Obama orders hospital visitation rights for gays, lesbians

About fracking time.

Washington (CNN) – President Barack Obama has told the Department of Health and Human Services to establish a rule that would not allow hospitals to deny visitation privileges to gay and lesbian partners.

The president's memo Thursday notes that "There are few moments in our lives that call for great compassion and companionship that when a loved one is admitted to the hospital ... Yet every day, all across America, patients are denied the kindnesses and caring of a loved one at their sides ... "

Gay and lesbian Americans are "uniquely affected" by the relatives-only policy at hospitals, Obama said, adding that they "are often barred from the bedsides of the partners with whom they may have spent decades of their lives - unable to be there for the person they love, and unable to act as a legal surrogate if their partner is incapacitated."

Obama requested that the regulation should make clear that any hospital receiving Medicare and Medicaid funding, which mean the vast majority of U.S. hospitals, to allow patients to decide who can visit them and prohibit discrimination based on a variety of characteristics, including sexual orientation and gender identity.

VIDEO of presser + TV station strips references to Rush Limbaugh's back pain meds

By GottaLaff



Aren't screen grabs fun? They do all kinds of things, like, well, documenting items that disappear from news reports:

(click on image to enlarge)

Oddly, the link leads to a piece that now says nothing about Boss Limpdong's med guzzling:

Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh said he's fine and leaving the hospital with plans to return to work on Wednesday. The combative conservative said tests show nothing wrong after he was hospitalized with chest pains.

He remained at a hospital in Hawaii Thursday night, a day after being admitted for chest pains.

According to his radio program, Limbaugh underwent a complete examination on Thursday that gave doctors more information about his condition. [...]

Doctors said there were no plans for a news conference from the hospital or Limbaugh on Thursday. [...]

Citing privacy issues, doctors at Queens Medical Center won't talk specifically about Limbaugh's conditions.

And by "no plans for a news conference from the hospital or Limbaugh on Thursday", they must have meant Friday was a go.

I sure hope Boss's back is okay now. No telling what kinds of chest painy side effects those pesky meds could produce.

More references to the back pain medication here. And here:

A 911 call was made from the Kahala Hotel and Resort Wednesday afternoon and paramedics responded at 2:42 p.m. Hawaiian Time - 7:42 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. A source tells KITV:

Limbaugh was sitting in a chair in his ninth-floor hotel room at the Kahala when emergency crews arrived... He told medical crews that he was taking medication for a back problem. [...]

The conservative radio host, who is in Hawaii the same time as powerful left wingers Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi, hadn't, to the public's knowledge, been hospitalized since 2003, when he underwent treatment for an addiction to painkillers. His chronic back problems were reportedly at the root of the addiction.

According to rawls, who tipped me to this, the painkiller story was "whitewashed except on Google. The lawyers may have attacked."

UPDATE: On CNN just now, Ed Henry said he asked Boss about those back pain meds. Rush told him he didn't take any pain killers, but that he was on Prednisone, a synthetic corticosteroid drug that is particularly effective as an immunosuppressant, and affects virtually all of the immune system. It is used to treat certain inflammatory diseases and (at higher doses) cancers, but has significant adverse effects. It is usually taken orally but can be delivered by intramuscular injection or intravenous injection. It has a mainly glucocorticoid effect. Prednisone is a prodrug that is converted by the liver into prednisolone, which is the active drug and also a steroid.

So those earlier reports were wrong?

H/t: rawls

Sarah Palin is booted from speech at a Canadian hospital

By GottaLaff



We knew this was coming, did we not? Barbie McLipSchmutz was scheduled to speak at a socialist-- er, public-- abortion-providing, advanced directive-servicing (gasp! death panels!) hospital. But that wasn't going to stop her, nosirreebob! Not when there was $200K at stake!

Let's get real. There was no way one of the two wouldn't eventually quit the other:

Now, the Toronto Sun reports that Palin has “been given the boot” and will no longer appear at the fundraiser for St. Peter’s hospital. Jeff Valletine, the vice president of communications for Hamilton Health Sciences, said that he had received a backlash for inviting Palin.

No more $200 grand? That explains her recycled Hawaiian resort wardrobe. No wonder she quit that trip, too. Also.

Sarah Palin to Speak at a Socialist Canadian Hospital

By GottaLaff



This is quite the big deal for someone who said that Canada should really think about reforming its health care system (video from post above), and who's not the biggest fan of abortion rights, and who thinks "death panels" will kill your Grandma. Me oh my.

Hyp. O. Crite:

According to the Hamilton Spectator, Sarah Palin has been contracted to speak at a fundraiser for the Juravinski Cancer Centre and St. Peter’s Hospital in Canada.

Oopsie daisy there, Barbie McLipSchmutz, I do believe you're exposing yourself to the dreaded H1Socialism1:

– St. Peter’s Hospital is a public hospital within the national Canadian healthcare system. In Palin’s worldview, universal, government-insured health care is “socialism.”

– St. Peter’s Hospital performs abortions. Palin, a staunch anti-choice zealot, has protested outside of abortion clinics and has refused to denounce abortion clinic bombers as terrorists.

– St. Peter’s Hospital, through its Centre for Studies in Aging, offers “advanced directives.” Palin tried to derail health reform earlier this year by falsely labeling advanced directive reimbursements as “death panels.”

Oh dear. This will never do.

I feel a "quit" coming on....

As Barbie said, "Keep the faith".

