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**This was sent as an E-mail, I thought it should be here, so I started the Forum and moved it, Les**
Now I can explain i have been on food stamps once in my life. I have been forced to find any job i could as i was being pressured to get one quick. Not in a leisurely fashion...pronto was more like it. But I was grateful for the help I received and have been able to put food on the table and a roof over my kids heads so far. I have one left in high school. I will be grateful to have my home if I can continue to be employed. I am a contract worker and my job is not secured by the normal route. I have to bid on a postal contract in order to continue doing my job. I lost half or more of my income when my fiancee died in Midland last year in March. I have been struggling ever since then.
My biggest concern is what Mr. Obama is doing to health care. It is a privilege not a right. I have to pay for mine. Why shouldn't every one else. Its not like i can afford it on my pay, but others should have to pay for it too. Health care insurance is the same thing. Pay for it or do the low cost thing or the charity thing. There is help out there if you can get off your ass and find it. I do believe there are some people that will never be able to find it. But that is why we have help here in the good ole USA. We can help them by donating, and pointing in the right direction!
The way the new bills are laid out is to interfere in everyone life and health care is becoming a state run industry if it passes. God help us all. Obama wants to be daddy for us all and tell us what we can and cannot do.
I want your opinion and where you stand on this issue. It should be reasonable. That is all I am asking.
I am sending you a email I received about the healthcare that was supposedly written about health care bills as they are now.
Please take time to have it researched.
This could be America's last farwell to the freedoms as we know and love it!
Sincerely,
Shannon Marinelli |
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First of all, I do not support the Health Reform Bill that is presently being considered by Congress, you can read my position on the Health Care page of my site. And secondly...
I have a problem reconciling the fact that our Federal Government spends more money every year on Health Care, by twice, what any "Socialized Health Care" nation on the planet does, and our life expectancy is the lowest of any industrialized nation and we get 37th rate care.
Our Medicaid & Medicare systems ARE socialized Medicine and no one seems to want to stop them, reform and remove fraud, yes. But there is a sizable dead zone between where you no longer get assistance and where you can afford to take care of yourself.
I am tired of hearing what we can't do, tired of the excuses for the present system followed by the mantra, "Well, at least we still have the best health care in the world", which is a blatant LIE. I am tired of staying sick because I can't afford a doctor, then made to feel like I am a loser because this is true. I am tired of hearing how rich Hospitals, Doctors, Pharmaceutical companies, and Health Insurance companies have the right to charge whatever they want, when over 40% of Texans are either under-insured or un-insured, and supply and demand obviously doesn't matter.
It should be the desire and mission of anyone associated with Health Care to put health before profit, compassion before greed. I went to the emergency room for 2 hours got 2 X-rays and 2 shots, cost = $6500, justify that. I got a $1350 bill for my daughter's visit in 1993, 8 hours, they completely messed up and hurt my child, and the final prognosis? "We don't know, go see your Family Physician."
I am not saying that someone shouldn't get paid for their work, but no one works efficiently while sick. It behooves a community, society, or business to keep their people as healthy as possible.
I find it crazy that two of the most important things for a people to be happy and prosperous are being out-priced, education and health. We shoot ourselves in the foot and then come to a total standstill while arguing our position.
America and Texas are failing and their is nothing on the horizon that is going to reverse this trend. No politician, organization, nor the capabilities of our youth, are prepared to stop the decline. If we do not act to change this we will suffer the consequences very soon, some of it is already upon us.
We must be educated, we must be healthy, we must have proper nutrition, clothing, and shelter, we must make this a reality soon. We are in for tough times no matter what we do today, but the only course that insures coming out of this with an opportunity to achieve greatness once again, is not the current path we are on.
No problem is unique unto itself, everything is interwoven. That is why my proposals are so diverse and complete. We need to revamp the entire system and the way we think and live. "You cannot have your cake and eat it too", if we continue to do things the same way, we will never see them change, those courses of actions are what led us here.
Do I have the exact answer for every problem, of course not, who does? But the plans laid out on this site go further than anything else I have heard to address them. I am not in this for Political gain, I am not a politician. I am not here for personal gain, I cannot benefit more than any Texan. I am not here for any agenda, it's just me, no Party or Organization. I am here because I see what is wrong and have some good ideas how to fix it, or at least, get it moving in the right direction.
If I am elected, I will end unemployment, I will end poverty, I will provide the needs of the people and secure their opportunity to achieve their wants. I can do this, I will do this! Support me and become part of the solution, deny me and live the present "no end in sight" situation. Believe me, if we do not come together and solve our own problems, the world will eventually solve them for us, which do you prefer? |
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I NEED SOME HELP AND SOME ANSWERS AND I ASSUME YOU WILL BE OUR NEXT GOVERNOR OF TEXAS.
My mother was a very active 77 year old when she was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis of the lungs in May 2009. She had been working out at the junior college swimming pool 5 days a week for at least the last 7 years. She saw her cardiologists on a regular basis and her heart was just fine. I know RA of the lungs is considered fatal but some people live 10 - 15 years after being diagnosed.
My mother had a lung biopsy done in July, 2009 to make sure she was being treated for the right disease. Her surgeon told us that her lungs were very pink and looked like a normal lung. My mothers breathing had improved so much one month after starting her medication that her doctor said that he had never seen this much improvement in such a short time. She was doing fine.
