Category: Health care

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Congress GOP Health care Joe Biden The Biden Administration

Democrats Are About To Expand Medicare – And The GOP Can’t Do Anything About It

Congressional Democrats are about to pass a truly historic $6 trillion budget that will focus on priorities identified by President Joe Biden as fundamental to making sure the United States addresses the problems facing the nation: Crumbling infrastructure, climate change, and the lack of affordable health care for every American.

According to the Washington Post, most of the discussion is taking place in the Senate, which remains evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, 50-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tiebreaking vote when needed.

One of the biggest changes would be to Medicare:

“(Democrats) are also considering reconciliation as an avenue to pursue changes to Medicare that would lower the eligibility age to 60 from 65, as well as major reforms that expand its coverage to include vision and dental and seek to lower the cost of prescription drugs, according to the three people familiar with the effort.”

Yes, the plan is to use budget reconciliation for the massive budget package, meaning that Senate Republicans cannot filibuster or block the bill reaching the Senate floor and becoming law.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) says he’s convinced there’s unity among Democrats that will be needed to pass the reconciliation package this summer:

“I think there was universal agreement [that] we have a lot of things we have to do to help the American people, and we have to have unity to do it.”

The Biden budget would be paid for with higher taxes on the wealthiest and corporations:

“The reconciliation package is also expected to open the door for changes to the tax code that raise rates on corporations and high-income earners, the sources said. Biden has sought to unwind the 2017 tax cuts approved under then-President Donald Trump to fund his economic agenda, a position that Republicans vehemently oppose.”

Republicans oppose rescinding the tax cut because it benefits their wealthy contributors who help bankroll their campaigns.

It should also be noted that plans to spend on infrastructure, climate change, and health care are wildly popular with voters, so passing such a budget deal could well benefit Democrats in next year’s midterm elections.

Once again, we see that President Biden, Sen. Schumer, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi have outmaneuvered Republicans, who stand for nothing but obstruction, whining, and lies.

 

Categories
Coronavirus Health care Uncategorized WTF?!

Anti-Vaxxers Are Now Claiming The COVID Vaccine Changes Your Race

The people who are opposed to anyone getting vaccinated for deadly diseases such as smallpox, flu, or even the novel coronavirus live in a fact-free world where the only source of information consists of conspiracy theories they find on the internet from others who share their bizarre worldview. Science, medicine, and logic do not exist for such easily deluded individuals.

But a new theory circulating among the anti-vaxxer crowd may well be the most absurd yet: If you take the vaccine for COVID-19, it will change you to another race.

The Daily Beast reports that there’s a strain of misinformation circulating that tells people the coronavirus vaccine threatens to turn the human race into a mutated pro-human:

“This long-simmering idea, which could not only help to steer some people away from vaccines but also fan the flames of already volatile cultural divisions and conflicts, came into stark focus in mid-March, when a meme spread across pandemic denialist Telegram channels, featuring a large image of two sheep fucking, and a block of text that reads: ‘DO NOT BREED WITH SHEEP.’

“‘People who are vaccinated will have modified DNA,’ it continues. ‘No one discusses that DNA is passed onto the next generation. The risk that your children will marry into other cultures is possibly now shadowed by the fact that your children may marry into a COVID vaxed gene group potentially shortening their lives and that of others.'”

Another anti-vaccine poster went a step further, breathlessly opining that those who are vaccinated suddenly become a threat to the unvaccinated:

“They are now genetically modified humans,” that user posted in a community chat last month. “They are not even technically human anymore. Vaccinated people are honestly a threat to humanity as a whole.”

Did you know you had been genetically modified? It must be true; it was on the internet!

There’s also the race change theory for those who wear their tinfoil hats a few sizes too small:

“Only vaccinated people will marry each other while non vaccinated will also get married,” one Redditor wrote earlier this year. “[It] will split the human race into a fake race. The Vaccinated Race.”

