Cleo's Mom

The latest Gallup Poll - the momentum seems to be for people to approve of the healthcare reform. Maybe they've finally stopped listening to the stupid death panel people. Healthcare Bill Support Ticks Up; Public Still Divided NEW January 12, 2010 Slightly more Americans want their member of Congress to vote in favor of healthcare legislation rather than against it, 49% vs. 46% -- a first since October. Democrats are widely supportive while a slim majority of independents and most Republicans are opposed.

Do some research about bariatric doctors in your area. Find out about their experience, whether their hospital is a hospital of excellence, etc.. Call their office and tell them your situation. If you find a doctor that you think you'll like make an appointment. It sounds like you are too tight. You are eating sweets because they are slider foods. Easy to get down. I think with an unfill you will be able to eat a bigger variety of foods, including protein. Do you like eggs? How about SF carnation instant Breakfast? How about some of the Protein Bars? But first and foremost is that you need to see a good bariatric surgeon that you can work with. It has been too long since you've seen one and you are not eating the right or healthy foods. Good luck.

If the shoe fits....

I think women who have abortions are thankful to have that option available to them at the time that they make that difficult decision based on their circumstances. Those who later regret it often do so because NOW their circumstances are often different. They are older, more economically stable, maybe married and they might look back on the decision with regret. But they might not have achieved their current and more stable situation if they had not had that abortion. It's easy to look back on a decision with regret when you're doing so in VERY different circumstances, perhaps forgetting the circumstances that drove you to that decison in the first place. The whole point is that the choice was available and that's what this is all about: CHOICE.

Aside from medicaid, which is healthcare by the government for the poor (and which by the way, you have said should be expanded), what healthcare is paid for by the government? People pay for medicare. People will pay for healthcare under this new bill, if they can afford it. If they can't afford it there will be government subsidies but it won't be free.

If prisoners have the right to healthcare, then so do law abiding citizens.

Since you don't have to have a brain (or need to be able to spell) to work at Fox, she is well qualified.

