Michigan Disability Resistance

Duh...

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To keep their chronically ill residents at home and out of hospitals or nursing homes, states are beginning to look at food-as-medicine models that deliver healthy, nutritious meals under doctors’ orders.

But there’s now a state that’s doing a lot more than looking.

California has launched a new, three-year, $6 million pilot program spearheaded by six local not-for-profit organizations, The New York Timesreported. A group of 1,000 Medi-Cal recipients who have Type 2 diabetes or heart failure will receive free, strategically nutritious meals under the new program. Medi-Cal is California’s Medicaid program. Researchers will then compare that group to a larger population of Medi-Cal patients who didn’t receive the delivered meals, all with the goal of assessing whether the food-as-medicine approach does, indeed, reduce re-admission rates and slash health care costs.

“Food-as-medicine has intuitive appeal, and there is some limited evidence that management of diet can reduce complications such as readmissions,” Dan Mendelson, president of the Washington D.C.-based consulting firm Avalere Health, told Home Health Care News via email. “Health plans and governments are interested in expanding these programs—provided that they don’t add substantially to cost.”

Recent research has revealed that a lack of access to nutritious food often leads to higher readmissions rates. Home-delivered meals—both ones that are tailored to medical needs and meals that are not—have been found to curtail emergency department trips, inpatient admissions and the use of emergency transportation.

On a national level, there is currently “considerable experimentation” going on to gauge the food-as-medicine model’s effectiveness, Mendelson said. The Food Is Medicine Coalition, a national association of non-profits that supports nutrition-related public public, for example, has grown to include 27 member organizations scattered across more than states.

“Many states are starting to allow food as a benefit in Medicaid,” Mendelson said. “We expect to see these trends to continue—and to accelerate if food-as-medicine can prove positive medical outcomes.”

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Videoconferencing offers the possibility of uninterrupted care during disasters.

One of the more frightening features of climate change is the way it compounds risks to public health. People who live through a powerful hurricane, for instance, endure severe mental and emotional stress, which can drive up the risk of heart attack or stroke. At the precise moment when they most need a doctor, they may find their local hospital is without power or can’t be reached because severe flooding has shut down roads, bridges and railways.

“Following a major disaster, there are always victims with new, urgent healthcare needs,” said Lori Uscher-Pines, a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit health policy organization. “At the same time, the healthcare system is not functioning at 100 percent. So you have greater demand for healthcare resources and less capacity. Given that this is a common problem, it’s exciting when new tools or services emerge, that can address these challenges.”

Enter direct-to-consumer telemedicine, a viable way of delivering medical care in the aftermath of a natural disaster via smartphones, laptops and tablets. New research suggests the technology proved valuable during hurricanes Harvey and Irma and could become even more so as climate change produces more severe weather. Dangerous storms, prolonged drought, intense heat waves and destructive wildfires can worsen chronic health issues and threaten lives.

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The following is a statement from Nancy Altman, President of Social Security Works, in reaction to nearly every Republican member of the House of Representatives, as well as seven Democrats, voting for a Constitutional amendment requiring that all annual revenue and spending balance every year. The amendment failed to attain the two-thirds majority required to pass it into law:

“Every pay period, starting with our first jobs, America’s workers contribute to Social Security. The program uses those funds to pay all benefits and related administrative costs. Social Security does not add even a penny to the deficit, as Republican President Ronald Reagan so clearly stated when he was president.

When Social Security runs a surplus, Social Security holds the funds in trust. Social Security currently has a $2.9 trillion accumulated surplus, which was intentionally built up over decades to cover the retirement of the Baby Boom generation. In the guise of a so-called balanced budget amendment, 233 members of the House of Representatives just voted to pretend that the accumulated surplus does not exist.

That’s because the so-called Balanced Budget Amendment would ignore the past Social Security contributions and instead require all federal spending – including Social Security spending – to be offset by revenues collected in that same year. That means that Social Security would not be allowed to use its own $2.9 trillion surplus to pay out benefits.

