Political Cartoon is by Jim Morin in The Miami Herald.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Hospital Gowns Re-Designed (About Time)
If you've ever been admitted to a hospital, then you know about the glaring inadequacies of a hospital-issued gown. The flimsy gowns open in the back and the only thing to hold them together are some cloth ties (which naturally are useless since you can't reach them to tie them). If you get out of bed wearing one of them, you can bet you'll be flashing anyone in the room.
And the nurses are adamant that you need to exercise by doing some walking. When you do, you wind up with one arm behind your back trying to hold the gown together and the other pushing your IV stand. Of course, if the IV stand hangs up on something and you need both hands to free it you find yourself exposing your rear (and maybe more) to anyone in the area.
I realize that the gowns are necessary because they give doctors and nurses easy access to your body so they can perform tests and check on your progress, but there has to be a better way to make these gowns -- one that will allow easy access and also protect a patient's modesty. Fortunately, the British government thought so too.
They gave several designers grants of $37,500 to design a gown that would both provide access to medical providers and would not compromise patient dignity. Yesterday they unveiled the fruits of those labors. It looks like the designers were successful and the government money well-spent. They hope to have the new gowns in all their hospitals by next year.
Instead of opening in the back, the new gowns (pictured above) open on the side and have snaps to keep it closed (something that can be easily done by the patient). One version even has a small pocket for a cell phone. And they come with a soft fleece blanket. As a former hospital patient, I'm impressed.
The Brits are eager to share the new design with President Obama in the hope it will help "in his efforts to overhaul U.S. health care practices." I don't know if it will help to reform health care, but I believe millions of hospital patients in this country would love to have the re-designed gowns. They are a huge improvement over the current gowns.
The only question now is how long will it take American hospitals to start using the new gowns? I hope it's not long.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Help Wanted
How's this for truth in advertising? It sounds like some of the jobs I've had. Found at the blog of The Unrepentant Old Hippie.
Supreme Court Refuses "Ava Maria" Case
The Supreme Court has just refused to hear a case involving religious freedom. This time they affirmed the right not to be subjected to religion in a secular ceremony such as a high school graduation (because the right to religious freedom includes the right to be free from religion).
In 2006, a graduating senior, Kathryn Nurre, wanted to play the religious song "Ava Maria" with the school bands wind ensemble at her graduation. Members of the wind ensemble went to the school administration, and the school officials refused to allow Ms. Nurre to play the song.
The school did not want to be put in the position of allowing a christian song to be played at the secular event, where students, their families and their friends who may not be christians, or even religious at all, were to be in attendance. There was no point in going out of their way to offend anyone at what was supposed to be a happy and religion-free event.
But that wasn't good enough for the christian Nurre. She felt she had the right to subject everyone at the secular event to her own chosen religion. She sued the school district (in Everett, Washington), claiming they had violated her First Amendment rights.
Of course this was ridiculous. The school was not violating her rights, but their actions were meant to protect everyone's rights. It makes me wonder how Ms. Nurre would have acted if another student wanted to involve the muslim or hindu religion into the ceremony, or if a student wanted to give a speech extolling the virtues of atheism. Thankfully, the school district wouldn't have allowed those things either.
Her case was quickly kicked out of court. Her case was also denied by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The judges said it was reasonable for the school officials to ban a song that was obviously religious, and her rights had not been violated. It looks like a majority of justices on the Supreme Court agreed, because they refused to hear the case. Only one justice wanted to hear the case -- Samuel Alito (pictured).
Alito said, "A reasonable reading of the Ninth Circuit's decision is that it authorizes school administrators to ban any controversial student expression at any school event attended by parents because of the importance of the event for participating students. A decision with such potentially broad and troubling implications merits our review."
Alito must be an idiot. The decision did not authorize the banning of "any controversial student expression". It only authorized the school to ban religious expression from a secular school event with a captive audience, and that is constitutional. In fact, allowing religious expression in such a setting would have been unconstitutional.
I don't care if christians want to worship as they please. That is their right, and I have no desire to interfere with it. But they must understand that it is not their right to force their religion into a public secular event. To protect their own right to worship as they please, they must also support the right of others to worship differently or not at all.
Why is that so hard for some christians to understand?
Texas AG Will Fight For Insurance Companies
It is an unassailable fact that Texas will benefit from the health care reform passed by Democrats as much, if not much more, than any other state. That's because Texas is a low-wage "right to work" state where many employers, especially small businesses, do not provide employer-paid health insurance for their employees. In fact, more than 25% of Texas citizens do not have any health insurance coverage.
Sunday night, Democrats acted to fix that problem. Thanks to the new health care reform bill, now many Texans who could not get insurance because of pre-existing conditions will now be able to get health insurance. Many more poor people will be able to get insurance through Medicaid (and it won't cost Texas a single penny until 2018, when it'll have to start kicking in 10% of the cost).
The millions who couldn't buy insurance because their wages were too low will now get government help to purchase insurance. And of course, small businesses will get monetary help from the government to provide insurance for their employees. Texans may not realize it yet, but the new health care reform will be a very good thing for the citizens and small businesses in the state.
In fact, there are only a couple of groups that will be negatively affected by the new bill, and they can easily afford it. The rich will have to pay a small tax on their "cadillac" insurance policies (and the cut-off is high enough that middle and working class workers will not be affected), and the insurance companies may have to survive with smaller than windfall profits (since they will have to cover pre-existing conditions and can't drop someone's insurance when they get a serious illness).
One would think that our state's leaders would appreciate the fact that most Texans will be able to get insurance, and it will be at minimal cost to the state government. But that is not how our Republican state leadership thinks. They have always favored the rich and corporate interests over ordinary citizens and small businesses, and they plan to go on doing that -- regardless of how many Texans will be helped by the new bill.
