Posts Tagged ‘Health’
2009
“There are two basic points about health-care reform that President Obama wants to convey. The first is that, as he put it in an ABC special in June, ‘the status quo is untenable.” Our health-care system is rife with ’skewed incentives.’ It gives us ‘a whole bunch of care’ that ‘may not be making us healthier.’ It generates too many specialists and not enough primary-care physicians. It is ‘bankrupting families,’ ‘bankrupting businesses’ and “bankrupting our government at the state and federal level. So we know things are going to have to change.’
Obama’s second major point is that–to quote from the same broadcast–’if you are happy with your plan and you are happy with your doctor, then we don’t want you to have to change … So what we’re saying is, If you are happy with your plan and your doctor, you stick with it.’So the system is an unsustainable disaster, but you can keep your piece of it if you want. And the Democrats wonder why selling health-care reform to the public has been so hard?
Again and again, their effort has brought us into a land of paradoxes. Public skepticism is warranted when the President promises to cut costs while simultaneously providing coverage to nearly 50 million uninsured people. It is even more warranted when his congressional allies seek to raise taxes to pay for all the new spending that this cost-cutting entails. We aren’t talking about short-term spending either; this isn’t a trillion-dollar investment in a new system that will ultimately save money. The Congressional Budget Office says the leading health-care-reform proposals will increase health-care spending and make the budget harder to balance in the long run. Yet saving money is the President’s principal stated rationale for reform…”
source: time.com
“According to CNN, the Pentagon is ‘to establish regional teams of military personnel to assist civilian authorities in the event of a significant outbreak of the H1N1 virus this fall, according to Defense Department officials.’
‘The proposal is awaiting final approval from Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
The officials would not be identified because the proposal from U.S. Northern Command’s Gen. Victor Renuart has not been approved by the secretary.
The plan calls for military task forces to work in conjunction with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. There is no final decision on how the military effort would be manned, but one source said it would likely include personnel from all branches of the military.
It has yet to be determined how many troops would be needed and whether they would come from the active duty or the National Guard and Reserve forces.
Civilian authorities would lead any relief efforts in the event of a major outbreak, the official said. The military, as they would for a natural disaster or other significant emergency situation, could provide support and fulfill any tasks that civilian authorities could not, such as air transport or testing of large numbers of viral samples from infected patients.
As a first step, Gates is being asked to sign a so-called “execution order” that would authorize the military to begin to conduct the detailed planning to execute the proposed plan.
Orders to deploy actual forces would be reviewed later, depending on how much of a health threat the flu poses this fall, the officials said.’ (CNN, Military planning for possible H1N1 outbreak, July 2009)
The implications are far-reaching. The decision points towards the establishment of a police State. The Pentagon is already planning on the number of troops to be deployed in the case of a pandemic. A nationwide vaccination program is is already planned for the Fall. The pharmaceutical indsutry is slated to deliver 160 million vaccine doses by the Fall…”
source: infowars.com
“A new study by psychologists at the University at Buffalo and the F. W. Olin College of Engineering finds that in the aftermath of national trauma, the ability to make sense out of what happened has implications for individual well-being and that the kinds of stories people tell about the incident predict very different psychological outcomes for them.
The study, “The Political is Personal: Narrating 9/11 and Psychological Well-Being,” is by Jonathan M. Adler, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology at Olin, and Michael J. Poulin, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology at UB.
‘Understanding the stories people tell about national events provides a unique opportunity to understand how individual well-being is linked to the state of the society,’ Poulin explains…”
source: buffalo.edu
“The Department of Homeland Security relied on a rushed, flawed study to justify its decision to locate a $700 million research facility for highly infectious pathogens in a tornado-prone section of Kansas, according to a government report.
The department’s analysis was not “scientifically defensible” in concluding that it could safely handle dangerous animal diseases in Kansas — or any other location on the U.S. mainland, according to a Government Accountability Office draft report obtained by The Washington Post. The GAO said DHS greatly underestimated the chance of accidental release and major contamination from such research, which has been conducted only on a remote island off the United States.
DHS staff members tried quietly last week to fend off a public airing of the facility’s risks, agency correspondence shows. Department officials met privately with staff members of a congressional oversight subcommittee to try to convince them that the GAO report was unfair, and to urge them to forgo or postpone a hearing. But the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s oversight and investigations subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), decided otherwise. It plans to hold a hearing Thursday on the risk analysis, according to two sources briefed on the plans. “
source: washingtonpost.com
“Genetically modified foods are not safe. The only reason they’re in our food supply is because government bureaucrats with ties to industry suppressed or manipulated scientific research and deprived consumers of the information they need to make informed choices about whether or not to eat genetically modified foods.
Now, the Obama Administration is putting two notorious biotech bullies in charge of food safety! Former Monsanto lobbyist Michael Taylor has been appointed as a senior adviser to the Food and Drug Administration Commissioner on food safety. And, rBGH-using dairy farmer and Pennsylvania Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff is rumored to be President Obama’s choice for Under-Secretary of Agriculture for Food Safety. Wolfe spearheaded anti-consumer legislation in Pennsylvania that would have taken away the rights of consumers to know whether their milk and dairy products were contaminated with Monsanto’s (now Eli Lilly’s) genetically engineered Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH)…”
“A city council said Saturday it was considering using underground burial chambers, currently a tourist attraction, to store the corpses of swine flu victims if the pandemic worsens.
Exeter City Council said the empty 19th-century catacombs could become an emergency mortuary.
A council spokesman said the plan could be put into operation if the cemeteries and the crematorium could not keep up with funeral demands.
