It’s fairly well known that Americans, especially those in Texas and California, have been crossing the border to Mexico for cheaper prescription drugs for years -but Texans are now turning to our neighbor for more than pharmaceuticals. With the recent economic downturn, skyrocketing health care costs, and an increasingly broken health care system, Americans are now seeking health care refuge and lower costs across the border.
According to a UCLA study, millions of Californians are crossing into Mexico for health care because they cannot afford the rising costs at home. The study states that at least 952,000 California adults – roughly 488,000 are Mexican immigrants- travel south for their medical, dental and prescription services.
With rising unemployment and the accompanying loss of health insurance, is this the only option for our citizens? Is this the kind of America our fore fathers envisioned for us? One whose citizens are forced to seek treatment for injuries and illness in neighboring countries? An America that does not even come close to ensuring that people are receiving the care they need- at a cost they can afford?
Why don’t we just change the Statue of Liberty inscription to “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, …but the sick- you guys can go to Mexico.”
If our health care system is so great, why are millions of people choosing to go to Mexico for their health care? Or trying to buy their drugs from Canadian pharmacies? And why was our beloved United States of A-Merry-Ca’s health care system ranked 37th in the world by the World Health organization the last year they did international rankings in 2000? Why is the country of quiche, Chardonnay sippers and surrender monkeys, that evil bastion of socialized single payer health care, i.e., France, ranked number 1? Why, in short do we suck at providing affordable, reliable, universal health care to all our citizens?
Last Thursday, the House Committee on Education and Labor held a hearing on President Obama’s proposal to cut wasteful subsidies to student loan companies in order to increase grants to low and middle income students. Campus Progress Action submitted a statement to the committee—check it out.
Here are some clips from the hearing:
Testimony from Robert Shireman, who is the Deputy Under Secretary for the U.S. Department of Education and the former President of The Institute for College Access and Success.
Rep. Rob Andrews questioning the witnesses. For a bit of comic relief, check out Rep. Andrews questioning Dr. Richard Vedder, a conservative economist that writes about higher education issues, at 3:39.
After months of being attacked from all sides, the American Clean Energy and Securities Act (ACES) finally made it through the Energy and Commerce committee, looking more like a colander than like a ‘Clean Energy Jobs bill’, as it is often touted by centrist environmentalist organizations. A bunch of environmental groups came out against the weakened ACES arguing that “while a week of debate failed to adequately strengthen protections for consumers, communities, and the climate in this bill, it erased all doubt of who will benefit most from it: Big Business”. Environmental Defense Fund and the National Resources Defense Council, who masterminded the first iteration of the bill, came out in support and most others (Disclaimer: Campus Progress is in this last category) are not taking a stance one way or another while loudly calling for the bill to be strengthened. This bill is over 900 pages long (Chairman Waxman hired a speedreader in anticipation of Republican demands that parts of the bill be read aloud, check it out!) and contains everything from a market-based pollution reduction system, to Renewable Energy Standards, to funds for international assistance, to a ton of giveaways for coal companies and dirty utilities.
This bill isn’t perfect, far from it. It’s the product of a political process that is corrupt and gives way too much power and access to corporations who realized a long time ago that having politicians in their pockets is a much better investment than innovating their products for the public good. The bill went from being a relatively weak, but still exciting Clean Energy Jobs Bill to becoming a bailout for King Coal thanks to the hard work of Blue Dog Democrats (especially those on the top of the King Coal’s donor list) who weakened the bill every chance they got. Chairmen Waxman and Markey did an incredible job protecting the bill at every turn, but their herculean effort wasn’t enough to overcome the copious amount of cash donated by energy industries to the campaign coffers of most Energy and Commerce committee members (duh, makes you wonder how progress can be ever made, it’s time to Change Congress!).
15 people of all ages, were arrested this morning while obstructing Representative Boucher ’s (D-VA) office. Rick Boucher is the second largest recipient of coal money in congress (preceded only by fellow Democrat and Energy and Resources committee member John Dingell from Michigan) and many of his constituents are getting fed up with him for voting in favor of King Coal and against the economic well-being of his district. This action was the latest chapter in an escalating series of attempts by Virginia Tech students to meet with their legislator about the climate crisis, all attempts that were blatantly ignored by his scheduler. Instead of listening to his constituents, Rick Boucher has been busy meeting with coal lobbyists and negotiated behind closed doors to weaken the American Clean Energy and
After spending 4 months waiting for a response from Boucher’s scheduler, our friends at the Chesapeake Climate Action Network decided it was time to turn it up a notch and organized an incredibly inspiring sit-in to obstruct Rick Boucher’s office due to his own obstruction of working-class and climate friendly legislation. Check out this video and pictures after the gap:
The GOP have finally revealed their own health care plan, which, in short, is a tweaked version of the McCain health care plan- which offers roughly $5,000 in tax rebates for families to purchase coverage, even though the average cost to cover a family is $12,000.
