Women And Children First?
“Women and children first!” That’s the stereotypical cry from the chivalrous men of literature and the silver screen. When the ship is sinking, you save the most vulnerable first. Unfortunately, this ideology seems to matter primarily in the annals of fiction – in the real world, the practice of saving the most vulnerable first is rarely implemented. Especially evident in today’s economic climate, women and children are being allowed to drown, while the captains of their fate continue to prosper. No, America does not save women and children first, and captains do not go down with their ships.
When financial institutions are facing hardships due to the decisions the companies have made in the last decade or so, the government gives them hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars. The captains of these industries then enjoy spa treatments and end-of-year bonuses presumably footed by hard-working Americans, while the citizens they employ are laid off, their positions are terminated, or pay and benefit cuts are sweeping.
And women and their children feel it the most. Take a look at this report from the National Women’s Law Center: http://www.nwlc.org/pdf/WomenEconomicRecoveryJuly2008.pdf. It details how women are in need of targeted assistance, especially during recessionary times, because they’re often the first to be tossed overboard. And because women are often the primary caregivers for American’s children, the youth of America is likewise cast aside.
Some facts from the report:
Women earn 23% less than men
Women are 40% more likely to live in poverty than men, and one in every eight American women is poor
Women are 10% less likely to receive unemployment benefits after losing a job
Women are 30 to 40% more likely to have subprime mortgage loans, despite comparable credit scores to men
These factors, combined with a lower average compensation, make it more difficult for women to maintain and care for their families and households. Single women with children face the toughest times of all, especially when state legislatures are considering slashing Medicaid budgets (four out of every ten single mothers receives Medicaid assistance).
America, the ship is sinking and women and children are drowning. Our captains, those who have steered us in this direction, are not subject to the consequences of a sinking ship. Instead, the American people are struggling to keep the ship afloat, bucket by bucket, and their collective efforts ensure the livelihood of their captains – who no longer have fear of financial ruin because public funds are readily available to assist them.
Do the heads of industries need assistance more than the heads of households? Of course not. Our women and children need assistance now more than ever, yet these are the last to be attended to. Greed and corruption are in abundance, while millions of women and children nationwide suffer as martyrs for their cause.
Aaron and Washington D.C.
American Family Man
Benefits of Prenatal Vitamins
Prenatal vitamins work better when taken along with a healthy diet. They are only meant to be a supplement, and not a substitute for a proper diet. Never rely on prenatal vitamins for all your nutritional needs. Talk to your doctor about what foods you should be eating.
Be sure to keep an eye on your calcium. An expectant mother generally requires 1,200mg – 1,500mg of calcium on a daily basis. Most prenatal vitamins do not contain this amount, so you may need a calcium supplement in addition. (Many will only contain 250-500mg.) Calcium is certainly important in the development of your new baby.
No two prenatal vitamins are the same; and many may not provide any benefits at all. Recent studies show that a pregnant woman’s body does not necessarily absorb all of the nutrients provided by the vitamins, especially folate. Folate is extremely important in the baby’s prenatal development. The vitamin helps prevent birth defects like spina-bifida.
While prescribed vitamins are ideal, most of the same vitamins are available over the counter in stores. You may be able to save substantial money with a store bought brand. The most important things to consider are the ingredients in the vitamins, and whether they absorb quickly or not.
There is an easy test you can use to determine if the vitamins will be absorbed into your system. Put one of the prenatal vitamins into a cup of water. Wait ten minutes. If the vitamin is dissolved, or is very soft, it will be absorbed into your system. If the vitamin remains hard, it will probably pass through your system without depositing many of the nutrients it carries. This is important, so be sure to do this with any new vitamin. (I am NOT a doctor or rocket scientist, this is just plain LOGIC)
Finding the right prenatal vitamin may take a little trial and error, but the benefits are great. Just continue to keep in mind that you still need to maintain a healthy diet. The benefits of prenatal vitamins are enormous and highly recommended, but good nutrition is still better than any supplement. Remember, no vitamin is going to be exactly the same, but here is what most sources that I have found suggest (these will vary slightly):
4,000 and 5,000 IU (international units) of vitamin A
800 and 1,000 mcg (1 mg) of folic acid
400 IU of vitamin D
200 to 300 mg of calcium
70 mg of vitamin C
1.5 mg of thiamine
1.6 mg of riboflavin
2.6 mg of pyridoxine
17 mg of niacin amide
2.2 mcg of vitamin B-12
10 mg of vitamin E
15 mg of zinc
30 mg of iron
Fighting for the uninsured and underinsured pregnant mom and their unborn babies,
Advocate Aaron
This is News?
