of their mandated statutory COLA, depriving these workers of over $700 million in raises, and balancing the budget on the backs of low-wage workers and nonprofit community organizations,” the Human Services Council, which represents dozens of New York City nonprofits, wrote in January.

    In response to a request for comment from Cuomo, Rich Azzopardi, a spokesperson for the former governor, sent the following statement: “Every budget is defined by the revenue you have and — if you intend to be fiscally responsible — reasonable growth that can account for future economic downturns and avoid fiscal cliffs. We never had bags of money from the federal government that enabled billions upon billions in new spending in an election year budget. I wonder what will happen once the Washington gravy train dries up?”

    In her January budget proposal, Hochul said that the 5.4% COLA, which is primarily intended for employee recruitment and retention, would provide “immediate fiscal relief” to mental health providers, “enabling them to offer more competitive wages to their staff.”

    Advocates say that the COLA and workforce bonuses are a great start, but it remains to be seen how big a dent they will make in the workforce crisis. “I know of an agency that has 270 job openings,” said Andrea Smyth, the president of the New York State Coalition for Children’s Behavior Health. “Right now, they post them and they get no one to apply. Does this amount of money get 270 people to apply — or does it get 15? That’s undetermined.”

    Smyth added, “That said, this is more than we’ve gotten in decades.”

    Some of the funding increases in the budget were made possible by an influx of federal COVID-19 relief money. An additional $111 million came from a financial maneuver that advocates say Cuomo could have made use of but didn’t. Under its Medicaid contracts, the state can claw back money from managed care insurance plans that fail to meet minimum spending requirements on mental health and addiction treatment for Medicaid recipients. In this year’s budget, the state will use two years’ worth of recouped money to fund increased reimbursement rates for mental health and addiction treatment clinics.

    Advocates for community-based mental health providers hope the recouped funds signal an intention by the Hochul administration to increase oversight of managed care plans that participate in New York’s Medicaid program. “The state needs to step up surveillance, monitoring and enforcement of all the provisions that are in place to protect Medicaid beneficiaries and to guarantee access to care,” said Lauri Cole, executive director of the New York State Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare, which represents more than 100 mental health agencies.

    “It’s about oversight of benefits that save people’s lives,” Cole added. “There should be nothing complicated about that.”

    This post was originally published on Articles and Investigations – ProPublica.

  • Child care and elder care investments are a tool for reducing inflationary expectations without pain

    Policymakers should look for any tool that can help restrain inflationary pressures without causing significant collateral damage. One such tool could be investments in child care and elder care. By subsidizing families’ use of child care and elder care and providing direct investments to providers, such investments could boost future labor supply by allowing working-age parents and children who want to look for paid employment to do so while remaining confident their family members are receiving care. Further, these investments can help dampen inflationary pressures—that rising wages could in theory contribute to—even well before they fully take effect.

    The post Child care and elder care investments are a tool for reducing inflationary expectations without pain appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Vaccinations for Medicaid Patients Are Far Behind Those for Privately Insured

    Washington, D.C., resident Michael Tyree wasn’t sure about getting the coronavirus vaccine at first.

    “I thought about it for a little over a month,” said the 70-year-old retiree, who relies on Medicaid for health care.

    But his sister insisted that he get vaccinated before visiting her. So he walked into a CVS for his shot last year.

    Many of his fellow Medicaid patients are still on the fence. People insured by Medicaid — the joint federal-state program that provides health care coverage to more than 78 million people with low incomes or disabilities — are less likely to be vaccinated against the coronavirus than those with private insurance, according to a report by the National Academy of State Health Policy.

    Though complete national data is scarce, California reported last month that 57% of Medicaid recipients in the state had gotten at least one dose of the vaccine, compared to 84% of all residents. Other states have reported similar gaps.

