The following column was posted on the Star Tribune website May 6, 2017:
With America in a health care crisis, the solution shouldn’t be winning the lottery.
Demonstrators gathered at the Burnsville offices of Minnesota Republican Congressman Jason Lewis in the wake of his health care vote on Thursday.
Dear Reps. Erik Paulsen, Tom Emmer and Jason Lewis:
Thank you so much for your news releases praising the passage of the American Health Care Act. This is the first time in my career that I have received political suicide notes from sitting members of Congress.
The following article by Mike Mullen was posted on the CityPages website May 5, 2017:
GOP U.S. Rep. Erik Paulsen is one of many members of Congress who are avoiding constituent town halls for the time being.
Congressman Erik Paulsen, on Election Night in 2016. It appears some voters in the 3rd Congressional District do not like his support of Trumpcare Jeff Wheeler, Star Tribune
His enraged constituents stood ready, and quickly tore his statement to tatters with their pitchforks.
Said Paulsen: “With millions in Minnesota and the United States in need of relief from skyrocketing costs, diminishing choices, and limited access, the status quo under Obamacare is no longer acceptable. This is just the latest step in reforming our health care system to be more patient-centered, and my focus remains on finding solutions that will make sure Americans have access to high quality, affordable health care. I’m also pleased to see the permanent repeal of the medical device tax included in this effort, which is critical to encourage medical innovation and make life-saving technologies accessible to patients.” Continue reading “‘Sleep well tonight’: After Trumpcare vote, Rep. Erik Paulsen’s Facebook page is a shitshow”
The following article by Philip Rucker was posted on the Washington Post website May 5, 2017:
With one hasty and excruciatingly narrow vote, House Republicans have all but guaranteed that health care will be one of the most pivotal issues shaping the next two election cycles — including congressional, gubernatorial and state legislative races in the 2018 midterms and President Trump’s likely reelection bid in 2020.
The following article by Margot Sanger-Katz was posted on the New York Times website May 4, 2017:
A group protesting outside the St. Joseph, Mich., office of Representative Fred Upton on Wednesday. Mr. Upton emerged as a crucial supporter of the effort to revive the G.O.P.’s health care bill. Credit Don Campbell/The Herald-Palladium, via Associated Press
The American Health Care Act, which narrowly won passage in the House on Thursday, could transform the nation’s health insurance system and create a new slate of winners and losers.
While the Senate will probably demand changes, this bill, if it becomes law in its current form, will repeal and replace large portions of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). It will change the rules and subsidies for people who buy their own insurance coverage, and make major cuts to the Medicaid program, which funds care for the poor and disabled. Continue reading “Who Wins and Who Loses in the Latest G.O.P. Health Care Bill”
There is a key concept often left out of the health care debate and something that politicians seem to continually misunderstand or refuse to acknowledge: that we have an obligation to provide care. This does not necessarily translate to “we as a nation” but “we as clinicians,” who have a moral obligation and, in the case of hospitals, a legal obligation to provide emergency care under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act. There is a need to acknowledge the moral and deontological sentiment that exists here. This was borne out of many failures and Supreme Court decisions resulting from a refusal to treat people, who then died or had bad outcomes. Patient dumping led to overcrowding of emergency rooms in county hospitals, where turning people away may have been legal but was ethically reprehensible.
The continuing frame of thought that health care is a market-based product is doomed. We may continue on this path for some time, but the end is inevitable; either we finally recognize an obligation to providing care or we allow hospitals to turn people away. It is all well and good to be a congressperson and treat health care as a free-market product, but when you are face to face with the bad effects of this mind-set, you may think differently. When the major groups representing clinicians in the trenches are against what you are doing, you ought to take some time to contemplate this.
The following article by Tim Marcin of Newsweek was posted on the National Memo website May 5, 2017:
Lots of liberals, and even some conservatives, are upset that House Republicans passed Thursday a health care bill that hadn’t been vetted by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) for its cost or effects, such as the loss of coverage for millions of Americans, as the CBO estimated for a prior version of the legislation. The GOP was apparently ready for it’s Obamacare replacement and ready for it now—but opponents also were ready to fight back.
Causing particular anger is the provision in the American Health Care Act (AHCA)—often dubbed Trumpcare—that undermines protections for Americans with pre-existing conditions. States would be able to apply for waivers to allow insurers to charge higher premiums for those with pre-existing conditions. It has been estimated some 27 percent of people on the individual market suffer from things that could be considered pre-existing conditions—which under Obamacare included having cancer or being the victim of sexual assault. Continue reading “How To Fight The Republicans Who Voted For ‘Trumpcare’”
The following article by Glenn Kessler was posted on the Washington Post website May 4, 2017:
With House Republicans prepared to take a vote Thursdayon yet another version of a plan to overhaul the 2010 Affordable Care Act, attention has been especially focused on whether Obamacare’s popular prohibition against denying coverage based on preexisting medical conditionswill remain in place. Republicans, from President Trump to lawmakers pushing for the bill, insist that it remains intact, just in different form. Democrats and opponents of the bill say the guarantee is gone or greatly weakened.
The following article by Erica L. Green was posted on the New York Times website May 3, 2017:
Students at Merriman Park Elementary School in Dallas in 2014. The Richardson ISD Council of PTAs hosted a program called “Understanding Differences” to show students and teachers what it is like to have learning disabilities.
WASHINGTON — While House Republicans lined up votes Wednesday for a Thursday showdown over their bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Vickie Glenn sat in her Murphysboro, Ill., office and prayed for it to fail.
Ms. Glenn, a Medicaid coordinator for Tri-County Special Education, an Illinois cooperative that helps more than 20 school districts deliver special education services to students, was worried about an issue that few in Congress were discussing: how the new American Health Care Act, with its deep cuts to Medicaid, would affect her 2,500 students.
With all the sweeping changes the Republican bill would impose, little attention has been paid to its potential impact on education. School districts rely on Medicaid, the federal health care program for the poor, to provide costly services to millions of students with disabilities across the country. For nearly 30 years, Medicaid has helped school systems cover costs for special education services and equipment, from physical therapists to feeding tubes. The money is also used to provide preventive care, such as vision and hearing screenings, for other Medicaid-eligible children. Continue reading “A Little-Noticed Target in the House Health Bill: Special Education”
The following article by William Bornhoff of the Patch Staff posted the following on the St. Louis Park Patch website May 4, 2017:
St. Louis Park’s state representative took to Twitter Thursday to criticize Congressman Erik Paulsen’s vote for American Health Care Act.
ST. LOUIS PARK, MN — Republicans in the House of Representatives, including Minnesota Third District’s Erik Paulsen, voted to pass the American Health Care Act Thursday by the slim margin of 217-213 with no Democratic votes. GOP leadership has partially recovered its wounded pride after its embarrassing first attempt to pass the bill ended in abject failure in March.
The following article by Phillip Bump was posted on the Washington Post website May 4, 2017:
It was one thing for Donald Trump to pledge on the campaign trail that his plan for health care would assure that every American had coverage. He did so repeatedly, including during a town hall event in February 2016 at which he said his promise to “take care” of everyone might sound as if he was talking about a single-payer system, but he wasn’t. “That’s not single-payer,” he said. “That’s not anything. That’s just human decency.”
It was another thing, though, for Trump to make similar claims after the election. Before the election, it was anything goes in a way that most politicians would avoid. Afterward, one might expect Trump to zero in on his preferences a bit more narrowly, to scrape away the rhetoric and describe, instead, what it was that he wanted to see. Continue reading “This is not the health-care bill that Trump promised”
