Category Archive
The following is a list of all entries from the Uncategorized category.
Abortion Coverage: House Versus Senate Bill
What are the differences between abortion coverage in the House versus the Senate bill?
-The House has 25 mentions of abortion versus the Senate’s 21.
-The Senate Bill mandates federally funded abortion coverage, where the House Bill passed the Stupak Amendment, which bans federally subsidized coverage that could ultimately lead to denying abortion coverage in private plans.
-According to Andrea Simoncic of the Examiner, “the Senate bill simply provides abortion funding in a much more direct and honest manner” than the House Bill. Tax dollars will be mandated for abortion coverage in the Senate Bill.
Regardless of which bill passes in the House or the Senate, there have been rumors that President Obama does not support Stupak and could intervene in the final legislation. However, Stupak told Fox News that “They’re not going to take it out. If they do, health care will not move forward.”
Wow. Really? It’s not possible for national health coverage to pass if it includes abortion coverage? I thought we lived in a modern society. But we also live in a society where women pay 48 percent more for health insurance than men. Pregnancy and reproductive health coverage can be denied in insurance plans due to a “pre-existing condition.”
There is a lot of room for reform in the American health care system, but I am willing to wait for nationalizing health care if it does not include reproductive health coverage. If we have waited this long, why not wait a little longer and get it right?
Anti-Abortion Movement Gains Momentum
Recently, a dozen anti-abortion supporters were arrested for protesting outside of Nancy Pelosi’s office. Those arrested were the followers of Randall Terry and Father Norman Weslin, who are prominent anti-choice activists.
Today, one protester outside the Capitol targeted President Obama as a “fascist” that “will force Americans to pay for abortions and for government-provided health care.” This protester was from the group Insurrecta Nex, which follows Terry, who is described as a “militant anti-abortion leader.”
This is not true! First of all, there will be no government dollars going towards abortion and Americans will not be paying more for a public option. The public option will be there, but that does not mean you have to give up your existing coverage.
Also, government measures like Medicaid and Medicare are existing programs that have taken American tax dollars. This is not a new concept.
In the blog I am Emily X, the staff of Planned Parenthood recounted the 40 days of protests by the 40 Days for Life campaign. On the 40th day there were 1,034 protesters spotted outside of Planned Parenthood facilities nationally. Planned Parenthood supporters raised $56,048 against the 40 day protest movement.
Anti-abortionists are making health care reform a negative thing. The point of reforming the health care system is providing health insurance to more people, and that health insurance should cover abortion just like existing private insurance plans.
Stunting Abortion Coverage in Stupak Amendment
Today’s health care reform vote in the House was not good news for pro-choice supporters. There was a last-minute abortion compromise known as the Stupak Amendment, which guarantees that no federal dollars will be used towards abortion coverage.
Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops support the amendment that specifies that there will be no abortion coverage in the government insurance plan and this could also go as far as applying to private insurance plans that already cover abortion.
According to Planned Parenthood, “If the bishops and their anti-choice partners in the House succeed, they’ll permanently alter health care in America, even taking away benefits from women that they have today. The bishops want to effectively eliminate abortion coverage in both private plans and the public option.”
This is a serious halt on reforming health care with conservatives stunting existing abortion coverage. The U.S. should not be moving backwards on female health care coverage when the health care bill seeks to improve the current system.
Planned Parenthood is strongly advocating for people not to let this happen, by calling local representatives and tweeting the news on PPact. Please visit the Planned Parenthood Action Center to find out more about the pro-choice campaign.
Michelle Obama Stresses Female Health
The first lady has become the voice of female health in the Obama Administration. The video below was recently released by the White House in an effort to stress the importance of female health insurance reform. Mrs. Obama makes her stance clear by saying, “The need for health insurance reform is a critically important issue for families all across the country.” Generally, women manage the health care needs of themselves and their children.
Mrs. Obama relates to the uninsured by discussing the fear of not having proper health insurance when critical health care service is absolutely necessary. She gives the example of her daughter Sasha being diagnosed with meningitis, where the Obamas had health insurance coverage, but what if they had not in this life threatening circumstance?
According to Politics Daily, ” one in 10 [breast] cancer patients said they could not get covered because of their pre-existing condition.” Insurance is supposed to provide health care coverage, not prohibit it. Insurance needs to be affordable to those who need it the most, like cancer patients.
