Tag-Archive for » healthcare «

February 23rd, 2010 | Author: sarcozona

Over the last year, the frequency of my migraines has increased. Then last week, I had a new and frightening kind of aura.  If I were seeing a neurologist, those two statements would be certain to worry her, and she’d likely demand all kinds of fancy brain scans.

Unfortunately, I can’t afford health insurance. While I have plenty to pay my bills (I’ve even got enough saved for almost a year’s rent!), there is simply no way I could afford being treated by a neurologist.  So, like the many other Americans without health insurance, I’ve just got to hope it’s nothing serious and that by some miracle our government gets some real health reform passed – soon.

December 29th, 2009 | Author: sarcozona

Father most certainly does NOT know best.

Some men go to strip clubs at least in part because they don’t know how to tell their guy friends they like them.

The link above explains that women are glue.  This also suggests that women most certainly aren’t people.

Jimmy Carter publicly denounces Southern Baptists because of their misogyny.

Who’s lying about climate change?

Money is the only good reason to get married.

Conservatives haven’t changed much at all since the New Deal.

December 20th, 2009 | Author: sarcozona

More evidence that our drug policies are just wrong.

Evolving to eat meat helped humans live longer.

American evangelical influence is likely to cause Ugandan gays to be executed.

How did health care reform turn into a subsidy for health insurance companies?

It makes me livid when good ideas get shut down because politicians are more interested in support from corporations than their constituents.  Pharmaceutical companies freaking out about having to become more competitive are how we lost one great cost-saver in the health care bill this week.

HIV is a tricky bastard. A promising microbicide failed to work in large scale trials.

If we found other intelligent life, would we be able to communicate in any meaningful way? I recommend we start trying with octopuses.

A great story demonstrating that the pay gap is alive and well, sexism still has large effects in women’s lives, and that women are just as qualified as men.

I made these pancakes, but with whole wheat flour and extra buttermilk.  They will make any day better.  I promise.

Sexism makes you worse at math.

Bill Smith, untitle (calibreted arterial system), detail, 2006, mixed media

Bill Smith, untitle (calibreted arterial system), detail, 2006, mixed media

You aren’t funny, you’re an ass.

Dear Obama, please stop being such a failure.

October 24th, 2009 | Author: sarcozona

Lights on how the Christian community accepts rapists and vilifies their victims.

Green spaces make you healthier. I wonder if houseplants help.

Banning abortion doesn’t make it rarer, but it does make it more dangerous: unsafe abortions kill 70,000 women a year.  A lack of access to contraceptives leads to 60 million unintended pregnancies a year and increases abortion rates, often in unsafe conditions. If Christians really wanted to save lives, they’d be mailing condoms instead of gospel tracts.

Homeless people deserve better.  I hope that so many people losing their homes will lead to improved services for the homeless.

Proposed budget cuts in AZ target the poor and include wonderfully ironic cuts like “eliminating state supervision of loan originators, mortgage brokers and money transmitters.” Hawaii is dramatically shortening the school year because of budget cuts.

US drug policy blocks successful treatments for cluster headaches.

The difference between fields with lots of women and fields with few is other women.

Interpol hooked up with UN Peacekeeping.

Churches in Nigeria are torturing and killing children.  Isn’t God great?

So many of the same people who think blowing up all the Muslims is a great idea are also strongly anti-immigrant.  I guess they don’t realize how many immigrants are dying for their beliefs. Or they’re just racist.

The worst companies in the world.  Just in case you thought corporations were generally looking out for your best interests.

WWJD?

WWJD?

One week without health insurance was enough for this family to be denied real coverage for their daughter.

Wearing a bra is an evil deception deserving extreme punishment.

Garlic might actually help prevent colds, but the AIDS vaccine probably didn’t really work.

Companies with more women are better companies.

Thomas Hillier - The Emperor's Castle

Thomas Hillier - The Emperor's Castle

The Pansy Project: “Artist Paul Harfleet revisits city streets planting pansies at the site of homophobic abuse. Each location is photographed and named after the abuse received.”

