VA Head Eric Shinseki Falls On Sword

GLAAD On Trans Health Care

Among those appearing in the clip is Stephen Ira Beatty, the son of Warren Beatty and Annette Bening.

Bucks For Bauman

A crowdfunding website to pay the medical expenses of bombing victim Jeff Bauman has already raised almost $200,000. Bauman lost both of his legs in the attack and a gruesome photo of his injuries instantly became one of the tragedy's most haunting images. He is also the only person to provide the FBI with an eyewitness description of one of the bombers, scrawling an initial note from hospital bed that read, "Bag. Saw the guy. Looked right at me."

Think Progress reports on the Bauman fundraising campaign and laments the state of health insurance.

The 27-year-old’s story is particularly tragic considering that he lives in Massachusetts, the state that gave birth to Obamacare and has the lowest uninsurance rate in the country. Unfortunately, Bauman — who worked part-time at Costco and was planning on going back to school — is one of the mere 1.9 percent of Massachusetts residents without health coverage. He likely would have gained insurance under his school’s health plan had he made it there before the bombings.

Bauman has been fortunate enough to receive an impressive number of donations to help him pay his bills, and his uncle plans to buy him his first pair of prosthetic legs. But many other victims in the Boston bombings may not be as fortunate. The cost of treating the bombing survivors’ injuries is expected to exceed $9 million. The out-of-pocket costs associated with that treatment could bury many of the victims financially, even if they do have insurance — unless hospitals, insurers, and charitable foundations swoop in to help, as they did after the mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado.

USPS Reports $16B Loss

The Postal Service has reported a record $15.9B loss for the year, more than three times last year's loss.

Much of the red ink was due to mounting costs for future retiree health benefits, which made up $11.1 billion of the losses. Without that and other related labor expenses, the mail agency sustained an operating loss of $2.4 billion, lower than the previous year. Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said the agency has been able to reduce costs significantly by boosting worker productivity. But he said the mail agency has been hampered by congressional inaction on a postal overhaul bill that would allow it to eliminate Saturday mail delivery and reduce its $5 billion annual payment for future health benefits. Earlier this year, the post office defaulted on two of those payments. It is forecasting additional losses next year of roughly $7.6 billion.

The Postal Service is the only government agency required to make prepayments into its healthcare plan.

Christian Groups To Protest Obamacare Outside The White House

Via press release:

For the faith community, we can never be silent or indifferent when it comes to matters of justice, human rights and religious freedom. As people of principle and faith, we must purpose in our hearts that we will never comply with an unjust or immoral government mandate which would require us to violate our conscience, the teachings of the Scriptures and the historic teachings of the Church. We want to make it clear to President Obama and all public officials that we would rather spend time in jail that to be forced into complying with a mandate that crushes religious freedom.

Ireland's President Vs The Tea Party

For reasons not yet apparent, a two year-old anti-Tea Party rant by Irish President Michael Higgins has suddenly exploded across the web and gone viral. Listen. Legendary. Thanks to everybody who sent it to me last night.

New Study: Declining U.S. Circumcision Rate To Increase Sexual Diseases

According to a just-published Johns Hopkins University study, the declining U.S. rate of newborn circumcision will result in higher health costs for the nation when these boys become sexually active adults.

About 55 percent of the 2 million males born each year in America are circumcised, a decrease from 79 percent in the 1980s, according to the report in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. The procedure, which removes the foreskin from the tip of the penis where bacteria and viruses accumulate, is linked to fewer cases of HIV, herpes, genital warts and genital cancers among men and their sexual partners. “If there were a vaccine that reduced HIV infection, genital herpes and warts, penile cancer, cervical cancer and bacterial vaginosis, it would be promoted as a game changing intervention, and all physicians would encourage their patients to get it,” said Aaron Tobian, a health epidemiologist and pathologist at Johns Hopkins and senior researcher on the study.