On the health care blog iVillage, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, states that in the government health insurance plan “insurance companies will no longer be able to eliminate folks based on a pre-existing condition; there will be a limit for how much they can charge for out-of-pocket costs.”
Also, Sebelius said that the extent of maternity coverage should be reformed in the government plan. With most insurance plans not covering the full cost of maternity care, reproductive health, and birth control, there definitely needs to be more female health care coverage.
On the Politics daily column Lynn Sweet writes about Mrs. Obama’s hosting of an event honoring Breast Cancer Awareness month. The fact that the first lady is strongly addressing women’s needs in the health care debate, is a crucial step to reforming female health care coverage.
Women Speak Out on Health Reform
This past Thursday there was a female dominated talk on health care in the Senate. While Democrats and President Obama insist that health reform will benefit women and are trying to campaign to get women more involved, most women do not feel included in the health care debate. In an Associated Press-GfK poll, one-third of women under the age of 55 reported that they were ambivalent about health care reform and did not support either side.
This means that Congress needs to target women as a group even more. Women have to be part of the debate before decisions like reducing reproductive rights and maternity benefits are not included in a government insurance plan. Strong advocates for getting female voices heard are Michelle Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the latter of which led a rally on the steps of the Capitol.
In my opinion, women need health reform more than men. Not only are women in need of more health care service, but they are usually the individuals in the household that are responsible for managing the well-being and health of others. Also, since working women get paid less and some cannot be full time employees due to household duties, they qualify for insurance coverage less often than men.
Women would greatly benefit from health care reform, especially in the need for more federal funding of breast cancer research. According to the American Cancer Society (ACS), breast cancer is the most prevalent cancer among women. “This year in the United States, over 192,370 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer and approximately 40,170 women will die from the disease.”
These are some frightening statistics. Breast cancer runs in my family; I lost my maternal grandmother to it, and my mother has had a cancerous cyst removed. In a hearing last Wednesday to the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health, Otis Brawley, M.D., chief medical officer of the ACS, spoke about the importance of improving the health care service for breast cancer patients and having more early detection services such as mammograms. The latter is a problem that I have noticed, most women do not get tested for cancer early on in their lives to reduce medical costs, something that I have experienced.
The good news is that this upcoming Tuesday the Senate Finance Committee is voting on getting health care reform initiatives passed and improving existing ones. According to Obama, health care reform will “not add one dime to the deficit,” but reduce costs. Republicans do not fully agree. Pelosi said there will be a public option. Regardless of all the controversy circulating around health care reform, I am optimistic that once passed the health care bill will be positive for everyone. I just want the needs of women to be further addressed before it passes.
Oil? Natural Gas? Electric? Regardless, Get Ready to Pay for Heat!
Weather Feature Audio Slide Show
By: Sara Afzal, Kirsten Swenson, and Brendan Anthony
Should I turn the heat on?
This is a concern for many UMass students who live off-campus. According to the Boston Globe, although oil prices have declined since the summer of 2008, from $4.71 per gallon to an average of $2.73 per gallon, college students are still struggling to afford heating costs.
Most students find keeping the heat off and bundling up in layers a favorable alternative to turning on the heat for the first time this season.
“We dress inside as if we live outside,” said Bruce Danek, a sophomore forestry major from Northampton, Mass. “Our apartment’s really cold; we don’t really use the heat much.”
“We haven’t turned the heat on yet because I’m poor and I can’t afford it,” said Zoe Shanor, a junior plant, soil and insect sciences major. “When we take showers, we leave the door open so the steam will heat up the house. We do a lot of soup cooking to heat up the house.”
It’s clear that both Shanor and Danek are worried about affording heating costs this winter. Although most tenants cannot choose their preferred type of heating system, the cost of electric heat could increase, with Congress developing a solution designed to reduce carbon emissions.
Congress is proposing a “cap and trade” tax policy, which would regulate the amount of carbon dioxide that companies release each year. Companies who exceed their limits will then be allowed to “trade” this excess with a company whose carbon emissions fell short of the allocated amount. Power plants that burn coal, thus producing more carbon dioxide emissions, would be forced to increase costs.
This would, in turn, raise the cost of heat for the 12 percent of households in Massachusetts that use electric heat, and reduce the cost for the 44 percent of households who use natural gas.
Ryan Burke, a junior sociology major, explains that he uses electric heat in his off-campus home, and because him and his roommates just moved in this year, they have no idea what to expect.