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott (pictured) has announced that he will file suit against the federal government the minute President Obama signs the new health care reform bill into law. He said, "To protect all Texans' constitutional rights, preserve the constitutional framework intended by our nation's founders, and defend our state from further infringement by the federal government, the state of Texas and other states will legally challenge the federal health care legislation."
What a horses' ass! He is either being disingenuous or he's the stupidest lawyer in the state of Texas. There is nothing unconstitutional about the health care reform bill. Congress had both the right and the authority to do exactly what they have done. I believe the courts will quickly dispose of this lawsuit, and I seriously doubt the Supreme Court (as conservative as they are) will overturn them.
But there is an election coming up in November, and I'm sure that's why the AG is filing the lawsuit. He needs the right-wingers (and there are many in Texas) to turn out in force to vote for him, because he has an intelligent and very able Democratic opponent named Barbara Radnofsky who is fighting to take his job.
In other words, he is willing to spend a huge amount of state money fighting a lawsuit he can't win for purely political purposes. And this is in a state that already knows it will have an $8-$11 billion shortfall in the next biennium. I can think of no better reason to vote against this fool next November!
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By the way, only one Texas Democrat voted against health care reform -- Chet Edwards in House District 17. This blue dog doesn't deserve the support of Democrats in November.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Health Care Reform Bills Pass !
Well, it's all over but the shouting (and I expect that'll come from the teabagging opponents of fixing our health care system). The House of Representatives passed both the Senate health care bill with 219 votes (all Democrats) and the reconciliation bill with 220 votes (again all Democrats). The Senate bill nows goes to the president for his signature, and the reconciliation bill goes to the Senate where it is expected to pass in a week or two.
I am happy the bills passed. They are far from perfect, but it is a start and they do accomplish some good things. For instance:
-Private insurance companies can no longer deny insurance coverage because of pre-existing conditions.
-Private insurance companies can no longer drop a person's coverage because they have contracted a serious and expensive illness.
-Working class people who cannot afford the expensive private insurance will get some government help to purchase health insurance.
-It will give millions of people insurance coverage who do not have coverage now.
-It protects those with very serious and/or lingering illnesses by removing arbitrary caps on what insurance companies will pay.
But I hope that Congress realizes that these bills, while accomplishing some good things, do not fix our broken health care system. Much more needs to be done. The bills do nothing to lower the cost of insurance or slow down the rising of insurance premiums. It also leaves the private insurance companies in charge of making health care decisions (instead of doctors) for millions of Americans.
While I would still like to see a single-payer health insurance system (like making Medicare available to all Americans), I think at least an option for enrolling in a public insurance plan should be available. Hopefully, Congress can address this in the not too distant future. This would have a downward effect on all insurance premiums, and give Americans the option of getting the private insurance companies out of their health care decisions.
We now know health care reform can happen. All we have to do now is finish the job.
(The picture above shows the moment the House vote for health care reform got to the 216th and winning vote.)
Imprisonment Without Trial Is Just Wrong
When our forefathers created this great nation, one of the ills they desperately wanted to correct was to insure that government could no longer put people in prison and keep them there for extended periods of time without a trial. This was a tactic many governments had used to stifle free speech and punish people who they didn't like. Because this is anathema in a free country, the writers of the Constitution included safeguards like habeas corpus to rein in those kind of governmental powers.
Sometimes in our history, we have not lived up to that ideal of justice. For instance, almost everyone now believes it was wrong for the U.S. government to imprison American citizens of Japanese descent during the Second World War. These people had committed no crime and posed no real danger to this country. Their incarceration was due to a racist and irrational fear.
We are now doing it again. We have been holding and torturing people (although I hope the torture has now been stopped) in Guantanamo Bay for many years without giving them a trial. This started under the administration of George Bush, when he decided he could imprison muslims without reason or trial just by labeling them enemy combatants or terrorists, and keep them in prison for as long as he wanted.
To his shame, President Obama has continued this unconstitutional practice. He is now considering moving these prisoners out of Guantanamo Bay and into either a prison in Bagram in Afghanistan or a facility here in the United States. He is trying to do this to keep his promise to close the facility in Guantanamo Bay. Personally, I think this looks far more like a shell game than an effort to keep a promise.
What difference does it make whether these people are imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan or the United States? They are still being imprisoned with no charges and no trial, and are not allowed to present a defense or make a plea to be released. This is exactly the kind of thing our forefathers tried their best to prevent.
Now I know some will say these are prisoners of war and should be held until the war ends. The fact that not all of them were soldiers captured by our own troops belies this. Not to mention the fact that many have been released already. Others say they are terrorists and we will put ourselves in danger by releasing them. But a nation governed by the rule of law does not put people in prison because they may be scary people.
If scaring people was all it took to put people behind bars without a trial and deny them the right to defend themselves, then thousands of scary Americans should be behind bars right now. Frankly, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Michele Bachmann, the KKK, the John Birch Society, the teabaggers, and anti-choice people who believe murder is a legal political act scare me far more than any so-called terrorist.
But I'll just have to wait until these people, vile though they may be, actually break a law. Because that's the way things are done in a country governed by the rule of law. We only arrest lawbreakers and then we give them a fair trial. And that's exactly what should happen to those that have been imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay.
Every prisoner in Guantanamo Bay should be given a constitutionally-fair trial if there is evidence that they have broken a law. If there is no evidence (or the evidence was gained through torture), then they should be released. Justice should always outweigh politics, and no person should be kept in prison for purely political reasons.
It comes down to something as simple as doing the right and just thing.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
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