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WASHINGTON (AP) — House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Bob Filner accused the Department of Veterans Affairs Tuesday of criminal negligence in the handling of data about the number of veterans who have committed suicide.
E-mails among VA officials were recently disclosed during a trial in San Francisco that suggested some might have been attempting to hide the number of attempted suicides by those under the agency’s care. More…
From AP Via Rawstory:
CHICAGO - Doctors know some patients needing lifesaving care won’t get it in a flu pandemic or other disaster. The gut-wrenching dilemma will be deciding who to let die.
Now, an influential group of physicians has drafted a grimly specific list of recommendations for which patients wouldn’t be treated. They include the very elderly, seriously hurt trauma victims, severely burned patients and those with severe dementia. The suggested list was compiled by a task force whose members come from prestigious universities, medical groups, the military and government agencies. They include the Department of Homeland Security, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services.
The proposed guidelines are designed to be a blueprint for hospitals “so that everybody will be thinking in the same way” when pandemic flu or another widespread health care disaster hits, said Dr. Asha Devereaux. She is a critical care specialist in San Diego and lead writer of the task force report.The idea is to try to make sure that scarce resources — including ventilators, medicine and doctors and nurses — are used in a uniform, objective way, task force members said.
Their recommendations appear in a report appearing Monday in the May edition of Chest, the medical journal of the American College of Chest Physicians.
“If a mass casualty critical care event were to occur tomorrow, many people with clinical conditions that are survivable under usual health care system conditions may have to forgo life-sustaining interventions owing to deficiencies in supply or staffing,” the report states.To prepare, hospitals should designate a triage team with the Godlike task of deciding who will and who won’t get lifesaving care, the task force wrote. Those out of luck are the people at high risk of death and a slim chance of long-term survival. But the recommendations get much more specific, and include:
Article Continues @ Sourced Site.
From Rawstory:
At least 20 disabled activists, most of them in wheelchairs, were arrested outside Sen. John McCain’s offices Tuesday after being refused a meeting with the GOP presidential nominee-to-be over a bill to expand Medicaid coverage to more people who want in-home care.
“If he should be president, it would be ironic that he comes from a party that talks a lot about family values,” said Bob Kafka, national organizer for ADAPT, a group advocating for passage of the bill. Without the legislation, many disabled and elderly people don’t have the choice to apply coverage to anything other than institutional care, he said.
“Families are devastated because they don’t have a choice to keep people at home,” Kafka said.
McCain was not in his office during the protest. He was campaigning Tuesday in Florida on his health care plan.
The bill, stuck in committee since last year, would amend the Social Security Act to allow people who are eligible for Medicaid coverage of nursing home costs to spend it instead on home-based, or community care.
Sponsored by Sens. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and Arlen Specter, R-Pa., it also would grant extra money to states that participate in the program, according to a summary of the bill.
Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination, are co-sponsors of the bill, but McCain is not.
Capitol Police Sgt. Kimberly Schneider said about 20 people from the group were arrested outside McCain’s office in the Russell Senate Office Building on Tuesday and charged with unlawful assembly.
Article Continues @ Sourced Site.
From The Washington Independent: By MIKE LILLIS 04/22/2008
The Bush administration has no plans to rescind controversial guidelines restricting enrollment in a popular children’s health-care program, despite a recent legal finding that they were administered illegally. The administration’s position could leave the issue to the courts, where several states have already sued the White House over their right to expand coverage under the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP.
It could also lead to a showdown with Congress, though legislative efforts to expand SCHIP were twice vetoed by President George W. Bush last year. Perhaps with that in mind, congressional critics of the enrollment guidelines are clinging to the unlikely hope that the new legal opinion will inspire the administration to scrap the rules voluntarily.
The long-running debate over SCHIP highlights the sharp differences between the White House and a Democratic Congress over Washington’s role in providing health care. With medical costs skyrocketing and employers dropping more and more coverage benefits, many lawmakers are pushing to expand that role into higher income brackets. The Bush administration has fought that push, claiming such expansions nibble away at private insurance markets.
In limbo are tens-of-thousands of kids whose health coverage hinges on their eligibility for the state-federal program.
At issue are controversial eligibility guidelines — issued directly to state health officials in an Aug. 17 letter — that prohibit states from using federal SCHIP funds to cover children in families earning more than 250 percent of the federal poverty level, or $53,000 for a family of four, until they have covered 95 percent of kids living under 200 percent of poverty, or $42,400. Supporters in and outside of the White House say the rules ensure that SCHIP dollars go to the lowest income kids.
