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The Trump-Pence Theocracy Continues to Take Shape, As “Abstinence” Is Elevated To National Policy

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By Dartagnan / Daily Kos

Between 2007 and 2015, the rate of teen pregnancies in the United States dropped approximately 50%. Much of the credit for that goes to federal and state educational programs that teach teenagers about birth control and making informed choices about sex. The Teen Pregnancy Prevention program, implemented in 2010 during the Obama Administration, was one of the most effective of these efforts, providing annual grants totaling 200 million dollars to the states to operate and evaluate their public health programs aimed at preventing unwanted teen pregnancies.

These programs are vital because more than 25% of American girls become pregnant by age 20. Many of these pregnancies are neither expected or wanted. The drastic negative economic and social implications of that fact–to women and American society— should be obvious. The real beneficiaries of programs such as the TPP are women because it is women (in this country at least) who have been burdened socially with major responsibility for contraception. It is women’s lives and futures that are impacted the most by an unwanted pregnancy.

In August of last year the Trump Administration, through its Department of Health and Human Services, effectively ended funding for the TPP program two years before it was to be re-authorized. In its place, the Administration specified that any recipients of grants from the TPP must follow one of two “abstinence-based” agendas,  de-emphasizing birth control as a method of preventing pregnancy.   [Read more…]

The Science Can No Longer Be Ignored: Legal Cannabis Access Reduces Opioid Abuse and Mortality

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By Paul Armentano / Alternet

Scientific data is growing exponentially in support of the notion that legalized cannabis access can significantly mitigate opioid use and abuse.

On Monday, the esteemed Journal of the American Medical Association, Internal Medicine published a pair of persuasive new studies reinforcing this opinion.

In the first study, investigators from the University of Kentucky and Emory University assessed the relationship between medical and adult-use marijuana laws and opioid prescribing patterns among Medicaid enrollees nationwide. Enrollees included all Medicaid fee-for-service and managed care enrollees—a high-risk population for chronic pain, opioid use disorder, and opioid overdose.

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Breast Cancer and Screening Info Removed from Government’s Women’s Health Website

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By Jen Hayden / Daily Kos

A variety of important information about breast cancer and breast cancer screenings has gone missing from the Department of Health and Human Services women’s health website. The Sunlight Foundation tracks changes to government sites and they published a report on the now-vanished information. 

The “Breast Cancer” website and related pages were removed from within the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office on Women’s Health (OWH) website. While content about mammogram breast cancer screening remains, informational pages and factsheets about the disease, including symptoms, treatment, risk factors, and public no- or low-cost cancer screening programs, have been entirely removed and are no longer found elsewhere on the OWH site. Among the material removed is information about provisions of the Affordable Care Act that require coverage of no-cost breast cancer screenings for certain women, as well as links to a free cancer screening program administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The office did not proactively announce or explain the removals.   [Read more…]

Privatizing the Veterans Administration: A Key Part of the Trump Agenda

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By Mark Sumner / Daily Kos

The replacement of Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin has two narratives in the media—that Shulkin “embarrassed” Donald Trump with a trip to Europe that included days of sightseeing, and that Shulkin “clashed” with other officials at the VA.

Despite the amount of play the first item has received in the press, and despite some completely justified criticisms of Shulkin’s efforts both slip his wife’s travel costs onto the VA’s dime and indulgence in gifts he should never have accepted, the idea that he was pushed out over travel costs is clearly ludicrous. Scott Pruitt has engaged in far more lavish—and ridiculous—travel policies, hauling along a vast entourage on trips to Italy and Morocco, and the only thing his actions have earned from Trump is a suggestion that Pruitt may get a promotion to some other department ripe for wrecking. Besides, Trump isn’t capable of embarrassment. 

And when the press reports that Shulkin butted heads with officials, what they really mean is that Shulkin was blocking appointees from Trump who were pushing to privatize the VA. Fast. The conflict was simple: Shulkin, the only hold-over in Trump’s cabinet from the Obama administration, was trying to maintain the VA as a viable system of health care for veterans. The Trump appointees that filled all the other VA slots, were actively working to do to the VA what Pruitt has done to the EPA—destroy it.   [Read more…]

Healthcare Repair: The Achilles Heel for Republicans in 2018 Elections

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Indivisible Panel to Discuss Solutions at Balboa Park Club March 18

Issues of health and wellness represent a threat to the quality of life to most Americans.      

Healthcare. Obamacare. Medicare-For-All. Single-payer.  These are issues key to stemming the Red Tide of Republicanism come election time. The systems we to turn to for self-preservation often aren’t working when people need them. And it’s about to get much worse. So let’s have that conversation.

The GOP couldn’t come up anything beyond ‘don’t get sick and die quickly if you do’ after years of prophesizing the collapse of capitalism and civilization itself unless the collection of compromises passed while the Black Guy was in the White House were repealed.

Having robbed the treasury via ‘tax reform’ to pad the pockets of the wealthy, the Congress will have no choice but to announce yet another round of ‘reforms’ designed to reduce access to–along with the quality of–healthcare.
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It Will Take a Political Revolution to Cure the Epidemic of Depression

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We need to change the nature of work, community and wealth distribution.

