Here are two issues that don't get much play. However, I believe that they can be used to help persuade others. Energy is on everyone's mind and nuclear may seem reasonable but is it prudent to trade one import for another? Twenty percent of us suffer from some form of mental illness. To those who have had to deal with this common illness it is all encompassing. For example did you know that people diagnosed with schizophrenia have a 50 times higher rate of suicide than the general population? There are many families who are affected by mental illness. McCain has been on the side of the insurance companies and against all mental health advocates his entire career.
John McCain Wants to Trade Importing Oil for Importing Russian Uranium. Does that sound like progress to you?
Argument 1.John McCain keeps mentioning that he wants to build 45 more nuclear plants by the year 2030. This alone could be debated because of cost, security risks and what to do with all the waste. But the real problem with this plan is that we are dependent on foreign sources for uranium.
In 2006 we used 67 million tons of uranium. We imported 84%, 56 million tons were imported from foreign sources. Only 11 million tons were domestically produced. Some of the players in this uranium trade are Kazakhstan, Russia, Niger,Namibia, Uzbekistan, Canada and Australia. So, John, we are going to trade importing oil for importing uranium. Is that a solid plan? U.S Steelworker president Leo Gerald had this to say in fighting for legislation on uranium imports this fall.
Gerard emphasized, "The United States is dangerously dependent on cheap Russian commercial uranium to fulfill our electricity demands. That over dependence has put our workers and industry in serious jeopardy." He adds, "I am very pleased the Democratic Congress -- working in a bipartisan fashion -- stood up to Russia to keep these good-paying, middle-class jobs here in America.
The legislation he was discussing limits Russia's future market share for commercial-grade uranium in the U.S. to 20 percent of total electricity demand. Presently, the Russians 50 percent market share is supplied by commercial uranium down-blended from 500 metric tons of weapons-grade uranium under an agreement between the two governments. We are dependent on foreign uranium sources in a much bigger way than we are dependent on foreign oil sources
What about increasing domestic uranium mining and production.? Well, there are some problems with doing that. Some quick history.
During WWII and afterwards, the Colorado Plateau was quickly explored and thousands of mines opened in New Mexico, Wyoming, Arizona and Colorado. Many of these open pit mines were abandoned after the uranium was taken out. In the 1950's the first "ghosts" started to appear which were various lung diseases from radioactive dust, and radon releases, and kidney diseases blamed on underwater aquifers pollution.
The Navajo people were especially hit hard by these diseases in the 50s and have been anti-mining ever since.
Uranium is dangerous at very low levels and the open pit technique has been replaced by pumping water into the deposits to extract the uranium. Getting to the uranium is difficult and has much opposition due to health and environmental concerns. There are large vocal anti-uranium groups in Australia and Canada as well as in the United States. Even if these concerns could be handled the fact remains that the United States only has 6% of the recoverable uranium resources worldwide. We would still have to import to fuel these proposed plants that McCain has as the core of his energy policy.
Nuclear power may have a place in our goal of energy independence after all one ton of uranium will produce as much energy as 17,000 tons of coal but it will be an expensive, controversial solution with the net result being trading one source of energy that we have to import with another. One of the biggest part of John McCain's energy plan is the building of 45 new nuclear power plants. From Reuters article of Feb.1,2008 entitled-U.S. Nuclear Power Plants to get More Russian Uranium
Under the deal, Russian uranium exports to the United States would increase slowly over a 10-year period, beginning in 2011, when shipments would be allowed to reach 16,559 tons.
Exports would then increase about 50 percent annually over the next two years and increase more than tenfold from 41,398 tons in 2013, when the current "Megatons to Megawatts" program expires, to 485,279 tons the next year.
Shipments would increase at much slower rates in each of the following six years, until reaching 514,754 tons in 2020.
Under the "Megatons to Megawatts" program, enriched uranium from dismantled Russian nuclear weapons is imported by USEC and processed into fuel to run American nuclear power reactors.
