by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger

Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs) in New York City may soon have to level with the public about their real agenda. At the Ms. Blog, Michelle Chen has an update on proposed legislation which would force CPCs in New York to disclose that they aren’t reproductive health centers.

CPCs are anti-choice ministries that masquerade as full-service reproductive health clinics. They typically set up shop near real clinics to trick unwary clients. Real clinics dispense medical advice from doctors, nurses, and other licensed health care professionals. They are required to tell clients about the risks and benefits of all their treatment options. They don’t push clients towards abortion or adoption. CPCs are typically staffed by volunteers. Instead of medical advice, they hand out over-the-counter pregnancy tests and medically inaccurate information about the risks of abortion. They use pseudoscience and high pressure sales tactics to derail as many women seeking abortions as they can.

Chen reports that if the bill becomes law, New York CPCs will have to post signs disclosing that “they do not provide abortion services or contraceptive devices, or make referrals to organizations that do.” If the facility lacks licensed on-site medical professionals, the center would have to inform prospective clients of this fact. This is an excellent piece of consumer protection legislation. If CPCs are honest about who they are and what they do, they should have no problem with the law.

Christine O’Donnell: not (just) a joke

In an essay for the Women’s Media Center, organizer Shelby Knox explains why Delaware’s Republican Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell represents more than an anti-masturbation punchline:

Not ironically, O’Donnell is a loyal disciple to the religious agenda that equates sexuality, especially female sexuality, with evil and the decline of humanity. [...] To most mainstream Americans, O’Donnell’s concerted battle against solo sexual pleasure in particular is so fringe, so bizarre, it’s laughable. Yet, those of us deeply familiar with the ideology of the extremist right wing have long understood the condemnation of sex and sexual pleasure for anything other than the purpose of conception within marriage to be the underpinning of public policies that invite (Christian) God and (big, big) government into our bedrooms.

Knox notes that the same underlying suspicion of human sexuality finds expression in more mainstream areas of American politics, like federally-funded abstinence-only education, which substitutes religious homilies and gender stereotypes for science-based sex ed. (I would add federal funding for some of the nation’s aforementioned “crisis pregnancy centers” to Knox’s list of examples of anti-sex religious ideology replacing science-based health services.)

This week, O’Donnell drew audible gasps from a crowd when she claimed that the separation of church and state isn’t part of the U.S. Constitution, as Monica Potts reports for TAPPED.

O’Donnell may seem bizarre to the average voter, but Knox reminds us that she’s pretty typical of a rising tide of anti-sex, anti-science conservatism that we ignore at our peril:

But more accurately she’s the poster girl for more than 78 candidates running this election season who share her anti-sex, anti-woman views. These candidates believe abortion should be illegal in all cases, without exception for rape and incest. Some have promised a GOP majority would signal a return to funding failed abstinence-only policies. Ken Buck, the GOP Senate candidate in Colorado, even went so far as to refuse to prosecute a rape because the accuser had “buyer’s remorse” over an abortion he alleged she’d had a year before the assault.

Condoms and porn

A porn actor in California became the latest performer to test positive for HIV last week. His diagnosis sent shockwaves through the San Fernando Valley’s porn industry because the actor was reportedly a star who worked with a lot of big names in an industry where condoms are the exception rather than the rule.

The case has reignited controversy over the fact that straight porn companies aggressively flout California law that mandates condoms on porn sets. The industry maintains that it doesn’t need condoms because it has a rigorous testing program for talent. As I report in Working In These Times the industry is being allowed to investigate the HIV outbreak on its own, which is a little like asking BP to monitor oil spills. The same industry-allied non-profit that administers the tests, and does PR about how great the testing program is, also investigates cases of HIV in the industry. Does anyone else see a potential problem?

Concussions in the NFL

Football season is in full swing, but for Dave Zirin of The Nation and many other football fans, it’s getting harder and harder to reconcile their love of the game with our growing awareness of the toll that it takes on players:

In August, to much fanfare, NFL owners finally acknowledged that football-related concussions cause depression, dementia, memory loss and the early onset of Alzheimer’s disease. Now that they’ve opened the door, this concussion discussion is starting to shape how we understand what were previously seen as the NFL’s typical helping of off-field controversy and tragedy.