“The difference is this is a surgery with very minor complications, and it also has a cultural tone to it.” The lack of protection may boost U.S. health-care costs by $4.4 billion if rates plunge in the next decade to levels seen in Europe, where 10 percent of boys are circumcised, according to the analysis by health economists at Johns Hopkins. Each time a circumcision is avoided, $313 is added in direct illness- related expenses, after taking into account the cost of the procedure, Tobian said in a telephone interview. “All state Medicaid and private insurers should cover male circumcision and we should eliminate all of the current barriers,” he said. “Families should discuss the risks and benefits of the procedure with their physicians and decide what is best for them.”

Medicaid coverage for circumcision has been dropped in many states and the above-linked study notes that private insurers have followed suit.

Obamacare Will Ban Anti-Transgender Discrimination By Health Providers

A senior official from the Department of Health and Human Services has confirmed that under the Affordable Healthcare Act, federally funded agencies and providers will be barred from discriminating against transgender patients. Chris Geidner reports at Buzzfeed:

In response to a letter sent by a dozen LGBT health and advocacy organizations to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in June, Leon Rodriguez — the director of HHS's Office for Civil Rights — wrote on July 12 HHS considers discrimination based on "gender identity or failure to conform to stereotypical notions of masculinity or femininity" in federal health programs or activities receiving funding under the Affordable Care Act#39;s-covered programs to be illegal.

In the letter, obtained by BuzzFeed, Rodriguez agreed with the groups' assessment that the prohibition on sex discrimination in Obama's health care law prohibited discrimination against transgender people and stated that his office would investigate any complaints of such discrimination. Referring to a recent survey, National Center for Transgender Equality executive director Mara Keisling told BuzzFeed that 20 percent of transgender people report being turned away from a health-care provider for being transgender. "That's illegal now," she said.

Read Geidner's full report.

London's Olympic Opening Ceremonies Praise Universal Health Care

One of the most interesting moments in last night's opening ceremonies was the lavish tribute to Britain's National Health Service. Teabaggers went nuts on Twitter, of course. Check out the below commentary from one American, whose clip has (so far) evaded the the IOC, which has been furiously scrubbing YouTube of Olympics-related clips.

Blacks AIDS Group Issues Grim Report

Yesterday the Black AIDS Institute issued a grim report that will surely be the subject of much discussion at next week's International AIDS Conference.

HIV-AIDS is affecting black gay men in the United States on a scale unseen among any other group in the developed world, said a report issued Wednesday ahead of the International AIDS Conference. So grave is the crisis that in some US cities, one in two black men who have sex with other men are HIV positive, according to the report from the Black AIDS Institute, the only national HIV-AIDS think tank focusing on African Americans. "AIDS in America is a black disease, no matter how you look at it," its president and chief executive Phill Wilson, who is himself HIV positive, said ahead of Sunday's opening of the six-day global conference. "The best lens through which to figure out what AIDS looks like in America is to look at AIDS in black America," he said in an interview, adding that it was time to "jump-start a new conversation... and build a robust response" to the crisis.

According to the 74-page report, while black gay men only constitute one out of 500 Americans, they account for one out of four new HIV infections. The group's head added this withering quote: "There are almost no national LGBT organizations today that give a rat's ass about the lives of black gay men as they are impacted by HIV-AIDS, and that's disgraceful."

Alan Grayson On FL Gov. Rick Scott: The Blood Of The Poor Will Be On His Hands

Today's Lie From World Net Daily

Make that 83% of doctors that belong to a wingnut Obamacare repeal group.

Obamacare & The End Times

They're related, of course.

Just Out From The Romney Campaign

Concerned Women Are Concernstipated That Poor People Will Get Health Care

"We are outraged to see the Supreme Court ignoring the constitutional limits the Founders put in place to constrain the federal government's power over us. Shame on them! With this decision they have given a blank check to the federal government, forever altering the constitutional concept of checks and balances that has been so crucial throughout our history. We wholeheartedly believe we must strive to make health care more affordable for all Americans. But it is inconceivable to believe we must infringe on our constitutional rights in order to achieve that." - Penny Nance, writing from this week's Botox treatment.

Blowing Away Health Care Reform

Alliance Defense Fund Vs. Obama

Government In Your Vagina

UN Issues World Happiness Report

Shocker! The world's happiest nations tend to be the most socialist. Who'd think that providing your citizens with health care and adequate housing would make them happy?

Obama Vs Romneycare

Suh-NAP!