Hmm, something just isn’t adding up here….can this really amount to affordable coverage for all? I think not.
The Republican plan, titled “The Patients Choice Act” can be seen and further summarized in this Huffington Postarticle:
… the plan will be introduced by U.S. Senators Tom Coburn, (R-OK) and Richard Burr (R-NC) and U.S. Representatives Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Devin Nunes (R-CA) at 11 a.m[Wednesday, 5/20]. The focus of the proposal — an advanced copy of which was obtained by the Huffington Post — is to push for a “guaranteed choice of coverage” in the private market through federal-state partnerships know as State Health Insurance Exchanges.
President Obama yesterday took a ‘major’ step” that many progressives had been waiting on for a long time, when he resolved the dispute between California and auto-makers over regulating how much gas cars can guzzle.
For those who haven’t been following this telenovela-worthy drama, the backstory goes like this: It’s the year 2005 and California wants to reduce it’s carbon footprint because it recognizes that such measures would help save people money, improve public health and save its agricultural land from becoming a desert. Republican Governor Schwarzenegger agrees that making cars guzzle less gas would be a cost-effective, consumer friendly way to address all these issues and approves mandating that cars sold in the Golden State must burn less oil. Car companies, being the trigger-happy criminals that they are, decide to complain to their friend President Bush to avoid ‘burdensome’ regulation arguing that it would bee too chaotic and unfair for them to have to follow different standards for every state, all this while crying croccodile tears on their private jets. Now, under the oversight any president with any respect for its citizens, this issue would have been resolved pretty quickly and California would have been granted the permit to set their own regulations. But the Bush administration’s Environmental Protection Agency, known for its Environmentally Pejorative Actions, denied California its right to protect its citizens leading to a drawn out law suit which wasn’t resolved until yesterday, when President Obama stepped in and passed an extremely Obanesque solution.
Earlier today, Congress passed the Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights. The bill will end some of the worst abuses of the credit card industry by creating protections for borrowers – especially young people and students.
This represents one of the first times that Congress has ever taken on the credit card industry. As Ed Mierzwinski—long-time consumer advocacte with US PIRG—wrote in his blog yesterday:
I’ve been in Washington twenty years. For the first 19 we couldn’t even get a committee vote on credit card reform despite these practices.
Credit Card Bill will Help Young People & Students
Today Congress passed the Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights by a margin of 361-64 in the House of Representatives, following yesterday’s vote of 90 to 5 in the Senate. The President is expected to sign the bill on Friday afternoon. “By passing this legislation, Congress took a big step toward extending basic protections to all credit card borrowers, especially young people and students,” said Erica Williams, Deputy Director of Campus Progress, whotestifiedbefore the House Financial Services Committee on this issue last summer on behalf of Campus Progress Action.
[Click here to read the full statement & factsheet]
Campus Progress Action also participated in a press conference call on Monday with other student organizations. You can listen to the recording online.
You know you’re getting into the thick of a debate when the gloves come off, the lying begins, and promises are broken just as soon as they’re made. Well, roll up your sleeves, because we’re wading into the thick of the health care reform debate and its about to get ugly.
Former health insurance executive Rick Scott, recently released ads with the aim of spreading fear, warning that if Obama’s health care reform passes, Americans will “lose control of their medical system”. These ads were released through Scott’s group, Conservatives for Patients Rights (CPR), who have loudly voiced their opposition to the progressive health care reform advocated by Health Care for America NOW(HCAN). In turn, HCAN released their own ads exposing Rick Scott for his health insurance fraud and rhetoric. Not to be outdone and in a desperate attempt to raise funds,CPR quickly sent a boastful letter to their supporters, proclaiming that Comcast pulled HCAN’s ads from the air due to misleading content.
That claim was a blatant lie.Comcast confirmed to HCAN that the ads had simply expired from their original media buy and will return to the airwaves soon.
In further heated news, health insurance executives have already backed out of their commitment to President Obama to cut costs in national health care spending. Executives are claiming that the whole discussion was misunderstood and overstated. Instead of the firm commitment to trim $2 trillion from health care spending, the industry is now using terms such as “eventually”, “gradually”, and “not specific” on when the spending “target” would be achieved. Breaking that commitment didn’t take long and just proves that we can’t leave it up to the insurance industry for real reform.
This is the week of markups and cut-downs when it comes to climate. Monday began the first day of committee markup on the climate bill, which is a week-long session the House Energy and Commerce Committee will use to debate the Waxman/Markey bill. So far, the markup has displayed continued moderate Democratic support and repetitive complaints from GOP members, along with a whopping 450 possible amendments written by Republicans. However, Rep. Barton (R-Texas) stated that he only expects the GOP to focus on about 150 of the amendments. Some proposed amendments include expanding renewable energy sources to include nuclear or carbon-capture, proposed by Rep. Whitfield (R-Ky), and terminating the bill all together if unemployment reaches 10%, proposed by Rep. Upton ( R- Mich.).