If I go nuts, this is why.

October 03rd, 2009 | Author: sarcozona

It’s more expensive to be gay.

The Straight Girl’s Guide to Sleeping with Chicks.  I’m beginning to think straight women don’t actually exist.

Mac vs. PC hilarity.

Another health insurance company screws over another sick person.

Frat boys that aren’t awful human beings.  Hooray feminism!

cute attack: baby pygmy hippo

cute attack: baby pygmy hippo

Nike resigned from the board of the Chamber of Commerce in protest of the chamber’s position on climate change.  Other companies flat out resigned their memberships.  It’s good to see companies recognizing climate change is going to start affecting their profits.

I feel like the appropriate punishment for these sorts of crimes would be to deny them modern medical care.

Second wave feminism has a bad reputation, but without it, women would still be writing songs like this:

Every native fish in AZ is in trouble, and several have already gone extinct.  Drastic times call for drastic measures.

A new spider species was recently discovered and named after David Bowie.

Heteropoda davidbowie

Heteropoda davidbowie

Warming can fundamentally change interactions in an ecosystem.  This means that many of our predictions about what’s going to happen to ecosystems with climate change could be very, very wrong.

The Finance Committee killed the public option this week and then approved money for abstinence only sex-ed, which is the proven best way to up teen pregnancy and std rates.  I’d like to point out that democrats Lincoln, Conrad, and Baucus voted down the public option.  I suggest letting them know how you feel about their vote, especially if you come from Arkansas, Montana, or North Dakota.

Laurent is finally blogging again – I adore his silly botany posts.  Here’s a great one about how purple toothwort protects its nectar.

September 24th, 2009 | Author: sarcozona

Today I spent $250 on a 4 month supply of birth control.  That’s $750 a year.  Before the pharmacy at my school closed because of budget cuts, it was $540 a year.  Unfortunately, I can’t find a prescription discount card that covers my pills.

Despite the outrageous cost (you’d think the pills with less hormone in them would be cheaper.  They aren’t.) it’s worth the money – without the pills I spent a week every month feeling like I’m in labor.

But I wish I could have spent that money on these instead:

Jarvis by Jessica Bennet

Jarvis by Jessica Bennet

and these:

Kicky by Chinese Laundry

Kicky by Chinese Laundry

September 22nd, 2009 | Author: sarcozona

A new study in the American Journal of Public Health calculated that 45,000 non-elderly US citizens die every year (based on data from the 80s and 90s) because they don’t have health insurance.  That number is higher than the 18 – 22,000 cited in many other articles because the studies that estimated the 18 – 22,000 deaths were based on older data and health care has become more expensive (for everyone) and inaccessible to those without insurance in the past few decades.

Many opponents of reform don’t have a problem spending $3 trillion to attack Iraq over the 2,976 9/11 deaths (regardless of the fact that Iraq had nothing to do with those deaths).  But they do have a problem spending a much, much smaller amount of money saving 45,000 young Americans every year.

Chronic conditions are especially deadly, even if they can be controlled with good medical care.  If you lose your job because you’re sick, you lose health insurance and get sicker.  Many, like Nikki White, die.  Pre-existing conditions may mean you can’t get insurance even if you can keep your job, and the list of pre-existing conditions is very very long and includes things like being a victim of domestic violence.

Even if you do have insurance, going broke when you get sick or hurt is not unusual and not having insurance puts people in terrible situations.  Our system is so broken that people choose jail over rehab to get needed medical treatments.

77% of people support a public option and 73% of doctors support a public option.  Why then is a public option so unlikely to be a part of health care reform?

Tags:  | One Comment
September 12th, 2009 | Author: sarcozona

Oh so true snippets of fundie culture.

The Princeton Guide to Ecology just went to the top of my wishlist.  Yes, even above the lovely shoes I posted earlier this week.

