It is hot and humid tonight so I decided to take a walk on Mass Street at 9:15 PM.  It is a nice time to walk but it is not nice to see a mother and two babies homeless on a bench in the 900 block.  This is not the first time I have encountered mothers and babies on the street in Lawrence.

One has to ask what kind of government we have right now.  Obviously a government that will let babies live on the street.  The demeaning Temporary Aid to Needy Families – the name is even demeaning – is the handiwork of the Clinton era Democratic Leadership Council, which, along with the Republicans passed off punishment of the poor off as “welfare reform.”  As opposed to the old AFDC, TANF provides an extremely small amount of help to destitute families and provides it only for a limited time.

I have actually seen hungry children interviewed on a major news network.  On a Brian Williams anchored NBC evening news program, a correspondent asked some African American children what it felt like to go to be bed hungry.  These children answered the question with dignity and grace – much like the migrant children working as child labor I saw interviewed on a Dateline NBC program.

I laud the First Lady’s focus on childhood obesity.  But she and the President should be acting more like Eleanor and FDR right now.  What could be a greater priority than childhood hunger and homelessness?  The President and the First Lady are identified to much with inside the belt way elitists and not coming across as fighters for the poor and working classes. 

To the President and the Democrats credit, they have pushed for an extension of unemployment benefits over the opposition and filibustering of the mean-ass Republicans.  Republican oligarch flacks representing so-called Washington think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute have been all over talk shows pontificating about how helping the unemployed will make them lazy and shiftless.  That is exactly what the neo-cons said throughout the 1960s and 70s about public assistance for poor families.

Sharon Lockhart & Alice Burdick:  “Every Woman” on KKFI at 3:00 PM (Saturday, July 17^th)

Sharon and Alice will be discussing the big demonstration by progressive and just plain decent people against the anti-immigrant candidate for Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and pal Sheriff Joe Arpaio, which took place out in Johnson County this week. They will also have some guests who have recently returned from assisting the people of Haiti.

Sharon Lockhart

2012 THE AWAKENING

A novel by Bill Douglas

You are invited to a catered book-signing at Edokko Japanese Restaurant, 8615 Hauser St, Lenexa, KS (Organized with Prospero’s Books)

Saturday, July 17^th, 12 noon

Hear Sharon Lockhart’s interview with Bill at http://www.2012theawakening-thenovel.com/

If you like gripping adventure and a shift in consciousness coinciding with the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012, you will like this novel.  See what Deepak Chopra, Coleen Rowley (FBI whistle blower) and others have to say about Bill’s novel at http://www.2012theawakening-thenovel.com/

Erskine Bowles from the pro-corporate branch of the Democratic Party (Democratic Leadership Council) and Alan Simpson, former reactionary Republican U.S. Senator, both appointed by President Obama to lead his euphemistically entitled National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, are putting out signals that “responsibility and reform” will be placed squarely on the backs of the middle class and poor Americans. Here are a couple quotes from the former Clinton Chief of Staff Bowles that a correspondent of mine picked up from Reuters (Washington, July 14):

” Bowles said he favors lowering corporate and individual income tax rates and putting in place a tax on consumption.”

“Both Simpson and Bowles made clear that cuts in defense spending, food stamps and other social programs as well as the Social Security retirement program and Medicare healthcare program for the elderly were under consideration.”

In their talk to the Chamber, Simpson and Bowels expressed their opposition to increasing the very low and ever decreasing taxes on the top wealth in this country.  Rather, they suggested that eliminating the mortgage interest deduction, widely favored by middle class home owners, would be a better alternative.

If President Obama and the Democrats in the House and Senate, by going along with the NCFRR, signal that the Democratic Party is still under the thumb of the pro-business, anti-working class DLC wing of the party, a huge chunk of the base will be furious.  The blowback will be so intense that President Obama will be insured a single term in office and the Democrats in the Senate and House will have a difficult time motivating the base in the 2012 election-year.

This is a big deal!  The Democrats had better understand what Social Security & Medicare mean to American voters.

