From Harold Pollack at The Treatment:
IWF’s television ad is especially sad, and especially misleading. With soft piano music in the background, a no-doubt sincere breast cancer survivor named Tracy Walsh warns women that they will get shoddy breast cancer care if health reform passes. Providing now-standard misleading references to the Lewin Group, conflating the public plan option with a full-stop National Health Service, she adds that in England, “if you find a lump, you could wait months for treatment.”
This advertisement is especially misplaced in light of many studies documenting poor outcomes among uninsured American women with breast cancer. It’s been known for many years that uninsured breast cancer patients are diagnosed later, require more invasive and costly treatment, and die sooner than their insured counterparts. Lack of health insurance is a major risk factor for delayed mammography, and for delayed response to abnormal mammography that requires diagnostic resolution…
Then there is the other elephant in the room. Women in other industrial democracies do not go bankrupt because they have breast
cancer. That’s an everyday occurrence across America–among both insured and uninsured citizens.
Here’s the Independent Women’s Forum.
From Wikipedia:
The IWF has been described as “a virtual ‘Who’s Who’ of Washington’s Republican establishment.”[26] People for the American Way, which is critical of the organization, describes IWF as “a secular counterpart to Religious Right women’s groups like Eagle Forum and Concerned Women for America.”…
The board is chaired by investment fund executive Heather Higgins with other members Mary Arnold, Carol T. Crawford, Jennifer Ashworth Dinh, Randy Parris Kendrick and Larry Kudlow. These staff are complemented by ‘directors emeritae’; these include Second Lady of the United States Lynne V. Cheney, neoconservative writer Midge Decter, Kimberly O. Dennis, the Mercatus Center’s Wendy Lee Gramm, Elizabeth Lurie, Washington editor of National Review Kate O’Beirne, and Louise V. Oliver.
Fec, I am fully medically insured. But if I was diagnosed with breast cancer tomorrow (for which I am hyper-vigilant), I’d still probably eventually go bankrupt – because I would likely not be able to work or pay the premiums (in my case nearly $700/month to “non-profit” charitable BCBSNC).
You see, I cannot get disability insurance (at any price) – because back in 1994, I (did what I was supposed to do) and sought treatment and counseling for depression and an eating disorder. As a result, I have been locked out completely. Every time I’ve applied, I’ve been turned down.
And that’s because a not-so-long time ago, a number of doctors “retired” from medicine by seeking treatment for depression and going out on full disability. For a while, they got away with it. The insurance companies, assessed their risk and locked down. Now, people like me are screwed.
Of course, it’s not the first time I’ve been screwed over by a “non-profit”. It’s fact that “non-profits” have gotten away with murder over the last 15-20 years – with the government barely blinking an eye. And that’s the reason I do not believe for a moment that the government can fix anything.
There’s a lot to reform. Deaf, dumb and blind doesn’t cut it.
And I’d say it’s accurate to say that a lot of women are afraid.
Wow, that’s scary. I don’t hear many anecdotes of discrimination against physicians.
BTW, I don’t dislike them, even though my recent experiences have been problematic.
I’ve not yet lost hope. Taibbi says in the current Rolling Stone that the Dems are doing what they have always done: crumbling in the face of a clear mandate. Neither do those in office or shouting most loudly from the right represent the views of the more considerate. A lot of really bright people are working on the problem. We have met the enemy and it is us. Surely, such knowledge has some power to affect change. If I didn’t believe that, I couldn’t get up in the morning.
We are our worst enemies.
Politicians are so focused on making policy that will get them re-elected (blue dogs)instead of what is RIGHT for Americans.
Americans are so focused on one upsmanship because their candidate lost. They would rather be SICK and dumb, than to support reform because it is being spearheaded by that other one.
God Bless American and the Kennedy Family!
I’m far from dumb. I support healthcare reform, dear. Just not the kind that panders to entitlement and will create ka-trillion dollar deficits.
Jackie was a class act. Bobby had his moments. Ted left a young woman alone to die in a car that he drove off a bridge.
Reports say Mary Jo was found in a portion of the car where an air bubble would have formed – an probably lived for an hour or two in the pitch black cold water before losing consciousness and drowning.
Do “ya think” she was scared?