That is what tests are for. Any teacher worth their salt is going to teach people how to think more precisely and logically about the subject not just expect students to regurgitate data. We have computers for that.
--- In Politics_CurrentEvents_Group@yahoogroups.com, elaine mckay <glyndon47@...> wrote:
>
> Hey, thats fine, just saying it is better to show you learnt what they taught.
>
>
> From: Gary <garyrumor2@...>
> To: Politics_CurrentEvents_Group@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Saturday, 10 September 2011 6:46 PM
> Subject: [Politics_CurrentEvents_Group] Re: Immigration, Hospital Closings, and Right Wing Propaganda
>
>
> Â
> I am 57 and disabled. I have never done things to "get a good grade" and I am not about to start now.
>
> --- In Politics_CurrentEvents_Group@yahoogroups.com, elaine mckay <glyndon47@> wrote:
> >
> > Something my daughter told me from her time at university, write what the lecturers want you to write if you want a great mark. They are not interested in your own thoughts, especially if you don't agree with them.
> >
> >
> > From: Gary <garyrumor2@>
> > To: Politics_CurrentEvents_Group@yahoogroups.com
> > Sent: Wednesday, 7 September 2011 8:02 PM
> > Subject: [Politics_CurrentEvents_Group] Immigration, Hospital Closings, and Right Wing Propaganda
> >
> >
> > ÂÂ
> > Immigration, Hospital Closings In California, & Right Wing Propaganda
> > September 7th, 2011
> > I have a teacher, my Geography teacher who seems to be anti-immigrant in the message she is presenting to the class regarding undocumented immigrants in the USA. She states that 90 hospitals in California went out of business because of unpaid bills, implying that those bills were the responsibility of immigrants who come the United States, can¡¯t find jobs and become criminals and use hospitals for free and don¡¯t pay their bills. I became irate and stated to the class that Pew Hispanic Center reports that immigrants add value to the society and are not a detriment overall. I didn¡¯t have any reports in front of me, but she disagreed and said that the statistics show them to be a drain on society. I just said, ¡°bull shit¡± and was about to walk out of the class when she called a break. I needed to take a dump anyway. Afterwards I returned to the class and took the test we were supposed to take. I decided to write a
> response to her statistics
> > with numbers of my own. I really don¡¯t like it when someone gets me to lose my cool and I really don¡¯t like not having the statistics available to respond intelligently.
> >
> > From PR Watch:
> >
> > ¡°Profit Motive Underlies Outbreak of Immigration Bills
> >
> > Submitted by Brendan Fischer on August 24, 2011 - 8:00am
> >
> > July 29 marked the one-year anniversary of Arizona¡¯s controversial immigration law, a year that has seen similar anti-immigrant bills emerge across the country. Thanks to the release of over 800 pieces of ¡°model legislation¡± by the Center for Media and Democracy, we can now pinpoint the source of the outbreak to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a bill factory for legislation that benefits the bottom line of its corporate members. While it has been reported that more immigrants behind bars means more income for ALEC member Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), less discussed has been how immigrant detention benefits commercial bail-bond agencies, an industry represented in ALEC through the American Bail Coalition.¡±
> >
> > http://www.prwatch.org/node/10980
> >
> > From Terraviva
> >
> > ¡°U.S.: Tea Party, Fox News Viewers Outliers on Immigration, Islam
> > By Jim Lobe*
> >
> > WASHINGTON, Sep 6, 2011 (IPS) - While 10 years after the 9/11 Al- Qaeda attacks, most U.S. citizens say they respect diversity and the freedom of religion, they don¡¯t always apply those principles to Islam and immigrants, according to a survey released here Tuesday by two major think tanks.
> >
> > The survey, entitled ¡°What It Means to be American: Attitudes in an Increasingly Diverse America Ten Years after 9/11¡å, found that viewers of Rupert Murdoch¡¯s Fox News were significantly less tolerant and more distrustful of Muslims than the general public.
> >
> > It also found that self-described sympathizers of the mainly Republican ¡°Tea Party¡± were significantly more hostile to immigrants and their children, as well as any effort to legalize their status in the United States.