Siemans Corporation - A Global Conglomerate in the Medical Device Field

In October of 20007 – almost three years ago – Senators Charles Grassley and Arlen Specter introduced Senate Bill 2221, otherwise known as the “Transparency in Medical Device Pricing Act of 2007.”  This bill simply requires medical device manufacturers to report the average and median prices of their products quarterly.  They don’t reveal this information now because they use a variety of financial incentives to induce physicians and hospitals to use their devices (since I don’t fully understand libel law, I won’t call these “financial incentives” bribes and kickbacks).

SB 2221 is bottled up in the Senate Finance Committee.  It was “stopped in its tracks,” which means it is pretty well dead.  You can bet that the so-called deficit reduction commission won’t show much interest in how this bill would prevent a major rip-off of health care consumers, the biggest of which is the U.S. Government. The commission’s mostly conservative members want to go after Social Security and Medicare benefits.

The problem boils down to this:  if an industry keeps secret and controls all pricing information, the negotiating powers of purchasers of the industry’s product are drastically reduced.  Furthermore, discounts and other goodies provided as incentives to use the product will not be accounted for in pricing.  Hospitals and physicians not willing to “play ball” will pay the full freight for the product because they will have no idea what their competitors are actually paying. 

Health care in this country is theoretically based on the “free market” concept, which should result in the best health care at the lowest price – this is the efficient market hypothesis. If an industry can manipulate and control prices, the free market is a joke.  This type of situation is all too common in the “Rube Goldberg” nature of the current U.S. health care system.  The “free market,” as it is practiced in health care, is actually driving up prices.

How does pricing practices in the medical device industry drive up prices?  Actually, a bulletin issued by King & Spalding, a high-powered lobbying firm for the medical device industry, explains it very well:

“Increased transparency of device pricing might especially impact the hospital’s purchasing costs of ‘high sticker price’ implants, allowing the hospital to reduce the publicly posted price charged for specific services and procedures that utilize the device and still maintain a favorable operating margin for that service.  In this context, where the hospital’s own pricing will be in the spotlight, hospital administrators will look closely at all opportunities to drive down purchasing costs and to negotiate purchasing prices based on market-based pricing information” (Client Alert, dated December 4, 2007, page 2).

This King & Spalding bulletin warned its clients that “Pending legislation proposes a federal price reporting requirement on implantable medical devices that could prove to be extremely complicated and costly to device manufacturers” (page 1).  The bulletin also stated that “Hospitals have reported to Senator Specter that implantable devices … represent close to 40% of their expenditures” (page 2).

The Tallgrass Activist will continue to blog about health care technology.  Medical advances are a wonderful thing but they pose a far bigger problem for health care financing than a moderate shift in the demographics of age.  The impact of a change in the proportion of the 65+ population from 13% to 20% of the total U.S. population is quite manageable.  However, the medical device industry is massive, powerful, profitable, and quite attractive to investors.  The website BNET reported that none of the top 30 medical device manufacturers had less than $1.5 billion in revenues in 2006*.  You can find a list of the behemoths in this industry at Espicom, a business intelligence website**.

It is not surprising that a powerful industry can kill a bill by pressuring a committee to pigeon hole it.  But it is hypocritical of Congress to claim that decent health care for all Americans is unaffordable while they allow deceptive pricing practice that inhibit control of health care costs.

Pacemaker

*http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb6159/is_6_5/ai_n29366501/pg_2/?tag=content;col1

**https://www.espicom.com/prodcat2.nsf/Product_ID_Lookup/00003469?OpenDocument

The Tallgrass Activist will always ardently and vociferously support gay rights and the rights of other groups suffering discrimination.  GBLT publications should also display sensitivity to the rights of oppressed workers.

The current issue of Liberty Press features an article regarding the Kansas Indoor Clean Air Act, which took effect on July 1.  As indicated on the cover, the focus of the article was “How the Local GLBT Community Thinks the Law Will Impact Them.”  The contents were mostly about how patrons of bars felt about prohibition on indoor, public smoking.  It included the typical whining by libertarians and business owners about infringement on their rights.