    Most Medicaid enrollees are people of color, and the pandemic hit some of those communities hardest. It has also taken a particular toll on people with disabilities, who are eligible for Medicaid. But along with common reasons for vaccine hesitancy — such as lack of trust in government or the health care system — Medicaid patients may also have more difficulty taking time away from low-paying jobs to get a shot, experts say.
    “It’s very important that we are making sure that vaccines are available to all populations of people,” said Dr. Michelle Fiscus, a public health consultant with NASHP who helped author the report, “especially those who have already experienced disproportionate burdens from COVID-19.”

    The report recommended that state Medicaid programs improve their data systems so that they know how many of their patients have received coronavirus vaccines. It also recommended they pay doctors for their time counseling patients on vaccination, even if the patients don’t end up accepting the shot. The Biden administration moved in December to require states to cover this type of counseling for children’s coronavirus vaccines. Doctors have pushed the administration to do the same for adults.

    “That is a disincentive to health care providers to take the time to have that talk if they can’t be paid for that time,” Fiscus said. “So it’s really important that medical providers be appropriately compensated.”

    The pandemic has highlighted states’ poor record in inoculating Medicaid patients against preventable disease. Adults insured by Medicaid are less likely than those with private insurance to have gotten all commonly recommended vaccines, such as influenza and tetanus, said a March report from the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission.

    But state Medicaid agencies have a lot on their plate besides vaccinations: The Biden administration is expected to end the public health emergency for the coronavirus in coming months, and that would also mean an end to the mandate that states keep current Medicaid patients on their rolls. Agencies will have to reevaluate recipients’ eligibility when that happens; millions of people may lose their Medicaid coverage.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Reproductive rights advocates brace for Oklahoma’s near-total abortion ban

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    This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on April 5, 2022. It is shared here with permission under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.

    Reproductive rights advocates on Tuesday braced for Kevin Stitt, Oklahoma’s Republican governor, to sign what’s been described as a “worse than Texas” abortion ban that would make performing the medical procedure at any stage of pregnancy a felony punishable by up to a decade in prison.

    “Nearly half of the patients Oklahoma providers are currently seeing are medical refugees from Texas,” the groups added. “Now, Oklahomans could face a future where they would have no place left in their state to go to seek this basic healthcare.”

    The New York Times reports the GOP-controlled Oklahoma House of Representatives voted 70-14 to approve Senate Bill 612, which would imprison healthcare providers who perform abortions at any time “except to save the life of a pregnant woman in a medical emergency” for 10 years or fine them $100,000. The measure, which was passed by the state Senate last year, heads to the desk of Stitt, who has pledged to sign “every piece of pro-life legislation” he receives.

    “If allowed to take effect, SB 612 would be devastating for both Oklahomans and Texans who continue to seek care in Oklahoma,” reproductive rights groups including the ACLU of Oklahoma and Oklahoma Call for Reproductive Justice said in a statement.

    “Nearly half of the patients Oklahoma providers are currently seeing are medical refugees from Texas,” the groups added. “Now, Oklahomans could face a future where they would have no place left in their state to go to seek this basic healthcare.”

    SB 612 has been compared to SB 8, the Texas law banning abortion after around six weeks of pregnancy and incentivizing private citizens with a $10,000 reward plus legal fees for successfully suing abortion providers or anyone who “aids or abets” the procedure. The law allows no exceptions in cases of rape or incest.

    However, critics say the Oklahoma bill is even more severe than the Texas ban.

    “We are actually going to be worse than Texas because this bill would prohibit abortion access as soon, at conception, whereas Texas allows for a six-week abortion ban,” Tamya Cox-Toure, executive director of the ACLU of Oklahoma, told KTUL.

    Cox-Toure said that “Oklahoma providers were seeing an increase of almost 2,500%” in people seeking abortions “because of Texas patients coming to Oklahoma for care.”

    Myfy Jensen-Fellows of the Trust Women Foundation told KTUL that SB 612 “will make it difficult not only for people in Oklahoma, not only people in Kansas and Texas, but the entire region.”