Zirin appends a list of over 30 players who have sustained concussions since the pre-season. Peter King of Sports Illustrated is calling for the NFL to start kicking excessively violent players out of the game, but Zirin says that’s not enough to stem the tide of concussions. Devastating brain injuries can come from routine, legal hits. A lot of the cumulative brain trauma leaves players demented in their fifties is actually sustained during practice.

The carnage is built into the game. Concussions are unavoidable given anatomy of the human brain and the physics of huge guys crashing into each other. Helmets only help so much because they can’t prevent the brain from smashing against the cranium. Zirin thinks football fans need to do a lot of soul searching. He argues that every fan should think hard about whether it’s really that much fun to watch guys get their brains pulped in the name of sport. Zirin’s not ready to give up football yet, but he thinks the gnawing guilt may eventually outweigh his love of the game.

Cephalon spokesdoc: “Maybe I am a pervert, I honestly don’t know”

Mother Jones and Propublica have a blockbuster exposé of crooked doctors on pharmaceutical company payrolls. They found that a shocking number of “white coat sales reps” (doctors paid by pharmaceutical companies to sell drugs to other doctors) have checkered pasts and dodgy credentials.

For examples, in 2004, a court upheld a Georgia hospital’s decision to fire Dr. Donald Ray Taylor, an anesthesiologist who had a habit of giving vaginal and anal exams to young female patients without documenting why. According to court records, Dr. Taylor explained himself to a hospital official as follows, “Maybe I am a pervert, I honestly don’t know.”

For reasons that are themselves murky, Dr. Taylor went on to become the highest paid speaker for the pharmaceutical giant Cephalon, earning $142,050 in 2009 and an an additional $52,400 through June. It turns out that Dr. Taylor is far from the only shady doc to make big bucks as a shill for big pharma. The investigators found 250 pharma docs with serious blemishes on their records for such offenses as inappropriately prescribing drugs, providing poor care, or having sex with patients. Some were just playing doctor on the pharma circuit, having lost their licenses.

This update brought to you by the Media Consortium, and the letter C.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

 

 

by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger

Tainted egg shell game

The Iowa chapter of the Sierra Club is pushing state regulators to investigate two factory farms and a feed mill linked to this summer’s massive recall of salmonella-tainted eggs, Lynda Waddington reports in the Iowa Independent. The Sierra Club sent a strongly-worded letter to Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller urging him to investigate Wright County Egg, Hillandale Farms and the Quality Egg LLC feed mill. All three firms were linked to the salmonella outbreak that sickened an estimated 1200 people; and all three firms are linked to agro-baron Austin “Jack” DeCoster.

Tom Philpott of Grist calls DeCoster a “habitual” environmental offender and “one of the most reviled names in industrial agriculture.” In 1996, the Department of Labor fined DeCoster Eggs $3.6 million for what the then-Secretary of Labor described as “running an agricultural sweatshop” and “treating its employees like animals.” Over the years, DeCoster enterprises racked up additional fines in other states. A previous Attorney General of Iowa dubbed DeCoster a habitual offender for water pollution. In 2002, five female employees at the DeCoster’s Wright County egg operation alleged that their supervisors had raped them and threatened to kill them if they reported the crime. The company paid $1.5 million to settle the lawsuit.

Drowsy doctors

A coalition of public health activists is pushing the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to regulate the work hours of doctors in training. New proposed guidelines would limit the shifts of first-year residents to 16 hours, but more senior trainees could be forced to work shifts up to 28 hours. The group, which includes the Committee of Interns and Residents/SEIU Healthcare, the American Medical Student Association, and Public Citizen, says that’s not good enough to protect doctors or the public. As I explain in Working In These Times, research shows that sleep deprivation is a major preventable cause of medical errors, which is why the coalition wants to see shifts for all residents capped at 16 hours.

