Send a letter to your Senator: AAMDS.org; Donate to AAMDS.
In addition to revocation of collective bargaining rights, Governor Walker also encapsulated another hidden agenda in his bill, and has plans for a final death hand. The hidden agenda is to reform Medical Assistance; the death hand is two-fold; first, he intends to spin off UW-Madison hospital and clinics who are a national leader in life-saving research and treatment, and second, he intends to reform medical services at the state level.
The bill directs the department of public health services to 'assess' the medical assistance program and propose means by which it can be made more effective. As the spokesperson from the National Bone Marrow Donation Association put it, "That's not a bad thing. Despite how much you may like or dislike Governor Walker, to assess programs for effeciency is a good thing." Yes, it is; however, it goes on to say that the PHS can make law by means of medical emergency legislative paths. As well, what is written there in invisible ink is the call for reform and exclusions. One exclusion that other states have made during their assessments is of waiver programs; these are special programs to provide life-saving services such as bone marrow transplants. Without bone marrow transplants, people with Aplastic Anemia, as well as many other diseases (Leukemia, PNH, MDS, EB, and the list goes on and on and on) will die. That, Governor Walker, is a sentence to death by legislative pen.
Add to that legislative pen the stroke of deaths of millions with the spinning off of UW-Madison to make it act as a business on its own two feet. UW-Madison is a national leader in stem cell research. Those stem cells aren't fetuses, but rather blood stem cells donated from the marrow of people just like you and me, from the cords of babies donated by their parents to save a life, and form donors who are dying. They are on the brink of finding a solution for Alzheimer's. Do these Senators not realize how many millions of dollars could be saved by the Medicare and Medicaid programs by simply not confining an Alzheimer's patient to a nursing home? Multiples of millions in Wisconsin, to the billions of dollars nationwide, would be saved.
It's not only a Wisconsin problem. Senator John McCain is sponsoring a bill that will terminate funding to bone marrow research. That research is housed under the same arena as is the defense funding. Obviously, pro-war Senator McCain is seeking to stop dollars from going to save lives to put dollars towards the effort to take lives. We expect this given his history. McCain: there is no honor in killing Americans through a silent holocost on the medical assistance and research funding to fight for their freedom. We strongly disagree, and encourage everyone to write to Senator McCain to tell him not to kill the funding to bone marrow research.
PLEAS:
Whoever you are, you don't know that you won't one day need a bone marrow transplant. If the research is ended, where will you go? The US is the leader in medical research. Write to your Senator and to Senator John McCain to "Oppose any Amendment to Eliminate CDMRP Funding". You might also want to write to Doris O. Matsui (D-CA) to tell her that you support her and the “Bone Marrow Failure Disease Research and Treatment Act” (H.R. 640). This legislation would bring together the resources of several federal agencies to advance our understanding of, and treatments for aplastic anemia, myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS), and ParoPNH. We need your support now! It is simple to send that letter, just go to AA & MDS and fill in your name and submit the letter.
TO THOSE PROTESTING IN WISCONSIN: Please keep the reform appeals in Walker's bill in your minds and hearts as you fight for civil rights; this fight is for life.
Lent: One of my lenten sacrafices is to give two hours of my off time every day to helping further the fight of those who are fighting for their lives recovering from a bone marrow transplant.
I'll give him one cheer for having the courage of his convictions, a second cheer for appearing to truly attempt to balance the budget, but I have to withhold the third cheer; his bedside manner needs improvement (shoving things down people...'s throats hasn't worked well in the US... he could've presented his proposal better by informing and dialoging, rather than televising his meeting with the Guard - he sent the wrong initial message which tells me he isn't handling power well and that scares me as my state leader). If excessive spending isn't stopped, the system will implode, and with it all teachers' jobs. He gets the third cheer back here for demanding public service pay concessions. When a society's main employer is its public service sector, what do you call its governmental control? Doesn't socialism fit? In business, we earn because we perform. If education wants collective bargaining rights, then it follows that it becomes a business, and as such is paid by performance such as the ability of students to pass tests. Despite their name, collective bargaining rights are not a protected right under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 nor any other, and Walker didn't seek to strip all CBR's, he selectively targeted those areas where the public sectors' 'rights' were aligned with private sectors' dreams (pensions, insurance, pay above inflation). I've never viewed education or medical care as businesses. At Neenah High School, however, we have 6 principals all paid at least $80k per year, I am told by their administrator. The average lawyer in Wisconsin makes less than $72k per year, has no pension, and is lucky to have medical insurance or med ins with a reasonable deductible below $5k while state employees enjoy very low deductibles. I do however strongly oppose elimination of life-saving treatments, such as bone marrow research and treatment, and stem cell research because those two alone will save billions of dollars by preventing people from institutionalization and hospitalization for Alzhemier's - just one example of what that research is curing. From a very imformed position after having read every bill before the house....
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