What We're Reading - June 26
Spread the word
|
|
Today, voters in Colorado, New York, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah – will cast ballots in House primaries. Meanwhile, as many eagerly await the Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act, the candidates continue to campaign: Romney’s on the road in Virginia and Obama is splitting time between Georgia and Florida. Here’s what we’re reading this morning….
What’s at stake with the health care decision? “More Than 22 Million Could Lose Insurance With Supreme Court Decision” — “More than 22 million people who would have gotten cheaper health insurance or coverage from Medicaid will be out of luck if the Supreme Court overturns the entire health care law, according to analysis from consulting firm Avalere Health. Most of those who would lose out live in big states. The report found 55 percent live in 10 states: California, Texas, Florida, Illinois, North Carolina, Ohio, Georgia, Michigan, New York, and Pennsylvania. ‘If the Supreme Court rules that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is unconstitutional, approximately 22.4 million individuals who would have obtained Medicaid or subsidized exchange coverage by 2015 will remain uninsured,’ the report reads. ‘These 22.4 million individuals include roughly 7.5 million currently uninsured individuals who are expected to receive subsidies through exchanges and 14.9 currently uninsured individuals who are expected to enroll in Medicaid.’”
Who is talking about the attacks on women’s health? Men. “Women aren’t principal news sources on women’s issues, 4th Estate analysis finds” — “Men have long been the predominant sources for the news media on issues such as the economy, politics and the military. And a new analysis of campaign coverage found that women aren’t even the principal news source on a topic they would presumably know best: women’s issues. Major news outlets, print and TV, turn mainly to male sources for their take on abortion, birth control and Planned Parenthood, according to a study by 4th Estate, a research group that monitors campaign coverage. Women don’t even rate as the most common sources for reports about ‘women’s rights,’ a catch-all category that excludes reproductive issues, the group said. Women accounted for less than a third, or 31 percent, of the sources in these reports, with men in the majority, 52 percent, and institutions and organizations comprising the balance. On some topics, such as abortion, men were four to seven times more likely as women to be the ones offering an opinion, according to 4th Estate, an offshoot of Global News Intelligence, a company that monitors media sources for government agencies and companies. It concluded: ‘The gender gap undermines the media’s credibility.’”
An interview with Arizona Senate candidate, Richard Carmona, on women’s health issues. “Richard Carmona: Abortion Is ‘A Decision That Should Be Made Between a Woman and Her Physician’” — “What I’m seeing, in general, in a state that’s struggling with some of the highest foreclosures, that’s remarkably ranked among the worst educational systems in the country now, has significant immigration problems, is in a health crisis of its own for funding AHCCCS and health care—our legislature chooses to legislative contraception. Is that not a breach of fiduciary responsibility? Is it not malfeasance? It just makes no sense to me. You’re politicizing health issues. Anytime you deny any person—in this case, we’re talking about women but whether it’s children, whether it’s adults, whether it’s seniors—when you create a barrier to access to health care, the results are predictable. Your morbidity will go up, your mortality will go up, and ultimately the cost of that health care will go up because you’ll just show up later at the emergency room with a problem that could have been taken care of much earlier. Federal law says that hospitals must see you when you come for an emergency, so the hospitals then absorb the cost and physicians absorb the cost. So the cost is just redistributed. But the real issue to me, as the surgeon general, is creating barriers to health care results in deleterious health outcomes, period. So if you do it to women, what will you expect? If you deny them their reproductive health care, what happens? The amount of abortions will go up. The amount of unwanted pregnancies will go up. A whole set of health problems unique to women will increase when you deny or impede access. So to me, the bigger, overarching issue here is: We should never be politicizing health care. Health care should be one that we are all supportive of and no matter which side of he aisle you are on, we should be working to ensure that every American, women included, have access to a full set of basic health-care benefits, which include reproductive health.”
