My niece, Jennifer Reeves, was visiting the Bay area recently to show some of her movies. Her work is very well known and acclaimed and she has shown her films in many festivals, especially in Europe.
Visit her web site: http://www.jenniferreevesfilm.com/.
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Republicans for small Health Care
That's right, I meant to spell it that way. It would make a good slogan for them. Isn't it shocking the quality of potential leadership the Republicans have come up with. I can think of many honest, principled, peaceful people I know that would do a good job--and I'm sure you can too.
Coming back to health care, I heard a presentation on the radio today by Steffi Woolhandler MD about the problems with Obamacare and why we need a Single Payer Health Plan. If the Supreme Court allows Obamacare to go forward, 23 million people will be uninsured. Many of the policies will have high deductibles and co pays: after all, the big private insurance companies helped write the bill, why shouldn't they benefit.
Steffi Woolhandler, by the way, got her start here in Oakland at Highland Hospital, our public hospital. One of the things she was first involved in was opposing the practice of dumping. When private hospitals had emergency room patients who couldn't pay, they would send them to Highland in an ambulance, even if they had appendicitis or pneumonia or some other medical conditions. It was young doctors like Steffi in Oakland and other cities that led the campaign that stopped dumping.
When I was in Chicago at Northwestern Medical School, almost all of the patients in the hospital where white. The few black people who came to the medical center were brought in because they had unusual diseases and were "good teaching cases." The vast number of black people went to Chicago's Cook County Hospital. When we we're learning physical diagnosis, there were certain things we couldn't do with white patients, such as breast, vaginal, and rectal exams. Guess where we went to do those: Cook County. It was degrading to the patients and to us as well--to be forced to participate in that.
Back to our current time, Steffi is one of the leaders of Physicians for a National Health Plan. I highly recommend their web site PNHP.org. There's a lot of good information about how the insurance industry benefits from Obamacare, and how Single Payer is both a great improvement and highly feasible.
Coming back to health care, I heard a presentation on the radio today by Steffi Woolhandler MD about the problems with Obamacare and why we need a Single Payer Health Plan. If the Supreme Court allows Obamacare to go forward, 23 million people will be uninsured. Many of the policies will have high deductibles and co pays: after all, the big private insurance companies helped write the bill, why shouldn't they benefit.
Steffi Woolhandler, by the way, got her start here in Oakland at Highland Hospital, our public hospital. One of the things she was first involved in was opposing the practice of dumping. When private hospitals had emergency room patients who couldn't pay, they would send them to Highland in an ambulance, even if they had appendicitis or pneumonia or some other medical conditions. It was young doctors like Steffi in Oakland and other cities that led the campaign that stopped dumping.
When I was in Chicago at Northwestern Medical School, almost all of the patients in the hospital where white. The few black people who came to the medical center were brought in because they had unusual diseases and were "good teaching cases." The vast number of black people went to Chicago's Cook County Hospital. When we we're learning physical diagnosis, there were certain things we couldn't do with white patients, such as breast, vaginal, and rectal exams. Guess where we went to do those: Cook County. It was degrading to the patients and to us as well--to be forced to participate in that.
Back to our current time, Steffi is one of the leaders of Physicians for a National Health Plan. I highly recommend their web site PNHP.org. There's a lot of good information about how the insurance industry benefits from Obamacare, and how Single Payer is both a great improvement and highly feasible.
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