Oh my gosh! Does that mean all those flu vaccines we’ve taken for nearly a hundred years have turned us all into flu virus superspreaders without our knowledge?! Make it stop! Soylent Green is people!!!

Let’s all take a few deep breaths and listen to what medical professionals have to say about the matter.

Paul Knoepfler, a cell biologist and genetics researcher at the University of California, Davis, said this about the nutso shit floating around on the World Wide Web:

“I don’t see any way the vaccines could even unintentionally cause genetic changes. It’s just not going to happen.”

More deep breaths. Are those gills on the side of your neck that you’re breathing through? In that case, I have to ask: Did you get Moderna, Pfizer, or Johnson & Johnson?

Some people will believe anything, won’t they?

Categories
Donald Trump Elections Health care

Trump Gets Supremely Mocked After Announcing He’ll Have A ‘Medical Exam’ Live On Fox News

Later this evening on Fox News, the so-called president of the United States, Donald Trump, will get what’s being billed as a “medical exam” during Tucker Carlson’s show, Business Insider reports:

“President Donald Trump will appear in an on-camera interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson on Friday, the network announced.

“Fox News said its resident medical expert, Dr. Marc Siegel, would ‘conduct a medical evaluation and interview’ of the president during the show.”

Specifically, Siegel will ask Trump some questions and make a diagnosis based on what the president tells him, even though the good doctor has no credibility whatsoever:

“Siegel, an associate professor of medicine at NYU Langone, has spread coronavirus misinformation in the past. Like Trump, he has repeatedly pushed the unproven drug hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment in Fox News interviews, and in March he falsely claimed that the disease was no worse than the flu.”

Sounds totally legit, huh? Twitter certainly thought so, and mockery ensued:

Speaking only for myself (though I’m quite certain others feel the same), there’s not any damn part of a Trump physical exam that should be shown on television at any time of the day. I’d just as soon watch maggots making a meal of a roadkill armadillo.

Categories
Coronavirus Donald Trump Health care The Trump Adminstration

Trump Vows To ‘Terminate’ Obamacare As The U.S. Death Toll Approaches 75,000

The U.S. death toll from the novel coronavirus is nearing 75,000, with 1.2 million total cases, both of which are significantly higher than any other nation in the world, and yet Donald Trump is again vowing to destroy Obamacare so that millions more people will be without health insurance at a time when we all need it most.


On Wednesday at the White House, the president was asked about the Supreme Court hearing of a case that would strike down the Affordable Care Act (ACA), directly contradicting what Attorney General William Barr had wanted, CNN reports:

“According to four sources familiar with the meeting, Barr argued for modifying the administration’s current stance to preserve parts of the law, rather than fully back the lawsuit filed by a group of Republican states. As it stands now, the Trump administration’s position seeks to invalidate the entire Affordable Care Act, signed by President Barack Obama in 2010 and commonly known as Obamacare.”


Did Trump agree with Barr? Nope. Instead, he tossed him and the Justice Department under the bus, telling reporters:

“We’re not doing anything. In other words, we’re staying with the group, with Texas and the group.”

Trump then went off on one of his extemporaneous bouts of verbal diarrhea, declaring Obamacare to be a “disaster” even though he has never come up with an alternative to it as he has promised to on several occasions:

“Obamacare is a disaster, but we’ve run it very well, and we’ve made it barely acceptable. It was a disaster under President Obama, and it’s very bad health care. What we want to do is terminate it and give health care. We’ll have great health care, including preexisting conditions.”


More telling, however, was what the president said about health care in general, which he seemed to suggest he wanted to destroy completely:

“We want to terminate health care for — under Obamacare because it’s bad, and we’re replacing it with a great health care at far less money and it includes preexisting conditions.”

Health care is on the ballot in November. If Donald Trump gets a second term in office, he will rip health insurance away from tens of millions. He will also gut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. The majority of us will be left poorer, sicker, and less secure.

Donald Trump won’t be happy until he destroys everything that makes this country humane and civil.