Posted on 04/10/2011 6:57:30 AM PDT by flowerplough
Barf alert!
"... when President Barack Obama tasked Congress with sending a health care reform bill to his desk in 2009, the Congressional Black Caucus saw a huge opportunity.
"We'd already introduced a bill called the Health Equity and Accountability Act for the past several Congresses, so our work on this issue started long before the health care reform debate started," Virgin Islands Rep. Donna Christensen told The Root. In response to the president's charge, the CBC members promptly accelerated their efforts to tackle health disparities. They conferred with the National Medical Association and other black health groups, developed benchmarks that they wanted to see in the bill, formed a united front with other ethnic congressional caucuses and met on three occasions with President Obama.
Christensen, a physician and a chair of the CBC Health Braintrust, maintains that addressing race and ethnicity specifically in the legislation was critical because looking at differences in insurance coverage alone does not fully explain why blacks, on average, aren't as healthy as whites. Though pleased that the Affordable Care Act expands coverage through several means, including expanding Medicaid to include all people with incomes barely above the poverty level, she points out that health disparities persist regardless of insurance status. "Reports have shown that lack of insurance accounts for maybe 20 percent of what we see in health disparities," she says.
She also pushes back on the notion that health disparities are a matter not for government intervention but of individual behaviors -- that if black folks would just eat less fatty foods and exercise more, then most of the problem would be solved.
"To some extent, of course it's about personal behavior, but a lot of it is environmental," she says, explaining that poverty and residential segregation are among the issue's biggest drivers. "People of color tend to live in neighborhoods where environmentally polluting industries are located. We have communities with no grocery stores and [an] excessive [number of] liquor stores..."
Obama fan Peggy Josephs, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P36x8rTb3jI
“environmental”? The ghettos I have seen are not near factories.
The ghettos I have seen are in the old part of town. So unless lead paint is responsible for the problems, this gal’s attempt to buttress the EPA fails.
Americans have NO IDEA how little health care they will be getting but I do know they will feel the extra 10-20% in the tax increase FOR ALL.
As someone said awhile back: “If You Think Health Care is Expensive Now — Just Wait Until it’s Free.”
Da folks in da getto already gots dare own free helf care...it be called da helf depaht’mint.
The comments at the site are most interesting. If they are from black readers, the Dems are in deep trouble.
Devastatingly accurate comments for the most part. Obama better hope he can get a lot of illegals signed up to vote for him.
The one comment about W. Africa and salt was interesting.
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