USEC has said it does not object to the deal as long as Russian uranium does not jeopardize existing company facilities and the various new projects underway.
Owners of U.S. nuclear power reactors bought 67 million pounds of uranium in 2006. About 16 percent came from the United States and the rest, 56 million pounds, came from foreign suppliers, according to the Energy Department.
I am working on a flyer to put up all over my area and wished I had an example for you. The title will be TRADING OIL IMPORTS FOR URANIUM? DOES THAT MAKE SENSE TO YOU?
Argument 2. John McCain has opposed mental health care for all his career.
Over twenty percentage of Americans, nearly 50 million people, suffer from some form of mental illness, Nearly a 100 billion dollars is estimated to be lost annually in production and unemployment, broken lives and families, emergency room visits, homelessness and unnecessary use of jails and prisons. Yet, it has been difficult to get treatment accepted from all the public. Insurance companies have been reluctant and at times hostile to providing benefits in this area. They have even designed a concept called "carveouts" to deal with the issue.
Gilliam Friedman describes it :
Carve-outs allow insurance plans to turn mental health benefits over to separate companies, called managed behavioral care plans, to decide the terms of who gets coverage and under what circumstances. Managed behavioral health plans attempt to lower costs through a variety of limits. These include higher copayments for mental health care than for medical or surgical care; session limits restricting the number of times patients can visit mental health providers and the number of days they can be hospitalized; and coverage for only a select group of mental health diagnoses, regardless of the symptom severity of other conditions. In the aftermath of 9/11, Americans may have found themselves in mental health carve-outs with no coverage for post-traumatic stress disorder. Other frequent exclusions include such serious problems as anorexia and bulimia, sleep disorders, childhood emotional and behavioral disorders and substance dependence.
Insurance problems and adequate coverage have replaced stigma and personal embarrassment as the primary reason for not seeking and continuing treatment. Modern medications, cognitive therapy and effective care, concern and support techniques have lead to impressive progress in either curing or at least managing most mental maladies. However, insurance problems, expensive individual costs, overcrowding and lack of proper programs, prevent people from seeking and staying with treatment plans.
It seems that mental health discussions are part of the famous cultural wars we hear so much about. This surprised me, even though I am a professional in the field as I thought the vast differences were centered around abortion, gay rights and stem cell research. I didn't really even consider that mental health would cause such wide divides also. But they do! Hence, Barack Obama and John McCain's views and philosophies on this issue break along predictable lines.
Senator Obama's has a separate section of his health care plan on his web site dedicated to mental health. Senator McCain mentions mental health in a more general way in his overall statement on health care that is focused on reducing costs.
Senator Obama gives a series of detailed responses in filling out the questionnaire sent to him from the National Alliance for Mental Issues (NAMI)
He checked all answers with "strongly support" and made comments on each. Some were quite detailed. The 24 questions covered inappropriate jail use with the mentally ill, suicide prevention, veterans’ mental health issues, increased recruitment of professionals in rural areas, humane and inhumane treatments and mental health parity. Here are two excerpts from his comments:
I strongly support mental health fairness. In Illinois, I passed the state’s mental parity law. In the U.S. Senate, I co-sponsored the Mental Health Parity Act of 2007.
I was also an original co-sponsor of legislation to improve care for traumatic brain injuries (TBI). As president, I will establish standards of care for TBI treatment, require pre and post deployment screenings and improve case management so that service members get the best possible care.
John McCain presented a statement in lieu of filling out the questioner. His camp claimed he has a policy of not filling out questionnaires. Here are some excerpts from his statement:
Mental health is a necessary complement to physical health in all aspects of our daily lives. I have stressed the central role of personal responsibility in leading to lower health care costs.
I have consistently supported public housing programs that play a significant role in helping meet the housing needs of many seriously mentally ill Americans and have been a leader in the effort to eradicate homelessness among our Nation’s veterans many who are fighting mental illness.