    SB 612 is one of numerous state-level attacks on reproductive rights, and comes as the constitutional right to abortion established nearly half a century ago in Roe v. Wade is imperiled by the United States Supreme Court’s right-wing supermajority.

    State-level abortion bans like SB 12 have spurred calls for the US Senate to pass the House-approved Women’s Health Protection Act, which would codify the right to abortion nationwide.

    Responding to the Oklahoma bill, Planned Parenthood Action tweeted, “These extremist politicians are willing to turn their own constituents into medical refugees.”

    “Abortion is healthcare,” the group added. “And we’ll keep fighting for your care, no matter what.”

    This post was originally published on The Real News Network.

  • Mastermind of the Texas ‘Heartbeat’ Statute Has a Radical Mission to Reshape American Law

    Demonstrators’ signs read: “Expose & shut down the abortion industrial complex now,” “Bans off our bodies,” “Liberal atheist against abortion,” “Keep our clinics,” “Let their hearts beat,” and “Just overturn Roe already, you cowards.”

    When conservative legal provocateur Jonathan Mitchell published his 2018 law review article laying the groundwork for Texas to ban most abortions, some of the ideas he outlined were so far-fetched that they read more like thought experiments than legitimate legal theories. One was that state legislatures could give private individuals, rather than government agencies, the right to enforce abortion restrictions and other controversial statutes – a “bounty hunter”-type mechanism he claimed could make such laws all but impossible to challenge through the usual legal processes.

    Another of Mitchell’s theories was even more radical: that courts don’t have the power to strike down old laws they think are unconstitutional – for example, Texas statutes first enacted in the 1850s that made it a crime to help “procure” an abortion or furnish “the means” for it. Judges can only stop those laws from being enforced, he claimed. Unless legislators actually repeal them, America’s old laws never really die; instead, they linger in a kind of limbo, automatically springing back to life if a future court issues a new, contrary ruling. They can even be enforced retroactively, he argued. 

    At first, Mitchell’s ideas generated little attention outside conservative circles, where some of his own ideological allies were incredulous at the notion that overturned laws might rise from the grave like zombies and be used retroactively to lay waste to the foundations of contemporary American society in a legal version of “The Walking Dead.” The University of Chicago’s Richard Epstein, Mitchell’s former teacher and one of the most eminent legal scholars on the right, told a Federalist Society panel in 2018, “Jonathan always puts the fear of God in me, because God forbid he should be right on this particular question.” Epstein added, “I think most people would say that this is an enormously dangerous-type situation.” 

    Undeterred, Mitchell worked with the Texas legislature to enshrine his theories in Texas Senate Bill 8, also known as the Texas Heartbeat Act. The measure not only bans abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy, but it also takes the extraordinary step of giving private citizens the right to sue anyone who helps someone obtain one. 

    Now, seven months after Texas’ law became the most restrictive abortion statute to take effect in the U.S. in almost 50 years, the real-world impact of Mitchell’s ideas is becoming much clearer – as well as more urgent. Even as the effort to empower vigilante citizens alarmed legal experts across the ideological spectrum, an additional and relatively unreported aspect of the law has far greater implications beyond the elimination of abortion. Most legal experts and lawmakers still haven’t understood the full scope of Mitchell’s vision for remaking American law, but as reporting from Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting shows, it’s already being adopted by legislative leaders and being tested in court. 

    In a series of legal proceedings, threatening letters, press releases and social media posts, Mitchell and his allies are arguing that the 1850s statutes that made it a crime to help someone get an abortion in the state – the laws overturned by Roe v. Wade in 1973 – were never actually repealed and thus are still in force. And they claim that grassroots abortion funds, which raise money to help Texas patients pay for the procedure, are breaking those old laws and should be prosecuted. Ditto for ordinary citizens who’ve donated to one of those groups.  

