Americans Support Health Care Reform, Unsure Of Specifics Say Pollsters

By Laura Smith - University of New Mexico/Talk Radio News Service

During an event hosted by the Alliance For Health Reform on Friday, a group of pollsters discussed recent surveys that show a large number of Americans want healthcare reform, but are unsure of exactly what details are in the many bills being debated in Congress.

Mollyann Brodie, vice president and director of Public Opinion and Survey Research of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation

Mark Blumenthal, Publisher of Pollster.com, said that in the most recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 39 percent of Americans agreed that President Obama’s health care plan is a good idea, while 41 percent of those surveyed disagreed.

“We can get a hint of where those numbers might go from the extensive survey data collected by the Kaiser Family Foundation in the two years following enactment of the prescription drug benefit in Medicare, now known as Medicare Part D,” he said.

The same NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll also asked folks how well they understood the health care legislation that is currently being debated in Congress. Only 15 percent of those asked said they understood the issue very well and 32 percent said that they somewhat understood the legislation.

Mollyann Brodie, Vice President and Ddirector of Public Opinion and Survey Research of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, said that a recent poll conducted by her organization found that only about 53 percent of Americans believe that reform would be beneficial to the nation. The poll also found that 27 percent of Americans feel that their families would be better off thanks to reform.

Albright Talks About New NATO Strategy

By Laura Smith, University of New Mexico-Talk Radio News Service

Former Secretary of the State Madeleine Albright appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Thursday, saying that she has recently participated in the first of four planned seminars as part of a broader process to collect a range of views about NATO's strategy and operations. She said the treaty-organization plans to provide their conclusions and recommendations to the Secretary General by next May.

She said that after consulting with member governments, the Secretary General will draft the strategic concept for consideration at the Lisbon Summit, and when it is approved, it will serve as a guide for the alliance in the coming decade.

“NATO was created in response to the Soviet threat, but not only in response to that threat. It was also designed to reign in the many national rivalries that had ripped Europe apart,” Albright said.

Senators, Cabinet Officials Say They're Closely Monitoring H1N1

By Laura Smith - University of New Mexico/Talk Radio News Service

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) discussed measures that are being taken to manage the spread of the H1N1 virus Wednesday during a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on how the U.S. has so far dealt with the virus.

Lieberman, the committee's chairman, said the H1N1 virus reached pandemic levels this summer and that it was impossible to accurately report how many people in the U.S. have died from the H1N1 virus because it’s hard to stay on top of the numbers.

“We do know that at least 2,300 people have died in the United States from the H1N1 flu in the last few months,” Lieberman said.

Lieberman mentioned that the Center For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported that the H1N1 flu virus has spread to all 50 states in the country, and that “this particular strain of influenza has moved at an alarming speed and taken an exceptionally high toll at a time of year when we normally don’t encounter significant cases of flu.”

Lieberman also said that pregnant women are being hit hard by the H1N1 virus. He said that of 100 pregnant women who required intensive care and were treated for the flu in late August, 28 died.

The former Democrat said he is concerned that the flu is spreading so rapidly and in some cases with such intensity that it may well be getting ahead of the federal government’s ability to prevent and respond to it.

Lieberman gave three reasons for his concern: The schedule for the production and availability of the vaccine, the fact that hospitals and public health departments don’t have the capacity to care for the surge of people who may need hospitalization as a result of the virus, and the availability of intravenous antiviral medication to treat the critically ill who have contracted the virus.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) mentioned that Bates College in Lewiston, Maine issued a report showing that there was a jump in how many students at their school had the H1N1 virus, from six to 160 people in just a week.

“As of yesterday, 245 Bates students are infected with H1N1,” Collins said.

She said public health experts are learning as they go along, sometimes with the surprising results that run counter to their previous assumptions about H1N1. She added that the CDC released a report saying that 46 percent of 1400 adults hospitalized with H1N1 were healthy and did not have underlying chronic illnesses before getting H1N1.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said she testified in April that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and their federal partners were addressing the situation of the H1N1 virus aggressively and collectively. She said their planning has assumed that there would be some gap period between when vaccine would be commonly available and when the flu would actually be present.

“In other words they were assuming some lag time between the flu spiking and vaccine availability,” she said.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the H1N1 virus has not changed significantly since April. She also said that people are using the website flu.gov as a tool, and that the website has gotten about five million hits a week.

She also said the flu season officially started October 4th, but echoed Sen. Lieberman's assertion that this is not a typical flu season.

“Visits to doctors are higher than expected, 41 states represent what we now call wide spread level of activity, which is just the count that they’re giving, and the remaining states are at elevated levels of flu. so this is a national issue,” Sebelius said.

She said there have been 86 reported H1N1 pediatric deaths since the virus was reported earlier this year, and that pregnant women are among those seriously affected.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) asked Sebelius if she thought the spread of the virus would come down in the winter months, and she said she was hoping it would after people were vaccinated.

