Health & Environment

Health, Science & Environment

We need people with disabilities and their PCAs/DSPs at the Capitol this session!

  • As a community that is being marginalized, exploited and facing system-wide discrimination, we need to be seen, heard and taken seriously. Please come to the  Capitol and share your comments with DHS. Help us advocate for you!
  • March 11th- Hearing on the Personal Care Attendant/Direct Support Persons bills
  • March 17th- Disability Day at the Capitol
  • More cuts already projected!

Brigette Menger-Anderson and Ann Roscoe, Metropolitan Center for Independent Living (MCIL)

Many consumers are already receiving notice that their services are being reduced drastically, and have indicated that loosing access to services could greatly increase risks to their health, safety and independence. This is your time to let Department of Health and Human Services (DHS) and your legislators know how your life is being impacted.                           

Are you a DSP whose faced severe income reduction due to the 16 hour a day and/or 275 hours per month billing cap that has been put into effect? Please tell DHS and your legislators how this affects you. 

It is our duty together, to make sure that DHS can put names, faces and stories to the data and statistics that DHS, Legislators and Governor Pawlenty have all contributed to writing off for the sake of streamlining and savings.

Summary: Health Care Reform: Week of March 7

6 New Items including:

  • Durenberger takes aim at health reform fearmongering
  • Obama backs plan to give health overhaul fast track in Congress

David Culver, ed., Evergreene Digest

Nick Anderson

Read Healthcare for America NOW!

  • Health Care for America Now (HCAN) is a national grassroots campaign of more than 1,000 organizations in 46 states representing 30 million people dedicated to winning quality, affordable health care we all can count on in 2010.
  • Health care reform will pass this year. The question is, will reform work for you, or the healthcare industry?

Obama backs plan to give health overhaul fast track in Congress, Margaret Talev and David Lightman, McClatchy Newspapers

Supreme Court muddies clean water act


  • The court narrowed application of the act, leaving regulators confused and giving some polluters a clear path to the nearest creek.
  • Rulings Restrict Clean Water Act, Foiling EPA.

Charles Duhigg and Janet Roberts, New York Times


The mouth of Avondale Creek in Alabama, into which a pipe maker dumped oil, lead and zinc. A court ruling made the waterway exempt from the Clean Water Act. David Walter Banks for the New York Times

Thousands of the nation's largest water polluters are outside the Clean Water Act's reach because the Supreme Court has left uncertain which waterways are protected by that law, according to interviews with regulators.

As a result, some businesses are declaring the law no longer applies to them. And pollution rates are rising.

Durenberger takes aim at health reform fearmongering

  • On the eve of President Obama's health care summit, Durenberger told Kaiser Health News that the plan bears a strong resemblance to the reforms pitched by him and other Republicans in 1993. At the time, Durenberger's proposal was the GOP alternative to Clintoncare.
  • Asked why the GOP embraced his ideas in 1993 but shoot them down now, Durenberger told the national online health news service: "The main thing that's changed is the definition of a Republican."

Jill Burcum, Star Tribune | MN

Three cheers for former Minnesota Senator David Durenberger who took aim Wednesday (Feb 24) at the ill-informed rhetoric painting the Democratic health reform bill as some kind of wild-eyed socialist scheme.

On the eve of President Obama's health care summit, Durenberger told Kaiser Health News that the plan bears a strong resemblance to the reforms pitched by him and other Republicans in 1993. At the time, Durenberger's proposal was the GOP alternative to Clintoncare.
It included a mandate to buy insurance, subsidies for the poor and insurance reform to protect those with pre-existing conditions -- key elements of the Senate bill that became the foundation for White House plan released Monday (March 1).