Democrats have offered their own amendments as well, including a revised bill from Reps. Waxman (D-Calif.) and Markey (D-Mass.) and a call for a Clean Energy Investment Bank from Rep. Dingell (D-Mich.).
The markup is expected to be completed before the Memorial Day recess – while some of us wait with our fingers crossed, other students and young people are calling their Representatives and participating in sit-ins at the Capitol to demand a strong climate bill.
Also big news for this week – Obama will announce a plan to cut tailpipe emissions nationally, a huge and history-breaking step for the United States. Check out this Progress Report article for more:
Today, President Obama will unveil “the first-ever national emission limits for cars and trucks,” a move that Sierra Club President Carl Pope says is “one of the most significant efforts undertaken by any president, ever, to end our addiction to oil and seriously slash our global warming emissions.” Daniel Becker of the Safe Climate Campaign calls it “single biggest step the American government has ever taken to cut greenhouse-gas emissions.” The Obama administration will also raise fuel efficiency targets so that by 2016, cars and light trucks will have an average mile requirement of 35.5 miles per gallon (mpg) by 2016.
It’s Graduation season -a time for celebration. Yet many college graduates this year may be celebrating with a few significant concerns hovering in the back of their minds, such as entering a depleting job market (According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers only 20% of 2009 graduates who have applied for jobs have been hired, compared to 51% in 2007), or facing a crushing burden of student loan debt (The average amount of debt a student graduates with is a hefty $20,000, according to the Project on Student Debt), or the final concern of graduating into the new status of being completely uninsured.
Young adults, ages 19-29, account for the largest and fastest-growing segment of the population without health insurance, according to the CommonWealth Fund. Many young people are dropped from their parents’ policies or public programs when they turn 19 or on the very day they graduate, leaving them out in the cold to find coverage and navigate the confusing private health insurance market on their own. Even when hired into the job market, many young adults are entering into low-income, entry-level, or temporary positions where health benefits may not be offered or are very limited. This is not only a health risk, but it puts immediate financial stress on young adults who are just starting out in the workforce. Low-income young adults and young people of color are hit the hardest.
So, on top of the stress of finding a job and working in low-income or temporary positions just to pay off student debt and bills, young graduates are struggling with the fear of not being covered in a health emergency or they are paying outrageous out-of-pocket costs for prescriptions or health care visits. Graduation has literally become hazardous to your health.
Check out this article Out of College, Out of Coverage for stories from graduating students worried about losing their health insurance:
Stefanie Swanson, 21, of Doylestown, who is graduating from Villanova University, recently caught up on her medical checkups in advance of her graduation – and loss of coverage – later this month. “I won’t be covered by the end of May,” she says. “Hopefully, nothing will happen between now and when I get a job.”
Lateefah Holder, 23, a Temple University senior and theater major, knows firsthand the steep cost of living without insurance. She lost coverage under her parents’ plan three years ago after she became a part-time student. When she got the flu last year, she passed out, hit her head, and was hospitalized with a concussion. She’s graduating this month with $5,000 in medical bills, along with $80,000 in college loans.
“At this age, you never think something is going to happen to you,” says Holder, who is from Bloomfield, N.J., “but you’re wrong.”
The increasing loss of coverage among young people just represents the spreading illness that has become our failing health care system. We can’t let this generation fall through the cracks.
Funding our Future is a campaign to pass a progressive federal budget for 2010 and ensure that our nation.s key economic choices invest in our education, spark reform of our health care system, and address climate change through cap and trade and clean energy investments. Click here for more info.
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for May, 2009.
It’s fairly well known that Americans, especially those in Texas and California, have been crossing the border to Mexico for cheaper prescription drugs for years -but Texans are now turning to our neighbor for more than pharmaceuticals. With the recent economic downturn, skyrocketing health care costs, and an increasingly broken health care system, Americans are now seeking health care refuge and lower costs across the border.
Earlier today, Congress passed the Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights. The bill will end some of the worst abuses of the credit card industry by creating protections for borrowers – especially young people and students.
This is the week of markups and cut-downs when it comes to climate. Monday began the first day of committee 
It’s Graduation season -a time for celebration. Yet many college graduates this year may be celebrating with a few significant concerns hovering in the back of their minds, such as entering a depleting job market (According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers only 20% of 2009 graduates who have applied for jobs have been hired, compared to 51% in 2007), or facing a crushing burden of student loan debt (The average amount of debt a student graduates with is a hefty $20,000, according to the Project on Student Debt), or the final concern of graduating into the new status of being completely uninsured.