Michigan Disability Resistance

I sometimes hear these thoughts and feelings expressed, so I want to share my responses.

1.  I want the freedom, choice and the right to end my life when I want to.

That freedom and choice already exists. When the pain of an illness gets to be too much, you can decide using a number of methods to end your life. Suicide is not illegal in the United States.

What you want is the freedom to doctor shop until you find a doctor who will give you suicide pills, even if it means that the choice to live will be taken away from some elders and people with disabilities who do not want to die.

We’ve already noted that President Trump’s budget would eliminate more than 250,000 Housing Choice Vouchers next year. It also would force families using vouchers to pay much more in rent and sharply limit their access to housing in safe neighborhoods with quality schools and other opportunities. Let’s take a closer look:

Overall, the budget includes $19.3 billion for Housing Choice Vouchers, nearly $1 billion below the 2017 level. It includes $17.6 billion to renew vouchers in use — $771 million less than policymakers recently agreed to spend for 2017 and $2.3 billion (12 percent) less than we estimate will be needed next year. As a result, more than 250,000 vouchers that families are expected to use this year would be eliminated. State and local housing agencies could eliminate these vouchers in part by not reissuing vouchers when families leave the program, but they’d still have to end assistance for a large number of households. About half of the households losing assistance would likely include seniors or people with disabilities, while most of the rest would likely be working families with children, based on the current composition of the voucher program.

Such cuts would devastate families and communities. Vouchers sharply reduce homelessness, housing instability, overcrowding, and other hardships. They also enable families to move to safer neighborhoods with better access to quality schools and other household needs. These effects, in turn, are closely linked to educational, developmental, and health benefits that can improve children’s long-term prospects, enable frail seniors and people with disabilities to live in the community and avoid institutionalization, and reduce costs in other public programs.

Moreover, these cuts would come at a time when near-record numbers of low-income families struggle to pay rent and make ends meet, and 3 in 4 eligible households receive no rental aid due to funding limitations.

The President also requests $1.55 billion for housing agencies’ administrative expenses, $100 million less than in 2017. Agencies use these funds to inspect families’ housing to ensure that it meets basic health and safety requirements, verify families’ income and eligibility, and gather information to ensure that program dollars are used lawfully and effectively. Agencies have strained to fulfill these essential functions, as funding has already declined 7 percent since 2010, adjusted for inflation.

There's a correlation between the number of times students are suspended or expelled and their likelihood of ending up in the corrections system, which is prompting educators and law enforcement to come together in an effort to dismantle a so-called "school-to-prison pipeline."

A panel of Washtenaw County experts on school discipline and law enforcement convened by state Rep. Adam Zemke discussed alternative ways to address student discipline issues at a town hall meeting held Wednesday, May 24 at Washtenaw Community College. There was standing room only in the WCC conference room, and Zemke's office said more than 120 people attended.

It’s no secret that drug prices have been rising rapidly and have placed a heavy burden on American families, particularly those with health plans that force them to pay thousands of dollars before their insurance kicks in. Certainly, drug companies are partly responsible for the price hikes. But what far fewer Americans realize is that drugs travel a multi-stop route from manufacturer to user, with each player along the way taking its bite and sometimes imposing hurdles on patients’ ability to access the drugs their doctors order.

In his prime, consultant David Blaszczak bragged that he made millions for his hedge-fund clients when he predicted important Medicare funding changes.

“Warren Buffett can eat it,” Blaszczak wrote in one email in 2013, referencing the legendary stock trader.

He boasted in that same year to a finance executive: “I am a beast that cannot be stopped.”

The case targets the narrow but lucrative world of “political intelligence,” a web of consulting firms like one that Blaszczak co-founded in 2014. Such firms traffic in crumbs of information coaxed out of federal employees, or simply good hunches, and make money by landing contracts with Wall Street firms.

Political intelligence workers track countless decisions Medicare and the Food and Drug Administration make each month about which hospital beds, heart valves, surgical techniques or drugs will rise or fall in value — or if the government will pay for them at all.

It’s a Washington, D.C., industry that reflects the big business of U.S. health care. While patients who get radiation treatments for cancer or dialysis after kidney failure are largely unaware, small tweaks in what the government pays for these services can mean millions to hedge funds and their elite investors.