But on Thursday, the Government Accountability Office challenged the guidelines, charging that the administration broke the law when it bypassed Congress in issuing them. Under a 12-year-old law, the GAO says, the changes have to be reviewed by both Congress and the GAO before they could take effect.
The legal opinion is being cheered by children’s health-care advocates and state health officials. But they might not want to hold their breath waiting for change: The GAO opinion has no teeth, and the Bush administration has already issued a statement saying it will ignore it.
“GAO’s opinion does not change the department’s conclusion that the 8/17 letter is still in effect,” Jeff Nelligan, spokesman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said in an Apr. 18 statement.
The issue boils down to a difference in legal interpretations. The Bush administration claims the Aug. 17 letter is just a non-binding statement of general policy — a clarification of existing law. The GAO, on the other hand, argues that the letter constitutes a policy change significant enough to require congressional and GAO perusal under the Congressional Review Act.
“The August 17 letter from CMS to state health officials is a statement of general applicability and future effect designed to implement, interpret or prescribe law or policy with regard to [SCHIP],” GAO writes. “Accordingly, it is a rule under the Congressional Review Act. Therefore, before it can take effect, it must be submitted to Congress and the Comptroller General.”
The Congressional Research Service, another nonpartisan investigative research body, reached a similar conclusion in a January report.
Article Continues @ Sourced Site.
For more background on this story, see the Original Article.Via Rawstory:
StaffAP NewsApr 05, 2008 21:22 EST
Sect leaders at a polygamist compound in West Texas refused Saturday to let authorities search a temple for a teenage girl whose report of abuse led to the raid, and authorities said they were preparing “for the worst.”
If no agreement is reached with sect leaders, authorities will forcibly remove the sect’s followers “as peaceably as possible,” Allison Palmer, a prosecutor in Tom Green County, told the San Angelo Standard-Times.
Medical workers are being sent “in case this were to a go in a way that no one wants,” Palmer said. Law enforcers are “preparing for the worst,” she said.
“Within the religion that we have encountered, their place of worship is very special to them,” Palmer said. “It appears to be of great concern to them if a person from outside their congregation even attempts to step inside their place of worship.
“A search warrant authorized troopers to enter the retreat, run by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. They are looking for evidence of a marriage between the girl and a 50-year-old man.
Court documents the girl had a baby eight months ago, when she was 15.
Article Continues @ Sourced Site.
From Wausau Daily Herald and The Associated Press
WESTON, WI — The mother of an 11-year-old girl who died of untreated diabetes said Wednesday that she did not know her daughter was terminally ill as she prayed for her to get better.
The parents of Madeline Kara Neumann called 911 three minutes after police and EMS crews already had been sent to their home by the girl’s aunt, who lives in California.
Neumann died Sunday from an undiagnosed form of diabetes. The family told police they chose to pray for her to get better, rather than seek medical assistance.
Neumann’s mother, Leilani Neumann, told The Associated Press Wednesday she never expected her daughter, who she called Kara, to die. The family believes in the Bible, which says healing comes from God, but they are not crazy, religious people and have nothing against doctors, she said.
The aunt from California told a Marathon County sheriff’s dispatcher Sunday afternoon that the girl was thought to be at home in a coma. She advised the dispatcher in a recorded phone call that the family was religious and refused to take the girl to the hospital, despite the aunt’s urging them to do so for at least three days.
When the dispatcher asked if an ambulance should be sent to the Neumanns’ town of Weston home, the aunt replied, “Yes. She’s refusing. She’s going to fight it,” in reference to the girl’s mother.
A few minutes later, at 2:38 p.m., a male caller from the home told a sheriff’s dispatcher that a child there was not breathing, according to the 911 call, a copy of which was obtained by the Daily Herald. The dispatcher informed the caller that an ambulance already was on its way. He then attempted to instruct the family how to perform CPR. Family members sounded panicky, and cries and screaming could be heard in the background.
Officers met with the Neumann family Wednesday, and Everest Metro Police Chief Dan Vergin said he hopes to complete the investigation late this week or early next week.
Child protective services interviewed Kara Neumann’s three older siblings Wednesday night to determine whether it was safe to return them to the home, Vergin told CNN’s Nancy Grace. More…
Via Yahoo: By MARTIN CRUTSINGER, AP Economics Writer
WASHINGTON - The trustees of Social Security and Medicare are certain to kick off a fierce round of debate when they release their annual assessment of the fiscal health of the government’s two biggest benefit programs.