By Michael Bader / Alternet

What causes depression and anxiety? I have been a practicing psychologist and psychoanalyst for almost 40 years and have seen hundreds of patients suffering from both. In my experience, some factors are obvious. People who suffer from depression and anxiety have experienced stresses and traumas in their development that predispose them to mood disorders. Garden-variety psychodynamic theory teaches us that issues involving loss, neglect, guilt, and rejection usually figure prominently in the backgrounds of people who present with significant symptoms of depression and anxiety.

In addition, over 50 years of research into the neurobiology of mood disorders strongly suggests that genetic and biological factors usually accompany, if not underlie these painful affective states. As a result of these assumptions, the treatment of depression today usually relies heavily on pharmacology, and drug companies have spent billions making sure this explanation is widely accepted. Some one in five US adults is taking at least one drug for a psychiatric problem; nearly one in four middle-aged women in the United States is taking antidepressants at any given time; and around one in 10 boys at American high schools are being given powerful stimulants to make them focus.

Since it’s well known that psychological events produce biological changes, it remains debatable whether or not disorders of our biochemistry are causes or effects. What we do know is that untold amounts of money have been spent by the pharmaceutical industry to finance research and public relations designed to enshrine biochemistry and pharmacology as primary in the diagnosis and treatment of depression and anxiety.

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Sam Bee Sounds the Alarm On Rural Maternal Healthcare Crisis | Video Worth Watching

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Full Frontal’s Samantha Bee sounds the alarm on a developing crisis in healthcare for rural women. As access to healthcare facilities and providers dwindles, the risks of pregnancy are magnified.   [Read more…]

The Mess – Living With Bi-Polar Diagnosis | Video Worth Watching

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The Mess – Living with bi-polar diagnosis. Here is one person’s attempt to communicate the experience as a video. It was a finalist in the Homespun Yarns 2017 film competition. The British web site Channel4 features an interview with Ellice Stevens.   [Read more…]

ALS Sufferer Fighting GOP Tax Bill: ‘I Don’t Know How Many Birthdays I Have Left’ | Video Worth Watching

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“I don’t know how many birthdays I have left.” Ady Barkan, whose video of him challenging Sen. Jeff Flake to vote on his principles and oppose the current GOP tax bill recently went viral, was interviewed on MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes. He noted that the current tax proposal, if enacted, will trigger $400 billion in Medicare PAYGO cuts over 10 years. “I paid into Medicare just like all of us pay in. You know, every two weeks we make a commitment to one another and to our society that we’re going to protect each other in case tragedy strikes. And the Republicans are saying, ‘Uh uh, Ady, you don’t get that Medicare Disability that you paid for because Donald Trump Jr. needs a tax cut for his real estate developments and my hedge fund buddies on Wall Street they need a tax cut too.’ So I think that’s not OK and I’m trying to do what I can to fight it.”   [Read more…]

4 Myths About the Spread of Hepatitis A | Video Worth Watching

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Voice of San Diego’s Lisa Halverstadt busts four myths about the current Hepatitis A outbreak, including one about contracting it simply by touching a homeless person.   [Read more…]

Putting a Knot in Pinkwashing

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The pink ribbon isn’t just a symbol of breast cancer awareness; it’s a symbol of the breast cancer industry.

By Karuna Jaggar / Common Dreams

Breast cancer is the darling of corporate America, with pink ribbons adorning everything from handbags to handguns. Corporations put a pink ribbon on their products to boost sales and build their brand. And it works—sales go up and profits increase. Unfortunately, despite 25 years of pink ribbon marketing, breast cancer diagnoses have not gone down.

It’s one reason the national education and activist organization that I lead, Breast Cancer Action, has long called October “Breast Cancer Industry Month.” October was designated Breast Cancer Awareness Month (BCAM) more than 30 years ago—by the corporation now known as AstraZeneca, in partnership with the American Cancer Society.   [Read more…]

What you need to know about the GOP’s Graham-Cassidy health care bill | Video Worth Watching

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For those still unclear on the latest Obamacare “repeal & replace” effort—the Graham-Cassidy bill, here is a brief outline of the key points as of last Wednesday. Note that the Graham-Cassidy bill is a moving target, though. Over the weekend, Senator Cassidy revealed that a new version will be proposed on Monday. Speculation is that it will be an attempt to buy off Senators Murkowski of Alaska and Collins of Maine, possibly by crafting exceptions which would essentially permit them to retain Obamacare. That also means, of course, that there won’t be time for a full CBO analysis and score before senators are expected to vote on the legislation.

This isn’t over till it’s over—on September 30th when the clock runs out on the ability to pass a bill with a simple majority. If you haven’t called your senator yet, do it now. 202-224-3121. Even Democratic senators need to hear from their constituents. They must be urged to slow down all activity in the Senate to run out the clock. For those of us in California, check out Indivisible’s TrumpCareTen website for California. When the Washington phone lines are busy, call a local office. Staffers at local offices communicate with Washington.   [Read more…]

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