On Veteran’s mental health, John McCain voted against an amendment in 2005 to provide an additional 500 million for Veteran’s mental health care for the years 2006-2010. Obama voted in favor of the amendment.
The Congress began a bipartisan effort in 1993 to deal with the issue of mental health parity. Basically, the mental health advocates began demanding that physical and mental care be treated the same.
In 1996 the Congress passed the Mental Health Parity Act of 1996 requiring that annual and lifetime dollar limits on mental health care not be stricter than for other medical care. This set off a twelve year old battle over this parity issue. In 2000 The General Accounting Office (GAO) reported that while most employers complied with the 1996 Act, 87 percent of those plans restricted their mental health coverage in other ways, substituting new barriers for those ruled out under the law. In 2001 the federal government instituted mental health and substance abuse parity under the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program( the health plan covering federal employees including members of Congress, their dependents and staff). Senators Domenici and Wellstone introduced the Mental Health Equitable Treatment Act that went nowhere.
A version of this same bill was introduced every year from 2001 to 2008 and the arguments and lobbying became intense every time over this subject. The same lines were always drawn. All the advocates for mental health would line up support, get a bill introduced and then watch as the opponents would stall or defeat the bill each time. The argument on the pro side seems to be best illustrated by an example.
Could you imagine if a heart patient came in and was told that he could no longer have his visits paid for as he had used up his insurance lifetime allocation? Or that his copayment had increased, or that there were no beds available for him or that his situation was not grave enough to warrant insurance coverage? Come back if you have a real problem,like a heart attack. There would be outrage throughout the nation. However, mental health patients regularly are forced to deal with these issues.
Opponents which include a coalition of employers, businesses, and the gigantic insurance industry claim that it will cost consumers and employers to pay higher premiums and drive up health cost all that much more. Some conservatives oppose mental health parity on grounds that some of the illnesses listed are frivolous and not really illnesses. They feel that some are just poor discipline and/or weak personal decisions. In a press conference, Republican Speaker Hastert’s response to a question about parity was, "What mental health condition is at parity with a broken leg?
Rep. Jim Ramstad, R-Minn:
"I think there is a bigger stigma and lack of enlightened views toward addiction diseases than there is toward mental health, although some of that still exists with respect to mental health. There are people who don’t think that depression needs treatment—you just go to church or to synagogue, take your vitamins, do your laps and you should be fine. They don’t understand the nature of the illness."
Senator John McCain either voted no starting in 1996 or missed the votes over the years on mental health parity. EVERY VOTE HAS BEEN IN SUPPORT OF THE INSURANCE COMPANIES AND AGAINST MENTAL HEALTH CLIENTS. Even George Bush has ended up supporting this issue in 2002 and created a great commission that put out a tremendous report on mental health. The NAMI organization on January 28th 2000 released a statement entitled:
" What Does Every Presidential Candidate Except John McCain Know About Mental Illness? Perhaps It’s That Treatment Works-If You Can Get It."
" Mental illnesses like schizophrenia and bi-polar(manic depression) are severe biological brain disorders, then NAMI executive director Laurie Flynn noted in the release. In essence, that means they are physical illnesses. They are not merely mental health problems from living daily life. I wonder whether Senator McCain has read the Surgeon General’s report and is aware of the distinction and whether he has looked closely at the pattern of recent state legislation. The fundamental is unfair discrimination and the debate today is less about cost than scope of coverage.
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GET THE FACTS--McCAIN IS A SUPPORTER OF THOSE WHO HAVE CONSISTENTLY BLOCKED YOU AND YOUR FAMILY's EFFORTS TO GET HELP FOR YOURSELF OR A LOVED ONE. OBAMA WILL SUPPORT MENTAL HEALTH-McCAIN WILL CONTINUE TO FIGHT MENTAL HEALTH COVERAGE AS HE HAS HIS ENTIRE CAREER.