Her 8-year-old daughter, Miranda Smith, looked up through blonde bangs at the pediatric neurologist — who also happens to be the state’s lieutenant governor and a physician — as he put a stethoscope to her chest. He provided a diagnosis and his cell phone number, assuring Castle that everything should be fine.
Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, running for governor as a Democrat, had just come from his first debate against Republican Ed Gillespie that morning. The two had argued about the GOP plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act — and now Northam was treating those who had fallen through its cracks.
"Just another day at work," Northam said in the drawl of Virginia's rural Eastern Shore.
Wise County voted 80 percent for Donald Trump, but with unemployment, poverty and disability rates all above the national average, most of the patients here didn't care about whether the White House would prevail in the health care debate raging in D.C. or what version of the GOP plan would be voted on. They just wanted care.
"I don’t have insurance enough to have an opinion on that," said William Doss of repealing Obamacare as he waited to see a dentist.
For his part, Northam said Obamacare is working and that he hopes to get Virginia to finally accept the law's Medicaid expansion if he wins, which might help people like those at the clinic.
"I’m a big believer that health care should be a right, just like education is a right," he said. "In the richest county in the world, people should be able to not be one medical issue away from financial demise or death."
He added, "I think everybody that is in policy-making should come out and see what’s going on out here."
Stan Brock founded Remote Area Medical, which has run this pop-up clinic for 18 years, to send doctors to developing countries. But he found the need was so great in Appalachia and other parts of the U.S. that the non-profit now runs dozens of free clinics each year right at home.
Hundreds of people travel from all over southwest Virginia to spend the night in their cars and line up in the pre-dawn hours to see a doctor, get their teeth fixed, or leave with a new pair of glasses.
Brock knows it can be a photo opportunity for politicians. Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe visited Friday and almost didn’t recognize Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who was volunteering at patient registration.
This is just god awful depressing......
Say what you want about cynicism but when you see Obama helping out at food banks or Senator and Vice President candidate Tim Kaine helping out here vs Donald scamming cancer charity money.....
Let him land on any Lyran world to taste firsthand the wrath of peace loving people thwarted by the myopic greed of a few miserly old farts- Katrina Steiner
Maybe this will change some minds. Until then, I'm just seeing a society that has utterly forgotten how to help those who need it most, and continues to do so until it becomes a huge tragedy.
At least they are getting some help from volunteers.
I think that the utter failure of the Republican health care plans shows that the cry of "Privatize!" has had its day. More and more, we are seeing even more "mainstream" Democrats coming around to the idea of some form of single payer (Al Gore just recently came out in support of it, for one).
Just give us Congress back, and we'll give you Universal Medicare before too long.
But yeah, good for these Democrats.
"I know its easy to be defeatist here because nothing has seemingly reigned Trump in so far. But I will say this: every asshole succeeds until finally, they don't. Again, 18 months before he resigned, Nixon had a sky-high approval rating of 67%. Harvey Weinstein was winning Oscars until one day, he definitely wasn't."-John Oliver
"The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan."-General Von Clauswitz, describing my opinion of Bernie or Busters and third partiers in a nutshell.
I SUPPORT A NATIONAL GENERAL STRIKE TO REMOVE TRUMP FROM OFFICE.
One thing I've always wondered is why no one ever pushed for Medicare for children(meaning 0-18 years). That seems like a slam dunk, and once you've bookened the oldest and the youngest of the population with healthcare, it seems like the next natural step is Medicare for all.
"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance--that principle is contempt prior to investigation." -Herbert Spencer
"Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain." - Schiller, Die Jungfrau von Orleans, III vi.
I actually think that that would probably be the most practical way to get universal health care in our current political environment.
Even with a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress, outright passing single payer would probably be a long shot right now, and would stir up intense opposition.
But periodically extending Medicare coverage, by further lowering the minimum age or, as you noted, extending it to children... that's probably viable. And once you've dropped it to somewhere in the '40s, and included minors, then you're most of the way to universal coverage already.
Do it in steps, and in twenty years or so, we can have everyone covered.
"I know its easy to be defeatist here because nothing has seemingly reigned Trump in so far. But I will say this: every asshole succeeds until finally, they don't. Again, 18 months before he resigned, Nixon had a sky-high approval rating of 67%. Harvey Weinstein was winning Oscars until one day, he definitely wasn't."-John Oliver
"The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan."-General Von Clauswitz, describing my opinion of Bernie or Busters and third partiers in a nutshell.
I SUPPORT A NATIONAL GENERAL STRIKE TO REMOVE TRUMP FROM OFFICE.
Alferd Packer wrote: ↑2017-07-28 10:12pm
One thing I've always wondered is why no one ever pushed for Medicare for children(meaning 0-18 years). That seems like a slam dunk, and once you've bookened the oldest and the youngest of the population with healthcare, it seems like the next natural step is Medicare for all.
There actually is, it is aptly called Children's Health Insurance Plan (CHIP) which is available to those 19 and under with various degrees of premiums and co-payments depending on the state. New York's program for example is called Child Health Plus and it offers free monthly premiums for families below 1.6 times the poverty line or those above it can pay up to $60 per child per month in premiums with all having to pay zero co-payments. Looking on Wiki, I know, CHIP has been around since 1997.
Stan Brock founded Remote Area Medical, which has run this pop-up clinic for 18 years, to send doctors to developing countries. But he found the need was so great in Appalachia and other parts of the U.S. that the non-profit now runs dozens of free clinics each year right at home.
Hundreds of people travel from all over southwest Virginia to spend the night in their cars and line up in the pre-dawn hours to see a doctor, get their teeth fixed, or leave with a new pair of glasses.
Medicare for all is not a crazy far left issue, it's everyones and fuck all the Hillarybots who told Bernie supporters and convinced everyone else to be "realistic". You gotta fight for it to get it and its too bad that sentimentality is growing strong faster after Trump's win and not before.
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season."
There's a lot more incentive to do something radical to permanently cure your problem, when someone threatens to take away the medicine that's suppressing the symptoms. The ACA has spent most of the past decade suppressing the symptoms of our health care crisis.
Alferd Packer wrote: ↑2017-07-28 10:12pm
One thing I've always wondered is why no one ever pushed for Medicare for children(meaning 0-18 years). That seems like a slam dunk, and once you've bookened the oldest and the youngest of the population with healthcare, it seems like the next natural step is Medicare for all.
They did, more or less; it's called the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP).
EDIT: Oops, already answered.
“Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behavior, not because they won or lost.” Nassim Nicholas Taleb
CHIP doesn't cover all children, though. The cutoff point for the program is low enough that a lot of Americans who are nominally above the poverty line, far enough so that CHIP won't cover them, nonetheless cannot afford insurance.
CHIP is currently funded by cigarette taxes. Yes, cigarette taxes provide enough money to insure a significant fraction of all American children, who would otherwise go uninsured.
That said, it really would not take much to create "CHIP for all children." An extension of the existing program would easily do the job- but the current crop of congressional Republicans won't go for it. I wouldn't be surprised if Democrats try in the near future, though, especially if single-payer doesn't manage to win the required level of support. CHIP originated in the '90s as precisely this kind of "well, if we can't get real national health insurance, we can at least take care of the most impoverished kiddies" compromise measure.