> >
> > And both groups were much more likely to believe discrimination against whites in U.S. society has become as big a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities, according to the survey, which was released by the Brookings Institution and the Public Religion Research Institute (PRII).¡±
> >
> > http://ipsnews.net/newsTVE.asp?idnews=105007
> >
> > From University of California Newsroom
> >
> > ¡°Financial Problems Triggered Most Recent Hospital Closures
> >
> > Financial problems were the single most common reason for the closure of 23 California hospitals between 1995 and 2000, according to a report by the recently established Nicholas C. Petris Center on Health Care Markets and Consumer Welfare at the University of California, Berkeley.
> >
> > The new report, ¡°California¡¯s Closed Hospitals, 1995-2000,¡± commissioned by the California attorney general, is the first close look at hospital closures statewide. The study focuses on reasons for the hospital closures, distribution of the closed facilities and the characteristics of the closed hospitals.
> >
> > The hospital industry - citing seismic retrofit requirements, managed care and shrinking reimbursements - has predicted that up to 150 of the state¡¯s hospitals will close in the next few years. The Petris Center report is designed to provide some context to evaluate those claims.
> >
> > * The largest proportion of hospitals that closed, 11, or 48 percent, were for-profit enterprises.
> >
> > * Each of the closed hospitals experienced declining reimbursements, income per bed and utilization in the year prior to closure. As a group, they performed worse financially than the state¡¯s operating general acute care hospitals did in 1999.
> >
> > http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/3211
> >
> > From NurseWeek
> >
> > ¡°Closing Time
> > California leads nation in hospital closures
> >
> > By John Leighty
> > May 17, 1999
> >
> > In the current era of intense competition and managed care, hospitals are finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet. While some hospitals have reduced staff and services to cut costs, others have been forced to close.
> >
> > The California Healthcare Association reports an average of three closings a year over the past decade, most of them involving smaller, low-capacity hospitals squeezed by intense competition under managed care. Dozens of other hospitals have merged or changed ownership, moves that often result in some department closings as services are consolidated.¡±
> >
> > http://www.nurseweek.com/features/99-5/hospital.html
> >
> > This article appears in the October 1, 2004 issue of Executive Intelligence Review. I don¡¯t normally reproduce Lyndon Larouche material but this analysis was actually pretty good.
> >
> > ¡°California¡¯s Hospitals Closing,
> > More Cuts Ahead
> > by Linda Everett
> >
> > The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors announced on Sept. 13 that Los Angeles County will lose yet another of its trauma centers¡ªthe Martin Luther King-Charles Drew Center which serves the very, very poor population of Watts. The King-Drew Hospital and Trauma Center was built after the 1965 Watts riots to serve the inner city population. Now, the Trauma Center is to close within 90 days¡ªand it is not yet known if the Hospital itself will survive its multitude of financial crises. The shutting of the trauma center is emblematic of the crisis devastating California¡¯s entire healthcare infrastructure.
> > California displays in extreme form the physical destruction of healthcare capability which has resulted, over 25 years, from the replacement of the national hospital-sufficiency strategy of the 1946 Hill-Burton Law, with the ¡°free market-driven¡± healthcare of the 1973 HMO law passed under Nixon, with its totally illusory ¡°cost-containment¡± veneer. The percentage of California¡¯s population ¡°covered¡± by managed care or health maintenance organizations (HMOs) is double that of the nation as a whole. Therefore, many more hospitals and physicians in California, than in other states, are reimbursed at below their own costs for care they provide to patients. Far more California hospitals are operating in the red, and closing.¡±
> >
> > http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2004/3138cal_hosp_cuts.html
> >
> > So it seems to me that the reason why hospitals are closing in California has more to do with the macro economic reasons of competition, lower reimbursements from States and Federal Government. Most of the hospitals closing are small for profit institutions that simply cannot run efficiently in a managed care environment. None of the reports or articles above mention illegal aliens as being a problem. Most of these articles are older, from 1999 to 2004. But I wondered where the teacher got the idea that illegal aliens were the cause of hospital closings.
> >
> > I hunted and found an article that seems to be the source for the people at FAIR and the Federal Observer. The author is a lawyer not a medical professional. As I suspected the Journal is published by a right wing organization among medical professionals and has been criticized by the more legitimate Physicians organizations.
