Healthcare

This election continues to place terrible individuals in positions of real, tangible power who are spending every hour of every day implementing destructive policies.  Smart Dissent will continue to provide examples of those in power who you need to stay informed about so you can share this knowledge and together we can Be Smart and Actively Dissent.

In this case, we look at new leadership of the Department of Health and Human Services which is getting two anti-abortion crusaders in key positions and many more after them.

The House voted 217-213 this afternoon in favor of a bill that seeks to eliminate many of the provisions of the Affordable Care Act leaving tens of millions of Americans without healthcare in exchange for eliminating taxes on the wealthiest Americans.  

As the Republicans and the Trump administration continues their assault on anything that the Obama administration did, Secretary Sonny Perdue has set his sights on school lunches.

The Trump administration has loosened nutritional standards aimed at making US school lunches healthier that were championed by former first lady Michelle Obama.

New Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue postponed reductions in sodium, relaxed requirements for whole grains and allowed sweetened flavoured milk back.

One in five US children is obese, the US government says.

Continuing to demonstrate a mind-numbing lack of understanding about the mission of and services provided by Planned Parenthood, Trump signed a bill into law in private on April 13th that allows states to withhold federal money from organizations that provide abortion services, including Planned Parenthood.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has been the target of Republican leaders and their base since its passage.  With full control Congress and the White House, they now hold the power to make changes but as it turns out, they have no idea what to do.  The one thing they are certain of is their desire to remove the funding mechanism for ACA -- a tax on the wealthiest citizens -- everything else be damed including millions of citizens who will not be able to obtain or afford coverage.

One would think that the health of our nation’s citizens is a unifying issue.  Politicians on both sides of the aisle, however, have used the Affordable Care Act, and ultimately public health, as a partisan political tool at the expense of their constituents. 

In an overnight vote, the Senate confirmed Tom Price to be the next Secretary of Health and Human Services despite ethics issues regarding lucrative stock purchases of companies his legislation would directly impact. Price's primary role at HHS is expected to be overseeing the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and rollbacks to medicare and medicaid. His past opposition to federal health care programs of all varieties appears to have been his primary positive attribute to Republicans in Congress and at the White House.

In his first executive order, President Trump on Friday directed government agencies to scale back as many aspects of the Affordable Care Act as possible, moving within hours of being sworn in to fulfill his pledge to eviscerate President Obama’s signature health care law.