Insurance premiums soar

A new report from the Kaiser Foundation Family shows that health insurance premiums continued to climb with employers shifting an ever-greater share of the burden onto employees. A family health insurance policy costs about $14,000 a year, with employees shouldering 30% of that cost. Michelle Chen reports in ColorLines that families that manage to hang onto their health insurance can’t expect relief through health care reform any time soon. The major reforms don’t go into effect until 2014 and the biggest early beneficiaries will be those who are currently uninsured rather than those who are already paying through the nose for lousy coverage. The ultimate goal of comprehensive health care reform is to reshape the health care and health insurance systems to bring costs down across the board, but that’s small consolation to workers who are struggling to stay on top of their premiums right now.

 

 

By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium Blogger

Progressives rejoiced when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced this week that the final Senate health care bill would include a public option. The announcement was a major victory for left-wing Democrats.

Better yet, it would be a public option without a trigger. Earlier proposals called for a triggered public option which would only take effect if private insurers failed to bring down costs on their own. Under the opt-out compromise, the public option would come on line automatically (albeit not until 2013), but states would later have the option of quitting.

The jubilation was short-lived. Alex Koppelman of Salon explains:

Progressives didn't even get 24 hours to celebrate the victory they won in getting Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to include a version of the public option in his health care reform bill. The celebration was cut off Tuesday afternoon with the news that Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., will vote with Senate Republicans to filibuster the legislation.

The Democrats have 60 Senate votes. If they all vote for cloture, a procedural motion to stop debate, the Republicans can't filibuster the bill. The Senators who vote for cloture can still vote against the bill. Reid's strategy for passing the bill was to get all Democrats to vote for cloture and let them vote their conscience on the actual bill. Even without Lieberman, Democrats have the votes to pass the bill by majority vote if they can avoid a filibuster.

Health care is the most important domestic policy initiative of the Obama administration. Would Joe Lieberman really torpedo reform? The Senate leadership thinks Reid is bluffing, according to Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly.

I understand the argument. Lieberman loves attention and power. By threatening to join the Republican filibuster, he gets both--Democrats have to scramble to make him happy, since there's no margin for error in putting together 60 votes. Lieberman gets to feel very important for the next several weeks by making this threat less than 24 hours after Harry Reid stated his intentions, but that doesn't necessarily mean he wants to be known forever as The Senator Who Killed Health Care Reform.

I find it very easy to believe, however, that Lieberman is capable of doing just that. He left himself some wiggle room, but not when it comes to the public option--he's against it, no matter what, even with all of the compromises thrown in.

In other words, if this is all a ploy for leverage, why would Lieberman open by swearing that he won't support a bill with a public option? You'd think he'd just say he was keeping his options open and force Reid to make him a counter-offer. Reid has already decided that the public option is politically non-negotiable. He's afraid that the base won't come out for the 2012 elections if they don't get what they want. Benen speculates that Lieberman wants to be the Senator Who Killed Health Care because he wants to drum up massive Republican support for his 2012 reelection bid. On this theory, Lieberman is joining Rep. Joe "You Lie!" Wilson (R-SC) and Balloon Dad in the quest to make bank on ridiculous publicity stunts.

Senator Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) says that she will side with the Republicans to filibuster the bill "if she has to," as Evan McMorris-Santoro reports for TPM. Snowe was the only Republican to vote for the Finance Committee's health care bill.

Reid must walk a fine line. The administration really can't afford to alienate organized labor before the 2012 elections. Newly elected AFL-CIO President Ricahrd Trumka continues to push for his three core demands for health care reform: a public option, a mechanism to make employers pay their fair share, and no taxes on health care benefits. Last week, AFSCME President Gerald McEntee said that his union would oppose legislation that taxed benefits, but Trumka hasn't gone that far, as David Moberg reports at Working In These Times.

Finally, in other health-related news, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the division of the Labor Department that oversees workplace safety, has issued a sweeping new report condemning Nevada's state-level OSHA program. As I report for Working in These Times, the investigators found that NOSHA inspectors were being pressured by their superiors to write up employers on lesser charges, even when their repeat offenses killed workers.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

There's more...