He said: ‘We have some empty catacombs in an old cemetery in the city. These are 19th century underground burial chambers which are normally a tourist attraction,’ he said.
‘They can, however, be safely used for their original purpose and allow us to temporarily store bodies in the remote possibility that the need should arise…’”
source: AFP
“To conceal the industry executives who will influence the nation’s massive healthcare overhaul, President Obama is utilizing a Bush Administration secrecy shield he has repeatedly chastised.
More than a dozen influential players representing physicians, health insurance companies and pharmaceuticals have visited the White House to discuss Obama’s coveted healthcare plan and he doesn’t want Americans to know who they are, even though the outcome will greatly affect them.
To keep the information from the public, the president who promised to have the most open and transparent administration in history is invoking a controversial and highly criticized argument coined by George W. Bush; that the information is considered presidential records exempt from public disclosure laws.”
via judicialwatch.org
“…If ‘Obamacare’ passes, most working people, the disadvantaged, and those singled out as less important will experience large rollbacks in quality, readily accessible coverage. For them, future health problems will be more hazardous than ever because a callous nation doesn’t care. On July 17 as expected, two of three key House committees passed HR 3200. Largely along party lines, Ways and Means voted 23 – 18. Education and Labor approved 26 – 22 with a Kucinich amendment that may not survive a floor vote or make it to the Senate. It leaves HR 3200 intact but lets states create single-payer plans. Eight are now considering them – California, Colorado, Illinois, Maine, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Missouri, and Washington with perhaps more to follow. On June 11 in Pennsylvania, HealthCare4ALLPA organized over 400 people for a state capital rally, and its Executive Director Chuck Pennachio predicts pending legislation passage later in the year because bipartisan support backs it. So do most Pennsylvanians, and Governor Ed Rendell said he’ll sign what comes to his desk…
Reversing its earlier opposition, the influential American Medical Association (AMA) endorsed the House bill after a new payments provision was added to halt scheduled 2010 cuts to doctors under Medicare.
AMA’s president, Dr. James Rohack, said:
‘We pledge to work with the House committees and leadership to build support for passage of health reform legislation to expand access to high quality affordable health care for all Americans.’ The AMA calls it ‘an important step, but one of many steps in the process,’ including income-increasing measures for their members and ‘individual responsibility for health insurance, including premium assistance for those who need it.’
Opposing Obamacare are advocates for universal single-payer coverage like Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP). On July 16, it said the House health reform bill is a “proven failure” and called for an amendment to overturn it and implement a Medicare-for-all system…”
via globalresearch.ca
“The US Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, has just signed a decree granting vaccine makers total legal immunity from any lawsuits that result from any new ‘Swine Flu’ vaccine. Moreover, the $7 billion US Government fast-track program to rush vaccines onto the market in time for the Autumn flu season is being done without even normal safety testing. Is there another agenda at work in the official WHO hysteria campaign to declare so-called H1N1 virus—which has yet to be rigorously scientifically isolated, characterized and photographed with an electron microscope—the scientifically accepted procedure—a global ‘pandemic’ threat?
The current official panic campaign over alleged Swine Flu danger is rapidly taking on the dimensions of a George Orwell science fiction novel. The document signed by Sebelius grants immunity to those making a swine flu vaccine, under the provisions of a 2006 law for public health emergencies…
The last time the US Government faced a new swine flu virus was in 1976. Thousands filed claims contending they suffered side effects from the shots. This time, the government has taken steps to prevent any possible legal remedy should thousands of US citizens suffer severe complications as a result of being given untested vaccines.
In 1976 President Gerald Ford, facing a difficult re-election campaign, was advised by the head of the CDC, David Sencer, to launch a mass national vaccination. As today with H1N1 Swine Flu, Sencer also used the scare of the alleged 1918 flu pandemic. Notably, some scientific researchers maintain that the deaths during the flu wave of 1918-1919, in the aftermath of the ghastly First World War, came not from any virus but from the governmental campaigns of mass vaccination against “Spanish Flu.” Interestingly, the Rockefeller University and Foundation was in the middle of that event as well…
The story gets worse. Now that the Obama Administration has signed a document of immunity from legal prosecution, the FDA in the United States and UK health authorities have decided to let Big Pharma put vaccine products onto the market before any tests of the possible harmful side effects of the vaccines are even known.
The first doses of swine flu vaccine will be given to the public before full data on its safety and effectiveness become available. The untested “pandemic” vaccines will be spread over two doses in a higher quantity, and one brand reportedly will contain a chemical additive, an adjuvant, to make it “go further,” dramatically potentially increasing the risk of side-effects. Children will be among those first in line for the shots and may get the vaccine more than a month before trial results are received. In the UK the government’s National Health Service, NHS, has been ordered to plan for a worst-case scenario in which swine flu might cause 65,000 deaths over the coming winter, including several thousand deaths among children…’”
via globalresearch.ca
“Closing schools for long periods could reduce the spread of swine flu, ease its burden on hospitals and potentially limit the number of deaths it causes, two leading experts argue today.
The fact that children are more infectious and more vulnerable to the H1N1 virus, resulting in it spreading among them at great speed, means that prolonged closure of schools is necessary, according to Dr Simon Cauchemez and Prof Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London.
The government may need to rethink its existing policy of schools staying open during the pandemic before the UK’s 30,000 primary and secondary schools return from their summer holidays, if swine flu has become more severe by then, warn Cauchemez and Ferguson, who work in Imperial College’s department of infectious disease epidemiology.”
via gaurdian.co.uk