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GOP cuts to Medicaid will harm America’s health

“ Congress is considering proposals that could change Medicaid financing and eligibility. “Some of these proposed changes could cause millions of people to lose access to care under Medicaid. People without coverage often skip necessary care, leading to worse health outcomes. For people in poor health, the results can be dangerous. “Cuts will put a greater burden on emergency rooms and community health providers. “Each additional uninsured person results in $900 in uncompensated health care costs. Hospitals absorb most of these costs. Ultimately, this means fewer services, higher prices, and reduced investments in their local community. “Federal cuts to Medicaid funding could also have a ripple effect in many states that have “trigger laws” that automatically reduce Medicaid care and coverage if federal matching funds are cut.” Medicaid cuts hurt citizens in red states. In particular, the cuts that result in rural hospital closures will fall on rural voters who historically skew Republ...
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The Trump/Musk Administration shuts down Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System

This certainly isn’t pro-life: “ The Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) is a federal data collection system, run out of CDC, “designed to identify groups of women and infants at high risk for health problems, to monitor changes in health status, and to measure progress towards goals in improving the health of mothers and infants,” in the words of the program’s website. It has run continuously since 1988 and covers everything for the particulars of newborn health and morbidity to issues like postpartum depression in mothers. I can report that the Trump CDC has shuttered the program as part of its general clampdown on medical research and public health information.” Shame. https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/cdc-shutters-prams-program-on-maternal-and-infant-health
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Did COVID-19 begin with raccoon dogs?

The weight of evidence—scientific and epidemiological—points to a zoonotic origin for SARS-CoV-2 with the epicenter at the Huanan wet market in Wuhan, China. Although the virus is endemic in bats, there’s little evidence for a direct jump of the virus from bats to humans in Wuhan. The most parsimonious hypothesis is that some other mammal intermediated the transmission. While several animals known to be at the wet market have been suspects, the raccoon dog (which is not related to raccoons) is at the top of the list. Recent review of the data supports this inference: “ Today, mounting evidence from more than a dozen studies point to a person, or people, catching the virus from a wild animal or animals at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, China, the city at the epicentre of the outbreak. And the animal at the top of the list is the raccoon dog   ( Nyctereutes procyonoides ). “There is a large focus on raccoon dogs,” says Kristian Andersen, an evolutionary biologist at Scripps Rese...
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Poultry farms are America’s “wet market” for the next pandemic

  "In the facilities—the artificial ecosystems—that now house much of Earth’s terrestrial vertebrate biomass, constraints on virulence that prevail in natural ecosystems are not merely removed. Virulence is actually favored. In the words of Mark Woolhouse, an epidemiologist at the University of Edinburgh, the viruses are “a response to the selection pressures that exist in a human creation: the modern poultry farm.”   “I already know people are going to look at that subheading and start screaming about gain of function and other fantasies. It's not about making a virus in a lab. It's about providing the perfect conditions for a virus to evolve into a pandemic.” So US poultry farms are functioning like the Wuhan wet market, although I guess the conspiracy theorists will blame Ft. Detrick. https://nautil.us/the-unnatural-history-of-bird-flu-1189930/?fbclid=IwY2xjawIkSBRleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHZp1IHazCDJeMy_qfzTOLiGbodC8_nWMKyehjaxdJYhbeDMhn6VPGVNk-Q_aem_w0G2fgsu0YijH_bnmtY9Lg   ...
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About those DOGE cuts to defense spending

For those who were duped into believing that DOGE is serious about defense budget cuts rather than centralizing control of spending and aligning spending with the political priorities of the Trump/Musk Administration, here’s Secretary of Defense Hesgeth: “ Hegseth said beginning immediately, the Pentagon will pull 8% — or roughly $50 billion — from nonlethal programs in the current budget and refocus that money on President Donald J. Trump's "America First" priorities for national defense.  "That's not a cut; it's refocusing and reinvesting existing funds into building the force that protects you, the American people," Hegseth said.” Read past the bafflegab and you see that there won’t be cuts. No surprise, since Congress wouldn’t approve a budget with defense cuts anyway—that’s just tooth fairy thinking. Budget cuts are for civilian programs. https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/4072698/hegseth-addresses-strengthening-military-by-cu...
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Cutting defense spending

Wanna know why nobody wants to cut defense spending? It’s because defense dollars are spread all over the country. There’s a military installation in every state. Many companies have contracts with the DoD. So any discussion of cuts ends up with folks saying “don’t cut our piece, cut their piece.” No Congressman wants their piece of the pie taken away. If DOGE was serious about government efficiency, it would be attacking the DoD with the same alacrity that it is cutting NIH, NSF, USDA, CDC, FDA, NPS and NFS. As Willy Sutton famously said, that’s where the money is. The fact that they haven’t fired 30% of the troops, closed 50% of the military bases and cut the budget by 30% shows that this isn’t about spending tax money efficiently, it’s about finding the most politically expedient path to extending tax cuts for the top 1% and corporations. Full stop. https://installations.militaryonesource.mil/view-all
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They’re coming for Social Security

“Before President Donald Trump started mass layoffs of federal workers, he demonized them, arguing, despite evidence to the contrary, that most never went into the office.  “As he moved to cut foreign aid, he and Elon Musk alleged widespread waste and abuse, although they offered little evidence to back up their claims and may simply disagree with how the money was being spent. “With that in mind, consider what the Trump administration is now doing to Social Security, seeding the idea, which is not backed up by known facts, that millions of dead people are collecting payments. “Add in the departure of Michelle King, the acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration after a run-in with Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency over the agency’s recipient information, and it’s worth paying attention to what’s going on. “Trump promised throughout the presidential campaign that Social Security payments and Medicare coverage would not be cut.” Of course the Trump/...
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