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The first amendment introduced on the floor of the Senate comes from Sen. Barbara Mikulski, seeking to add a provision included in the HELP Committee version of the bill. This measure would mandate coverage – for free – for various women’s preventive health procedures and screenings. This is a direct response to the controversy surrounding the US Preventive Services Task Force’s changing guidelines over mammograms.
In the bill, the USPSTF guidelines are seen as a baseline for the minimum guaranteed benefits in any health care plan. The Health and Human Services Secretary could go beyond those guidelines in the implementation stage. But it is unclear whether HHS would offer those additional services free of co-pays. Mikulski’s amendment would certify a number of women’s health services eligible for the exemption from cost-sharing. Given the way conservatives pounced on the USPSTF recommendations, it’s a smart play. It would be nearly impossible for anyone to vote against covering mammograms at this stage, for example.
A draft of the Mikulski amendment as it appeared in the HELP Committee is available here. One can assume that what has been offered on the Senate floor is similar. Mikulski said in her floor speech that the amendment would cost $1 billion, per CBO.
By clarifying the guidelines on women’s health measures, this measure does improve the bill.
…this makes Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL), running for US Senate, look like a maroon for claiming that the reform bills could make the USPSTF recommendations on mammograms “law.”
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Gee, now why ever would a Republican want to make false claims about how the bill would affect women’s health.
It’s not like they are asking for Viagra or anything. After all, we know that would get approved.
Kirk IS a maroon. His claim is nonsense on its face.
When did the truth of a claim ever matter to a Republic?
“By clarifying the guidelines on women’s health measures, this measure does improve the bill.”
Glorious. The steaming pile of dung now has a tiny pearl inside it. Just remember to wake me when the Democrats stop worrying about the poor insurance companies and start caring about people instead.
Do you all think for a New York minute the USPSTF “research” or guidelines for other conditions will be any more generous?
As a woman on Medicare I am certainly grateful for this little bit. But the entire USPSTF program has got to be removed from this health insurance legislation, torn down and restructured with some real scientists and clinicians.
Mike Huckabee and the garbage neo-con republicans of Arkansas,
The blood of four dead Washington State police officers are on YOUR hands and the Arkansas garbage medical system that could of treated this mentally ill shooter before he destroyed the lives of four Washington State families.
This is WHY we need UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE! THIS IS WHY YOU republicans NEED TO VOTE FOR UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE SO POLICEMEN AND POLICEWOMEN ARE NOT SLAUGHTERED BY MENTALLY ILL PEOPLE because you prefer to give kick-backs and bribes in “sweetheart contracts” to your political buddies lining your own pockets versus appropriating taxpayer funds to care for the American people!
Mike Huckabee, did you as a republican, decide to “court the black vote” by releasing a mentally unstable black man into the public, while he was serving a 95-year prison sentence, just so you – Mike Huckabee – could get elected and steal more money from taxpayers to give to yourself and your republican garbage friends?
This is NOT a racial issue – it’s a Mike Huckabee “Greed and Lust for Power” issue and you are “eating of the golden calf!” You seduced the ignorance in your state and you know what that makes you – right, Mike? Read the book “Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work” by Babiak & Hare. Look into the mirror Mike Huckabee every morning and embrace what you are and what awaits you.
How does it feel Mike Huckabee knowing you have indirectly MURDERED four Washington-state police officers by unleashing a mentally deranged person to slaughter these people in order to get more money and power?
Nine children lost their parents MIKE HUCKABEE! And you have the God-Damned nerve to lecture the rest of the nation on morals, ethics and values on your CNN talk show?
I am choking on a fomenting rage with YOUR MIKE HUCKABEE hypocrisy.
Or are you a psychopath or sociopath who feels nothing and have definitely now shown us all you do NOT know the difference between right and wrong?
You and your Arkansas garbage-republican buddies are responsible for the deaths of four Washington State Police officers.
You and your republican party’s “obstructionism” of Universal Health Care are placing all Americans on a firing line while calling yourselves “Christians!?”
You and your red-state, garbage Public Health system in the garbage, red-state of Arkansas with its garbage red-state people have caused the deaths of four outstanding police officers because you want HMO’s to make MORE PROFIT and GET YOU – MIKE HUCKABEE – ELECTED FOR PUBLIC OFFICE?
You deserve to go to jail for the rest of your life on FOUR COUNTS OF NEGLIGENT HOMICIDE!
YOU ARE NOT FIT TO SHOW YOUR FACE IN PUBLIC MUCH LESS PUBLIC OFFICE!
MIKE HUCKABEE – Are the HMO PROFITS worth the LIVES of four dead cops?
You and the garbage state of Arkansas caused these deaths by failing to fix your mentally ill people before release from prison!
Then your Arkansas garbage travels to Washington to explode and harm other American people.
Mike Huckabee – You have failed the American people and irreversibly harmed the people of Washington state and destroyed the lives of four Washington families. Your failed clemency program, Mike Huckabee, and your garbage red state of Arkansas are a Threat to the National Security of the United States and a “domestic enemy” of the United States Constitution.
The blood of these four dead cops are on your hands Mike Huckabee and the neo-conservative garbage republicans of Arkansas!
You rotten republican neo-con scumbag son of a bitch. May you, George W Bush, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean O’Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Laura Ingraham and every other neo-conservative republican bastard burn in hell! Ezekiel 25:17
“The Path of the Righteous Man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who in the name of charity and goodwill shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children.
And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger anyone who tries to poison and destroy my brothers and you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you!”
Yes. Even the simple minded understand that treating all illnesses is cost effective, not only in terms of individual patients the their extended productive lives but also in terms of public health as you point out.
That puts Republicans and the USPSTF somewhere below flat worms in reasoning capacity.