Why I haven’t seen this video before, and why it has not gone viral, is beyond me. Listening to this speech, I feel as relieved as I did listening to Reagan in the late 1970s explaining calmly and clearly to the American people how we were being hoodwinked by Continue reading
Tag Archives: community organizing
Former White House health policy advisor: Get the public on board
In case you missed it, this was Chris Dawe last year, shortly after he left the Obama administration, and before he joined Evolent Health — a consulting company founded by the Advisory Board and the Univ. of Pittsburgh Health Plan “to help health systems move towards providing value-based care.” (Advisory Board, which consults for C-TAC, was founded by David Bradley, now Chairman of Atlantic Media.)
Here Dawe is addressing the Campaign to End Unwanted Medical Treatment (which is in fact a campaign to gin up the public to demand less life-saving treatment. Talk about perverse.) Continue reading
Compassion & Choices is funding the American Society on Aging blog
Just a quick nota bene that the current edition of Generations — the journal for the American Society on Aging (ASA) — is posted on ASA’s blog courtesy of funding from Compassion & Choices (the present incarnation of the old Hemlock Society) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
One of the articles is by AARP veteran and Coalition to Transform Advanced Care (C-TAC) co-founder Bill Novelli (“Advanced Illness Care: We Can Do Better“). Continue reading
Progressives lobby for end-of-life funding “to change health care delivery”
On July 23 a new pro-Obamacare coalition called the Patient Quality of Life Coalition (PQLC) lobbied on Capitol Hill for “two bills to change health care delivery.”
The bills (H.R. 1339 / S. 641; and H.R. 1666) would authorize (to start) roughly $300 million for advertising to the public, training navigators, educating health professionals, establishing a national supervisory board, and promoting research, all with the goal of replacing standard care with palliative care (symptom treatment and hospice) for sick people, in lieu of costly life-saving treatments.
Dick Woodruff — former chief of staff to Rosa DeLauro; former legislative advisor for Alliance for Justice — gives the PQLC lobbyists some final instructions.
Veteran lobbyist Dick Woodruff explained why the urgency: “Because these people who have these illnesses . . . are the ones who are driving healthcare costs more than anybody else . . if we can figure out a way to manage their care, we can make life better for them, but then save the system money. . . . [These bills] could have major returns over the next 25-45 years.” [my emphasis]
Woodruff, who served as chief of staff for Rosa DeLauro (of EMILY’s List fame), and later as senior Continue reading
New Dept. of Labor ruling: Minimum wage for home health in all 50 states.
In case you missed it, the Obama administration has issued a rule that will mandate a minimum wage for “direct care” workers (i.e., home health caregivers), extending the rule to all 50 states, including 29 states that currently do not have such regulations.
A map at the Department of Labor website indicates the states (in gray) that will be most affected by the rule. Continue reading