Category Archives: medical news

medical news

Alzheimer’s claims another celebrity

A dreaded disease that needs intense national attention has taken another noted celebrity.

Glen Campbell died today at the age of 81. He suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. It’s a merciless, ruthless killer that afflicts about 4 million Americans. That number is going to increase as the nation’s median age continues to rise.

My blog post today isn’t so much about Campbell as it is about the disease that killed him. I’ve written to you many times over the years about Alzheimer’s disease. I take news such as Campbell’s death very personally.

My mother died of Alzheimer’s complications on Sept. 17, 1984. She was 61 years of age at the time of her death. She was diagnosed formally only in the spring of 1980 but truth be told Mom exhibited some strange behavior shifts for years prior to the neurologist’s grim diagnosis.

The federal budget doesn’t devote nearly the amount of money I would prefer for research into finding a cure for this neurological disease. Alzheimer’s disease doesn’t get the kind of attention it needs, either. Why is that? Its victims generally are older. They are susceptible to this killer. We used to pass it off as merely age-related dementia.

I will tell you this as well: Its victims aren’t just the individuals it strikes without warning; they also are the loved ones who care for them. The afflicted individuals eventually do not know they are in dire peril. They don’t know their family members. They lose their cognitive ability … all of it. In my mother’s case, she lost the ability to speak.

This disease is as ugly as they come.

The only blessing in Glen Campbell’s death is that we’re talking yet again about the disease that killed him. May this conversation translate — finally! — into meaningful commitment to finding a cure.

medical news

Is bipartisanship making a comeback in the Senate?

Oh, I do hope my ears and eyes aren’t deceiving me.

I’ve heard during the past day or so that the failure of the Republican-authored bill to replace the Affordable Care Act has produced a remarkable event.

It is that Republican U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Democratic U.S. Sen. Patty Murray of Washington are going to actually talk to each other about how they might find a path toward improving the ACA.

Alexander chairs the Senate Health Committee and is committed to working with Murray to commence bipartisan hearings next month that would fix some elements of the existing health care law.

I do believe this is how effective government is designed to work.

The Senate Republican caucus sought to craft an ACA replacement without any Democratic help. The House of Representatives did approve its version of an ACA replacement, also without Democratic input or votes. It fell to the Senate to complete the job. The Senate failed when they lost three GOP senators, killing the totally partisan measure.

Now the Senate is blundering its way toward a compromise solution. Sens. Alexander and Murray are leading the way.

They’re both Capitol Hill veterans. They’ve been around long enough to know how the place can actually work. Alexander and Murray aren’t alone in that knowledge, to be sure.

It well might be time for Republican congressional leaders — in both legislative chambers — to accept that the ACA is the law of the land and that it’s likely to remain the law of the land.

Many of us out here in the heartland have noted that the ACA is far from perfect. Its chief proponent, former President Obama, has implored Republicans to find a bipartisan solution to repair the law. GOP lawmakers, though, have been hung up on repealing the ACA.

A one-party solution hasn’t worked out for the Republicans.

There now appears some momentum building for a return to the proven strategy of working together — with both parties sitting at the same table — to find some common ground.

That’s how you legislate.

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Trump ponders new display of heartlessness

Donald John Trump Sr.’s next potential display of heartless public policy would hit yours truly a good bit more personally.

The president is now considering whether to end government subsidies of health insurance plans until Congress repeals the Affordable Care Act. Such a move would render health insurance utterly unaffordable for millions of Americans. I happen to know that because our household benefited greatly from the subsidy.

Does the president have a clue as to what he’s pondering? Does he have any feeling in what passes for a heart for those who would be affected by a decision to pull the plug on these subsidies?

My wife and I had to purchase health insurance to cover my wife after her post-employment insurance plan expired. The ACA required us to purchase it under the “individual mandate” provision. We sought counsel with our insurance agent, who shopped around for a provider who could cover us. She found it and then we applied online — through healthcare.gov — for the subsidy; we got it approved and my wife was able to be covered by health insurance under the ACA.

That policy expired the day she became eligible for Medicare.

But the point here is that if Trump decides to end the ACA subsidy, he is going to deprive millions of Americans — just like my wife and me — of an opportunity to purchase health insurance.

This is how Trump is proposing to let the ACA “implode”?

At what cost, Mr. President?

So help me, Donald Trump Sr. disgusts me to my core.

medical news, national news, political news

This is how Trump refuses to ‘own’ his failures

Well now. Donald Trump is tweeting something about “repercussions” if Senate Republicans fail to enact a health care insurance overhaul that would “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act.

This must be what the president means when he says he won’t “own” any failure to approve this legislation.