    Last month, Republican state Rep. Briscoe Cain, a lawyer and joint author of the House version of SB 8, showed just how far anti-abortion lawmakers are willing to push the idea that helping someone in the state pay for an abortion is a crime. Cain issued cease-and-desist letters to abortion funds across Texas, claiming that they are “criminal organizations” under the pre-Roe statutes and that their employees face two to five years behind bars for breaking those laws. He sent a similar letter to Citigroup, demanding that the banking giant rescind its new policy of paying for its Texas employees to travel for abortion care outside the state and warning that it will face prosecution if it continues to cover abortions in-state under its employee insurance plan. 

    Cain himself doesn’t have the authority to bring criminal charges, but he claims local prosecutors do. In a press release, he said he plans to push for legislation allowing them to prosecute these cases even outside their own jurisdiction. Meanwhile, saber-rattling is itself a core element of Mitchell’s legal strategy. In his law review paper, he notes that “the mere threat of future prosecution” could be enough to “induce substantial if not total compliance” with pre-Roe laws.

    Some of the most powerful conservative groups in the country have joined Mitchell’s cause, including the America First Legal Foundation, which helped defend the Texas law before the Supreme Court last fall and is now also targeting abortion funds. The new foundation was created by former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows; Stephen Miller, the architect of former President Donald Trump’s family separation immigration policy; and other members of Trump’s inner circle to “oppose the radical left’s anti-jobs, anti-freedom, anti-faith, anti-borders, anti-police, and anti-American crusade,” according to its mission statement. In a press release, Miller’s description of why America First Legal has gotten involved echoes the “tough-on-crime” language that the Trump administration made a hallmark of its often-authoritarian policies: “We will maintain the rule of law,” Miller is quoted as saying.

    Mitchell’s ideas could have vast repercussions for more than reproductive rights, legal experts warn. The notion that old laws don’t go away and can be resuscitated is “awfully curious in a country where old law legalized segregation, slavery, sexual abuse and rape of wives,” said Michele Goodwin, a legal scholar at the University of California, Irvine, who focuses on issues at the intersection of gender and race. Many of these old laws, she pointed out, “subordinated people who were not White males.” If Mitchell and his allies were to succeed, she said, the result would be to resurrect a version of the country as it existed 200 years ago, when “White men controlled every branch of government in every state.” 

    Mitchell declined requests to be interviewed on the record for this article. But he has made it clear that he also wants to roll back decades of progress for LGBTQ rights. Over the past several years, when he wasn’t litigating abortion cases, he was filing lawsuits aimed at undermining same-sex marriage and affirming the right to discriminate against LGBTQ people in housing and the workplace. Mitchell’s culture-war campaigns converged in an amicus brief he wrote in the Mississippi abortion case that the U.S. Supreme Court will decide by this summer. His ominous warning: “Lawrence and Obergefell,” the Supreme Court cases that legalized sodomy and same-sex marriage, respectively, “are as lawless as Roe.”

    The Genesis of Texas’ Heartbeat Act

    Mitchell honed his ideas in some of the most elite institutions in the country. After clerking for late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, he taught at the University of Chicago and Stanford University law schools, served as the Texas solicitor general and volunteered on the Trump transition team, reviewing future executive orders. 

    Just when he seemed likely to win a more permanent role under Trump – heading the Administrative Conference of the United States, a little-known federal agency that issues recommendations on how the government can work more efficiently – his nomination was scuttled because of his role in coordinating a sprawling, multistate attack on public-sector unions. The lawsuits filed in California, New York, Minnesota and other states were funded by a shadowy litigation finance group based in Chicago that wasn’t disclosing its backers. “If he is a clandestine operative of the same powerful ultraconservative special interests out to cripple unions, he is not fit to serve in this post,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., told The New York Times.