This article underscores why WE NEED GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION because left to their own devices PRIVATE BUSINESSES DO NOT/WILL NOT SELF-REGULATE. And 98,000 a year who die from medical errors? THIS SHOWS WHY TORT REFORM IS A BAD IDEA. I don't want a cap placed on the value of these lives. Each case is different. Sunday Forum: We need a federal safety agency for patients It could save a lot of lives, money and anguish by policing medical errors, argues KAREN WOLK FEINSTEIN of the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative Sunday, January 10, 2010 Item: The newborn twins of actor Dennis Quaid and his wife nearly died after overdoses of heparin, a powerful blood-thinning drug. This occurred due to a mix-up between similarly packaged infant and adult doses (which are 1,000 times stronger). The same error had previously killed or sickened at least 250 newborns. The drug manufacturer had alerted hospitals to potential confusion but not until after the international publicity about the Quaid twins did it clearly differentiate the packaging. The Institute for Safe Medication Practices lists several dozen look-alike medications that cause preventable patient injuries and deaths. Item: A Pennsylvania man, seriously injured and unconscious after an auto accident, was rushed to a hospital emergency department. A wristband placed on his right wrist denoted an injury. However, at a nearby hospital the same color of wristband meant "do not resuscitate." An ER nurse who worked at both hospitals became confused. Only quick action by other emergency personnel averted a possible death. National research has shown an average hospital wristband identification error rate of 2.2 percent. Item: Wrong-site surgeries are supposed to be a "never event" in medical parlance. According to the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority, wrong-site surgeries in our state average 50-plus each year. Most instances are at least partly attributable to the failure of surgical teams to follow a pre-surgery safety checklist. It's been 10 years since the Institute of Medicine's groundbreaking patient-safety report, "To Err Is Human." The report estimated that up to 98,000 Americans were dying annually as a result of medical errors and that hundreds of thousands more were suffering serious injuries. Hopes for dramatic improvement in the wake of the report have not been realized. The federal government's 2008 National Healthcare Quality & Disparities Report asserts there has been virtually no improvement in patient safety in recent years. Some health-care experts nevertheless believe the stage is set for substantial safety improvements. Others are frustrated after a decade of only marginal improvement through voluntary action; they advocate stronger government intervention. The Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative favors government intervention. We propose that Congress create a Federal Patient Safety Agency to identify recurring medical errors and require quick, preventive action. Federal regulation has been a powerful catalyst for improving safety in other industries, such as aviation. Rather than a large, new federal agency and onerous regulations, PRHI proposes limited federal intervention that could be implemented rapidly, at modest cost -- intervention that not only would prevent injury and death but also would produce significant savings for taxpayers and private insurers. Here is an initial outline for a Federal Patient Safety Agency: • No new reporting requirements: The agency could use existing public and private error-reporting systems to identify recurring patient injuries -- the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority, for instance, collects and publishes data in Pennsylvania. Other government agencies, such as the Institute of Medicine, already conduct medical-error research. The new safety agency would rely on these resources to develop regulatory recommendations, such as a standardized hospital patient-identification system. • Independent evaluation of proposed regulations: No regulatory action would be taken without the concurrence of a public-private Patient Safety Review Commission. Commission-approved recommendations also would go through the normal federal regulatory review process. • Enforcement: As instances of noncompliance come to the attention of the safety agency, it would be authorized to issue warnings, publicize problems, levy fines or make referrals to federal law enforcement. When PRHI was founded in 1998, we hoped mistakes in medical settings would be reduced rapidly and dramatically. One of our earliest projects enlisted 30 local hospitals and reduced life-threatening, central line-associated bloodstream infections by more than two-thirds. That success gave momentum to tackling other infections, medication errors, pathology mistakes and patient falls. But hopes for rapidly spreading and sustaining improvements were naive. We have seen dramatic improvements in certain areas, but not in others. We've learned that quality is not viral. Part of the problem is that our current health-care payment system rewards errors. If mistakes require further treatment, providers get paid even more for having made them. National exposure of this catastrophic irony played a part in Pennsylvania becoming the first state to require public reporting of hospital-acquired infections. PRHI vigorously lobbied Medicaid and Medicare officials to withhold reimbursements when egregious errors occur, and it helped to enact new policies. But even negative incentives have produced insufficient patient protections. Observational studies show that most health-care professionals still do not wash their hands appropriately! Pending federal health-reform legislation would direct Medicare to develop new safety policies to reward hospitals and physicians with good safety records; to penalize providers for high error rates; to publicly report on health-care quality and safety. But none of these promise the gold standard: rapid corrective action. A Federal Patient Safety Agency of limited scope would not eliminate all medical errors and patient injuries overnight. But by concentrating on the causes of serious, recurring errors -- such as look-alike medications and non-standardized patient identification -- it could expedite significant reductions in preventable patient deaths and injuries. And it could save us all a lot of money. Karen Wolk Feinstein is president and CEO of the Jewish Healthcare Foundation and president and CEO of the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative (www.prhi.org).

I hope that family member went to jail.

I don't think RNC chair, Michael Steele, shares your enthusiasm: RNC chair Michael Steele doesn't think his party can take back the House in '10, and even if they do, he doesn't know if the GOP is ready. Appearing on Sean Hannity's nationally syndicated show the same day his new book, "Right Now," hit store shelves, Steele said the GOP is set for "nice pick-ups" in the House. But, he said, at the moment there aren't enough candidates to take out enough Dems.

Researchers at Harvard University and University of Southern California said an overhaul of the health care system would slow the growth of health care costs, allow employers to spend less on health insurance and more to hire more workers, potentially creating up to 400,000 new jobs EACH YEAR for a decade. Helping the uninusred get insurance and creating jobs? Now, that's change I can believe in!!

I don't know if Harry Reid is a racist or not. His remarks are what a lot of people were thinking and certainly not PC but he has apologized and the president accepted it. I am not a big Harry Reid fan, I would like to see a more progressive democrat replace him, one that is a lot tougher. Jesse Jackson made some disparaging remarks about what part of Obama's anatomy he would like to cut off because he didn't think Obama was being black enough. I think Pres. Obama has learned very well how to walk that fine line of being portrayed as the first black president but not campaigning as that. He runs as a democratic candidate who just happens to be black. He has never portrayed himself as the black candidate or president.

I think the people who criticize President Obama, our commander in chief, are unpatriotic and on the side of the terrorists. He is a war president, after all, and when people criticize him, especially when he is on foreign soil, it borders on treason. These people need to get behind the president and support him so that he succeeds. To do otherwise is to give comfort to the enemy.

