The corruption and profit above all other considerations has produced the worst healthcare system in the developed world. If you are on Medicare, Medicaid, I urge you to read this report. America’s illness profit system is a failing mess, and millions of people may soon lose their healthcare. As this report lays out, “More than 4 million people have had their Medicaid benefits terminated in the last four months, including nearly three-quarters who have lost coverage because of paperwork problems.” Like the rest of the developed world we need universal birthright single payer healthcare, a real healthcare system based on fostering wellbeing. Will we ever get such a system? Not until Citizens United is overturned, and the Democrats are in control of both Houses of Congress as well as the presidency. Put another way, not until enough American voters wake up and vote for Democrats. Forget about your partisanship. Just vote for fostering wellbeing. Your life may depend on your doing so.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services identified three key areas of concern: high rates of people losing Medicaid because of paperwork problems, long call center wait times and slow application processing. Credit: David Goldman / AP Photo
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is ramping up pressure on states that may be failing to meet federal requirements as they renew Medicaid coverage for millions of people for the first time since the start of the pandemic.
The agency has for months been mum about its behind-the-scenes communications with states, but on Wednesday made public letters it sent to state Medicaid officials warning that they may be running afoul of federal law and regulations. The letters, which were sent to all 50 states and Washington, D.C., identified three key areas of concern: high rates of people losing Medicaid because of paperwork problems, long call center wait times and slow application processing.
Thirty-six states were flagged as falling short on at least one of the criteria, including five — Alaska, Florida, Montana, New Mexico and Rhode […]
Scott Waldman, Staff Writer - E&E News - Scientific American / E&E News
Stephan:
I don’t think I have ever seen a party and a single fascist official destroy a state the way Ron DeSantis and the Republican Party are destroying the wellbeing of Florida. Here is the latest on DeSantis’ climate denial indoctrination of students in Florida’s public schools. It is particularly perverse given that Florida is going to be impacted by climate change more than most states, as is becoming obvious as 14 insurance companies stop insuring property in the state, and the best projections predict about half the state is going underwater. The people of Florida did themselves no favor when they elected, and then re-elected this vulgar incompetent nasty man.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at a press conference announcing awards for post-hurricane recovery. DeSantis’s administration has allowed schools to use videos that contain misinformation about climate change, which is worsening the impacts of the hurricanes that strike the state and causing sea level rise. Credit: Paul Hennessy / SOPA Images / LightRocket / Getty
Wind and solar power pollute the Earth and make life miserable.Recent global and local heat records reflect natural temperature cycles.
These are some of the themes of children’s videos produced by an influential conservative advocacy group.
Now, the videos could soon be used in Florida’s classrooms.
Florida’s Department of Education has approved the classroom use of material from the Prager University Foundation, a conservative group that produces videos that distort science, history, gender and other topics.
Florida is the first state to allow PragerU materials in public schools, where teachers will have the option of showing the five- to 10-minute videos in their classrooms. Florida public schools have roughly 3 million students, more than the entire population of Kansas.
Stephan A. Schwartz, Editor / Columnist - Explore - the Journal of Science and Healing
Stephan:
I have been particularly concerned about what is happening in the United States concerning healthcare for women. American healthcare is the worst amongst the developed nations of the world, as well as the most expensive by orders of magnitude. It is a national humiliation. But the impact of this illness profit system on women, especially pregnant women, is particularly alarming and very much a function of The Great Schism Trend between the Red and Blue states.
Notice that the best states are entirely Blue states and the worst states are overwhelmingly Red states. Credit: Governing.
Thirteen years ago, after tracking what I saw as an emerging trend in American culture, I wrote in these pages, “Do you sense the schism occurring in the United States? Not just the red and blue of politics, although that comes into it. Something deeper, a shift that is producing two very different reactions. Can you feel the ground moving? The zeitgeist of one population is grounded in fear, resentment, anger and a sense of loss. It is theologically conservative, politically rigid, and exclusionist. The other population holds a sober realization that great change is coming, but also the sense that it offers at least the putative opportunity to create a more stable life-affirming culture. It is theologically and politically accommodating, and inclusionist.
“We all have a vested interest in this schism and the struggle it has produced, not only because through our choices we are its source, but because we will live with the consequences of the decisions made over the next few years. What is particularly concerning […]
ALEC TYSON, CARY FUNK and BRIAN KENNEDY, Associate Director of Research | Director of Science and Society Research | Senior Researcher Focusing on Science and Society Research - Pew Research Center
Stephan:
This is the best quality research I have seen on American attitudes about climate change and transitioning out of the carbon energy era. Once again it confirms what I have been telling you. About a third of Americans seem to be incapable of learning or persist in maintaining willful ignorance when it comes to comprehending what human-mediated climate change is doing to the earth’s matrix of life. And, no surprise, this third is made up mostly of older MAGAts. Younger people, even Republican younger people clearly understand the issues far better than their parents.
A recent report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has underscored the need for international action to avoid increasingly severe climate impacts in the years to come. Steps outlined in the report, and by climate experts, include major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from sectors such as energy production and transportation.
But how do Americans feel about climate change, and what steps do they think the United States should take to address it? Here are eight charts that illustrate Americans’ views on the issue, based on recent Pew Research Center surveys.
How we did this
A majority of Americans support prioritizing the development of renewable energy sources. Two-thirds of U.S. adults say the country should prioritize developing renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar, over expanding the production of oil, coal and natural gas, according to a survey conducted in June 2023.
In a previous Center survey conducted in 2022, nearly the same share of Americans (69%) favored the U.S. taking steps to become carbon neutral by 2050, a goal outlined by President Joe Biden at the outset of his […]
Thom Hartmann has it right. In Red states, recognizing that even in those states they are becoming a losing minority, the Republican Party’s answer to that is to make it very difficult for people to vote, and through gerrymandering rig the entire structure of their state’s election process. As I have said many times before you cannot be an ethical person and support and vote for Republicans.
If you live in the Blue part of a Red state, Republicans don’t want you to vote. And their latest strategy is their most brute-force method: simply remove you from the voting rolls.
A shocking new study from Demos lays out the dimensions of this voter purge crisis of democracy brought to us by an increasingly desperate GOP.
Republicans are doing this because they know that their policies are unpopular: most Americans aren’t fans of tax cuts for billionaires, more pollution, deregulation, high-priced drugs, privatizing Medicare, ending Social Security, criminalizing abortion and birth control, student debt, hating on Black and queer people, and the GOP’s war on unions and working people.
So, the GOP does everything they can to make voting difficult or even impossible, particularly for people in heavily Democratic neighborhoods (which are usually college towns, big cities, and Black neighborhoods).
When Republicans run elections in such areas (typically Blue cities in Red states), they’ll close or change polling places at the last minute to sow confusion […]
