Tag Archives: health care

medical news

They’re like family … almost

I didn’t think it was possible to grow attached to a team of medical professionals who would answer the call to care for my bride.

But I have … become quite fond of the men and women who have worked tirelessly at Medical City/McKinney to assist her as she begins her recovery from brain surgery.

I will declare that I likely will shed a tear or three in a couple of days when my wife leaves their care and comes home to Princeton, Texas — to Toby the Puppy and me.

My wife told me something today as well that softens me up for the emotional goodbye that awaits. She said the nurses told her they often cry when patients leave. They shed tears when their favorite patients depart their care and venture out to begin their own journeys back to recovery.

I suppose I need to share with you this bit of intel: My dear bride has become a favorite among the nurses, techs, physician assistants and nurse practitioners who have cared for her. She doesn’t ask for much from them, as she knows how hard they work, given her long-ago experience working at an acute care hospital in our hometown of Portland, Ore.

That was then. The here and now is about to bring us a flood of emotion as we depart their care and venture into the next challenging chapter of our long life together.

I have to get ready for this.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

medical news

Health care heroes abound

Forgive me if I am repeating myself, but the hospital staff caring for my bride deserves a word of thanks from me.

I intend to give it to them with this brief blog post.

My wife is recovering from brain surgery. The doctor took most of a malignant tumor out of her skull. She now is in rehab at Medical City/McKinney hospital. She is getting marvelous care from a staff of compassionate nurses, techs, doctors, aides and therapists.

Why mention this? Oh, it’s just because I am in the mood to share some good will for those who get criticized when the health care they deliver at times falls short. Not this time.

I want them to know that this North Texas family — starting with me, my sons, my daughter-in-law — appreciates the TLC that these medical pros are delivering every day.

It is seeing us through this challenging leg of our life journey.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

medical news

They’re all heroes

I have been receiving a real-time lesson in how heroes do their jobs and how they continue to perform at the highest levels while maintaining smiles on their faces and kindness in their hearts.

These are the medical professionals who have been tending to my bride since the day after Christmas when she reported to the emergency room to determine the cause of her loss of balance. The initial news was stunning: a tumor was pressuring her brain. Most of the tumor is gone.

We took her to the Medical City/McKinney hospital about 15 or so minutes away from our home in Princeton.

And for the past several days we have borne witness to some of the most astonishing displays of compassion and alertness I only have been able to imagine … until now.

I told a young nurse, Bradley, that “I could not possibly do your job.” He laughed and described himself as a classic “type A” individual who, I should add, is married to a woman who he described as being an equally type A person, which he acknowledges brings some interesting conflicts in their home. “But, hey, all marriages have ’em, right?” he said.

These heroes occasionally get the recognition they deserve. The 9/11 catastrophe told the world of their heroism. Time and again through one disaster after another, these men and women deliver service to the public that only a select few of us can replicate. I am not one of them.

Thus, I stand in awe as I watch these individuals at Medical City/McKinney take meticulous care of my dear bride as she begins her fight to recover fully.

I just feel the need to thank them publicly. Their kindness will stay with me forever … and beyond

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

medical news, national news

Who needs that CBO ‘score’ on health care bill, right, GOP?

The Republican rush to repeal the Affordable Care Act might proceed without a key element that GOP congressmen and women would need to make this critical judgment.

The Congressional Budget Office won’t be able to provide its full analysis of the impact the replacement legislation will have on the future of Americans’ health care insurance.

You see, Congress is facing a Sept. 30 deadline to get this deal done with a simple majority of 50 Senate votes. After that date, the rule rolls back to a 60-vote supermajority requirement. So, there you have it: Senate Republicans don’t want to wait for a “score” that they usually rely on to help them decide matters of this importance.

As Politico reports: The Congressional Budget Office will only have a bare-bones assessment of the latest GOP bill ready before Sept. 30, the deadline for Senate Republicans to pass health care legislation on a party-line vote.

Is it any wonder, then, that some Senate Republican leaders — such as John McCain of Arizona — are critical of the process that is rushing this vote forward?

Read the Politico story here.

The ACA is Barack Obama’s signature domestic legislative achievement. Republicans want to wipe it out, toss it aside. They aren’t interested in repairing it, improving it, making it work better for Americans.

In normal times, the complete CBO analysis was thought to be the standard for lawmakers to follow. The CBO is known to be a completely non-partisan, unbiased source to determine the financial impact of legislation. Its previous analyses of efforts to repeal and replace the ACA have told us that 20 million Americans would lose health insurance under terms of the replacement legislation. Are ACA repeal/replace proponents afraid of what the CBO is going to tell us about what they’ve got in mind this time around?