Health care watch: White House visitor logs

By GottaLaff

The White House had visitors, as the logs reveal, and they were talking health care reform:

Top aides to President Barack Obama met early and often with lobbyists, Democratic political strategists and other interests with a stake in the administration's national health care overhaul, White House visitor records obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press show. [...]

The records show a broad cross-section of the people most heavily involved in the health care debate, weighted heavily with those who want to overhaul the system.

Here are a few on the list:

• Dr. David Himmelstein of Harvard Medical School, single payer advocate
• George Halvorson, chairman and CEO of Kaiser Health Plans
• Scott Serota, president and CEO of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Assoc.
• Kenneth Kies, a Washington lobbyist who represents Blue Cross/Blue Shield, among others
• Billy Tauzin, head of PhRMA
• Richard Umbdenstock, chief of the American Hospital Assoc.
• Laird Burnett, a top lobbyist for insurer Kaiser Foundation Health Plan
• Joshua Ackil, a lobbyist whose clients include Intel, U.S. Oncology Inc., and Knoa Software Inc.
• Alissa Fox, a lobbyist with the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, met March 31 with Peter Orszag
• Mark Agrast, a lobbyist for the Center for American Progress Action Fund
• Amador "Dean" Aguillen, a former aide to Nancy Pelosi who is now with Ogilvy Government Relations, where he lobbies for clients including pharmaceutical companies
• Merribel Ayres, a lobbyist who appears to focus on environmental issues such as energy and climate change

There is much more information on these visitors and others here.

Swine Flu Victim Dies After Being Kicked Out Of ER

By GottaLaff

Via Crooks and Liars, it's pretty obvious we already have death panels:

CORPUS CHRISTI — The mother of a man who died of a swine flu-related illness said her son was asked to leave a Texas hospital a day before his death because he was lying on the floor, too ill to sit in a chair.

Irving Neil Range, 58, of Corpus Christi died in the emergency room of Christus Spohn Hospital Memorial on Friday of a swine-flu related illness, confirmed Annette Rodriguez, interim director of Corpus Christi-Nueces County Public Health District.

Opal Range told the Corpus Christi Caller-Times that her son went to the emergency room Oct. 1, but laid on the floor because he felt too sick to sit a chair while waiting to see a doctor. She said a security guard asked him to leave so he went home. Her son returned to the emergency room the next day and died.

Sherry Carr-Deer, a spokeswoman for Christus Spohn Health System, told The Associated Press that she did not know the specifics of Range's case, but that their security guards generally try to work with people and give them a couple of chances.

But of course, we're not rationing health care now, right Rushpublics?

Equipment burned, nurses fired... hospital administrators got new cars

By GottaLaff

An L.A. Times letter to the editor:

Re “Conserva-care,” Opinion, Sept. 20

What nonsense. William Frist wants to "incentivize" folks to live a healthy life, thereby shrinking costs. OK -- but try getting couch potatoes to do it. And those like me -- living the healthiest of lives, yet I've fought back cancer twice only because Medicare authorized the right tests.

David Frum wants non-state-regulated insurance companies that will "squeeze" their suppliers. If doctors like my son are squeezed any further, most will quit medicine.

And Richard Viguerie: "Don't discourage profit ... [it] drives better prices, service and products." Ridiculous. When our local, nonprofit hospital became for-profit, all the best nurses were fired. Their incompetent replacements burned up equipment in the autoclaves. However, within weeks, a dozen administrators had new cars.

Brought to you by the Department of Driving while Rome Burns.

More leaving hospitals against advice

Wonder how many of these left because of cost concerns?

ROCKVILLE, Md., Aug. 24 (UPI) -- There was a 39 percent increase from 1997 to 2007 in U.S. patients leaving hospitals against doctors' advice, officials of a U.S. agency said.

The report by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, part of the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services, said the number of cases rose from 264,000 in 1997 to 368,000 in 2007.

(snip)

The report said:

-- 27 percent of the patients who left against medical advice were on Medicaid or Medicare.

-- Men were roughly 1.5 times more likely than women to leave.

-- Patients from the U.S. Northeast left hospitals at a rate of 2 per 1,000. The rate for the rest of the country was 1 per 1,000.

White House close to deal with hospitals on cost cuts

This is a very nice under the radar move. Coupled with the new numbers on the HELP act, things are looking good.

WASHINGTON — The hospital industry is close to a deal with the White House and congressional Democrats in which the industry would agree to federal funding cuts of $150 billion to $170 billion over the next decade to help pay for a health system overhaul, according to people familiar with the talks.

The deal, which isn't final, could be announced within days. A critical feature is an agreement on phasing in the Medicare and Medicaid cuts.

(snip)

An agreement would boost Obama's drive for comprehensive legislation by addressing the biggest concerns of one of the most influential players in the health care overhaul debate. It would provide more money to the administration and Congress to cover the uninsured.

In addition, it would come at a crucial time — just as members of the House of Representatives and the Senate return from their July Fourth break. Democrats are hoping to complete floor action in both chambers before the start of the August recess.

Americans Trust Doctors Over Politicians on Fixing Healthcare

Hmm, there's a group of people missing from this, but I just can't put my finger on who it is... I don't think I would have put hospitals so high up on the list.

A recent survey asked Americans who they trust most to fix healthcare. The top 5 answers:

1. Doctors said 73 percent of Americans
2. Healthcare Professors/Researchers said 62 percent of Americans
3. Hospitals said 61 percent of Americans
4. President Obama said 58 percent of Americans
5. Democrats in Congress said 42 percent of Americans

• Read more Five Things.

Source: Gallup.