Wednesday, May 16th, 2012
KATE SHEPPARD, - Mother Jones
Stephan: I am beginning to think that we have an invisible pandemic in the U.S. Something in the environment -- hormones in the water, cell phone usage, toxins? -- is causing changes in the brain structure of a large percentage of the population resulting in a level of fear and hate that is completely irrational. How else to justify something like this?
Franciscan University of Steubenville, a Catholic school in Ohio, made news today for dropping its student health-care plan in protest of the Obama administration’s decision that health insurers must cover contraception. (Via the Huffington Post.)
The school announced online that it will no longer offer student health care starting this fall:
The Obama administration has mandated that all health insurance plans must cover ‘women’s health services’ including contraception, sterilization, and abortion-causing medications as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). Up to this time, Franciscan University has specifically excluded these services and products from its student health insurance policy, and we will not participate in a plan that requires us to violate the consistent teachings of the Catholic Church on the sacredness of human life.
Although the contraception decision has sparked outrage from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, as we’ve noted before, a number of Catholic institutions already offered that coverage before the new law. And the Obama administration created an exemption for Catholic institutions like Franciscan, requiring the health insurer, not the institution, to cover the contraception coverage. Nor does the mandate require insurers to cover abortion.
So, is there something else going on here? […]
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Wednesday, May 16th, 2012
Stephan: Not much is being made of this, but it represents a cost of tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars in additional publicly funded expenses because those individuals who have now lost their unemployment benefits will not get proper medical attention, so their small problems will become chronic or life threatening illnesses treated in last resort emergency rooms. It means an increase in hungry children, increased homelessness. Like so many of our toxic nasty-minded conservative social policy decisions we save pennies to ultimately spend hundreds if not thousands.
It is worth noting that in those 'socialist' states, say Scandinavia, where they make national wellness a priority they save billions in public costs because they deal with these problems at the cheap end.
More than 230,000 people stopped being eligible for unemployment insurance benefits over the weekend-not because they got jobs, but because the emergency extended benefits program providing their benefits was cut as part of the payroll tax deal earlier this year. The number of weeks of benefits available in states drop as unemployment drops, which hit California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Texas on Saturday.
While ‘as unemployment drops’ may make this sound like good news, consider that California, where 100,000 jobless people will no longer be getting unemployment insurance, has an unemployment rate of 11 percent. Nationally, more than 5 million people have been unemployed for six months or longer, and there are 3.4 job-seekers for every job opening.
That makes things especially hard for people like Jennifer Moss, a divorced mother of three who has been unemployed since October 2010:
Since losing her job, Moss said she’s applied for countless jobs and had maybe 10 job interviews, but nothing has worked out.
‘There are many sleepless nights where at 2 or 3 in the morning I might be on a website … applying for jobs,
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Wednesday, May 16th, 2012
Stephan: As a person who is in the market for a new car -- the one I am currently driving is 15 years old -- I have been seriously studying the ecological options, in the course of which I came across this. As you can see the issue is more complicated than it at first appears.
Getting the equivalent of 106 mpg (2.2 litres/100km), the Nissan Leaf electric car would seem a motoring skinflint’s dream come true. Even an advanced plug-in hybrid like the Chevrolet Volt (Opel/Vauxhall Ampera in Europe), with an energy consumption equivalent to 61mpg, sounds pretty miserly, too. Yet, for all their frugality, neither has been selling particularly well, despite the present sky-high price of petrol (see ‘Priced off the road
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Stephan: Over the years I have heard several friends with MS tell me this, now it is actually being explored. If you have MS, or know someone who does, you might try this or pass it on.
Source: REPORT 3 OF THE COUNCIL ON SCIENCE AND PUBLIC HEALTH (I-09) Use of Cannabis for Medicinal Purposes (Resolutions 910, I-08;921, I-08;and 229, A-09) (Reference Committee K)
NEW YORK, NEW YORK — People with multiple sclerosis have long said that smoking marijuana helps ease their painful muscle cramping. And a new clinical trial suggests they are not just blowing smoke.
The study, published Monday, found that for 30 MS patients with muscle ‘spasticity,’ a few days of marijuana smoking brought some relief.
Some people with MS are already using medical marijuana to treat certain symptoms, including spasticity — when the muscles in the legs or arms contract painfully, in something akin to a ‘charley horse.’
There is some science behind the idea: The body naturally produces cannabinoids, the group of chemicals found in marijuana. And studies have suggested the cannabinoid receptors on our cells help regulate muscle spasticity.
But the evidence that pot smoking actually helps with spasticity has been anecdotal.
‘We’ve heard from patients that marijuana helps their spasticity, but I think a lot us thought, ‘Well, it’s probably just making you feel good,” said Dr. Jody Corey-Bloom, the lead researcher on the new study.
‘I think this study shows that yes, (marijuana) may help with spasticity, but at a cost,’ said Corey-Bloom, of the University of California, San Diego.
The cost, her team found, is that smoking caused fatigue and dizziness in […]
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MIRIAM WIDMAN, - Der Spiegel (Germany)
Stephan: This is what we look like to the strongest economy in Europe. Note the linkage of healthcare and economic success.
As the United States Supreme Court considers whether requiring people to have health insurance is unconstitutional, Germans are bewildered as to why so many Americans appear to be against universal coverage.
They also question the continued portrayal of US President Barack Obama and his health reform backers as socialists and communists, noting that healthcare was introduced in Germany in the 19th century by Otto von Bismarck, who was definitely not a leftist, and is supported by conservative and pro-business politicians today.
‘It’s a solidarity principle,’ says Ann Marini, a spokesperson for the National Health Insurers Association. ‘Not every ‘S’ automatically means socialism.’
Marini and others say that mandated coverage is something that is simply not questioned in Germany. Furthermore, even the most pro-market politicians wouldn’t dare to dismantle the country’s health insurance system.
System Only Works if Everyone Takes Part
The requirement that everyone buy health insurance is based on a simple concept, healthcare experts agree. Allowing healthy people to opt out of having health insurance destroys the insurance community and leaves insurers covering only the sick.
American health insurance companies are well aware of that. America’s Health Insurance Plans, a trade group, filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in January saying the required […]
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