> >
> > From Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons
> >
> > ¡°Illegal Aliens and American Medicine
> > Madeleine Pelner Cosman, Ph.D., Esq.
> >
> > Illegal aliens’ stealthy assaults on medicine now must rouse Americans to alert and alarm. Even President Bush describes illegal aliens only as they are seen: strong physical laborers who work hard in undesirable jobs with low wages, who care for their families, and who pursue the American dream. What is unseen is their free medical care that has degraded and closed some of Americas finest emergency medical facilities, and caused hospital bankruptcies: 84 California hospitals are closing their doors. “Anchor babies” born to illegal aliens instantly qualify as citizens for welfare benefits and have caused enormous rises in Medicaid costs and stipends under Supplemental Security Income and Disability Income.¡±
> >
> > http://www.jpands.org/vol10no1/cosman.pdf
> >
> > For instance this Fair Article cites Cosman¡¯s article as one of its sources.
> >
> > ¡°Illegal Immigration and Public Health
> >
> > The impact of immigration on our public health is often overlooked.¡±
> >
> > http://www.fairus.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=16742&security=1601&news_iv_ctrl=1007
> >
> > This article in the Federal Observer is by Ms Cosman herself. It is as hyperbolic as the original article.
> >
> > ¡°Cosman: Illegal Aliens and Emtala
> > By Dr. Madeline Cosman, Ph.D., ESQ
> >
> > The influx of Illegal Aliens has devastating, hidden medical consequences. We judge reality primarily by what we see.¡±
> >
> > http://www.federalobserver.com/archive.php?aid=9572
> >
> > From Wikipedia article about the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, publisher of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons:
> >
> > ¡°In 1966, the New York Times described AAPS as an ¡°ultra-right-wing¡ political-economic rather than a medical group,¡± and noted that some of its leaders were members of the John Birch Society.¡±
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_American_Physicians_and_Surgeons
> >
> > ¡°A Global Warming Counterfeit -Steven Dutch, Natural and Applied Sciences, University of Wisconsin - Green Bay
> >
> > And just what is the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons?
> >
> > A scan of the journal¡¯s contents shows very little real science. It may well be that the two papers on climate change are the most scientific papers the journal has ever published. There are a lot of articles critical of medical peer review and government regulation. And there are a host of tangential articles and book reviews favorable to far right and libertarian ideology.¡±
> >
> > http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/GlobWarm0.HTM
> >
> > From Science Blogs - Respectful Insolence
> >
> > ¡°The group to which I refer is the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), and its journal is the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (abbreviated JPANDS, because ¡°JAPS¡± has some rather obvious negative connotations). It is not an exaggeration to say that the AAPS, through its journal JPANDS, is waging a war on science- and evidence-based medicine in the name of its politics.¡±
> >
> > http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/02/the_journal_of_american
> > _physicians_and_s.php
> >
> > I could go on, but the evidence is pretty clear that the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons is a right wing front and it prints articles that are pretty much over the edge academically speaking. What I still don¡¯t understand is why my teacher would be using such information as a source? Was she in a hurry or has her childhood in Communist Bulgaria colored her perception of the world. Certainly her constant harping on Communist bureaucrats robbing the people of their savings accounts to finance their monopolies in the newly capitalist Eastern Europe makes me wonder.
> > It is true that unpaid bills are a drain on hospitals but my experience with them is that they are quite good at making up their losses in one area by the charges for normal services to the vast majority of their patients who are insured and pay.
> > This is from Kaiser Health News and is a pretty decent factual report. As they say, it is hard to determine how many of the non-paying patients are illegal because it is illegal to ask.
> >
> > http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2009/October/23/illegal-immigrants-health-explainer.aspx
> >
> > In any case blaming illegal aliens for the problems of hospitals, or crime or any of the other social problems that existed before the influx of Latin Americans began in the 1980¡¯s to become a significant factor in the complex problems of this country since Reagan reoriented a huge chunk of spending away from social services and to defense. Ever since there has been a deliberate attempt to starve services, in the name of efficiency or privatization. When people feel the crunch instead of blaming the policy makers, they blame the immigrants and the poor who have the least control over their lives.
> >
>
No comments:
Post a Comment