By voting to mandate that income and outgo match for all federal spending every year, ninety-seven percent of Republicans just voted  in effect, to default on Social Security’s $2.9 trillion worth of Treasury bonds. (Ninety-six percent of Democrats voted to honor their commitment to the American people.)

That 233 politicians would vote to raid the Social Security trust funds, never to repay them, is shameful. It helps explain the low regard the American people have for Congress. Fortunately for Social Security beneficiaries, the amendment did not attain the two-thirds majority required to pass the House. But those who voted for it are now on the record in support of stealing the American people’s earned Social Security benefits.”

More information on why the so-called balanced budget amendment is a backdoor attack on Social Security is here. A list of the Members of Congress who voted for the so-called balanced budget amendment is hereand on the graphic below. Click here to share the graphic on Facebook.

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George Andrie has always been a devoted father to Mary Brooks and her six siblings. But with the benefit of hindsight, Brooks also sees that something was always a bit off about her dad, going back to when she was a child. The outgoing guy she always knew suddenly became less socially engaged in the early 1980s, about 10 years after Andrie retired from the NFL.

“He was definitely a family man; I want to make it totally clear that he was a loving father,” Brooks said. “I just thought that he was needy. I thought he was middle-aged, grumpy. I knew that he was withdrawn and a little distant and had a very hard time with social situations and things like that—and he didn’t used to be that way.

“But we didn’t know. If you look back now, the man suffered forever. It all makes sense now.”

Andrie, 78, played defensive end for the Dallas Cowboys from 1962 to 1972. A member of the original Doomsday Defense, he played in five Pro Bowls and was a first-team All-Pro once—an all-timer for the franchise that proudly sells itself as America’s Team. Andrie recovered a fumble for a touchdown in the legendary Ice Bowl game against the Green Bay Packers. He won a ring in Super Bowl 6. He knocked Johnny Unitas, the Hall of Fame quarterback for the Baltimore Colts, out of the game with a hit in Super Bowl 5.

“Which used to be awesome,” Brooks said of her dad’s knockout of Unitas, who broke his ribs on the play. “Not anymore.”

Andrie is one of nearly 2,300 retired NFL players or family members of players who have filed claims under the NFL’s concussion settlement, which was reached last year after a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of thousands of former players alleged that the NFL “was aware of the evidence and the risks associated with repetitive traumatic brain injuries virtually at the inception, but deliberately ignored and actively concealed the information from the Plaintiffs and all others who participated in organized football at all levels.”

The process has been beset with problems since the settlement became final. According to the most recent report from BrownGreer, the Richmond-based law firm serving as claims administrator, some 70 percent of the 1,343 claims processed thus far have either been denied outright, denied following an audit, or sent back with requests for more documentation. The settlement has been particularly slow to approve dementia claims, which make up more than half of the total submitted (qualifying diagnoses also include death with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and ALS). Of the 1,160 dementia claims received, according to the latest claims report, just 11 have been paid out, with another 127 approved but not yet paid.

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The Social Security Administration plans to close its Arlington field office and one of its Baltimore locations in June, part of a series of shutdowns across the country that activists and political leaders say is causing major difficulties for the elderly, people with disabilities and other beneficiaries.

The agency has closed about 125 of its approximately 1,250 offices since 2000 — a 10 percent reduction, part of what officials describe as a shift to greater use of online services in an era of budget constraints and a growing population of senior citizens.

In addition, all 533 Social Security Administration “contact sites” — locations that serve remote, rural populations on a weekly or monthly basis — have closed, said leaders of the union that represents Social Security employees.

The most recent closures, which have not been publicly announced, come on the heels of the shutdown of offices in Milwaukee and Chicago in the past year, which elected officials also protested to no avail. An SSA spokeswoman attributed the Arlington closure to an expiring lease and an inability to find space nearby — an explanation that elected officials in Virginia dispute.

“Closing the Arlington office is a shortsighted way to cut costs, and will inflict hardship on people least able to cope with it,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) said. He said he is asking the Social Security Administration’s inspector general to investigate whether the agency complied with requirements for public notice and community feedback before field offices were shuttered.