Here we see the beginning of an emerging trend that is becoming a healthcare crisis. We so desperately need universal birthright single-payer healthcare. But to get it the people of America must make the White House and both houses of Congress strongly Democratic.
Beth Roper, left, helps her husband, Doug Roper, get comfortable on a bench with the assistance of their daughter, Kathryn Roper, at a locked memory care facility in Poquoson, Va., where Doug Roper lives. He has Alzheimer’s disease, and his care costs nearly $6,000 a month. Credit: Michael S. Williamson / The Washington Post
Beth Roper had already sold her husband Doug’s boat and his pickup truck. Her daughter sends $500 a month or more. But it was nowhere near enough to pay the $5,950-a-month bill at Doug’s assisted-living facility. So last year, Roper, 65, abandoned her own plans to retire.
To the public school librarian from Poquoson, Va., it feels like a betrayal of a social contract. Doug Roper, a longtime high school history teacher and wrestling coach, has a pension and Social Security. The Ropers own a home; they have savings. Yet the expense of Doug’s residential Alzheimer’s care poses a grave threat to their middle-class nest egg. At nearly $72,000, a year in assisted living for Doug, 67, costs more than her $64,000 annual salary.
Alice Miranda Ollstein, Staff Writer - Reader Supported News / Politico
Stephan:
If you don't get that Republicans don't care about the wellbeing of Americans consider this wound by a Republican judge appointed by a Republican president, and the response of a Republican House. I had a hard time believing this story when I first heard about it. Given the already poor state of American healthcare, particularly in Red states like Texas, how could anyone deliberately choose to further degrade it?
The ruling jeopardizes free coverage of a wide range of preventive care services. Credit: John Raby / AP
A federal judge on Thursday struck down a key provision of the Affordable Care Act, jeopardizing free coverage of a wide range of preventive services including mammograms, colonoscopies and mental health screenings for nearly 168 million people on employer health insurance and on Obamacare’s individual market.
District Court Judge Reed O’Connor, the author of several previous rulings against Obamacare, sided with conservative employers and individuals in Texas who argued that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force that set those requirements has been acting unconstitutionally since 2010. The decision blocks enforcement of the rules nationwide.
O’Connor, a President George W. Bush appointee to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, also ruled that the requirement to cover the HIV prevention drug PrEP violated the religious rights of the employers and could not be enforced against them.
The employers and individuals had standing to sue, O’Connor wrote, because “compulsory coverage for those services violates their religious beliefs […]
How insecure, how fearful of reality, do you have to be to deliberately sabotage public libraries? It says I do not want to educate, I want to indoctrinate, and I am afraid of the truth. The people of Missouri are going to have to decide the nature of their society. They have to want wellbeing over fears, resentments, and hates. That's how democracy defends itself.
Monroe City, Missouri Public Library
Late Tuesday night, the Missouri House of Representatives voted for a state operating budget with a $0 line for public libraries. While the budget still needs to work its way through the Senate and the governor’s office, state funding for public libraries is very much on the chopping block in Missouri.
This comes after Republican House Budget Chairman Cody Smith proposed a $4.5 million cut to public libraries’ state aid last week in the initial House Budget Committee hearing, where Smith cited a lawsuit filed against Missouri by the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri (ACLU-MO) as the reason for the cut.
ACLU-MO filed the suit on behalf of the Missouri Association of School Librarians and the Missouri Library Association (MLA) in an effort to overturn a state law passed in 2022 that bans sexually explicit material from schools. Since it was first enacted in August, librarians and other educators have faced misdemeanor charges punishable by up to a year in jail or a $2,000 fine for giving students access to books […]
The Republicans want to make the AR-15 military weapon, the favorite gun of mass murderers in the United States the "National Gun of America." Really. That's the Republican state of mind. I'm surprised they aren't circulating pictures of the dead children.
A customer looks at a custom-made AR-15-style rifle at Davidson Defense in Orem, Utah, on February 4, 2021. On Tuesday, Alabama Representative Barry Moore announced a bill that would make the AR-15 the “National Gun of America.” Credit: George Frey / AFP / Getty
Alabama Representative Barry Moore, a staunch gun-rights supporter, is proposing that the AR-15 rifle should be the “National Gun of America.”
“The Second Amendment is as American a right as freedom of speech, religion, & the press,” Moore wrote on Twitter Tuesday evening. “Today I unveiled my bill to make the AR-15 the National Gun of America. We must send a message that we will meet every attack on any of our constitutional rights.”
Along with the tweet, Moore shared photos of himself speaking with a gun shop clerk. AL.com reported that the store is in Troy, Alabama.
Congressional records indicate that the bill was first introduced by Moore on Friday, but the House has not received the full text.
If Moore’s proposal were to make it through both […]
When I talk to you about political whoring in Congress, and renting congress members for political ends nowhere is it clearer than in the gun violence issue. Here are the top 10 recipients of money from the NRA. Do you notice something about the list? Every congress member on the list is a Republican. And which party is blocking efforts to meaningfully control guns, and gun violence? Republicans. QED.
The pro-gun group’s grip on the GOP holds tight.
A familiar routine is already playing out after the horrific shooting at an elementary school in Nashville: Politicians are calling for thoughts and prayers, and insisting we must find a way to prevent this unfathomable bloodshed from happening again.
The problem is, many of those elected officials have gotten into their prestigious positions thanks to the gun lobby, and their campaigns have pocketed millions of dollars from groups whose sole purpose is blocking the kind of meaningful legislation that could potentially curb this violence.
Open Secrets, a nonpartisan, independent and nonprofit research group that tracks money in U.S. politics, compiled a database of the senators who have taken the most cash from the National Rifle Association as of the 118th Congress. As you’ll see below, the numbers are pretty staggering. Here’s a look at the top 10.