“Right now, we pay about $20 a month for electric. We are hoping that once the heat goes on, that amount won’t double. The last tenants caulked all the windows shut, so we’re kind of worried about living in a drafty house,” said Burke.
Danek has similar concerns about the rising costs of heat.
“We have gas. Right now, we pay about $20 a month for gas. Last winter, when it [the house] was at 65 degrees, it’d be upwards of $150 to $200 a month,” said Danek.
Regardless of the policy that Congress adopts to reduce carbon emissions, the University of Massachusetts is taking steps towards being recognized as a leader in “green” initiatives. The University recently opened up the new Central Heating Plant, which cost about $130 million and took almost 10 years to build. The new facility generates UMass’ energy from natural gas.
According to UMass Magazine, with the new facility up and running, UMass hopes to reduce emissions by 18 percent from 2007’s emissions levels.
Women’s Rights in Afghanistan
The LA Times’ audio slide show Afghanistan’s Women Yearn for More is well a constructed piece on the increase of social freedoms for Afghani women, who are more able to attain education, laugh in public, and wear less traditional coverings like burkas. Reporter and photographer Carolyn Cole narrates the slide show, which features numerous portraits of Afghanis. The photographs are mostly candid shots of citizens in daily life. This allows the viewer to feel like they are getting a natural sense of life as an Afghani woman.
Cole starts the slide show with a shot of two modern Afghani women crossing the street. There is natural sound in the background of the narration including city street noise in Kabul like cars zooming and the chiming bells of a bicycle. This furthers the audience’s experience of getting a vibe of the real Afghanistan through sight and sound.
Under each photograph there are captions that coincide with the narration, but at times the captions give more specific information like quotes and ages. In my opinion, this is distracting because if the viewer looks at the caption below the photograph than they will miss the narration and therefore have to pause the slide show. Cole’s narration flows well and is not worth missing. A text piece including the specific information in the captions would have been more appropriate.
The parts that I found the most interesting were when the narration synchronized flawlessly with the subject of the photograph. For instance, there is one shot of a man looking displeased in the direction of his wife, when the narration says some men are not happy with the change in freedoms for women and even threaten their wives’ lives.
Afghanistan has a male dominated society, where if a man believes that his wife has not followed expectations or been adulterous than extreme repercussions take place. In the worst case, women can be killed or burned with acid, in an “honor killing.” Also, women can feel so guilt ridden that they give themselves self-afflicted wounds or even burn themselves. Cole shows gruesome shots of women at the National Burn Unit. Although these shots are hard for the viewer to see, I understand the impact that Cole wanted to bring the audience. As a viewer, I thought, “these women really burned themselves?”
The photos that were the most intriguing to me were women eating ice cream while wearing a burka, a woman getting married, and the many shots of children. What also struck me was Afghanistan having one of the highest rates of maternal mortality in the world and 90% of burn victims not surviving. This is related to the lack of sufficient medical care in Afghanistan. Access to health care for Afghani women is probably more difficult to attain. Overall, Cole’s angle on the piece is ‘yes the women of Afghanistan have experienced some social freedom, but they still experience oppression and inferiority to men.’ The piece tactfully ends with an Afghani woman saying she hopes for freedom.
(This is a multimedia class assignment)
Women Need Health Care…More!
UMass economics professor, Nancy Folbre, wrote the column “Health Care Reform is a Woman’s Issue” in The New York Times; she argues that women need more health coverage than men because of pregnancy care and managing health care for their families.
The cost of health care for young women is higher than for men. Women need maternity care that requires intense medical care that obviously does not apply to men. In the long run, most women in households take responsibility for their children’s health. Personally, it was always my mother fretting over a minor cold I had and insisting to take me to the doctor.
Folbre gives a good account of the financial structure of health care in a typical household. She references the report by the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, stating that 64 million women do not have proper health insurance, and 1.7 million women have lost health insurance due to job losses—71% of which were due a husband’s job loss.
This vulnerability puts women in a very tough place. They are charged more for coverage, and yet they can’t help that they need to go to the doctor more often than men. Some women are reliant on their husband’s financial stability to receive health insurance; imagine getting divorced and losing health insurance—two blows. Many women will continue to lose coverage and care if the health care system does not improve.
One woman that is getting her voice heard on the importance of female health care is First Lady Michelle Obama. Reader’s Digest reporter Neil Merlino describes her recent speech at the White House, which focused on the need for the current health care system to be reformed of “gender bias” so that there can be “true equality.” Michelle has a background in health since she worked in the University of Chicago Medical Center. I really respect Michelle Obama and her effort to stress the need for female health reform.