    In an illustration, Jonathan Mitchell stands behind a lectern facing two Supreme Court justices.
    A courtroom illustration shows Jonathan Mitchell arguing in front of the Supreme Court in 2014, when he was Texas’ solicitor general. Credit: Illustration by Art Lien

    By then, Mitchell’s law review article, which was in prepublication review and bears the wonky title “The Writ-of-Erasure Fallacy,” was already making waves. Written in 2016 and published two years later, it was based on his experiences representing the state of Texas in court, where he saw how the legislature often enacted statutes that were easily blocked – including laws that sought to ban abortion. One of Mitchell’s goals, he has said, was to prod anti-abortion lawmakers out of their “learned helplessness” by empowering them with clever strategies that would make their ideas harder to defeat in court. 

    That’s where the “bounty hunter” idea came in. 

    Geoffrey Stone, former dean at the University of Chicago law school who taught Mitchell two decades ago, nodded to the “brilliance” of the idea but condemned it as “totally obscene.” The brilliant part, Stone said, is that in order to block a law in court, you typically have to sue a government official. But if only private individuals are empowered to enforce a law, there is no government official to sue – and opponents of the law are left with their hands effectively tied. The ultimate goal, Mitchell acknowledged in his paper, was to develop laws that could circumvent judicial review. But the real-world impact, Stone and other legal scholars have suggested, is that even a blatantly unconstitutional law opposed by the vast majority of citizens and courts would still be allowed to take effect.  

    Mitchell then made another argument that struck at the foundations of American law. He contended that court rulings – even those issued by the U.S. Supreme Court – are far less sweeping than mainstream legal experts believe. According to his “Writ-of-Erasure Fallacy” theory, courts don’t have the power to broadly “strike down” or “erase” laws they think are unconstitutional. Even more radical, he claimed that a law could be enforced retroactively against people who violated the statute during the time period when it had been blocked.  

    Stone took issue with the entire premise of Mitchell’s theory during a recent Federalist Society event at the University of Chicago. The law professor – who was a Supreme Court clerk when Roe was handed down – said in an interview that his former student’s strategy “simply fails to understand the critical legal concept of precedent” that “our whole legal system is based on.”

    Jennifer Ecklund, an attorney who represents the abortion funds targeted by Mitchell, found the retroactivity idea especially troubling. It “undermines the entirety of our system of constitutional justice. And that’s not hyperbole,” she said. “For this theory to take hold and become commonplace would be a complete undoing of constitutional jurisprudence in the 20th century.”

    Legal historian Mary Ziegler, author of “Abortion and the Law in America,” pointed to how retroactivity might be used if a conservative state passed a law that criminalized sodomy and the Supreme Court upheld that new law, overturning its 2003 decision that made such sexual acts legal. “Then, in theory, that criminal sodomy law could apply not only against people who committed sodomy … after the new Supreme Court decision, it would, in theory, apply before, too,” she said.

    Protesters carry a variety of homemade signs supporting abortion rights.
    Protesters gather for the Women’s March and Rally for Abortion Justice at the State Capitol in Austin, Texas, in October. Credit: Sergio Flores/Associated Press

    But there was one audience that was extremely receptive to Mitchell’s legal theories: anti-abortion lawmakers and activists in Texas. Starting in 2019, Mitchell and his allies worked with more than 40 communities to pass local ordinances that created “sanctuary cities for the unborn.” Those ordinances not only banned abortion outright, but also declared it to be “murder.”

    Then, working with Republican state Sen. Bryan Hughes, Mitchell embedded his ideas last year into SB 8, a variation on the “heartbeat bills” that had passed in about a dozen other states, only to be blocked by court after court for flouting Roe. 
    Like those other bills, the Texas version banned abortion after fetal cardiac activity could be detected in an ultrasound, around six weeks’ gestation. But as Mitchell had predicted, the law’s “bounty hunter” mechanism – giving private citizens the right to sue anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion for $10,000 per violation plus legal fees – made it extremely difficult for abortion rights groups to challenge the law in court, especially in those packed with conservative judges who shared his anti-abortion views.

