GOP Now Killing Off the Poor?
I happened to mention in one of my classes yesterday some advances in medicine such as the simple procedures now for heading off blindness due to glaucoma, the pressure build up in eyes that insidiously decreases peripheral vision and then blinds totally. I know of this personally as it caused my grandfather's blindness in his fifties, tragically blinded my mother in a time when medications had been developed to treat it, and I now take a drop a day in one eye where my pressure otherwise rises.
One of our pre-med students happens to be working in our local hospital, St. Luke's near Columbia, and reported that many of their patients cannot afford the $70.00 per tiny bottle of drops that would prevent such blindness. They might be prescribed to use a larger quantity than me and I get mine through our medical plan for a far smaller price. I cringe anytime I have to stand in line to pick up a prescription at Sally's Town Drug across the street from the hospital at the inevitable person ahead of me who exclaims that she (ordinarily an older woman) cannot pay for her prescribed medicine:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/health/2005-09-23-hca-frist_x.htm
Given the fees on Medicaid patients now imposed by the 216-214 vote this past Wednesday in Congress and the previous one vote margin in the Senate (cast by Cheney as Vice President) in December:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20060202-0014-budgetcuts.html
we must expect that an increasing number of Americans will needlessly go blind -- and, of course, others will die from other treatable conditions for which they do not receive basic medical care -- high blood pressure, colon cancer, breast cancer, lung cancer. I cannot believe that Senate Majority leader, Frist, himself a doctor under the cloud of having profited from selling off his stock in a medical operation just in time, did not fully know the implications here for which he organized a vote:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/health/2005-09-23-hca-frist_x.htm
I recall Dave Rogers, among other things Cornell's University Professor in medicine, former dean of two medical schools, former head of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, before his death, inveighing against greedy doctors. Now we seem to have an entire greedy party ready to kill to maximize its personal gains? And how disgusting is their sloganeering -- they are opposed to "big government" -- or the rest of us Americans who stand in the way of their greed?
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net
One of our pre-med students happens to be working in our local hospital, St. Luke's near Columbia, and reported that many of their patients cannot afford the $70.00 per tiny bottle of drops that would prevent such blindness. They might be prescribed to use a larger quantity than me and I get mine through our medical plan for a far smaller price. I cringe anytime I have to stand in line to pick up a prescription at Sally's Town Drug across the street from the hospital at the inevitable person ahead of me who exclaims that she (ordinarily an older woman) cannot pay for her prescribed medicine:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/health/2005-09-23-hca-frist_x.htm
Given the fees on Medicaid patients now imposed by the 216-214 vote this past Wednesday in Congress and the previous one vote margin in the Senate (cast by Cheney as Vice President) in December:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20060202-0014-budgetcuts.html
we must expect that an increasing number of Americans will needlessly go blind -- and, of course, others will die from other treatable conditions for which they do not receive basic medical care -- high blood pressure, colon cancer, breast cancer, lung cancer. I cannot believe that Senate Majority leader, Frist, himself a doctor under the cloud of having profited from selling off his stock in a medical operation just in time, did not fully know the implications here for which he organized a vote:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/health/2005-09-23-hca-frist_x.htm
I recall Dave Rogers, among other things Cornell's University Professor in medicine, former dean of two medical schools, former head of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, before his death, inveighing against greedy doctors. Now we seem to have an entire greedy party ready to kill to maximize its personal gains? And how disgusting is their sloganeering -- they are opposed to "big government" -- or the rest of us Americans who stand in the way of their greed?
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net
posted by Ed Kent at 7:35 AM
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