Tuesday, May 5, 2020
Free Fauci
by
Abby Zimet, Further columnist
https://www.commondreams.org/further/2020/05/01/free-fauci
In the midst of a pandemic that's killed more than 65,000 Americans and infected more than a million, the White House has announced that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country's leading expert on pandemics and the primary reason the death toll isn't even more obscene, will be blocked from testifying at a Congressional hearing on Trump's crisis response, because it would be "counter-productive" to have an esteemed scientist spout science stuff, crimes are the only things that the thugs of Trump's Crime Syndicate know how to do, and nothing says we have nothing to hide like flagrant obstruction of the truth and this is exactly how innocent people act. A House Appropriations subcommittee had sought Fauci's testimony for a May 6 hearing in the wake of demands by Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and many others to investigate Trump's murderously inept blunders on the coronvirus outbreak. The White House statement said that while the Trump administration "continues its whole-of-government response to COVID-19...it is counter-productive to have the very individuals involved in those efforts" speak to Congress, though they'd be happy to "offer testimony at the appropriate time," like, never. Their latest insanity quickly prompted the furious hashtags #TestifyFauci and #FreeFauci. Nothing to see here except the flouting of utter criminality and the brazen shredding of democracy.
The Hate That Is Among Us
https://www.commondreams.org/further/2020/05/04/hate-among-us
Monday, May 04, 2020
by
Abby Zimet, Further columnist
15 Comments
Idiots on parade in Michigan. Photo by AFP via Getty.
The apparent decision by "a stunningly dysfunctional White House" hellbent on re-electing a sociopath to heedlessly pursue re-opening the country - thus committing "large-scale negligent homicide" and needlessly sacrificing up to 240,000 American lives, or 3,000 a day - seems to have opened the floodgates of stupid and hateful. Both are on full sorrowful display in the Trump-enabled, increasingly rabid lockdown protests sprouting across the country, even as the numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths begin sharply rising outside urban epicenters. Still, shout these brave yahoos and patriots intent on "liberating" their states from the tyranny of wearing a mask to protect one's neighbors, damn the body bags and full speed ahead: Cue the surreal, sordid pageantry of bellicose crowds boasting swastikas, nooses, Confederate flags and the still-beguiling claims of "hoax." Last week, some of the most virulent scenes took place in Michigan, where the country's third highest number of cases is disproportionately killing black residents - hence the warning, “GOD SAYS STAY IN YOUR ARK" - where an idiot GOP congressman is suing Gov. Whitmer for trying to save her constituents, and where beefy, hyped-up, assault-rifle-toting thugs strong-armed their way into the Capitol, menaced lawmakers and pointlessly stared down police, because freedom.
In Illinois, hundreds gathered in Springfield to claim, "We stand here today as slaves." To heighten the cognitive dissonance, among them was a woman waving in the demented air a sign reading, “ARBEIT MACHT FREI" - "Work Will Set You Free" - the infamous slogan looming above Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps, and "one of the icons of human hatred....a symptom of moral & intellectual degeneration." Her photo was posted by nurse Dennis Kosuth, who stressed it wasn't photoshopped and argued, "If this photo bothers you, join efforts to better our world." At his daily coronavirus briefing, Gov. JB Pritzker, whose Jewish family fled pogroms to come to this country and who helped build the state's Holocaust museum, decried the image as "a demonstration of the hate that is among us." The hate stretched clear to California, where frenzied crowds screamed in the faces of placid cops about Murica - white privilege at its best - and a wise-ass racist in San Diego wore a KKK hood while buying groceries to meet the state's face-covering mandate. A county official called the act "abhorrent," adding, "This is not who we are." But at this point, we're not sure. As to those floodgates: For a reminder all this hate is in the name of pure stupid, read a devastating account of a New York ICU nurse about the daily, deadly, heartrending reality - "This is our grief" - these morons cannot see. Then read the thread by the daughter of a California ICU doctor about the unprecedented horrors he's seeing. "Send this thread to any idiot fucker who posts an Instagram at the beach or a crowded park," she urges. "Tell them my dad says see you later."
Illinois. Photo by Dennis Kosuth
California
She had "Re-Open Illinois" on the other side "because some people are touchy about swastikas."