SHE GOT A STAPH INFECTION FROM THE HOSPITAL WHERE SHE HAD THE BIOPSY DONE AND SHE DIED ON THE 25TH OF NOVEMBER 2009. This was 4 months after she had been told that her lungs were looking good. Not only did she die, but the infection that she got turned to an abcess and she was in a tremendous amount of pain. My mother should not have died. Her family should have been having Thanksgiving dinner instead of planning her funeral.
Medical Center Hospital in Odessa, Texas has a lot of their patients go into their hospital for minor problems, get a staph infection and die. It is horrible in this hospital. My mom is not the only one.
I am writing to everyone who is running for Governor of Texas because I want something done about my mother's death.
In 1993 I was having trouble getting my daughters replacement therapy medicine and I appealed to Bill Clinton and his staff got back with me and after he got into office my daughter and I were invited to the White House to visit about healthcare. If he and his staff can do that at that level, I know you can do something about staph infections in hospitals.
Thank you,
Susie Whitman |
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Staphylococcus aureus infections (S. aureus) create an enormous burden to hospitals by significantly increasing costs, length of patient stays and mortality rates, a Northwestern Memorial Hospital researcher found in the most comprehensive study to date, published today's Archives of Internal Medicine. The study, led by Gary Noskin, MD, an infectious diseases specialist and medical director of healthcare epidemiology and quality at Northwestern Memorial, examined two years of data from hundreds of hospitals.
"There are currently a number of things being done to reduce the number of hospital-acquired S. aureus infections, including use of antibiotics to prevent surgical site infections, consistent hand-washing and maximum barrier protections when putting in central lines," adds Dr. Noskin. "There are also strategies to reduce S. aureus infections that are brought into the hospital such as performing a nasal swab to screen for S. aureus then attempting to eliminate it. Another important intervention is to make sure patients with certain infections are placed in isolation."
S. aureus infection was listed as a discharge diagnosis in nearly 1 percent of all hospital stays, or an average of 292,045 stays in a year, the study found. And S. aureus infection stays had, on average, 3 times the length of stay (14.3 vs. 4.5 days), three times the total charges ($48,824 vs. $14,141), and five times the risk of in-hospital death (11.2 percent vs. 2.3 percent) than stays without this infection. Even when controlling for patient differences in age, gender, race and comorbidities, the differences were significant: 9.1 days in excess length of stay, $32,856 in excess charges and 4 percent in-hospital mortality.
Applying these per stay estimates to the total number of S. aureus stays in the United States in a given year results in an estimated 2.7 million days in excess length of stay, $9.5 billion in excess charges, and close to 12,000 inpatient deaths per year. The differences remained significant when also comparing hospitalizations with S. aureus infections with other types of infections.
S. aureus is a bacterium, frequently living on the skin or in the nose of a healthy person that can cause illnesses ranging from minor skin infections and abscesses, to life-threatening diseases. Long recognized as a frequent cause of healthcare-associated infections in acute care hospitals, it is often responsible for hospital-acquired pneumonia and surgical site infections, and is the second most common cause of bloodstream infections. An increasing percentage of S. aureus infections are caused by antibiotic resistant strains of the organism.
Other findings include:
1) Patients undergoing an orthopedic, cardiovascular, and neurosurgical procedure that have S. aureus infection spent 16.6 additional days in the hospital and at a cost of $68,944 as compared to patients without S. aureus infections.
2) Patients undergoing an orthopedic, cardiovascular or neurosurgical procedure with S. aureus infections had a nearly five-fold risk of in-hospital death compared to patients without this infection. The differential in absolute risk of mortality was greatest for cardiovascular procedures.
3) Among the hospitalizations analyzed, S. aureus infections were most likely to occur in neurosurgery stays (1.4 percent) and least likely to occur in orthopedic surgery stays (0.3 percent).
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MRSA infection is caused by Staphylococcus aureus bacteria — often called "staph." MRSA stands for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. It's a strain of staph that's resistant to the broad-spectrum antibiotics commonly used to treat it. MRSA can be fatal.
Most MRSA infections occur in hospitals or other health care settings, such as nursing homes and dialysis centers. It's known as health care-associated MRSA, or HA-MRSA. Older adults and people with weakened immune systems are at most risk of HA-MRSA. More recently, another type of MRSA has occurred among otherwise healthy people in the wider community. This form, community-associated MRSA, or CA-MRSA, is responsible for serious skin and soft tissue infections and for a serious form of pneumonia.
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I am not sure what I am able to do about this situation. One of the articles I referenced is from 2005, so I do not doubt that health care systems and staff are aware and doing everything in their power to address this situation. I don't think any hospital or its staff would be simply callous on this issue.
As a person that lost a Grandmother that was supposedly going to be released then died from "complications", I am sympathetic to your situation. Your cries have not gone unheard, If I am elected Governor, I will definitely look into this situation and insure we are using every possible measure to prevent unnecessary infections.
In the mean time, try doing some research of your own. Search for data on how many patients from your hospital have contracted a staph infection, and how many fatally so. See if there is any information on patients that were readmitted for a Staph infection after being recently released. Let's see if there is a disparity between the number of cases in your local system over the national average. If you should find a significant difference, Governor or not, I will do everything I can to get the proper authorities to address this situation.
My heart goes out to you for your loss, but I fervently hope that this was just an unfortunate incident that happened, in spite of taking every measure to prevent it. As Governor, I will do everything in my power to insure that our Health Care Institutions and personnel are constantly striving to give patients the best, safest, and most compassionate care possible. |
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