No Federal Dollars for Abortion Coverage
The New York Times has reported that a considerable amount of moderate Democrats and Republicans are in favor of restricting the use of federal money to pay for abortions. Although President Obama initially gave the impression that he was a supporter of female health rights, but the “abortion fight” has strongly divided up the House, causing him to take the side of restricting the use of subsidies for abortion. Currently, Obama has not clearly addressed his stance on these new restrictive proposals. It seems he is waiting for a middle ground that does not exist.
According to New York Times reporter David D. Kirkpatrick, the abortion opponents are “requiring insurers to segregate their public subsidies into separate accounts from individual premiums and co-payments. Insurers could use money only from private sources to pay for abortions.” So both insurers and consumers would have to pay from private funds to receive abortion services. This could have the consequence of private insurers not wanting to provide abortion to cut costs, resulting in women losing existing abortion coverage.
In the October newsletter from Planned Parenthood, this New York Times article was mentioned. Pro-choice supporters are worried that women are going have to give up the abortion coverage that they already have from private insurance plans.
The president of Planned Parenthood Cecile Richards is profiled and interviewed on her views on the health care debate. According to Richards, Planned Parenthood’s goals are to “just to make sure that reproductive healthcare is part of the healthcare package – and the second is that women’s healthcare providers are part of whatever exchange is developed.” Richards wants the government insurance plan to be supported by a diverse variety of health care providers and clinics, so that getting contraception is not an issue.
In modern society, women should not have to “fight” to receive the coverage they need, but then again who is fighting in the House and Senate right now? The majority of the House and Senate are made up of males. Female health coverage is not just a heavily debated issue, but an issue to be controlled.
If you are interested in supporting women’s rights to reproductive health please attend the Massachusetts Coalition for Choice Lobby Day 2009 on Oct. 6 from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. at the State House in Boston.
Dude, What’s that Health Care Problem Anyway?
FAQ on Obama’s Health Care Reform
1. Why do we need to reform the health care system?
Obama writes in The New York Times that Americans must reform “a system that often works better for the health-insurance companies than it does for them.” Obama wants to provide coverage to the 46 million uninsured Americans, improve the quality of care, reduce costs by providing a government insurance plan as an alternative, and regulate the insurance market. Also, from a global perspective America is behind in developing an affordable health care system, while 27 other countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development already provide universal health care.
2. How will the economy benefit from health care reform?
In 2007, the health care system cost Americans $2 trillion or $7, 471 per person. Families are being hit hard by escalating insurance costs, and Obama’s incentive is to stimulate the economy by reforming the health care system. Without changes, the government estimates that by 2025, “one out of every four dollars in our national economy will be tied up in the health system.” In the global health care market, America is competing against other countries, who do not have such high health care costs.
3. Would everyone receive health care coverage under Obama’s plan?
Yes, Obama’s goal is for everyone to receive coverage regardless of pre-existing conditions, allow the uninsured to get affordable insurance and compare prices in the Exchange program, and stop insurance companies from eliminating coverage in cases of extreme sickness and need. These are further explained on The White House Website. Obama’s plan would require every American to have health insurance and give coverage to the 46 million uninsured Americans, who sometimes “voluntarily go without coverage” due to the high cost of getting medical insurance.
4. What is the public option? What do the public option advocates and opponents believe?
In Tim Foley’s blog that focuses on Obama’s health care policies, he explains that the public option is a government insurance plan that would establish lowering insurance premiums, therefore competing in the insurance market with private companies, who are afraid of losing consumers to the public option. No one would be forced to sign up for the public option if they were satisfied with their current private insurance. According to Robert Schroeder of MarketWatch, Obama believes it would increase competitiveness in the insurance market, while Republicans do not want a “government takeover of health-care.”
5. What are the views of the opponents of Obama’s plan?
One of the biggest misconceptions embraced by the Republicans is that with a government insurance plan those who are insured would be required to drop their private insurance plans. On Obama’s Setting the Record Straight, it states that the 120 million insured Americans would be able to keep their existing insurance coverage. Republicans are the strongest opponents of Obama’s health care policy. Alternative Republican health care proposals include enhancing the existing Medicare or Medicaid system, making insurance companies provide affordable basic health insurance, and tax exemptions on insurance.
Medi-Gal 