The article included nothing about the ravaging effects of environmental tobacco smoke on the health of employees in the hospitality industry.  It would have been nice to see something in the article about nonsmoker heart disease, lung disease, cancers, and other maladies caused by exposure to cigarette smoke.  What right do smokers have to make other people sick?

As someone with a leading role in passage of the groundbreaking Lawrence Smoking Ordinance, which took effect in 2005, I was not primarily concerned about the comfort of bar and restaurant patrons who find cigarette smoke as offensive as I do.  I did not spend all that time on meetings, research, and lobbying so people could go out to dinner or to bars and feel more comfortable. 

The Federal government, through the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA), has implemented regulations, which protect a large proportion of American workers from a host of toxic substances.  In the early 1990s, OSHA issued a set of regulations on clean indoor air.  These regulations, which included environmental tobacco smoke, were never approved.  Why?

OSHA employees who were part of the process have told me that they had never seen an assault on regulations like the one unleashed by the tobacco and restaurant industries  on the clean indoor air regs.  By the end of the Clinton Administration, the regs had not been approved and the Bush Administration just let them die.

In the meantime, we have had to fight it out from city to city and state to state.  It is hard to know how many low wage, uninsured bar and restaurant workers have suffered harmful health effects as a result of the barriers erected by neo-conservatives, libertarians, and business owners.

My message to the selfish and the greedy is this:  it’s over.  The time has come.  You can no longer make other people sick because you want to smoke at any time and place of your choosing.  You have to consider other people.

  Recently, we traveled through Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee.  At no time did we encounter a “smoking restaurant.”  This trip through “tobacco country” tells me that it is time for businesses who want to sue and lose to just move on.

KKFI is community radio.  Community radio is just that – radio broadcasting that comes from the community rather than corporate America.  Community in this sense is Eastern Kansas and Western Missouri, in the middle of which is KKFI 90.1 FM.  This is an important media outlet for us to hear the “the truth” from programs such as Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now! (8:00 AM, Monday through Friday), and FAIR’s Counterspin (9:00 AM, Monday).

Democracy Now! is produced in New York’s Chinatown in a Downtown Community Television Center.  This program includes the type of open discussions of foreign policy, war, economics/social justice, and other issues that you won’t hear on corporate-sponsored media.

Counterspin, hosted by Janine Jackson, Steve Rendall, and Peter Hart, provides an exposure of the mainstream media’s biases, inaccuracies, and witting and un-witting spin of issues that affect the lives of everyday citizens.

KKFI focuses on local issues also.  On Saturday at 3:00 PM, Sharon Lockhart’s hosts EVERY WOMAN – a show about women making a difference and the men by their side. As 52% of humanity, women are not a ‘special interest’ group and EVERY WOMAN should work for nothing less than full participation in the social, political and economic arena.

The KKFI program schedule can be found at:  http://www.kkfi.org/programschedule.php.  Check it out!

You can make a donation to this community effort at: http://www.kkfi.org/donate.php.

 On July 3rd, Sharon Lockhart hosted a gathering of progressives at her home in Leawood.  The Tallgrass Activist was there.  This “Patriot Picnic,” hosted by Sharon, is an annual 4th of July fundraiser for the American Friends Service Committee .  It was a nice opportunity for this Lawrencian to connect with some progressive Kansas City soul mates.  The backyard barbecue was a  good opportunity to not only enjoy the company of other progressive thinkers, but to also discuss some ways we can come together across a wider area of Missouri and Kansas to take action.  Believe it or not there are a lot of us.  In fact, there are, I believe, probably more people on the progressive side of the political spectrum than there are in the Tea Party movement.

It was nice to have some discussions about organizing with (amongst other people) activists such as Dee Berry (Health Care for All), Ben Kjelshus (Green Party), and Sharon Lockhart, a well know activist in JOCO.  This is a good time to begin some political action.  The current assault on Social Security, ongoing wars, environmental degradation, mean-spirited Republican attacks on  poor, middle-class, and unemployed people, and a generally corrupt, wasteful health care system have progressives angry and just plain sick and tired of being sick and tired.

