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#Post#: 4613--------------------------------------------------
Trump administration may tangle the healthcare safety net
By: agate Date: November 9, 2024, 1:18 am
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From MedPage Today (November 6, 2024)--"Trump's White House
Return Poised to Tangle Healthcare Safety Net":
HTML https://bit.ly/3YKiqYW
#Post#: 4632--------------------------------------------------
What the Trump administration could mean for health policy
By: agate Date: November 27, 2024, 1:08 am
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More on this in MedPage Today (November 21, 2024)--"Trump Is
Back: What This Could Mean for Health Policy":
HTML https://tinyurl.com/543aeb65
Well, he isn't back quite yet, but there is every indication
that he has no respect for most of the public health measures
that have been put into effect in this country, often after
years of struggle in an uphill battle for acceptance.
Spitting was once such a common habit that it was quite all
right in the Houses of Congress. In my childhood there were many
men who routinely spat in public--though indoors there were
always the ubiquitous cuspidors, sometimes filled with an
interesting white sand.
Spitting went out of style only gradually--partly thanks to the
strenuous efforts of the anti-tuberculosis movement during the
Progressive Era.
This, along with other public health measures taken at about the
same time, is just one example of the kind of improvement in
public health that has been hard-won but effective. Tuberculosis
is all but unknown in the US (and in many parts of the world)
but it is by no means gone.
Vaccines have resulted in the near-eradication of many
devastating childhood diseases: whooping cough, polio,
diphtheria, measles, typhoid, smallpox. If anyone has any doubt
about just how devastating childhood diseases were, take a look
at your own family tree and notice how many children there were
born but didn't live very long. Or look at any cemetery
containing graves from any time up until about 1930--you'll find
an astonishing number of headstones for infants and children.
The new leaders of this country want to roll back these many
decades of progress. The medical profession doesn't want to see
this happen.
Nobody should want to see this happen.
#Post#: 4684--------------------------------------------------
Trump Presidency not good for most people with MS
By: agate Date: January 20, 2025, 1:52 pm
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People with MS usually take a big reduction in their financial
resources, simply because they are so often taken out of the
workforce--for the rest of their lives. Then there are the
medical expenses connected with MS, as well as costly
modifications in housing, transportation, and activities of
daily living that might be needed. For many with MS there are
major drastic changes in lifestyle.
I know of someone with MS who once owned a 4-bedroom house but
has been in a small 1-bedroom HUD-subsidized rental apartment
for decades. If the Trump administration puts an end to HUD
housing, this person might be among the homeless. HUD housing
hasn't been mentioned as ready for the axe so far as I know, but
under previous Republican administrations it has been an easy
target.
People with MS often rely on Medicare and/or Medicaid to cover
most of their medical expenses. Both of these programs are
definitely on their way to being cut.
People with MS also often rely on Social Security disability
benefits as their only source of income. Social Security is
especially likely to be cut back.
Then there is the SNAP program, formerly known as Food Stamps.
This is often the only income supplement to the minimal income
provided by Social Security for people with MS. Since the end of
"welfare as we know it" (the TANF program was ended some years
ago), there have been increasing numbers of people in this
country living on about $2/day, as was demonstrated in a 2016
book by that title--$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in
America by Kathryn Edin and H. Luke Schaefer.
Poverty in this country is already disgracefully prevalent and
is getting worse. People on MS and others with chronic health
conditions that disable them are apt to be impoverished by
policies to be adopted in the coming four years.
This is a sad day for the United States of America.
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