Pres. Obama has kept most of his promises. Did you hold bush accountable for his broken promises? He has changed the way he views his role and that of our country. He has put more republicans in place in his administration than republicans presidents put democrats. He has reached out to other countries in the world who were scorned, ridiculed or rejected by the bush administration. We don't operate in a vacuum. How other countries percieve us matters. bush was hated and it showed when he traveled abroad. Not so with Pres. Obama. This is a change. He has shown a refreshing ability to admit mistakes and accept blame, something bush never did. DON'T YOU REMEMBER WHEN BUSH WAS ASKED WHAT MISTAKES HE MADE AS PRESIDENT AND HE COULDN'T THINK OF ONE? REALLY?? WHOLE BOOKS HAVE BEEN WRITTEN ABOUT THEM. That's a BIG change right there - from the arrogance of bush to the humility of Obama. He changed the way we think about torture and is against it. Period. He want to close Gitmo and move those detainees to a federal prison. Gitmo has been used as a recruiting tool for Al-Qaeda. He has opened up white house visitor logs and declassified millions of documents. That's a change. But he is criticized for tackling the tough problems that you claim you conservatives could have handled quite nicely by yourself. You republicans/conservatives had the power for many years and it was YOUR POLICIES THAT FAILED AND CAUSED ALMOST ALL OUR CURRENT PROBLEMS. So, don't tell me you know how to fix problems when all you can do is create them. So, tackling tough problems is a change from bush who just kicked the can down the road. Oh, I forgot, the one solution of conservatives/republicans: tax cuts for the rich & corporations and crumbs for everyone else. These are changes I can believe in and I'm sure glad he's president.

This is what I have been saying over and over again here and the only answer they have is it doesn't matter what happened then, this is now. But it does matter because it shows that when these teabaggers weren't angry about the spending, deficits and lies under bush then it's just all about Obama now, and not these issues that they hide behind. They didn't vote for Obama, they don't want him to be president, they don't believe he was born in the US, they think he's a muslim and they want him to fail so that they can get more republicans/ultra conservatives elected so as to push through their agenda (tax cuts for rich & corporation and anti everything else)

You can find the healthcare bill at: www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h3200/text And the 1 AM vote was due to the delays caused by the obstructionist REPUBLICANS. There is procedure and timelines for these bills and because of all the delays and procedural obstructions the republicans did, the vote had to be delayed until 1 AM. You could watch it on CNN. It was on there, and I'm sure other stations, live. I watched it.

Please quote your sources PG. Never mind - it's from that conservative site entitled "Hot Air" - aptly named because that's what it's full of.

From Jon Garcia --

Obama plan could limit records hidden from public By PETE YOST (AP) – Dec 20, 2009 WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama plans to deal with a Dec. 31 deadline that automatically would declassify secrets in more than 400 million pages of Cold War-era documents by ordering government-wide changes that could sharply curb the number of new and old government records hidden from the public.

Amen to that!

Very intelligent post and well said, BJean. The other side's arguments is pure emotion. Pictures of aborted fetuses, screaming fetuses, name calling (murderer), etc.. As I have said before, if you believe abortion is murder then don't have an abortion and don't let your daughter have one and let the rest of us to make our own decision.

Alcohol is also legal, but I don't have a problem with people having to be off of drugs to receive benefits. You can't allow someone with a criminal record to live with you if you live in section 8 housing and I'm fine with that, too. In Connecticut, and I'm sure other states as well, if a welfare recipient worked, the amount of money they made when they worked was subtracted from their welfare benefits. Now, why would anyone work? That doesn't make sense. So, when they changed the law, more people had an incentive to work. I support these common sense changes. But I don't support eliminating the programs because some abuse it. And when the republicans were in power they could have set the wheels in motion to reduce these programs over time and they didn't. Yes, it would have been hard but that shouldn't have swayed them.

The government sets income levels, among other things to be eligible for government assistance. Many of those who receive it are the working poor. There is no way to monitor how someone spends their paychecks once they qualify for government aid. And it is mainly their incomes that make them eligible. And smoking is legal, so peeing in a cup would be unconstitutional to monitor for it. You also didn't answer my question about why the republicans didn't eliminate all these government assistance programs when they had all the power (if indeed it is the democrats who promote them, as you claim)?

First you were against the public option because it would put those poor private health insurance companies out of business. Now the plan doesn't have a public option and you are complaining about rationing, which also won't happen. The plan mostly covers those without insurance. It really doesn't affect those with insurance. Because most of that is through an employer. An employer, however, can change the company that it uses for health insurance, but that is their call, not the governement's. So all this talk about government control is just nonsense and not true.