    But providing a way to help the Texas law withstand a court challenge was only part of Mitchell’s plan. A second goal was to explicitly revive the 1850s laws that had once made abortion a crime in the state. To that end, Mitchell and his allies inserted another provision that was almost entirely overlooked amid the firestorm over the new statute: a legislative finding that the pre-Roe laws in Texas had never been repealed. 

    Then they went to work.

    Using Pre-Roe Laws to Go After Abortion Funders 

    The Heartbeat Act isn’t the only recent Texas law that seeks to criminalize abortion, nor is it the most draconian. For example, a so-called trigger law, also enacted in Texas last year, would outlaw abortion completely and automatically if Roe is overturned; doctors who violate the ban would face up to $100,000 in fines or life in prison. 

    The earliest that statute could take effect is this summer, when the Supreme Court is set to rule on the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization abortion case out of Mississippi. In the interim, Mitchell and his allies, impatient to halt as many abortions as possible as soon as possible, have turned to the 1850s statutes and the writ-of-erasure language in SB 8 to try to accomplish the same thing by targeting groups that help patients pay for abortions. 

    References to criminalization started cropping up in court proceedings even before the heartbeat law went into effect in September. In one hearing last summer in a lawsuit involving the Austin-based Lilith abortion fund, Mitchell told a Texas judge that such grassroots groups are “criminal organizations” that are “committing crimes under state law,” even if they’re not being punished for their crimes right now. 

    In a major ratcheting up of their campaign this winter, Mitchell and five law firms filed petitions demanding the right to take depositions from leaders of the Texas Equal Access Fund and Lilith Fund for allegedly violating the heartbeat law. But the press releases cited the pre-Roe criminal statutes. Kamyon Conner, executive director of the Texas Equal Access Fund, said she was at a retreat with fellow reproductive justice activists when she learned about the attempts to force her to turn over information about employees and donors. “The people in the room saw my expression change and they were like, ‘What’s wrong?’ ” 

    For Conner, the tactic felt like an attempt to scare and shame her. Far from being intimidated, however, she and her fellow abortion fund activists decided to fight back, filing lawsuits in mid-March against America First Legal, the Thomas More Society law firm – another conservative group in the case – and two Texas women represented by Mitchell. The suits ask courts in Texas; Washington, D.C.; and Illinois – where the Thomas More firm is based – to declare the heartbeat law unconstitutional. 

    Thus far, donors haven’t been intimidated. Conner said the Texas Equal Access Fund has seen an uptick in what she called “rage donations,” though some check-writers are taking the precaution of blacking out their identifying information. The Lilith Fund has seen a tripling of its budget since last year – enough to begin covering the entire cost of abortions for people who need them. 

    Meanwhile, anti-abortion activists and lawmakers have started taking the writ-of-erasure criminalization language nationwide. In July, the National Association of Christian Lawmakers unanimously adopted a model bill that features, verbatim, the heartbeat law’s finding that the state “never repealed” its pre-Roe criminal laws. Lawmakers in at least one state with a pre-Roe statute still on the books, Arizona, have introduced legislation with this language.

    Mitchell’s ideas about reviving these pre-Roe criminal statutes could become all the more relevant if Roe is overturned. In the meantime, by challenging the right of grassroots groups and private donors to help pay for abortions, he and his allies have opened a new front in the battle over access that is likely to spread well beyond Texas. Abortion funds see this as a sign of their growing significance in a landscape where access to the procedure depends on having the means to pay for it. 

    “I think it is very telling that the (anti-abortion activists) have caught on to us and understand us as a threat, because we are,” said Amanda Beatriz Williams, the Lilith Fund’s executive director. “We are a threat to them. We are a threat to their movement.” 