I believe the president must own it. He must take responsibility. He is the nation’s top Republican — even if he is a Republican In Name Only, aka a RINO, in the hearts of many true believers.

That’s not how sees it. He’s now suggesting via Twitter that he’ll somehow punish Republicans on Capitol Hill if they fail to do his bidding.

Explain yourself, Mr. President.

First things first. He needs to offer some detail on what his bidding entails. What does he want, specifically, in a health care overhaul? Oh, I almost forgot. The president is just too damn busy “making America great again” to worry about the details of legislation that aims to affect one-sixth of the American economy.

The Congressional Budget Office doesn’t like the GOP plan. It will cost millions of Americans their insurance plan and it cuts too much money from Medicaid, which enables Americans to afford health insurance.

Just as President Truman famously posted the sign on his desk proclaiming “The Buck Stops Here,” Donald Trump is now infamously declaring that others will pay the price for his own failures as head of a once-great American political party.

In my humble view, presidents don’t earn their tickets into the pantheon of greatness by refusing to “own” their mistakes. The GOP health care plan is a doozy of a mistake, Mr. President. It’s on you.

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Take the hint, Mitch: Nation hates Trumpcare

Memo to Mitch McConnell: Give it up on trying to resurrect the Senate Republican plan to replace the Affordable Care Act.

The word now from the U.S. Senate majority leader is that he is going to reopen negotiations on the failed GOP plan. He is trying to woo Republicans who (a) oppose the legislation or (b) are straddling the fence.

McConnell could not muster up the 50 votes he needed to approve the Senate plan. GOP conservatives hate it because it too much of the ACA; GOP moderates hate it because it casts too many Americans off the rolls of the insured.

The nation’s Republican in chief, Donald Trump, is refusing to “own” the GOP caucus failure.

One final point: Public opinion polls show a 17 percent approval rating for the Republican plan.

Hey, who needs those stinkin’ polls, right, Mr. Majority Leader?

McConnell is fueled by this desire, or so it seems, to rid the law of anything with Barack H. Obama’s name on it. Recall that he said right after Obama’s election that his “No. 1 priority” was to make Obama a one-term president.

He’s now gunning for a consolation prize, which is to toss the ACA into the crapper.

Pay attention, Mr. Leader: Your plan is no better in the eyes of Americans who now have health insurance for the first time in their lives. You and your fellow Republican senators work for them — for us, sir! You need to do our bidding.

medical news, national news

Yep, Trump isn’t your ‘normal’ president

Donald J. Trump more or less vowed to be an unconventional president while he campaigned for the office. Man, he’s made good on that one, eh?

Consider what he said after the failure of the Republican caucus in the Senate to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

“I won’t own” the failure, he said. He wants to let the ACA fail and then he’ll swoop in to clean up the mess — assuming, of course, that it even happens.

How disgraceful.

President Truman famously had that sign on his Oval Office desk: “The Buck Stops Here.” President Kennedy told us after the Bay of Pigs disaster in 1961 that “victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan”; he took the hickey for the invasion’s failure. President Reagan admitted to making a mistake during the Iran-Contra controversy, that he didn’t believe “in my heart” that he was trading arms to a hostile nation; he “owned” it eventually.

The current president? He’s not standing by the stumble-bum effort in Congress to enact this legislation. Republicans had seven years to come up with an alternative to the ACA, which they despise largely — or so it seems — because it has Barack H. Obama’s name on it. They call it “Obamacare” as a term of derision.

They blew it. As head of the Republican Party, so did the president. He owns this mistake, whether he cares to admit it or not.

Presidents Truman, Kennedy and Reagan all knew how to stand behind their failures. They all understood that the terms of the office they required them to do so.

Aw, but what the hell. They were just your normal run-of-the-mill politicians who played by the rules. The current president doesn’t operate under the same precept of full accountability.

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You’re up, congressional Democrats

Congressional Democrats — in both chambers of Capitol Hill’s legislative body — now have a chance to make good on where congressional Republicans have face-planted.

The GOP wanted to replace the Affordable Care Act. They wanted first to repeal the law, then substitute something else in its place. They just couldn’t cobble together a law that pleased everyone within their caucus, let alone the rest of this vast country.

They have cratered. Their repeal and replace effort is done. Gone. Kaput. Toast.

What’s left? Oh, wait! They can work with congressional Democrats. They can figure out a way to make changes to the ACA, if only congressional Republicans can stomach the idea of maintaining something with Barack H. Obama’s name on it.

In order, though, for Republicans to reach across the aisle, their legislative colleagues — Democrats, I must add — need to offer a starting point.