“Government-run” health care has problems, but it still works better than private insurance:

Compared with the employer-coverage group, people in the Medicare group report fewer problems obtaining medical care, less financial hardship due to medical bills, and higher overall satisfaction with their coverage.

Conservatives freaked out about Obama’s speech encouraging kids to work hard in school, calling the action “unprecedented.”  I guess they weren’t paying attention during similar speeches given by Reagan and George H. Bush.  (Though perhaps if they’d paid better attention in school they would have developed some critical thinking skills and we wouldn’t have to deal with their craziness.)  I think the response of the right in this situation is very telling – they disagree with Obama, so they won’t listen to anything he says.  This is why Republicans have blocked health care reform at every turn, why Republicans have become the party of “no.”  I’m reminded of a child being told something she doesn’t want to hear who covers her ears and yells.

There isn’t much justice in our justice system.  How many innocent people have we executed?

The myth of overspending:

Whether families are spending more than they should according to some moral notion—consuming too much of the world’s resources or buying things they could easily live without—is not the issue at hand. These data give us no clue about the right amount of spending. But they give us powerful evidence that excessive consumption is not why families are going broke. There is no evidence of any “epidemic” of overspending—certainly nothing that could explain a 255 percent increase in the foreclosure rate, a 430 percent increase in the bankruptcy rolls, and a 570 percent increase in credit-card debt. A growing number of families are in terrible financial trouble, but despite the accusations, their frivolity is not to blame.

A lot of people claim that being queer is wrong because it isn’t “natural.” Weird how different cultures consider different sexualities “natural.”

Ecological/environmental refugees are becoming much more common.

A corporate sponsor of the Tea Party Express, many of whose members believe that health care reform is “a secret plot to kill old people”, is paying millions of dollars for killing old people.

A ton of feathers – why micro-inequities suck.

August 29th, 2009 | Author: sarcozona

It doesn’t say anything good about our culture that sexual violence against women is eroticized and mainstream, but women choosing and enjoying sex is just too much for us.

A few songs are worth more than your life.  A lot more.  (via Michael Alan Miller) Oh, and Sweden took down pirate bay.

Well, this should change our lifestyles a bit.  Have I mentioned that overpopulation is a problem?

California is sacrificing education to prevent taxing big oil.  Wouldn’t it be awesome if our government thought just a little more long term? (via Edge of the American West)

Actually, money CAN buy happiness.

The Afghan elections weren’t fair.

Amino acids in space!

Cultural differences in interpretations of facial expressions.

Really, vaccines do not contain aborted fetal tissue.

Russia has some series race issues.

Just because change scares people doesn’t mean it should be slow.

By the way, were at war by bobster on flickr

By the way, we're at war by bobster on flickr

Music + politics = awesome

Think health care reform makes Democrats equivalent to Nazis?  Perhaps you need a quick history lesson.

Another reason to quit smoking: children pick the tobacco you smoke and it poisons them.

I really want to see this movie (via SublimeFemme):

An former health care executive comes clean. And yet another health care myth debunked.

We’re building a wall between Mexico and the US that doesn’t stop illegal immigrants, but is deadly to fragile wildlife populations.

The axolotl is about to go extinct in the wild

The axolotl is about to go extinct in the wild

American citizens in danger from chemical weapons – and they’re ours.

Iran is not a good place to be right now.

August 19th, 2009 | Author: sarcozona

We desperately need better health care  in the US.  As a queer woman with a chronic illness, it’s a very personal issue for me. Reforming health care in the US is complex and faces a lot of opposition from people concerned about personal freedom and insurance companies worried about profits.  I certainly didn’t expect health care reform to be easy.

But what I didn’t expect (naively), was the nature of the debate.  Many people aren’t interested at all in facts. They’re violent and more than a little crazy and don’t seem to recognize at all that they’re being manipulated.

We should be having a very vigorous debate about health care and working hard for a better system that serves more people more efficiently.  Instead, we’re seeing people go completely unhinged and screaming about how health care reform is really a plan to kill old people.  Too bad so few people seem to have actually read the bill