    Students and staff at UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center and Investigative Reporting Program contributed additional reporting: Gisela Pérez de Acha, Brian Nguyen, Emma MacPhee, Leah Roemer, Taylor Graham, Alex Harvey, Eleonora Bianchi, Eliza Partika, Elizabeth Moss, Anabel Sosa, Rhia Mehta, Brittany Zendejas and Sophie Hoblit. Reveal fellow Grace Oldham also contributed reporting.

    This story was edited by Nina Martin and copy edited by Nikki Frick.

    Amy Littlefield can be reached at alittlefield@revealnews.org. Follow her on Twitter: @amylittlefield. 

    Mastermind of the Texas ‘Heartbeat’ Statute Has a Radical Mission to Reshape American Law is a story from Reveal. Reveal is a registered trademark of The Center for Investigative Reporting and is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization.

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • Decolonizing The Healthcare System

    Mainstream healthcare is historically a twisted, uneven, financially debilitating, and constrictive path forcing incomplete ideals that do not always consider the person as a whole or the health of that individual in their totality. Specialties compartmentalize the body, concentrating on stabilizing a part without the care to follow through to care for the complete person’s needs. To often forgotten, emotional, and spiritual healing is often completely disregarded and not seen as necessary for a truly holistic recovery. The fact is today’s westernized approach of and on “holistic” healthcare is the colonizing of and plundering from many different cultures, fragmented, incomplete.

    The post Decolonizing The Healthcare System appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The CDC Is Beholden To Corporations And Lost Our Trust. We Need To Start Our Own

    Released four days before the State of the Union, the new CDC measures and the narrative they created let President Biden claim victory over the virus via sleight of hand: a switch from standard reporting of community transmissions to measures of risk based largely on contentious hospital-based metrics. The previous guidelines called anything over 50 cases per 100,000 people “substantial or high.” Now, they say 200 cases per 100,000 is “low” as long as hospitalizations are also low.

    The resulting shift from a red map to a green one reflected no real reduction in transmission risk. It was a resort to rhetoric: an effort to craft a success story that would explain away hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths and the continued threat the virus poses.

    The post The CDC Is Beholden To Corporations And Lost Our Trust. We Need To Start Our Own appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Medicare For All Is Not Enough

    We have long advocated for single-payer national health insurance. By eliminating private insurers and simplifying how providers are paid, single-payer would free up hundreds of billions of dollars now squandered annually on insurance-related bureaucracy. The savings would make it feasible to cover the uninsured and to eliminate the cost barriers that keep even insured patients from getting the care they need. And it would free patients and doctors from the narrow provider networks and other bureaucratic constraints imposed by insurance middlemen. We still urgently need this reform. However, the accelerating corporate transformation of US health care delivery complicates this vision. In the past, most doctors were self-employed, free-standing hospitals were the norm, and for-profit ownership of facilities was the exception. Single-payer proposals hence envisioned payment flowing from a universal, tax-funded insurer (like traditional Medicare) to independent clinicians, individual hospitals, and other locally controlled, nonprofit providers. This was usually the state of play when national health insurance (NHI) was achieved in other nations, such as Canada in the 1960s and ’70s—the model for single-payer reform in the United States.

    The post Medicare For All Is Not Enough appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Deterioration Of Rights Sparks Month-Long Actions Among Health Workers

    Health workers in major public hospitals in Haiti have reasserted their intention to continue striking on 28 March, citing lack of action by the Ministry of Health (MoH) on their earlier demands. Nurses, physicians, lab workers and other health professionals at the Haitian State University Hospital and Justinien Hospital among other places, began to strike near the end of February. They intend to continue the action until demands are met.

    The workers are asking for salary adjustments, improvements to working conditions, and payment of arrears in the form of debit cards, but remain dissatisfied by the approach taken by the Ministry since they first stopped working. While emergency care services have remained operational throughout the duration of the strike, delivery of other forms of care has significantly slowed down, increasing pressure on the MoH.

    The post Deterioration Of Rights Sparks Month-Long Actions Among Health Workers appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.