In their effort to slash the safety net for the elderly, billionaires such as Peter G. Peterson and their lackies in and out of government (e.g., at the Kellogg and MacArthur Foundations, in the U.S. Congress, at Harvard University, in the media, and amongst the deficit reduction commission appointed by President Obama) will probably provide the immediate catalyst for a major “coming together” in the progressive movement.  Progressives should provide the lead in opposing the cruel and unfair safety net slashing  that will be “on the table” soon after the next election.  This is one we can win!!

Don Kosmicki, Dave "Tallgrass Activist" Kingsley, Dee Berry, & Ben Kjelshus (Standing) Candy Gray & Rev. Rob Amerine (Sitting)

NEONATAL INTENSIVE CARE UNIT

It has become accepted wisdom that “old people” are running up health care costs.  This widespread belief allows legislators – who are mostly beholden to big Pharma, big Insurance, and big Hospital – to ignore racism, poverty, and a corrupt health-care system. 

The metaphor “plugging in granny” would lead one to believe that the oldest patients account for costly intensive care treatment, and, hence, the largest hospital charges.  Examination of hospital discharge costs for 2007 – the latest year they are available through the Agency for Health Quality and Research – shows a far different reality.  Hospital charges of $1 million or more are heavily concentrated in the under five age category.  While 30% of these extremely large charges are for patients under five years of age, less than 10% are for patients above the age of seventy-nine.

With an infant mortality rate amongst the highest in the World, along with increasing multiple and premature births, it is no wonder that neonatal intensive care units are very busy these days.  The good news is that medical science has advanced to the point that babies weighing less than 750 grams, born after 23 weeks of gestation, have a high probability of surviving – three fourths leave the hospital.  Twenty years ago, these babies rarely survived.

The bad news is that many of these children will have a life-time health of problems.  Furthermore, many premature births could be prevented with proper prenatal care.  My analysis of the AHRQ database indicates that 60% of the $1 million NICU charges are reimbursed through Medicaid, which suggests to me they are incurred by a lower income population.  This should not surprise anyone.  As the discussion of Professor Sandra Lane’s book (previous post below), “Why Are Our Babies Dying?” indicates, neglect of inner-city, minority populations is largely responsible for the disgraceful state of infant health in the United States.

Along with housing, jobs, decent activities and programs for kids, gun control has been proven to be effective in reducing homicide.  In the late 1980s, Boston and New York had homicide rates nearly equal to that of Kansas City.  Through very smart policing, which included gun control, programs for kids, housing and jobs programs, these two cities have reduced their homicide levels to at or below the national average of 5 per 100,000 in most years.  You can read all about Boston’s approach by Goggling Boston Strategy or by finding a copy of Murder is No Accident by Deborah Prothrow-Stith and Howard Spivak, both of whom are physicians, and both of whom were involved in the Boston Strategy.

Since I know a lot about guns (in the Marines, I was an infantry weapons specialist), I tried to tell KCMO community leaders that I never dreamed that so many of the weapons we used in the Marines would end up in the hands of civilians.  This fell on deaf ears.  Some of the community leaders were pro-gun conservatives; others either didn’t understand weapons or were intimidated by the current widespread gun-nuttiness in the U.S.  Furthermore, Kansas City leaders haven’t shown much of an inclination to do anything for the people living on the East side.

When I left the Marines, I never had a gun in my house or in my possession.  I lived in a “rough” neighborhood in Los Angeles for years and was in just about every part of that city in my daily activities. 

I don’t think people should even have hand guns.  Hopefully, people who like to kill animals will get over that infantile behavior and we could just leave all rifles, shot guns, and hand guns totally in the hands of the military where they belong.  Furthermore, adults who like to hear things go boom, boom should grow up and get rid of their extremely hazardous toys.  In other words, let’s just get firearms off of the streets and out of the civilian population.

The problem we have is simply this:  legislators are intimidated by the nutty, goon-like, aggressive National Rifle Association.  The Democratic-controlled U.S. Congress has even exempted these nuts from a recent bill to control lobbying activities.

 

The Nutty Rifle Association