The battle will be waged not only between the Democratic-controlled Congress and President Bush but also in this year’s presidential campaign, where the issue is expected to attract a lot of attention in light of the looming retirement of 78 million baby boomers.
All sides will try to use Tuesday’s report to score political points, but that is probably as far as the debate will go — at least until a new president takes office next year.
Bush, who had vowed to make overhauling Social Security a top priority of his second term, will almost certainly leave office with that goal unfulfilled given that Treasury SecretaryHenry Paulson, his point person on the issue, has not made any headway with Democrats in Congress in finding a compromise to resolve the pension program’s fiscal problems.
Democrats contend that Bush lost valuable time after his 2004 re-election pushing a plan to allow younger workers to direct their payroll tax contributions into private accounts, an idea that went nowhere in Congress.
Article @ Sourced Site.
Healing - Oregon City parents could face charges for failing to seek medical help for an ill child
Saturday, March 22, 2008
JESSICA BRUDER and DANA TIMS
The case of a 15-month-old Oregon City girl who died for lack of medical treatment could become the first test of a state law that disallows faith healing at the expense of a child’s life.
Ava Worthington died March 2 at home from bacterial bronchial pneumonia and infection, according to Dr. Christopher Young, a deputy state medical examiner. He said both conditions could have been prevented or treated with antibiotics.
The child’s breathing was further compromised by a benign cyst that had never been medically addressed and could have been removed from her neck, Young said.
Child-abuse detectives recently referred investigative findings to prosecutors, who are evaluating the case in light of a law passed in 1999 after several faith-healing deaths of children.
“This is the first time that they could be taking a shot at interpreting the law,” said state Senate President Peter Courtney, who carried the contentious bill on the Senate floor nearly a decade ago. He said the Worthington case is giving him “flashbacks.”
“Kids were dying. Kids were suffering,” he said. “Kids who have no choice over these things.” MORE
The ruling says a detainee who later died of penile cancer was denied a biopsy of a lesion though several doctors said the procedure was urgently needed. His family will be allowed to seek damages.
By Henry Weinstein, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 13, 2008
In a stinging ruling, a Los Angeles federal judge said immigration officials’ alleged decision to withhold a critical medical test and other treatment from a detainee who later died of cancer was “beyond cruel and unusual” punishment.
The decision from U.S. District Judge Dean Pregerson allows the family of Francisco Castaneda to seek financial damages from the government.
Castaneda, who suffered from penile cancer, died Feb. 16. Before his release from custody last year, the government had refused for 11 months to authorize a biopsy for a growing lesion, even though voluminous government records showed that several doctors said the test was urgently needed, given Castaneda’s condition and a family history of cancer, Pregerson said.
But rather than test and treat Castaneda, government officials told him to be patient and prescribed antihistamines, ibuprofen and extra boxer shorts, the judge wrote in a decision released late Tuesday. In summary, the judge wrote, the care provided to Castaneda “can be characterized by one word: nothing.”
Pregerson blasted public health officials’ “attempt to sidestep responsibility for what appears to be . . . one of the most, if not the most, egregious” violations of the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment that “the court has ever encountered.”
At this stage of the proceedings, “the only question is whether” the plaintiffs’ allegations, if true, show that government officials “were deliberately indifferent to his condition. The court finds that they do,” Pregerson said. MORE
This is appalling!
~Susan~
By Nancy Keenan at Huffington Post
It was a late night last night for the U.S. Senate. In the past, when anti-choice politicians controlled the process, that would have meant something dreadful would have happened to women’s freedom and privacy.
Previous Congresses were famous for votes at 3 a.m., hoping their shenanigans would go unreported and slip under the public’s radar screen.
But, pro-choice Americans, I am pleased to report different news: Last night, the Senate rejected two anti-choice amendments, but the razor-thin margin by which we won these votes is a reminder of why elections matters.
To what amendments am I referring?
Well, you can depend on anti-choice politicians to lack creativity and imagination, and last night was no exception.
In a blatant attempt to entangle the budget resolution in anti-abortion politics, Sen. Wayne Allard (R-CO) offered an amendment intended to codify a controversial Bush administration regulation, put in place in 2002, which allows states to make an embryo or a fetus — but not a pregnant woman — eligible for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). The amendment failed 46-52. Last year, a coalition of pro-choice and pro-life senators defeated a similar Allard proposal — but last night we picked up a few new senators. The tide is moving in the right direction! More…
The roll call of the Boxer Amendment that extends coverage to pregnant women through SCHIP can be found here.
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