Suppose it comes to a repair and revamp effort on the ACA, what might the Democrats offer as their chief sticking point?

Are premiums too high? Do Americans have enough choices of doctors? Are there ways to actually make the ACA more, um, affordable for every American who applies for insurance under the government plan?

Democrats have said they are willing to work with Republicans to improve the ACA. To get the discussion started, though, we need to hear from Democratic political leadership on where they intend to start.

We’ve hearing a lot of yapping and yammering from Republicans — for too long, if you were to ask my opinion. Now it’s time for Democrats to take the stage.

medical news, national news, political news

Stop telling the lie about ACA ‘failure,’ Mr. Leader

I am not going to label U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a liar, even though he’s just told another whopper about the Affordable Care Act.

He has called it a “failure.” He now plans to ask his Senate colleagues to repeal it and then seek to pass a replacement for it separately to smooth the “transition” from one health insurance plan to another.

“Regretfully, it is now apparent that the effort to repeal and immediately replace the failure of Obamacare will not be successful,” McConnell said.

Good bleeping luck with that, Mr. Leader.

The ACA is not failing. It is stabilizing, according to medical and insurance studies. Millions more American have health insurance coverage now than they did before the ACA was enacted in 2010.

Still, Republicans in Congress want to wipe out Barack Obama’s signature domestic legislation. It doesn’t matter now whether they can have a replacement bill in place. They want the ACA gone.

McConnell’s new strategy came to light after two more Senate Republicans, Mike Lee of Utah and Jerry Moran of Kansas, signaled their opposition to the GOP monstrosity that came forward just before the Fourth of July recess. Senators went home and got a bellyful from their constituents about how much they hate the GOP plan. Moreover, an increasing number of Americans are on board with the ACA; they don’t want it trifled with.

Not one to listen to reason, Leader McConnell is going to try to get the Senate to toss the ACA into the crapper and then hope the Senate and the House of Representatives can cobble together a replacement.

Forgive me for repeating myself: Why not summon Democrats to the table, too, to work out a bipartisan repair of what you think is so terrible about the Affordable Care Act?

medical news, national news, political news

Two more senators to vote ‘no’ on Trumpcare … what’s next?

U.S. Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Jerry Moran of Kansas are now “no” votes on Trumpcare.

Do you know what that means? It means the Senate Republican concoction meant to replace the Affordable Care Act lacks the votes it needs for approval. Now that Lee and Moran have climbed aboard the No Vote Bandwagon, there might be other fence-straddlers who will climb aboard, too.

What, oh what does the Senate GOP do?

Here’s a thought: How about getting on the horn with Senate Democratic leaders and start to hammer out a bipartisan compromise? Perhaps something that includes repairing and mending the ACA is in order. Hmmm? How about that?

Former President Barack Obama — who’s off doing whatever it is former president do — has made it clear: He doesn’t claim any particular pride of ownership of the ACA. He said while he was still president that he’d be willing to work with Republicans who wanted to improve the health care law.

The Senate caucus now appears irreparably split on the ACA repeal/replacement plan.

So … why not actually legislate right alongside Senate Democrats to make improvements to an existing law?

Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work?

medical news, national news, political news

Get well, Sen. McCain, and vote to nix GOP health plan

It is with heartfelt concern for a great American that I must point out a fascinating irony relating to his current medical condition.

U.S. Sen. John McCain is recovering from surgery to remove a blood clot in his skull. I honor this great man’s service to the country and the extreme sacrifice he paid when he was held captive for five years during the Vietnam War.

I wish him a complete recovery.

The irony? It exists in the debate that the Senate Republican caucus us having over a health care plan it has cobbled together ostensibly to replace the Affordable Care Act.

The Senate GOP has put together a plan that the Congressional Budget Office says will cut millions of Americans out of their health insurance in the next decade. It will slash Medicaid spending that helps poor Americans pay for health insurance. It lacks the “heart” that the president of the United States said he wanted.

Meanwhile, Sen. McCain is getting some of the best health insurance possible because of his government service.

What is wrong with this juxtaposition? Nothing in and of itself, of course. It’s just that McCain is one of those Senate Republicans reportedly straddling the fence: does he support the bill or oppose it?

Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell debated any further open consideration of the bill until McCain returns to the Senate. He needs McCain’s “yes” vote. I should add that McConnell and many of his Senate Republican colleagues are part of a distinct American minority: only 17 percent of Americans favor the GOP monstrosity.

I wish nothing but the best for Sen. McCain. I want him to return to the Senate full of his usual ration of p** and vinegar. I also would prefer that he oppose the Senate health plan.