Healthcare

Current Medicaid funding regulations are biased against in-home and community care. Many disabled individuals would prefer to receive care in a more personal setting but are not eligible for Medicaid funding, instead they can only receive care in an institutional setting.

The Community Choice Act will allow parents or family members to obtain support while caring for their children at home and require that services be available in the most integrated setting appropriate to the needs of the individual.

The American Public Health Association joins the rest of the nation this week in offering our deepest sympathies to the entire Virginia Tech community, especially to the families and friends of the victims of Monday’s unconscionable acts.

These tragic shooting deaths painfully remind us that handgun deaths and injuries, including suicides, homicides and assaults, remain a major public health problem in the United States. In addition, this tragedy points out the challenges of ensuring that individuals in need of mental health services receive them.

While many of the details surrounding these senseless killings remain unclear, our legislators should not adopt a wait-and-see approach. There are many steps that Congress should take to prevent such tragedies in the future.
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When people discuss abortion there is a tendency to couch the argument in terms of being simply a choice or decision. That's not what the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act is about. This ban has everything to do with protecting the innocent lives of the most vulnerable among us and the cruel procedure of partial birth abortion.

Editor's Note: Rep. Ros-Lehtinen said the following in response to Michael Moore's latest film project, entitled "Sicko," in which he argues that Cuba's health care system is superior to that of the United States.

It is completely incorrect to even insinuate that the health care system of the Castro brothers is superior to that of the U.S.

My congressional district has a large Cuban exile population, and I often hear firsthand accounts of the disastrous level of care provided by a Cuban regime which denies its own people, particularly human rights dissidents and any voices of internal opposition in Cuba, access to even the most basic medicines and treatment.

Furthermore, it is well-known that Castro’s Cuba has two health care systems – one for tourists, as well as Communist Party officials, and another for Cubans, who are denied even aspirins. Read more...

The most important tool kids will take to school is their eyes. Good vision is critical to learning, in fact, 80 percent of what kids learn in their early school years is visual. Unfortunately, that fact is often overlooked -- only one in three children receive any form of preventive vision care before entering school. That means many kids are in school with an undetected vision problem. One in four children has a vision problem that can interfere with learning. Some children are even labeled “disruptive Read more...

The Senate has approved two bills, S.5 and S.30, both of which would expand federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.  Now it's up to Congressional Democratic leaders to decide if patients and researchers must wait to expand federal funding of embryonic stem cell research until 2009 or just a few months.

S. 5 received 63 votes.  S. 30 received 70 votes. S. 5 can not become law because the President has promised to veto it.  His veto will be sustained by the House and the Senate.  President Bush would sign S. 30 into law.

Ethical embryonic stem cell bill language that I have worked six years to make law is included in both S. 5 and S. 30.  I support S. 30. However, I oppose S. 5 and I support President Bush's promised veto because it is both scientifically unnecessary and ethically unacceptable to destroy embryos to obtain their embryonic stem cells for scientific research.  Let me explain why this is true.

Stem cell research offers tremendous potential to alleviate the suffering that affects millions of Americans due to diseases and conditions such as paralysis, heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.  Embryonic and pluripotent (or embryonic-like adult) stem cells are those that can become many types of tissues and are long-lived. Embryonic stem cells are totipotent, meaning (and obviously) they will become every type of human tissue.  These pluripotent qualities, not the origin of stem cells, are what scientists believe hold the most promise for expanding their understanding of human diseases and to develop better treatments or cures. Read more...

Scientists have admitted that promises about embryonic research have been hyped and that patients are not likely to see benefits for decades – if ever. They have slyly confessed, after proponents have whipped the issue into a frenzy, that embryonic stem cell research will not live up to its rapturous claims.

British stem cell expert Professor Lord Winston stated, “One of the problems is that in order to persuade the public that we must do this work, we often go rather too far in promising what we might achieve…I am not entirely convinced that embryonic stem cells will, in my lifetime, and possibly in anybody’s lifetime for that matter, be holding quite the promise that we desperately hope they will. Read more...

When the president restated his veto threat Wednesday night he used a canard we're hearing now from opponents of S.5, that they want to avoid the culture war and allow science to progress through so-called alternatives like "dead embryos." Unfortunately even their own science experts say the alternatives are (to quote one) "pie in the sky." As to this administration's sudden aversion to culture wars after years of Rovean strategy that fanned those flames to the tune of two election victories, one can only shudder at the hypocrisy.

Stem cell research has the potential to help find cures for some of life's most devastating diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes, heart disease, multiple sclerosis, and spinal cord injury. The Stem Cell Research Act of 2007 (S.5) will remove the restrictions imposed by President Bush that have effectively stopped this research.

This research must be conducted in the sunshine. We need a national framework to establish bioethical standards based on sound science and ethical principles. Without national standards, this research will be conducted outside of the public eye and without national scrutiny. This is where I fear dark and ghoulish things can occur.

Every year we wait to pass this bill, our research falls three years behind. That's another patient who may have been saved, another family that may not have to watch a loved one suffer. This is not about ideology. It's not about party. It is about the American people and trying to help save lives everywhere.

S. 30 allows all the options, all the accomplishments, all the potential but does so in an ethical way. We can give to all those who are desirous of all these needed benefits of cure and treatment, and we can do it in an ethically responsible manner that will send us down the right road for this country, not the wrong road.