Posts about Healthcare
Tomorrow: Make Poverty a Priority on a National Level
By Quynh Nguyen | February 11, 2013 |
February 12th is the President’s first State of the Union address in his second term. The fiscal showdown didn’t end on January 1st. Instead, Congress kicked the can down the road and many of the most important programs that support struggling families in our country are still under threat.
Nationally, people are taking to Twitter, Facebook, and other social media to inspire President Obama to: (1) speak out for struggling families during his address, and (2) protect critical programs that reduce poverty in his budget request to Congress. Together we can show the White House why these programs are so important, and who has inspired us to support them.
It’s simple:
Tweet @White House about inspiring leaders who have built or protected federally funded programs like SNAP (formerly Food Stamps), WIC, Head Start, child care, housing, home energy, and homeless aid, education and training, Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. Use the hashtag #TalkPoverty.
On Facebook, post a message like this on your wall and tag the White House’s wall:
The fiscal showdown didn’t end on January 1st! We need the President to fight for human needs programs in budget negotiations. [add something about a leader who inspires you to cut poverty and what solutions the President should address in his speech. Use our Pinterest gallery for inspirational graphics and things to say.]
While CPI will continue to focus on Making Poverty a Priority on the local level, we encourage you to visit the “Talk Poverty” national project online, if you would like to commit to making poverty a priority on a national level.
CPI calls on SD County board to optimize use of new federal health funding
By Susan Duerksen | November 30, 2011 |
Research shows more people uninsured in county, while outreach lags
As residents of San Diego County continue to lose health insurance, County officials could enhance their efforts to bring in federal funding newly available to increase coverage.
The Center on Policy Initiatives is calling on the County Board to re-examine its approach to the federal Affordable Care Act, in light of new research findings:
- Employment-based insurance is declining, leaving an additional 27,000 San Diego County residents uninsured in 2010, and pushing many thousands more into public, taxpayer-funded programs such as Medi-Cal and Healthy Families, CPI reports in The Uninsured in San Diego County.
- San Diego County spends relatively little on the uninsured, compared to other major California counties, and is lagging on outreach and enrollment in preparation for the new federal funding, CPI found in Improving Access to Health Coverage: San Diego County and Federal Health Reform.
“Counties are responsible for providing a healthcare safety net,” said Corinne Wilson, CPI research and policy lead. “The federal government is offering funding to strengthen those safety nets, and that gives the San Diego County Board an opportunity to benefit taxpayers as well as individuals who’ve fallen on hard times.”
As the Union-Tribune reported this week, the County has limited early enrollment in the new Low Income Health Program, instead transferring participants in from another program it opted to close. Because the closed program had broader eligibility standards, the change by the County will leave more people uninsured in the future.
Under the federal Affordable Care Act, which will be fully implemented by 2014, an estimated 203,000 more county residents could be eligible for Medi-Cal and others qualify for additional public programs. However, decisions on eligibility standards and allocating matching funds are left up to county governments.
CPI urges San Diego County officials to gather input from a wide variety of community stakeholders on the best way to respond to the federal healthcare reform opportunities, for the good of community residents as well as healthcare providers such as hospitals and clinics.
Let sick workers get well, with pay
By Donald Cohen, Jake Blumgart | Published in NYDailyNews.com | October 8, 2010 |
Your second-grader has been up half the night with a hacking cough. Do you call in to say you can’t go to work – and risk losing a whole day’s paycheck? Or do you pack some tissues in his lunch box and hope that he makes it through the school day without getting worse or infecting half the class?
No working parent should face such a choice. But for thousands of New York City’s public school parents, this is a very real dilemma. It doesn’t need to be. Read More
Health Care Reform – Six Months Later
By Donald Cohen | Published in LA Progressive | September 29, 2010 |
Without doubt, history books will remember the sweeping health care reform law passed exactly six months ago as a major historic milestone and President Barack Obama’s most significant achievement. But the reform bill hasn’t yet won the hearts and minds of most Americans, who don’t understand it, or who, depending on their political views, think that it doesn’t go far enough, or goes too far.
Lots of reporters and pundits – all of whom, of course, have good, employer-provided health insurance plans – now say that Obama invested too much political capital getting the Affordable Care Act through Congress when he should have been concentrating on fixing the economy. Some House and Senate Democrats are worried that their support for reform will hurt their re-election chances in November. Even Obama has been gun-shy about hyping the law as he travels around the country giving speeches and trying to help Democrats keep their majority in Congress. Read More
A New Labor Standard for Labor Day: Paid Sick Leave
By Jake Blumgart | Published in The Huffington Post | September 4, 2010 |
You wake up Monday morning with a throbbing headache, achy muscles and a hacking cough. Do you miserably trudge into work, likely prolonging your recovery time and exposing your co-workers to infection? Or do you give your body the time it needs to heal, and call in sick? Can you afford to?
For almost 40 percent of the nation’s private workforce, the answer to that last question is no. A recent Bureau of Labor Statistics report shows only 33 percent of workers earning $10.50 an hour or less have access to paid sick leave, compared with 81 percent of those earning $24.22 an hour or more. This means, perversely, that if you can afford to take an unpaid sick day, you generally don’t have to. Read More
San Diegans Need Jobs with Health Benefits
By Murtaza Baxamusa | Published in VoiceofSanDiego.org | August 24, 2010 |
The increase in uninsured is a significant problem for working San Diegans. The recent report by UCLA shows that the percent of San Diegans below the age of 64 that were uninsured for all or part of the year increased by over 3 percentage points between 2007 and 2009. As a result, one in four San Diegans lack health insurance. Read More
One Way to Help America’s Families
By Doreen Mattingly, Jill Esbenshade | Published in San Diego Union-Tribune | December 2, 2008 |
For months, the collapse of the stock market and the size of the government bailout have dominated the national debate. While we are spending $800 billion or more to keep our financial institutions afloat, what are we doing to help the recovery of average American families? We are repairing the budgets of executives flying to congressional hearings in their corporate jets, but how do we repair the budgets of working families who cannot pay their mortgage or rent, utilities or medical bills? Read More
Privatization must not put health coverage in peril
By Murtaza Baxamusa | Published in San Diego Union-Tribune | July 27, 2008 |
If there is any universal agreement in the wide-ranging debate on the health insurance crisis, it is that the rising number of uninsured Americans is unacceptable.
Besides the moral repugnance at allowing people to get sick and die because they can’t pay for care, it’s widely acknowledged that the lack of health insurance for a portion of the population is a financial burden on the whole community.
San Diego County, for instance, spends more than $57 million a year to care for the uninsured whose medical problems have escalated in the absence of preventive care.
Hospitals bump up their rates to cover uninsured patients, and that in turn raises insurance premiums. Being uninsured is not just a personal issue – it’s widely seen as detrimental to society. Read More