The recent $50 million settlement by Oxford Insurance and its parent company, UnitedHealth Group, to halt accusations by the New York attorney general’s office that the health insurance providers overcharged millions of Americans hundreds of millions of dollars got a lot of media coverage (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28628880/). But it isn’t news – this is what we’ve been talking about for years!
Undoubtedly, New York isn’t the only state in which this occurred, nor is Oxford/UnitedHealth the only company that should be investigated. The research firm that provided the reimbursement rate figures, Ingenix (also owned by UnitedHealth), serves several other insurers. The article says that other companies will be investigated – but how many? How many other research firms fix the numbers? How many other insurance companies are overcharging?
And what happens to the millions of Americans who are overcharged? Women with newborns, those struggling with diabetes or fighting cancer – how do they also contend with bills totaling tens of thousands of dollars? How many people have died because they could no longer afford treatment after being overcharged?
The health insurance conglomerate denies the allegations, of course, but was willing to pay $50 million to make them go away. That’s a lot of money to pay if you’re innocent.
Some good will come out of the settlement, though. The $50 million is to be used for a nonprofit organization that will determine patient reimbursement rates, and the story did grab the attention of the media (about time!).
Still, it doesn’t seem as though justice was served. If you swindle people out of money, you should not be allowed to use that money to buy your way out of trouble. And now, the company is left with a gaping $50 million void in the budget – whose dollars do you think are going to fill that void?
Economy Trumps Mother Nature
Read this story (http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090111/LOCAL18/901110401).
What can we say about a society that defies the course of nature in order to pay the bills?
“I can’t afford to get pregnant.” It’s said so many times, it’s almost a cliché. Eve couldn’t “afford” to get pregnant, either. But she did, and we are here.
Money should not dictate the perpetuation of the species, should not delay the creation of life or stifle the gratification of being pregnant, having a newborn, being a child, starting a family, etc.
But that is what has become of our society. I am not against capitalism; I am against oppression – and when greedy enterprises threaten the very existence of humanity and take away the only pure and true thing that has been necessary for all of us – pregnancy and birth – then it is time to take action. There can no longer be concern for those who deny pregnant women and their unborn children proper maternal care. They have lost the right to have a say in how, and when, our society moves forward.
It is time for Congress to stand up for natural laws, those unalienable, as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution – a right to life.
A right to life is not possible without a right to birth, which is not possible without a right to become pregnant. And with a mother’s right to become pregnant, a child has a right to life. It’s a beautiful cycle; but economic forces – those completely man-made, little more than concepts of measurement that have no real value whatsoever in the natural world – would destroy the sanctity of life and the right to a good life by stealing proper prenatal care from our nation’s children.
Couples are afraid to have children in this environment, and for what reason? Money. Many other reasons can be cited, but money is at the root of all of them. Money buys health care. Money buys formula and diapers. Money buys food.
Without money, our society has no life.
Ironic, isn’t it, how those who would espouse the teachings of the Bible in public actually believe it is better to profit as a company than to prosper as humans?
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Labels: advocate aaron, healthcare, maternity, uninsured
Government-subsidized Health Care In A Year?
Could the U.S. government be voting on government-subsidized health care a year from now? They will be if Pete Stark has his way. The health care reformist and sometimes-cantankerous California representative was quoted in a recent Wall Street Journal article as predicting that it would take a year to clear a public health care plan through Congress (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123008136111331971.html).
This is great news for those of us who know the horrors of facing pregnancy without insurance. But there are plenty of people ready to rain on Stark’s parade if they have their way, including Democrats from his own party, pharmaceutical lobbyists and the health insurance industry.
Two things that set Stark apart from the rest: 1) he does not think Congress should negotiate terms with insurance companies; and 2) he does not think a public health care plan should pay whatever price pharmaceutical companies determine for prescriptions. He wants costs to be fair and affordable, something I’ve been championing as Advocate Aaron for years as well.
Like the rest of us, Stark faces several challenges in his plight to form a public health system, and is often criticized for being blunt and vocal in his positions. Stones are thrown his way because he unyieldingly stands for what he believes in — I thought that’s what we elected these people for!