Michigan
Tennessee
'A Travesty': Trump Restricting Covid-19 Relief Funds From Hospitals Serving Nation's Poorest
"Trump is using hospital bailout fund money to disproportionately help high revenue hospitals, and leave safety-net systems in the lurch."
by
Jake Johnson, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/05/04/travesty-trump-restricting-covid-19-relief-funds-hospitals-serving-nations-poorest
Public health experts, state officials, and frontline medical workers are sounding the alarm and demanding an urgent change of course as the Trump administration disproportionately allocates Covid-19 relief funds to higher-revenue hospitals while restricting the flow of aid to providers that primarily serve low-income people.
The Los Angeles Times reported late last week that the Trump administration's "program to aid hospitals and doctors on the front lines of the coronavirus crisis is leaving behind the nation's Medicaid safety net—the pediatricians, mental health providers, and hospitals that serve the poorest patients."
The CARES Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law in late March, included $100 billion in funding for U.S. hospitals, and the interim stimulus bill passed last month authorized $75 billion more."That result is likely to deepen inequalities in America's healthcare system as tens of billions of dollars of federal assistance go primarily to large medical systems that serve higher-income patients with Medicare or private health insurance," the Times noted.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has wide discretion over how those funds are distributed, and critics are warning that the Trump administration is using that authority to deny relief to providers that serve more vulnerable populations. As Common Dreams reported last month, the White House tapped the nation's largest private health insurer, UnitedHealth Group, to help distribute $30 billion in hospital funds.
"I don't want to point fingers, but it seems like it's the big players who are the ones who got listened to," Dr. Assaad Sayah, CEO of the Massachusetts-based provider Cambridge Health Alliance, told the Times. "Who is sitting at the table when decisions are being made? I know it's not me. It's not organizations like us."
As Rachana Pradhan and Lauren Weber of Kaiser Health News reported last month, "the $30 billion was distributed to more than 300,000 entities around the country but the decision to rely on past Medicare billings meant many providers hardly got a bite of the apple, including children's hospitals and nursing homes, which predominantly rely on Medicaid and other programs for reimbursement."
In a letter (pdf) to HHS Secretary Alex Azar last week, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists warned that the "situation facing frontline physicians is dire" and will only get worse if the Trump administration doesn't prioritize emergency funding for Medicaid providers.
"Obstetrician-gynecologists, pediatricians, and family physicians are facing dramatic financial challenges leading to substantial layoffs and even practice closures," the organizations wrote. "These challenges threaten patients' access to medically necessary and time-sensitive care during and after the public health emergency."
Medicaid, which has been under attack by the Trump administration for years, provides crucial insurance coverage to around 70 million low-income Americans, including millions of children.
But Medicaid has taken a back seat in the Trump administration's distribution of relief funds, state officials are warning. "The bigger your Medicaid business, the worse you do," North Carolina Health Secretary Mandy Cohen told the Times."Medicaid is a lifeline for millions of Americans, and its importance has never been more clear as America grapples with the coronavirus crisis that threatens everyone's health and safety," Brad Woodhouse, executive director of advocacy group Protect Our Care, said in a statement last Friday.
As the Times reported, HHS initially doled out relief funds "based on providers' Medicare revenues, a calculation that favored hospitals and physicians that care for large numbers of elderly patients."
"Last week, Azar announced yet another formula, which would allot additional aid largely based on medical providers' total revenues," the Times noted. "This tipped the scales even more toward hospitals, physicians, and other providers that care for patients with commercial health insurance, which typically pays them much higher rates than either Medicare or Medicaid, the two main government health plans. Particularly disadvantaged are medical providers that focus on poor patients."
Dr. Jennifer Sanderford, a Colorado-based pediatrician who serves Medicaid patients, told the Times that "there is just money being hemorrhaged with nothing coming in." Sanderford said she hasn't paid herself in a month and had to put vaccine orders for her patients on a credit card.
Moira Szilagyi, a pediatrician based in Los Angeles, called the Trump administration's approach to the crisis "a tragedy and a travesty."
"Forty-eight percent of America's children are on Medicaid and CHIP," Szilagyi tweeted, referring to the Children's Health Insurance Program.
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