Physician prescribes climate action to prevent the next pandemic
Even for those not battling COVID-19, the climate crisis has dire implications for human health. Recently, a patient of mine, a young man from Central America, arrived in our emergency room. He had been feeling increasingly tired and was developing headaches. Basic lab work revealed a devastating diagnosis: My patient’s kidneys were failing. He needed urgent dialysis and, ultimately, a kidney transplant.
We were stunned. How could this happen in someone so young and otherwise healthy? After a thorough evaluation, he was diagnosed with Mesoamerican nephropathy, a kidney disease linked to long-term exposure to severe heat — in his case, while picking crops on a farm back in his home country.
The facts are clear: Climate change will worsen food insecurity and water scarcity. This, in a world in which more than 800 million people go hungry and more than 1 billion people live in areas where clean water is already in short supply. It will increase the severity of hurricanes, droughts, wildfires, and flooding. These disasters will lead to more spikes in forced migration and political conflict, which leave women and children particularly vulnerable. And yes, climate change will continue to increase the burden of disease on communities around the world.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. […]
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QUOTATION
“But the truth is, that when a Library expels a book of mine and leaves an unexpurgated Bible lying around where unprotected youth and age can get hold of it, the deep unconscious irony of it delights me and doesn’t anger me.” ~~Mark Twain, Letter to Harriet E. Whitmore, Feb. 7, 1907
At Daily Kos on this date in 2012—House Republicans vote to gut health care programs, boost Pentagon:
On Thursday, in a razor-thin 218-199 vote of approval, the House passed another extreme bill that is destined to die: its Sequestration Replacement Act. The budget bill overriddes steep cuts to defense spending that were set to begin in January 2013, taking the money out of food stamps, Medicaid, Meals on Wheels and a raft of programs that help the poor and elderly. The Act replaces $109 billion in defense cuts that were triggered last fall under the Budget Control Act, when the super committee failed to agree on a $1.2 trillion deficit reduction plan.
Included in the $113 billion in cuts are Medicaid programs, allowing states to drop people who would currently be eligible, including a lot children. Two of the programs that are targeted have increased insurance rates for children to unprecedented levels, but the Republicans voted to repeal money in the Affordable Care Act that has maintained Medicaid and CHIP funding, and a new program that has rewards states for connecting eligible children to coverage. While the bill overrides the automatic cuts to the Pentagon included in the Budget Control Act, it keeps the Medicare cuts that were written into the bill. Oh, and of course it zeroes out the Prevention and Public Health fund in the health care law, the Republican’s solution to paying for everything from payroll tax cuts to student loan interest rate cuts.
All this when, as Meteor Blades detailed, polling shows that the American public wants to see defense spending cut, by really big margins.
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