When I was growing up in East Tennessee in the 1960s, there was a local grocery chain owner and right-wing politician named Cas Walker who railed about, among other things, water fluoridation. Water fluoridation was alleged to be a communist plot. If so, then God must be a communist, since water in some parts of the country is naturally fluoridated. In fact, that natural fluoridation, and its correlation with lower incidence of tooth decay, helped...
Read More »April 20 1999 25 Years after Columbine
Firearms and Public Health in the United States David Hemenway, Ph.D New England Journal of Medicine I have added things I know of to this article. I have an aversion to the word gun or guns by themselves. So get used to it if you expect to comment on this issue. Firearms are killing tools. If you shoot targets like I did pre-USMC, you get really good at staying in the black at various distances. This is a good article. It keeps the...
Read More »More than a million people in America’s prisons and jails have behavioral health conditions
Debra A. Pinals The Pew Charitable Trusts It has been a while since I talked about prisons. I have been in each level, up to a level 4 as a visitor. Spend hours talking to a prisoner. Eight hours out and 16 locked down at that level. They remain in their seats and you go to the canteen machines to buy the candy. It is not pretty and it never was to be a solution for their being there. The author touches upon those with mental illness who most...
Read More »Where the 2024 Presidential Election Voting Integrity Will Be Fought
Atlanta USPS Regional Processing and Distribution Centers crashes on launch by Steve Hutkins Save the Post Office This is a long post. It is the only way Steve can get it across the issues created by Louis Dejoy’s incompetence. Look out 2024 Presidential Election, we will have a battle on our hands. Think of SCOTUS. With the botched-up implementation of the new USPS Processing and Distribution Centers going on the way they are, we will...
Read More »Dwayne Johnson regrets endorsing Joe Biden in 2020, says cancel culture ‘really bugs’ him:
‘Tears me up’ Wesley Stenzel Kareem Abdul-Jabbar It was either talk about the dumb-ass state of Arizona where I now live. Or Kareem talking about why Dwayne he is not endorsing Joe Biden again. SUMMARY: Dwayne Johnson endorsed Joe Biden during his 2020 election campaign — but now he says he regrets that decision, and won’t be making political endorsements again anytime soon. The Black Adam star expressed remorse about his political...
Read More »Texas Seniors Suddenly Lose Medicare Benefits
Suzanne Blake Newsweek Nothing unique here. Just another Texas screwup while trying to eliminate people from state and federal programs. The problem being they mistakenly injure the innocents. No problem though, it happens in other states or so Texans claim. Hundreds of Texas seniors lost their Medicare benefits after Texas Health and Human Services made an error in the Medicare Savings Program. “Medicare is health insurance for people...
Read More »Trump’s “Truth” Social meme stock plummets
I’m an investor, not a gambler, so I don’t own cryptocurrency, NFTs or shares in “Truth” Social. So the news that investors in DJT are being taken to the cleaners doesn’t faze me. “Shares of Trump Media plunged more than 15% on Monday after the company filed to issue millions of additional shares of stock.“Trump Media’s dramatic slide came as Donald Trump sat in a Manhattan courtroom for the start of his criminal trial on hush money-related charges....
Read More »George Stephanopoulos asks New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu
George Stephanopoulos asked New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu by Prof. Heather Cox Richardson Letters from an American This Week, host George Stephanopoulos, “Just to sum up,” “You support [Trump] for president even if he’s convicted in [the] classified documents [case]. You support him for president even though you believe he contributed to an insurrection. You support him for president even though you believe he’s lying about the...
Read More »59% of People Retaining Medicaid Coverage Were Renewed Through Ex Parte Processes
Medicaid Renewals Of the people retaining Medicaid Coverage as of April 11, 2024 . . . Fifty-nine percent were renewed on an ex parte basis while 41% were renewed through a renewal form, though rates varied by state. Federal rules require states to first try to complete administrative (or “ex parte”) renewals by verifying ongoing eligibility through available data sources. Sources such as state wage databases. Doing this before they send a...
Read More »Medicaid Enrollment and Unwinding Tracker
by KFF Pulled together data from KFF to get an idea of what is happening with US healthcare. Big issue is people do not know. Another issue is state’s resistance to enrolling people. Hope this helps . . . Recent data on monthly Medicaid disenrollments, renewals, overall enrollment and other key indicators. Figure 1 above . . . At least 20,104,000 Medicaid enrollees have been disenrolled as of April 11, 2024, based on the most...
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