Lies. Lies and More Damned Lies

A free public service for a better community

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Happy Wednesday Healthcare Advocates

I would like to encourage comments and suggestions from you if you have time. If there is a special topic you’d like to see please let me know. Please use the comment button below.

Midwifery

Beth, a physician, recently pointed me to midwifery. Where she works it is a safe and caring alternative to a hospital with incredibly good outcomes. I found that the General Accounting Office just published a report on midwifery. I will be learning more about the subject in the next few days. Thanks Beth!!

Disinformation Spreading

I have been writing about disinformation for quite a while. I find it so frustrating that we the people have a hard time accepting facts. We saw this with COVID-19, where so many hundreds of thousands died needlessly by not adhering to public health warnings. Here in the Pacific Northwest, where I live, we had a measles outbreak a few years ago because parents refused to vaccinate their children against Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR). This because of a fraudulent report in the UK by an ex doctor who lied and said children could be adversely affected. He is an EX doctor because the UK stripped him of his license for lying to the public.

Now the Hill reports that according to a recent study a majority of pet owners do not trust pet vaccines, including rabies. The study, published Saturday in the medical journal Vaccine, found that 53 percent of dog owners had some concern about the safety, efficacy or necessity of canine vaccines. I’m just at a loss.

I don’t know what we can do to help restore trust in public health information, but I know that if we choose to ignore public health warnings, for us, our children, and our pets, the needless loss and grief will just be overpowering.

There is a bill in the senate that can help. It would allow social media companies to have some liability for the spreading of lies and hate online. In that way we may be able to reduce the viral (and I mean viral) nature of harmful disinformation.

ACTION

Regarding Internet rule 230 - you can send the text (mostly) below to our senators by texting to 50409 on your cell phone and then SIGN PWRHLH  Click on the link to see the text that is sent.

I am your constituent. I am calling to strongly urge the senator to co sponsor and work to pass Senator Warner's bill S. 560, the Safe Tech Act. It is high time that tech companies be held liable for the dissemination of hate speech. We have seen over and over how people latch onto disinformation and act out, often with fatal consequences. I call upon you to enact S. 560 and start protecting the public that elected you.

Link to Resistbot Message and instructions

Long Term Care Oversight - Update

CMS was just released a study on nursing home staffing. It had been hoped that it would highlight minimum safe staffing levels. There are about 15,000 nursing homes with 1.2 million patients and it is important that there is sufficient coverage for the patients.

Sadly the report falls short of identifying what safe staffing levels should be. Instead it indicates that higher staffing levels would improve outcomes, lead to fewer hospitalizations, emergency room visits, and faster care.

Here is a link to a Kaiser Family Foundation story on the subject. I’m including it because there is an embedded spreadsheet where you can check the number of staff hours/resident for any facility examined (751 pages in the spreadsheet). as well as the staff turnover rate at each facility. The government minimum for staff hours/resident is 3.16 as of 2016.

Oversight of Assisted Living (repeat)

I promised some data on oversight that government has for long term or assisted care facilities. Here is a link to a (rather long) summary of the data for the entire US published by the National Center for Assisted Living Note that there is no oversight at all in four states, CT, NV, OH, and WY. I have included this link in our Healthcare Advocacy Reading List, here and always in the resource section below..

League of Women Voters Healthcare Advocates - Check It Out (repeat)

There is an affinity group, HCR4US, of League of Women Voter members across the country who support and advocate for Universal Healthcare, better rural healthcare, and better care for all of us. We are members and wanted to share their latest newsletter and their website, which has many useful educational materials and presentations. It is encouraging to me that there are so many medical professional members of this group.

RESOURCES

Find My Elected Officials

Contact the White House  https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

Contact State and Federal Representatives

https://www.commoncause.org/find-your-representative/addr/

Important Healthcare Resources

League of Women Voters Healthcare Reform Toolkit

Our Newsletter resources including reproductive healthcare

Healthcare Advocacy Reading List

Organizations to Contact

National Nurses United Medicare4All

Physicians for a National Health Plan

Reproductive Health

NARAL - Pro Choice America

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

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