Health Insurance to Those Denied Medicaid & Important Medical Advances
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Expanding Health Insurance - in Medicaid Non Expansion States
Ten years after the implementation of the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) coverage options, ten states have not adopted the Medicaid expansion, leaving 1.5 million uninsured people without an affordable coverage option. The unwinding of the Medicaid continuous enrollment provision along with ongoing financial struggles among rural hospitals has focused attention on the gaps in Medicaid coverage in non-expansion states, and availability of temporary enhanced federal funding for states that newly adopt expansion has sparked renewed expansion discussions in some of these states.
Now Senator Raphael Warnock has just introduced legislation to try to help those low income people in non expansion states. It is S.4684 - A bill to ensure affordable health insurance coverage for low-income individuals in States that have not expanded Medicaid.
Make no mistake - this is a band aid instead of a repair to the healthcare problem - but it will improve the lives of 1.5 million of us who are being sidelined as not worth the effort in the 10 states that refuse to expand Medicaid.
ACTION
Let’s let our Senators know this bill, S. 4684 will make health insurance available for 1.5 million of us in Medicaid - Non Expansion States and we want them to support it. You can use the script below as a a starter and you can reach them here, https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials.
Or use RESISTBOT via [Apple Messages / WHATSAPP / MESSENGER] or by texting SIGN PLOMJC to 50409 on your cell phone to send that message to your Senators.
“I am your constituent and I am so disappointed that there are still 10 state that refuse to expand Medicaid. They have left at least 1.5 million of us with out health insurance. Good News - You can help them. Cosponsor and support Senator Warnock’s bill - S. 4684. It is a bill to ensure affordable health insurance coverage for low-income individuals in States that have not expanded Medicaid. You were sent to Washington to help solve problems. Please solve this problem for the 1.5 million of us who need help. Thank you.”
Drug Resistant Cancer Cells - What’s Going On?
The evolution of resistance to diseases, from infectious illnesses to cancers, poses a formidable challenge.
Despite the expectation that resistance-conferring mutations would dwindle in the absence of treatment due to a reduced growth rate, preexisting resistance is pervasive across diseases that evolve—like cancer and pathogens—defying conventional wisdom.
In cancer, it is well known that small numbers of drug-resistant cells likely exist in tumors even before they’re treated. In something of a paradox, before treatment, these mutants have been repeatedly shown to have lower fitness than the surrounding ancestor cells from which they arose. It leads to a scenario that seems to break Darwin’s rules: Why do these least fit cells survive?
In a new study, researchers at Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland Clinic reveal a fascinating discovery: Interactions between these mutants and their ancestors, like two species in an ecosystem, may hold the key to understanding this paradox.
Their findings suggest these ecological interactions play a pivotal role in reducing the costs of resistance, providing a path to survival for preexisting resistance. And not just in lung cancer, but across various biomedical contexts where drug resistance is a challenge, including other cancers, pathogens and even parasites. (Case Western Reserve University News)
Age Related Macular Degeneration NEWS
This is a big one for me. One of my wife’s cousins was an extremely creative physician and eye surgeon who helped develop cataract surgery. In is later years he had age related macular degeneration. Treatments were difficult and the disease caused severe restrictions for him.
In a new analysis of data, researchers have found that taking a daily supplement containing antioxidant vitamins and minerals slows progression of late-stage dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD), potentially helping people with late-stage disease preserve their central vision. (National Eye Institute)
Warning
Before you run out and start shopping for supplements read this National Eye Institute article and share it with your doctor to make sure they are right for you. It has dosages of the supplements they used for the different studies and recommendations about what AMD stage you have and whether one or both eyes are affected. Overall - good news.
Researchers reviewed the original retinal scans of participants in the Age-Related Eye Diseases Studies (AREDS and AREDS2) and found that, for people with late-stage dry AMD, taking the antioxidant supplement slowed expansion of geographic atrophy regions towards the central foveal region of the retina. The study was published in the journal Ophthalmology.
“We’ve known for a long time that AREDS2 supplements help slow the progression from intermediate to late AMD. Our analysis shows that taking AREDS2 supplements can also slow disease progression in people with late dry AMD,” said Tiarnan Keenan, M.D., Ph.D., of NIH’s National Eye Institute (NEI) and lead author of the study. “These findings support the continued use of AREDS2 supplements by people with late dry AMD.”
In their new analysis, the researchers reviewed the original retinal scans of participants in the AREDS (total 318 participants, 392 eyes) and AREDS2 (total 891 participants, 1210 eyes) trials who developed dry AMD, calculating the position and expansion rate of their regions of geographic atrophy. For those people who developed geographic atrophy in their central vision, the supplements had little benefit. But for the majority who developed geographic atrophy far from the fovea, the supplements slowed the rate of expansion towards the fovea by approximately 55% over an average of three years.
The original AREDS trial found that a supplement formula containing antioxidants (vitamin C, E, and beta-carotene), along with zinc and copper, could slow progression of intermediate to late-stage AMD. The subsequent AREDS2 trial found that substituting the antioxidants lutein and zeaxanthin for beta-carotene improved the efficacy of the supplement formula and eliminated certain risks. At the time, neither trial detected any further benefit once participants had developed late-stage disease.
Software Corner
Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence is all over the healthcare industry. It has wide promise assisting providers in quickly coming to diagnoses and treatments.
Foundation models are massive deep-learning models that have been pre-trained on an enormous amount of general-purpose, unlabeled data. They can be applied to a variety of tasks, like generating images or answering customer questions.
But these models, which serve as the backbone for powerful artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E, can offer up incorrect or misleading information. In a safety-critical situation, such as a pedestrian approaching a self-driving car, these mistakes could have serious consequences.
To help prevent such mistakes, researchers from MIT and the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab developed a technique to estimate the reliability of foundation models before they are deployed to a specific task.
They do this by considering a set of foundation models that are slightly different from one another. Then they use their algorithm to assess the consistency of the representations each model learns about the same test data point. If the representations are consistent, it means the model is reliable. MIT is the source.
Resources
Find My Elected Officials
Contact State and Federal Representatives - phone and email
Healthcare Advocacy (Us) Website
Our Newsletter resources including reproductive healthcare - Healthcare Advocacy Reading List
Important Healthcare Resources
League of Women Voters Healthcare Reform Toolkit
Organizations to Contact
National Nurses United Medicare4All
Physicians for a National Health Program
One Payer States
Healthcare Now
Reproductive Health
NARAL - Pro Choice America
Charley. chatbot abortion resource - make sure to use a secure incognito browser if you live in a state that has banned abortion
Planned Parenthood
Miscarriage and Abortion Hotline has references about where to procure abortion medications. They also assist women in the process of self managed abortion or miscarriage by phone or text and will respond in an hour. Details and hours of operation at their website.
United State of Women Reproductive health page (bottom of the page) has important resources such as medical support, access to Telehealth, prescriptions by mail, and legal support references.
Practice careful communications - The Digital Defense Fund has a number of tips to keep texts, calls, and internet use private. Here is their site.
If you need financial help with an abortion try abortionfunds.org
Claims Denials and Appeals & What to Do
Appeal a Healthcare Decision
Appeal/Negotiate a Hospital Bill
Disinformation Management
Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency
Save Democracy
Chop Wood, Carry Water by Jessica Cravens
RESISTBOT
Link to the RESISTBOT site to learn more
Link to Chop Wood, Carry Water RESISTBOT write up
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Done!✅ So important! Thank you!