News
White House Blocks EPA Draft On Global Warming Emissions
The White House is working to block the Environmental Protection Agency from publishing a document which outlines how the government could regulate global warming emissions under the Clean Air Act while benefiting the economy. The document is based on a multi-year, multimillion-dollar study by EPA and its findings could ultimately serve as a legal roadmap for regulating U.S. global warming emissions.
That is, until it faced review by the White House's Office of Management and Budget. Bush's OMB is demanding that EPA delete sections of the document that outline how greenhouse gas emissions could be regulated, delete any references asserting that emissions endanger public welfare, and delete an analysis of the benefits to the economy of regulating greenhouse gases here and abroad.
The OMB instead wants the document to suggest that the Clean Air Act is ineffective and that greenhouse gases should be regulated under new legislation. The draft is effectively being held hostage until EPA makes OMB's changes, since the White House must approve a final draft before EPA can release the document publicly.
The draft EPA document confirms that fuel efficiency could be improved to well above 35 miles per gallon by 2020; CO2 emissions could easily be regulated through the government-permit process and through a cap-and-trade system similar to existing programs for acid rain and mercury; and that overall, the regulations would be beneficial to the U.S. economy.
"The net benefit to society could be in excess of $2 trillion," according to the draft document.
When Wounded Vets Come Home
By Barry Yeoman, July & August 2008
As of April 29 the Pentagon counted 31,848 wounded service members in the current conflicts. Independent experts say that is a conservative figure. They estimate the number of brain injuries alone might total 320,000, or 20 percent of the 1.64 million who have served so far—a number that S. Ward Casscells, the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, calls “plausible.” In addition to the physical injuries, there are thousands of cases of depression and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Last year military screeners detected psychological symptoms in 31 percent of Marines, 38 percent of soldiers, and 49 percent of National Guardsmen returning from war.
For many of the newly injured, most in their late teens and 20s, the logical direction to turn for care is toward Mom and Dad. Many of the wounded are still single. Others are married to partners who can’t or don’t want to care for gravely injured spouses. As a result, across the nation, parents end up scrubbing burn wounds, suctioning tracheostomy tubes, and bathing their adult children. They assist with physical and occupational therapy. They fight for benefits. They deal with mental health crises and help children who have brain injuries to relearn skills. They drive back and forth to Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals for outpatient appointments. In short, they put their own lives on hold.
http://www.aarpmagazine.org/family/when_wounded_vets_come_home.html
Has Canada Got the Cure?
by Holly Dressel
Publicly funded health care has its problems, as any Canadian or Briton knows. But like democracy, it's the best answer we've come up with so far.
Should the United States implement a more inclusive, publicly funded health care system? That's a big debate throughout the country. But even as it rages, most Americans are unaware that the United States is the only country in the developed world that doesn't already have a fundamentally public--that is, tax-supported--health care system.
That means that the United States has been the unwitting control subject in a 30-year, worldwide experiment comparing the merits of private versus public health care funding. For the people living in the United States, the results of this experiment with privately funded health care have been grim. The United States now has the most expensive health care system on earth and, despite remarkable technology, the general health of the U.S. population is lower than in most industrialized countries. Worse, Americans' mortality rates--both general and infant--are shockingly high.
Different paths
Beginning in the 1930s, both the Americans and the Canadians tried to alleviate health care gaps by increasing use of employment-based insurance plans. Both countries encouraged nonprofit private insurance plans like Blue Cross, as well as for-profit insurance plans. The difference between the United States and Canada is that Americans are still doing this, ignoring decades of international statistics that show that this type of funding inevitably leads to poorer public health.
http://www.martincountydemocrats.org/060901canadianhealth.html
Wisdom of free trade? Not so fast
By Jeremiah Jaspon Orlando Sentinel
April 23, 2008
...Samuelson presents us with a false choice: either accept "free trade" or opt for "restrictive tariffs." Instead, I suggest that trade agreements monetize labor and environmental standards. If a country allows unsafe working conditions, uses child labor, forbids people from forming trade unions, allows companies to dump their waste into the environment, there should be accountable costs associated. Putting these economic "externalities" onto the balance sheet is the strongest incentive for countries to clean up their act.