This latest health care insurance bill comes from Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky already opposes it. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine is teetering against it. Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska is said to be leaning toward a “no” vote. McCain already is on record opposing this fast-track process.

Is this what we’re getting? Half-baked decision-making based on matters that have little to do with the facts?

national news

‘Let Obamacare fail,’ says POTUS; yeah, that shows ‘heart’

Donald J. Trump wanted the U.S. Senate Republican caucus to approve a health care plan with “heart.”

He didn’t get it. The Senate GOP plan cratered this week under the weight of the divisions within the caucus. The House of Representatives’ GOP plan was too “mean,” the president said.

So what does the president propose to do now? He wants to let the Affordable Care Act — Barack H. Obama’s signature domestic initiative — to “fail.”

There you go. Let the ACA fail — actually hoping it does — and then act. Meanwhile, millions of Americans who have obtained health insurance under the ACA’s auspices are left without health insurance.

That is such a heartfelt response, Mr. President.

The ACA isn’t doomed to fail, though, according to studies released by health insurance and medical agencies. It’s actually stabilizing, reports indicate.

Trump’s response to his own legislative failure — and make no mistake, the president owns this one bigly — is yet another example of this guy’s inability or unwillingness to take responsibility for any failure.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has talked openly about possibly working with Democrats to repair the ACA. If he can get the president focused long enough on the details of what is at stake, perhaps he can bring Donald Trump along, too.

Stranger things have happened, although this whole circus is beginning to rank among the strangest events in a good while.

medical news, national news

Sen. Cruz crawls into the belly of the beast

Ted Cruz deserves some high praise.

The junior U.S. Republican senator from Texas came back home for the Fourth of July and ventured into the heart of the Loyal Opposition — where he got an earful from constituents about the Senate GOP plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Cruz went to McAllen, deep in the Rio Grande Valley and the base of one of the strongest bastions of Democratic voting loyalists in Texas.

Cruz’s constituents told him point blank that they detest the Republican plan to replace the ACA with something concocted in secret, with no Democratic input.

According to the Texas Tribune, Cruz took the criticism well. “Isn’t freedom wonderful?” Cruz said shortly after taking the stage. “Think about it: In much of the world, if protesters showed up, they would face violent government oppression. In America, we’ve got something different.”

Yes, we do, senator.

With so many of his Republican colleagues forgoing direct communication with their constituents, I want to applaud Sen. Cruz for listening to their complaints.

Will he act on what he hears? I’m not holding my breath for that to happen. I do applaud him nevertheless for stepping into the line of fire.

Read the Tribune story here.

local news, medical news, national news, political news

Listen up, Congress: Americans hate the health care ‘reform’

Dear Members of Congress,

Y’all are going home for a couple of weeks. Some of y’all are going to conduct town hall meetings with your constituents, your “bosses,” the folks who decide whether to vote for you — and whose money pays your salary.

I just got word of a new poll. It says that just 17 percent of Americans favor the Republican Senate version of a health care insurance overhaul. That’s about the same level of (non)support that the House of Representatives version got when the GOP caucus decided to send the issue over to the Senate.

At least one of your House colleagues, by the way, is declining to meet face to face with his bosses. That would be Republican Mac Thornberry. He’s my congressman. He decided a while back that he didn’t need to hear from just plain folks. The last so-called “town hall meeting” he had was with local business leaders, tycoons, pillars of the community. He wanted to inform them of his desire to see Congress shed some of the Obama administration’s regulations. I reckon he got a friendly reception.

But back to the point here.

That poll doesn’t bode well for the future of the GOP plan to rewrite the Affordable Care Act — if House members and senators are going to heed its findings. If you truly are going to “represent” your constituents, then you need to rethink your approach. It cannot be a Republican-only effort. There appears to be a need to include Democrats in this process. Hey, I’ve heard some Democrats say in public that they want to work with their Republican “friends.” But the GOP leadership — so far — is having none of it.

The president calls the House health care plan “mean.” He said he could support a plan with “heart.” The Senate version appears to many of us to be as heartless as the House plan. It takes too much money from Medicaid and according to the Congressional Budget Office — I am sure you are now aware — the plan will cost 22 million Americans their health coverage over the next decade.

That’s not a plan with “heart,” you lawmakers.

Enjoy your time away from D.C. Have a good time over the Fourth of July. Celebrate this great nation’s birthday.