The New York Times had an op-ed yesterday,

"The Working Wounded" - reminding me of an issue that I have always thought the Democrats SHOULD stand for, but which seems strangely to have disappeared in this election year.

Workplace Safety. Legislating improved safety rules for the millions of working people in this country, so they can work without fear of death or serious injury while they are doing their jobs.

The article has a number of startling facts in it which should make us realize that in the current global climate, compared to many other developed countries (some of which have been making real progress) we in the US are basically going backwards by ignoring changes in global attitudes and expectations on issues like worker safety. The level to which we ignore safety violations is absolutely appalling. It is a national disgrace.

Not only have important and necessary changes been postponed, and some rules even rolled back, but during the Bush Administration, the agencies enforcing safety have also had their budgets slashed, sending a message to the worst kinds of employers that they 'could get away with murder', literally.

For example, read this segment of the op-ed piece (summarized digitally from the NYT article)

"Mr. Elias wanted his workers to clean out a 25,000-gallon
tank that contained cyanide waste.  He refused to test the
air or the waste inside the tank.  He ignored the pleas of
his workers for safety equipment.  When the workers
complained of sore throats and difficulty breathing, Mr.
Elias told them to finish the job or find work somewhere
else.

Mr. Dominguez, a 20-year-old high school graduate, wanted to
keep his job.  Wearing just jeans and a T-shirt, he used a
ladder to descend into the tank.  Two hours later, covered
in sludge and barely breathing, he was removed from the
tank, a victim of cyanide poisoning at the hands of a
ruthless employer who would blame his "stupid and lazy"
employees for the incident.

The Justice Department opened a criminal investigation of
Evergreen Resources.  I was one of the lead prosecutors on
the case.  We quickly discovered that we had a major
problem.

My colleagues and I were shocked to learn that an employer
who breaks the nation's worker-safety laws can be charged
with a crime only if a worker dies.  Even then, the crime is
a lowly Class B misdemeanor, with a maximum sentence of six
months in prison.  (About 6,000 workers are killed on the
job each year, many in cases where the deaths could have
been prevented if their employers followed the law.)
Employers who maim their workers face, at worst, a maximum
civil penalty of $70,000 for each violation.

We ended up prosecuting Mr. Elias for environmental crimes,
and he was sentenced to 17 years in prison.  I later became
chief of the Justice Department's environmental crimes
section, and we started an initiative -- based on this case
and others like it -- to seek justice when workers were
seriously injured or killed during environmental crimes.  We
prosecuted some of the largest companies in America.  But in
cases where 'no environmental crimes were committed', we often
could not prosecute.

Employers rarely face criminal prosecution under the
worker-safety laws.  In the 38 years since Congress enacted
the Occupational Safety and Health Act, only 68 criminal
cases have been prosecuted, or less than two per year, with
defendants serving a total of just 42 months in jail.
During that same time, approximately 341,000 people have
died at work, according to data compiled from the National
Safety Council and the Bureau of Labor Statistics by the
A.F.L.-C.I.O.

It is long past time for Congress to change the law.  First,
Congress should amend the Occupational Safety and Health Act
to make it a crime for an employer to commit violations that
cause serious injury to workers or that knowingly place
workers at risk of death or serious injury.  Whether good
fortune intervenes and prevents harm to workers should not
determine whether an employer commits a crime.

Congress should make it a felony to commit a criminal
violation of the worker-safety laws, and the penalties for
lawbreakers should be stiffened.  The maximum sentence ought
to be measured in years, not months.

Congress also should change the worker-safety laws so that
ignorance of the law is no longer a defense.  Employers have
a duty to know their responsibilities under the Occupational
Safety and Health Act.

Finally, Congress should make clear who can be prosecuted.
Some courts have held that prosecution is limited to
companies and their owners.  Supervisors who order workers
to break the law, as well as responsible corporate officers
who fail to stop violations that they know are occurring,
should also be held criminally responsible, just as they are
under most other federal laws.

Most companies care about protecting their workers.  But
without a serious threat of criminal enforcement, more
workers will be put at risk by companies that put profits
before safety."

There's more...