I disagree with Samuelson's linear thinking. In classical economics, replacing a thousand $30-an-hour jobs with an equal number of $10-an-hour jobs plus cheap imports worth more than the $20-an-hour difference is a net gain for us. But we know the truth. Job losses bring anxiety and pain, reduce productivity, strain families and attack the social order. Yet the collateral effects of the race to the bottom are never accounted for....
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/letters/orl-myword2308apr23,0,7336912.story
Health Plan Payments to Lobbyists Soared in 2007, Could Grow More in 2008
By Steve Davis Managing Editor
sdavis@aispub.com
AIS’s Health Business Daily Featured Story April 11, 2008 Reprinted from HEALTH PLAN WEEK, the industry’s leading source of business, financial and regulatory news of health plans, PPOs and POS plans.
Health insurers collectively paid more money to lobbyists in 2007 than they did a year earlier, according to disclosure forms made available last month by the U.S. Senate’s public records office (see table, below). Much of that money was spent to lobby lawmakers on issues related to Medicare Advantage (MA) and the reauthorization of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).
With both issues still unresolved — combined with the threat of health care reform under a potential Democratic president - industry observers say lobbyists might see even heftier paychecks this year from their health insurance clients.
http://www.pnhp.org/news/2008/april/health_plan_payments.php
Medical Errors Injure 1.5 Million Patients a Year
BY FRED TASKER
Oct. 27, 2007
Drug overdoses and other medical errors are a national problem, experts say. Across the country, hospital patients on average experience one medical error per day of stay, injuring 1.5 million patients a year, according to a 2006 investigation co-chaired by Dr. J. Lyle Bootman, pharmacy dean at the University of Arizona, for the Institute of Medicine, a Washington-based research group. ''Hospitals are realizing they must take a stronger stand against errors,'' he said. ``The key is communication among all the parties involved. We need check-and-balance systems to prevent confusion.'' A 1999 study for the same group said 44,000 to 98,000 people die in hospitals each year from such errors, at a cost of $29 billion in additional care and lost productivity.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/florida/v-print/story/286307.htm
Majority of U.S. Doctors Back National Insurance Plan
Washington Post, March 31, 2008
A survey conducted last year of 2,193 physicians across the United States found that 59 percent support "government legislation to establish national health insurance," while 32 percent oppose it, and 9 percent are neutral.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/31/AR2008033102253.html
Oil Execs Asked to Justify Huge Profits at Congressional Hearing
April 02, 2008
While independent truckers around the nation were striking to highlight the disastrous impact of soaring fuel prices on their survival, the chief executives of the five biggest oil companies justified their record profits at a congressional hearing on Tuesday. US lawmakers took the executives of Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips and Chevron to task for making enormous profits but investing next to nothing in renewable sources of energy. Congress called on them to justify why they got $18 billion in tax breaks last year, when their profits had hit $123 billion and oil prices had reached runaway highs. The oil company representatives were testifying before the Select Committee on Oil Prices and Energy Independence.
This is Congressmember Emanuel Cleaver, a Missouri Democrat, grilling Exxon Mobil Senior Vice President Stephen Simon about the $400 million severance package to former Exxon Mobil CEO Lee Raymond.
REP. EMANUEL CLEAVER: My father worked all of his life. He never earned more than $25,000 a year. And there were years that he worked—actually worked three jobs, most of the time just two, sent four children to college. He’s eighty-six years old. There will be people like my father all over the country, and I’ll have some of them at a meeting next Saturday when I do my monthly coffee with the congressman.
Mr. Simon, what can I say to them to help them understand how Lee Raymond received a $400 million severance package from Exxon Mobil, which translates into $141,000 a day? What do I say next Saturday to the people who come to my meeting who are struggling to get to work now because they can’t afford to put gasoline in their car? Can you help me get them to understand how it’s OK for Mr. Raymond to get a $400 million package, and they struggle, and the oil company profits at an all-time high...?
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/4/2...o_justify_huge
I welcome any questions you might have at Faye@fayeforcongress.com