McCain confronted Sebelius about a comment she made saying there would be many people who would not be vaccinated, and asked her if she was worried about hospital over utilization and lack of capacity in the hospitals in America, to which Sebelius stumbled to a response.

Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan said schools earlier this year closely followed school-dismissal guidance policies developed by the CDC. One example he gave occurred on April 26, 2009 when he said, “the CDC advised schools to consider closing when they had a confirmed or suspected case of H1N1 - and we found that schools adhered to that advice.”

Duncan said they learned a lesson in the spring that not only did schools follow the CDC’s advice on flu-related issues, but also that quickly closing a school is a complex undertaking that has consequences beyond the loss of valuable school time.

“For example, unplanned school closures led to the loss of school meals for some of the 31 million kids who rely on the federal school meals programs, loss of wages for parents who had to stay home from home to take care of their children, and older students left home without proper supervision,” he said.

Pelosi And Hoyer Meet With Young Girls With Pre-Existing Conditions

By Laura Smith, University of New Mexico-Talk Radio News Service

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), Rep. Mark Schauer (D-Mich.) and Jim Williams, the CEO of Easter Seals, a non-profit that helps disabled youth, held a briefing today to talk about the importance of health care reform for children with pre-existing conditions.

"Every family in America is one phone call, one accident, one diagnosis away from needing what we have in our bill," Pelosi said.

A mother, Roxanne, and her daughter, Shannon, who has cerebral palsy, were also present at the meeting.

Roxanne said that Shannon has dreams and that she's been fortunate to have had Medicaid almost all of her life, and she's progressed very well with having Medicaid. Shannon she had a surgery recently and also needed therapy to fully recovery, and Medicaid will not pay for it.

"These aren't just the services she needs now, this is services she needs all her life. Cerebral palsy doesn't just go away," Roxanne said.

She said she really wanted her daughter to get the therapy she needs so she can live a very full and independent life, like her.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said the health care bill is about making sure no American is left without the health care they need. He also said the health care bill is about "whether or not the nation can say 'yes we can' today.'"

Hoyer also introduced a young woman named Jessica, who at 21 months old was in a horrible car accident with her mother. She made a recovery, but her insurance company saw the accident as a pre-existing condition.

He mentioned how she was planning on getting married this month, but when she does, she will have to find different health insurance that she can afford and that will also accept her pre-existing condition.

"She ought not have to choose between her health insurance and getting married," Hoyer said.

Jessica said the organization Easter Seals has always been there for her. She said that her insurance wouldn't pay for her Easter Seals when she turned 21, and that one of her biggest expenses is a dietary supplement that she's paying for out of her pocket.

Pelosi said, "These girls demonstrate so clearly that, in our society, we must respect people for what they can do, rather than judge them for what they can not do."

Political Pranksters Take On Capitol Hill

By Laura Smith, University Of New Mexico-Talk Radio News Service

If you walked past the Capitol today and heard songs "Survivor" from Destiny's Child and "I will survive" by Gloria Gaynor and thought you were walking by a concert, think again.

A group of approximately 20 from the politically charged prank troupe The Yes Men donned ballon-like costumes and met on the Northeast lawn of the Capitol today to speak out against climate change, all while playing these songs repeatedly.

Andy Birchlbaum, a member of the Yes Men, says that the entire world is saying something needs to be done to combat climate change, but that it's not being done because the U.S. is holding up the game.

"If we don't send Obama to Copenhagen in December with a good bill, and the only bill we have is Kerry-Boxer right now, it's going to be disastrous," said Bichlbaum.

"The U.S. is going to be a laughing stock again, and worse than that, the world is going to be left without a plan to deal with climate change," Birchlabaum added.

The costumes, which the group deemed Survivaballs, are a wardrobe piece the activists jokingly claimed will protect people from disasters, such as tsunamis, falling out of windows and burning buildings.

"We are comedians. We do absurd things," continued Birchlbaum. "We're not trying to be legislators, we're not trying to be politicians, we're not even trying to be reporters. We're trying to help reporters get the message out," he said.

"We tried to come up with the absolute stupidest costume and the stupidest spectacle we could to show how stupid it is to do nothing and not to have climate legislation," he added.

He said the costumes were initially presented at a conference on U.S. Gulf Coast as Halliburton's solution to climate change. While the presentation was satire, the audience, not in on the joke, applauded them.

Yesterday, the group fooled the press by sending out a fake press release claiming to be from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The release claimed that the Chamber intended to adopt a more environmentally-friendly stance toward climate change. The release was picked up by Reuters.

The activists marched to the Capitol, chanting, "Oh it's hot in here, there must be some carbon in the atmosphere." The Yes Men also approached Capitol police officers, asking them for their opinions about climate change. The officers declined to respond.

Mike Bonanno, another member of the Yes Men and Survivaball costume wearer, moved the chains on the stairs of the Capitol to walk up. Police quickly swarmed in to escort him off the stairs, saying it was illegal. As he began to argue with them, he fell down the steps and onto the pavement at the bottom. Bonanno was unharmed, but his costume was deflated.