Gov. Rick Perry, Obamacare and The Morality of Rejecting Medicaid Expansion

by Nomad

Texas Governor Rick Perry's decision not to expand Medicaid, a provision of Obamacare that each state can accept or reject, will have serious consequences for the uninsured and the poor of that state. 

Here's a moral question for you:

Suppose you found that you possessed the power to save the lives of three thousand strangers, without doing anything except changing your mind, would you do it? Would you do it even if it required you to reverse a strong personal viewpoint or a core philosophy? Could any one of your personal beliefs really be so strong that you would allow the deaths of thousands and the suffering of many more? 

Those are the questions that the citizens of Texas should be asking their governor, Rick Perry.

The Cost of Perry's Resistance

In a recent article for the Dallas Observer, Eric Nicholson points out:

Governor Rick Perry's decision to opt out of Obamacare's Medicaid expansion has been well-documented. Billions in federal funds are off the table. More than a million poor adults won't have access to health coverage. Texas businesses will wind up paying an estimated $400 million in tax penalties.

Useful numbers, but none really captures the human toll of Perry's decision. A better figure for that purpose is 3,035, as in the number of people who will die as a result of Texas' refusal to expand Medicaid.

Nicholson cites a study by researchers at Harvard Medical School and CUNY School of Public Health. Admittedly this is a worst case scenario but even the best case scenario puts the number of people who will die at 1,840. That's not all.

Even for those who don't die, the outcome won't be good. The researchers predict that 184,192 Texans suffering from depression will go undiagnosed, 109,307 diabetics won't get medication, 40,562 women won't get mammograms and 62,610 uninsured individuals will have catastrophic medical expenditures.

Critics of the study say the study cannot be taken to prove a causal relationship between Medicaid expansion and lower mortality rates.

When the ACA was passed back in 2010, a requirement in the law required states to expand Medicaid for all households whose incomes fell below a certain level. A fairly generous level too. However in June 2012, the Supreme Court decided that states should be given an option to decide whether they wish to expand the Medicaid rolls. It could not be forced on the states by the federal government.

The Lone Star legislators in their wisdom then decided that expanding Medicaid was in the the great state of Texas was simply not going to happen. No way, Jose.

OSHA, Condoms and The Porn Industry: A Matter of Worker Safety?

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The Bread and Roses Strike of 1912 : The History and the Song

by Nomad

The story of the Lawrence Mill Strike of 1912 has - like most of the history of the labor movement- received very little coverage in the mainstream media.  

With that in mind, I offer this summary of the events that occurred over one hundred years ago in the mill town of Lawrence, Massachusetts.

History always provides both interesting parallels and contrasts to our own age. Before we look back, therefore, let's take a quick examination at our own times as a kind of reference.

Obama and EO 13036: New Tea Party Hysteria over Emergency Preparedness

by Nomad

When President Obama announced in no uncertain terms that he would use his executive powers to get around Congressional obstructionism, some on the Right appeared outraged. It's no surprise then they would dig up something from the past to launch yet another call for impeachment. In this post, we explore Executive Order 13036, the Tea Party meme and the source of this quackery.

As we have all come to realize, Republican hysteria seems to know no limit. The latest drum-beat which has the Tea Party radicals dancing frenetically to is now the word "outlaw. It sounds like this: Obama is an outlaw isn't he? And what an outlaw he is? What law has that outlawing outlaw Obama outed today? Impeach that outlaw.
Outlaw? Outlaw.

Quacking ducks make about as much sense. 

I saw this very black and very sinister-looking poster in the twitter-sphere. (I added the "Busted" so it couldn't be recycled.) The memes warned that the president has signed this here executive order- practically a royal decree- giving him the right to take, not just my hope, my dignity, my reason for living but... all my things. "Everything you own" can now be taken away. 

The text- and for a meme asks a lot of reading from its audience- states:

Under Executive Order 13036 everything you own can be taken away under the guise of national security. This order rips our Constitution to shreds. One person has all this power? Are we really living as free people or are we living under a dictatorship? Was it not more than seventy years ago that an ugly short mustache man did the same thing in Europe? I leave you one burning question: What is the real purpose of this Executive Order?

That's right, this outlaw president is planning to violate the Constitution in order to get your household appliances, your flat screen TVs and most importantly, your guns.

The accompanying tweet advised me to Google Executive Order 13036. So, being a curious fellow with a lot of free time, I did as instructed and googled. 

But I somehow doubt many Right-wingers bothered to do so. If they had devoted as little as 2 minutes of independent research- instead of simply joining in with tweet-chanting "Impeach Obama"- they might have realized how they had been- once again- hoaxed by Tea Party fear-mongering.

Boehner at the President's State of the Union Address: Caption Request

by Nomad

 Caption anyone?