While you’re at home, though, listen carefully to what your constituents — your bosses — are telling you. You’ll learn something.

national news

Beware of declaring the end of Trump Era

It might be easy for some observers to declare the virtual end of the Trump Era in the wake of the spectacular flameout of the effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

I wish to offer a word of caution.

* The principal character in this drama, Donald John Trump, is a guy who wasn’t supposed to win the Republican presidential nomination this past summer. But he did.

* Then he was supposed to be trampled by the Democratic Party juggernaut led by that party’s presidential nominee, Hillary Rodham Clinton. He defeated Hillary in the general election.

* Trump was thought to be a goner after an endless litany of verbal gaffes, insults, revelations of hideous behavior. He not only survived all those incidents, the legions of Trumpkins rallied behind him.

Trump shouldn’t be president. However, he is president. He doesn’t know the political system works. He has surrounded himself with sycophants who have little knowledge of the system as well.

He got his head handed to him by conservative congressional Republicans.

Is this the end of Trump’s tenure as president?

Sure, except that he survived some hideous mistakes on his way to the presidency.

There might be circumstances that develop along the way that derail this guy. One political miscalculation — admittedly it’s a big one, indeed — likely isn’t enough to do him in.

medical news, national news, political news

GOP turns tables on Democrats

John Boehner was a year away from becoming speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010, but he stood on the floor of the House to express his intense anger at his Democratic colleagues.

They were rushing the Affordable Care Act into law, the then-House minority leader declared. Democrats were shoving this “down our throats,” he hollered. He bellowed that no one had “read the bill!”

The ACA passed with no Republican votes.

Now the GOP is in charge of Congress. Boehner became speaker in 2011 and served until 2015. Republicans sought to repeal the ACA many times during Boehner’s tenure. They failed.

Now it’s Paul Ryan’s House. Speaker Ryan is working with a Republican president to enact something called the American Health Care Act.

What is the GOP strategy being mapped out by Ryan and Donald Trump. Why, they’re trying to rush this to a vote. They’re trying to “shove this down the throats” of conservative lawmakers who oppose it. They aren’t bothering to persuade Democrats, who are lined up en masse to oppose the AHCA, just as the GOP locked arms against the ACA in 2010.

Is it good enough now for Republicans to do the very thing they accused Democrats — with good reason, candidly — of doing?

Of course it isn’t!

The president declared that repealing and replacing the ACA was his top priority. The House was supposed to vote tonight on the AHCA. Ryan backed away from the vote. It’s now scheduled for Friday.

The president says a Friday vote — up or down — will be the end of his negotiating a replacement for the ACA. He said today he’s going to “move on” to other issues. Whether he does will depend on who gets to him. Trump does have this way of changing his mind.

Has there been sufficient comment and analysis on this Republican alternative to ACA, which was trotted out less than a month ago?

Nope. Not even close.

One difference between now and 2010: You aren’t going to hear the current House minority leader, Democrat Nancy Pelosi, screaming on the House floor about not having enough time to consider this health care insurance replacement. Rep. Pelosi is actually chuckling at what she calls the president’s “rookie mistakes.”

That’s the major difference. The tactics of today’s Republicans certainly resemble those employed by yesterday’s Democrats.

business news, medical news

Polls get in the GOP’s way regarding the ACA

Darn those pesky public opinion polls anyway.

The Pew Research Center, one of the more reliable polling organizations out there, has delivered another gut punch to congressional Republicans who are getting a snoot full already from constituents about the Affordable Care Act.

The ACA — which I now will no longer refer to as “Obamacare” — is more popular than ever with Americans.

Pew says 54 percent of Americans approve of the ACA, with 43 percent opposing it.

Republicans — and that includes the president of the United States — keep saying they’ll have a replacement plan ready to go once they repeal the ACA.

Really? Who’s seen it? I haven’t. Have you?

The GOP has eight years to craft their own version of affordable health care for Americans. Instead, they have come up empty, preferring to target the author of the ACA, former President Barack H. Obama. They detest him so much they cannot bring themselves even to refer to the ACA by its legal name, instead using the president’s last name to talk disparagingly about the plan.

Twenty million Americans have health care today who didn’t have it before the ACA was enacted in 2010. Is it perfect? Of course not. The federal government is incapable of crafting perfect legislation and then creating a perfect law.

It might need some tinkering around the edges.

Indeed, former U.S. House Speaker John Boehner — who sued the president over repeal of the ACA — this week has predicted that repeal of the act won’t happen. Congress will work to refine it, make it better, make it more “affordable” for Americans.

Oh wait! Didn’t Congress do something like this before, such as when it enacted Medicare and Social Security?

My advice to Congress is simple: Pay attention to what Americans are telling  you.