health

The Breast Care Center at Cape Fear Valley Medical Center is going to help save and improve the lives of many women. As the son of a breast cancer survivor, I appreciate and understand how important these efforts are to breast cancer screening and treatment in Fayetteville. Nevertheless, I think about my father and two brothers. According to recent cancer statistics,1 in 2 men will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime, and 1 in 6 will have prostate cancer. To make matters worse, North Carolina has one of the highest rates of prostate cancer in the nation. Locally, Fayetteville Mayor J. L. Dawkins lost his repeated battle with prostate cancer in 2000. My only conclusion is that Fayetteville needs a companion Prostate Care Center for men.

We just got home from a nice day with friends and family at Nan's parents (in their mid-eighties) home up in Penderlea. I cooked the bird and Nan made her special homemade cranberry sauce with orange zest and she made stuffing, pumpkin pie and so on...and up we went. Our children are in far flung places so we don't often get to spend holidays with them. On the way home we stopped to feed a neighbor's goats and dog and cats keeping a watchful eye for deer along the way.

The DHHS group Substance and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is crowing about the rate of retailers violating the law by selling cigarettes to juveniles being down to a new low. There is an inference here, at least in my reading of it, that this relates to juvenile smoking. That lowering this rate means less teens smoking. In fact, that is exactly how they describe it in their press release.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration today announced that sales of tobacco to underage youth have reached all time lows under the Synar Amendment program – a federal and state partnership program aimed at ending illegal tobacco sales to minors.

Now, I highlighted the Synar Amendment because they make the case that it is responsible for the decrease in retailer violations, which leads to decreased juvenile smoking. Maybe the Synar Amendment had something to do with this, but I'll offer another opinion after the break.

Protecting the health of all citizens is an important responsibility of government because our health can be impacted by many things out of our individual control. But in our current system, businesses are expected to shoulder a single major burden: health insurance.

Following up on my overview blog post about results from 11 Statewide Regional Town meetings of the NC Democratic Party, here is the package of resolutions to be considered at Saturday's (Aug 25, 2007) State Executive Committee meeting in Greensboro. Please see my prior BlueNC post for more information about what is on the minds of Democrats statewide.

I've been reading *Crashing the Gate*, and it really drives home the point that because of divisiveness over every splinter group's special interests, the Democratic Party hasn't accomplished a whole lot since the 70s, the Republican right has torn down much of what we did accomplish, and we have the worst president ever. They give an example of one good progressive Democrat who was defeated because he happened to be anti-abortion, while his far right Republican opponent was pro-choice. If NARAL had put its special interest aside to get this seat, they would have been in no danger of an anti-abortion vote, but the party would have been stronger for it.

That's the trouble we're in because of our narrow special interests, and we only have to look to the Republicans to see how we should be shelving those interests and focusing on gaining effective political power. Power first; special interests will have something done about their specific issues later.

The Hinchey bill, HR 818, would have Medicare pay for certain qualifying acupuncture services. Do you think it's a step in the right direction? As it is right now, most acupuncture services are like spa treatments for the upper socioeconomic strata. A few beneficent acupuncturists run low-overhead community clinics with semi-private treatment areas and a low, sliding-scale fee structure, not requiring proof of income but empowering patients to decide what they can afford, seeing a lot of working-class patients, and at an average of $20 per visit, patients can afford to come enough times for slow but sure acupuncture to resolve stubborn problems. I applaud this kind of effort, and hope it catches on everywhere. We really need a lot more community with each other, people. But Medicare reimbursement of acupuncture sounds like a great idea, with private insurance sure to follow.