Some of the arguments Stark and his supporters have to counter include the pharmaceutical industry’s stance that restrictions on drug prices will limit the availability of drugs to people who need them as well as innovation that fuels new medical discoveries. Insurance companies claim premiums will rise as younger people take out the publicly-funded health care policy.
These industries simply want to maintain and proliferate profitability. That’s fine for some corporate entities, but not those in which lives are at stake. The availability of products, in these cases, literally means the difference between life and death.
Medicare and Medicaid already pay whatever the drug companies charge, and in doing so drain public funds that could be used elsewhere – or to provide live-saving drugs to more people. And because these programs constitute two of the largest ‘clients’ drug companies have – they’re billion-dollar clients – it might be the drug companies who cannot afford to exist without publicly-funded health care, and not the other way around.
Publicly-funded insurance would, as Stark points out, have lower overhead costs than current private health care plans, which would mean lower premiums. Naturally, private health care companies don’t want us to believe this, simply because they want to make a buck.
These insurance companies have had their chance – if they would have taken the initiative to develop a health care plan that the millions of uninsured could afford, the volume of takers alone should have covered the costs – if even for a small profit. Intelligent business dictates that a little PR goes a long way, and preventive business measures (just like preventive health care practices) pay big dividends.
If the insurance companies have no consideration for the health of those who cannot afford insurance, then why should the U.S. citizenship give a damn about their business health? I get a bit cantankerous myself at times.
If Stark’s prediction is to come true, there are only two options: 1) the pharmaceutical companies and the insurance companies get on board and work within the demands of the American people, or 2) the American people take it upon themselves to provide health care and the pharmaceutical companies and the insurance companies die. There is no room for debate. That time has passed.
A Rumbling…
As despicable as medical overcharges are, it is good to know that not all of the media has chosen to ignore the pervasiveness of the problem. More and more journalists are taking notice, and more and more media outlets are printing stories the bring the truth to light. Let’s hope these are the early rumblings of a much-larger effort to secure the rights of medical patients nationwide, including pregnant women and their children.
One such article, posted at MSN here (http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/Insurance/Insureyourhealth/P74840.asp), reports estimations that Americans are pilfered out of $10 billion annually by the medical industry. Fraudulent charges, overcharges, erroneous charges – they add up to a lot of money. And they come in surprising ways: newborn blood tests for a man undergoing hip replacement; or $129 for a “mucous recovery system” — Kleenex to the lay man.
These infractions are outrageous and there’s little accountability for hospital administrators who facilitate fraud. They devise plans to discourage dispute, encode cryptic medical bills, demand up front payments or payment before discharge and other tactics designed to make you pay their price, carte blanche.
You wouldn’t go to a car dealer, hand over a blank check and tell them to give you whatever they think is best, would you? But that’s what hospitals expect you to do. You don’t get what you pay for – you get far less than you pay for. In fact, it is estimated that the average hospital stay results in overcharges of $1,300!
The MSN article lists ten ways to prevent hospital overcharges. Much of it has to do with demanding itemized billing, filing disputes, speaking with administrators, and generally jumping through hoops. Resources specific to helping pregnant women receive fair medical billing, handle disputes and hold hospitals accountable for overcharges are available at http://www.maternityhealth.org/ and http://www.maternityadvantage.com/.
SBut some people are finally taking notice, but not yet enough. The more mainstream media reports on such atrocities, the more likely decision makers are to hear our cry. The rumble is low now, but it’s getting louder. We will be heard, and we will get fair medical coverage, care and billing for pregnant women!
Big Brother that watches over our Hospital Bills
“I saw the literature on your website and watched the video. You are in essence a big brother that watches over our hospital bills to make sure we are not taken advantage of from the hospital. From the first review of our bills, you will reduce it anywhere from 30-50%, and if it can’t be reduced from there to a lower rate, that’s okay, because you will still set us up with a payment plan with the hospital. That’s great! Our hospital told us that we have to pay this huge amount upfront and they refused to set up a payment plan with us on that. If we don’t pay upfront, they will send a hospital administrator up to my wife’s room to collect the money in full. If I don’t pay in full right there, they will add another $1000-1500 on that bill!! You guys will be our Godsend and hope in this situation.”
The Word Is Out.
