Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) says the government is asking enough of families forced into bankruptcy and that if they are filing because of U.S. health insurance policies, they shouldn’t have to worry about paying additional medical bills.
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Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) speaks at a rally in support of the confimration Judge Sonia Sotomayor. “Let us hope that as history looks back on this day it notes the historic occasion of the confirmation of Justice Sotomayor and not the Republicans’ strange and strained efforts to impose right-wing political orthodoxy on our courts and judges,” Whitehouse says. (0:19)
By Courtney Ann Jackson-Talk Radio News Service
Civil rights leaders and Senators joined in a rally on Capitol Hill Wednesday to voice their support for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation.
The familiar phrase from President Obama’s campaign, “yes we can,” was heard both in English and Spanish at the rally, which was hosted by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR) and the National Council of La Raza (NCLR). The atmosphere was extremely celebratory as the crowd loudly responded with cheers each time the name of the historic nominee was mentioned.
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) was one of four Senators who spoke at the rally. “There are three words that sum up this nomination: It is time,” Schumer declared.
Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) also showed their support, adding that they were not pleased with the overall Republican response to the nomination.
“Let us hope that as history looks back on this day, it notes the historic occasion of the confirmation of Justice Sotomayor and …not the Republicans’ strange and strained efforts to impose right-wing political orthodoxy on our courts and judges,” said Whitehouse.
Sen. Menendez spoke about the response of the Hispanic community to Sotomayor nomination, but also mentioned the appreciation of the few Republican Senators who have said they will vote yes for her confirmation.
“When she raises her hand and takes that oath of office, the Supreme Court will be better, the nation will be better, and we will have fulfilled our promise as a country,” said Menendez.
Civil rights organizations including the Hispanic Federation, the Alliance for Justice, the NAACP and others were also present in support of Sotomayor. Many people held signs with the slogan “I stand with Sotomayor,” and at one point, a chant of, “What do we want?-Sonia-When do we want it?-Now,” erupted.
Chairman of the Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts Sheldon Whitehouse asks former FBI agent Ali Soufan if what the OLC has claimed happened with the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah in 2005 was an accurate account of the events. Ali Soufan rejects the account of the OLC. (0:46)
Coffee Brown, MD, University of New Mexico, Talk Radio News
There are many blocks in the arch of medical reform, but Health Information Technology is the keystone, according to a panel of policy makers who spoke and answered questions at the Brookings Institution. Everything from electronic medical records, to electronic ordering, to integrated billing, to error reduction and decision support, won’t fix medicine by itself, the experts concluded.
Presenters at the event included: U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI); former Rep. Nancy Johnson (R-Conn.) and Chairman of Health IT Now! Coalition; and Charles P. Friedman, Ph.D., Deputy National Coordinator for HIT Department of Health and Human Services. to discuss the current administration’s plans to upgrade the use of information technology in medicine.
“We are at a preposterous level of health information primitiveness,” White said.
According to moderator Darrell M. West, Vice President and Director, Governance Studies, Brookings Institution,, only one major business in the U.S. is less computerized than medicine; mining.
West co-wrote Digital Medicine: Healthcare in the Internet Era, published by Briikings. He said only one major business in the U.S. is less computerized than medicine; mining.
“Amazon can tell me what I’ve bought before, what I looked at today, and what I might like to buy tomorrow,” he said, adding that the majority of U.S. hospitals still keep manually-written, and, potentially life-saving, patient records in paper form.
According to the Institute of Medicine, only one in five clinicians in the U.S. are using electronic medical records.
West said the most optimistic projections are for savings of about $120 billion per year, but he believes the figure will be less.
Whitehouse quoted estimated healthcare savings as high as $320 billion per year , and he thinks that number could be a trillion.
The panelists agreed that interoperability is the first hurdle for the technology. Many, or most, of the computerized systems that exist now in hospitals can not share data with other computers.
This is intentional, Johnson said, because the competitive private business model favors a proprietary approach to information.
West said his doctor was using EMR now, but would never integrate the last 26 years of notes, “because that would cost too much.”
“Having HIT on a doctor’s desk is like having a car in the garage. you can enjoy the radio, air-conditioning and cigarette lighter but without a good road, you’re not going anywhere,” Whitehouse said.
The infrastructure, lines, connectivity and hardware all have to support the data flow, he said.
He pointed out that just moving data is not enough, “We need information aggregation, cross-checking, error reduction, decision support” and portability. The patient must be able to take data from system to system when traveling.
“Medicaid alone is approaching a $37 trillion obligation, not counting Medicare, VA benefits, S-CHIP, and similar entitlements. HIT is a necessary first step toward avoiding a healthcare cost tsunami,” he said.
Johnson discussed the tension between making the new healthcare more individuated and patient centered and avoiding the sort of consumerism that lets patients cow doctors into ordering expensive but unneeded tests and procedures.
She also pointed out the enormous proportion of healthcare costs that go to hopeless or marginal care, such as end-of-life care, or the prolongation of the lives of non-viable newborns. “No other country counts one breath as ‘live birth,’” she said. Many require hours, days, up to one year of life before being considered “live births”, she finished.
Friedman said the outlines of healthcare reform are clear and unlikely to change, but many details are still being worked out, not least a carrot and stick program to encourage and/or coerce stakeholders to adopt and “meaningfully use” HIT. “Meaningfully” is still being defined, but refers to applying this technology to actually improve clinical outcomes.
Whitehouse said that Republican opposition to Clinical Effectiveness Research surprised him. “No company would attempt a transformation one one-hundredth this complex” without Quality Assurance and accountability. “Someone has to be in charge.”
Coffee Brown, University of New Mexico, Talk Radio news
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), says that we had started to become comfortable with 46 million uninsured, but 86.7 million, uninsured at least part of the year reminds us that “these stories are tragic.”
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) supports Attorney General nominee Eric Holder’s confirmation, noting the importance of a well managed Department of Justice and stressed Holder’s ability to bring needed changes (0:53).
The Senate Judiciary Committee discussed a report on politicized hiring at the Department of Justice in favor of conservative candidates. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said the report realizes his worst fears – pervasive partisan hiring in the Department of Justice. (more…)
The Senate passed the update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that grants immunity to telecom companies from lawsuits with a 69-28 vote.
Before the vote, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said, in his opening statement, that 40 lawsuits are being litigated. Retroactive immunity should be given to phone companies, Specter said. There is a way to protect the phone companies without giving up the details of their programs, Specter said. (more…)
Attorney General Michael Mukasey testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in a hearing on oversight of the Department of Justice. Mukasey was questioned about past and present ‘politicization’ of the department, openness of the department with its findings, and controversial new criteria he has implemented for launching investigations into suspected terrorist activity. (more…)
