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PHOENIX (AP) ? President Barack Obama has championed two sweeping policy changes that could transform how people live in the United States: affordable health care for all and a path to citizenship for the 11 million immigrants illegally in the country.
But many immigrants will have to wait more than a decade to qualify for health care benefits under the proposed immigration overhaul being debated by Congress, ensuring a huge swath of people will remain uninsured as the centerpiece of Obama's health care law launches next year.
Lawmakers pushing the immigration bill said adding more recipients to an already costly benefit would make it unaffordable.
Health care analysts and immigration proponents argue that denying coverage will saddle local governments with the burden of uninsured immigrants. They also fear a crisis down the road as immigrants become eligible for coverage, but are older, sicker and require more expensive care. Those placed on provisional status would become the nation's second-largest population of uninsured, or about 25 percent, according to a 2012 study by the Urban Institute.
"All health research shows that the older you get, the sicker you become, so these people will be sicker and will be more expensive on the system," said Matthew O'Brien, who runs a health clinic for immigrants in Philadelphia and researches health trends at Temple University.
The Affordable Care Act will make health insurance accessible for millions of uninsured people starting in January through taxpayer-subsidized private policies for middle-class families and expanded access to Medicaid, the program for low-income people funded by federal and state dollars. The proposed immigration overhaul explicitly states immigrants cannot receive Medicaid or buy coverage in new health care exchanges for more than a decade after they qualify for legal status, and only after certain financial and security requirements have been met.
Immigrants with provisional status may obtain insurance through employers once they have legal status to work, but many are unskilled and undereducated, and tend to work low-wage jobs at small businesses that don't have to provide the benefit under the health care law. Immigrants illegally in the country also can access community health centers, but the officials who run those clinics said they are overwhelmed by the demand.
"We can't help everybody," said Bethy Mathis, executive director of Wesley Community Center in Phoenix. The clinic serves 7,000 patients a year who seek everything from vaccinations and relief from minor medical problems to care for long-term health conditions such as diabetes.
Debate over whether immigrants illegally in the country should be eligible for federal benefits nearly sank Obama's health care reform before it was passed by Congress in 2010. For lawmakers pushing immigration reform, there was no question that immigrants would continue to be excluded.
"That's one of the privileges of citizenship," said Republican Sen. John McCain, one of the so-called Gang of Eight pushing the immigration bill, during a conference call with reporters. "That's just what it is. I don't know why we would want to provide Obamacare to someone who is not a citizen of this country."
The issue has received more attention in recent weeks. Some House Republicans have threatened to kill the immigration bill unless immigrants are required to pay for all their health care costs even after they receive green cards or become citizens. Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, meanwhile, said she wants the government to distribute at least $250 million to state and local governments because they are the ones who will feel the financial pain of immigrants being left out of the health care law.
Pregnant women, children, seniors and the disabled are eligible for emergency Medicaid services regardless of their immigration status.
The politics behind the bill offer little solace to immigrant families struggling with growing medical bills.
Isabel Castillo came to the U.S. illegally with her parents when she was a child. She's now 28 and has not gone for an annual physical exam since 2007. Every pain triggers debate over whether it's worth a medical visit or not.
"You are like, 'God, should I go, should I wait? The bill is going to be so high,'" Castillo said. "You just wait until you can't tolerate the pain anymore and then you go to the emergency room."
Immigrants who are U.S. citizens are also affected by the limits on health care access if they provide for family members here illegally.
High school student Jacqueline Garcia of Phoenix works two jobs to support her 13-year-old brother and 52-year-old grandmother, who has severe diabetes. The woman's mobility is limited, her vision and memory are fading and she sometimes suffers from seizures. The children were born in the United States and are being raised by the grandmother, who does not have lawful status and as a result does not qualify for Medicaid.
"Every time she gets sick, I have to take her to the doctor. It's really expensive," Garcia said. "What if my grandmother doesn't make it for the 10 years? I mean, I am always going to be struggling. That's too long."
Opponents said they understand the concerns of immigrants not getting health care, but it becomes an issue of the added expense.
"We aren't saying people shouldn't get health care. The question is who is going to pay for it?" said Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a national group that opposes the immigration overhaul. "They would all be on Medicaid or heavily subsidized in some other way."
Critics of the decision said immigrants are eager to pay for affordable health care insurance and already support federal benefits by paying sales and income taxes. They note that adults unable to overcome health emergencies are less likely to contribute to the workforce and society.
"The risk of them being uninsured if they are in the country illegally is the same risk of anyone else in the country not being insured," said Stephen Zuckerman, a health economist for the Urban Institute. "It's always more expensive to treat people at a more advanced stage of disease."
In North Carolina, Jessica Sanchez-Rodriguez said she has undergone a series of surgeries and medicines to treat her spina bifida, a developmental congenital disorder, and an ailment that leads to brain swelling. Her parents brought her illegally from Mexico when she was 11 months old. As a minor, she received subsidized medical care, but she was cut off when she turned 18 in February.
Her family is trying to raise money for a $55,000 surgery to connect a catheter to her bladder.
"It's terrible," Sanchez-Rodriguez said. "I have to go to school with these pains."
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/immigrants-excluded-health-care-overhaul-083920285.html
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By Daniel Arkin, Staff Writer, NBC News
Large hail and damaging winds were expected to pummel the northern Plains and Upper Midwest on Friday evening, according to the National Weather Service forecast, with storms already reported to have hit parts of South Dakota and Nebraska.
Brief but brutal storms battered eastern South Dakota on Friday afternoon, ripping through homes and trees, according to NBC station KDLT in Sioux Falls.
At least four tornadoes were seen sweeping through rural areas of Nebraska?s southern Panhandle, according to the Omaha World-Herald.
Storm watchers reportedly spotted a twister and golf-ball-sized hail in the city of Sidney on Friday afternoon, the newspaper reported. There were similar sightings in the cities of Colton, Brownson and Potter.
Harsh hail and wild winds could roll into Wisconsin and Michigan overnight, according to Dr. Greg Forbes, a severe weather expert with The Weather Channel. The Upper Midwest may also be due for a weekend of heavy rainfall, Forbes added.
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The Supreme Court is poised to release its opinion on an affirmative-action case that could forever change the way public colleges and universities consider race in admissions. But even if, as some predict, the justices issue a broad ruling slapping down the use of race in admissions, an open secret in higher education?that many colleges lower their admissions standards for male applicants?remains unchallenged and largely unremarked upon.
For years, the percentage of men enrolled in college has been declining, with women making up nearly 57 percent of all undergrads at four-year colleges last year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. While schools are prohibited under the federal Title IX law from discriminating based on gender, some admissions officials have admitted in recent years that male applicants get a leg up from colleges hoping to avoid gender imbalances on campus.
Jennifer Delahunty Britz, the dean of admissions at the private liberal arts school Kenyon College, was among the first to admit this when she wrote an op-ed titled "To All the Girls I've Rejected" in The New York Times in 2006.
"The reality is that because young men are rarer, they're more valued applicants," she wrote, adding that two-thirds of colleges report that more women than men apply for admission. "What messages are we sending young women that they must, nearly 25 years after the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment, be even more accomplished than men to gain admission to the nation's top colleges?"
Delahunty Britz's acknowledgment opened the floodgates, and reporters began looking closely at schools that admitted a much higher percentage of male than female applicants.
Of course, these gaps don't necessarily mean that women are being discriminated against. It's possible that the male applicant pool is better qualified on average, though that's hard to ascertain when colleges generally resist releasing their admissions data.
The University of Richmond, a private liberal arts school, acknowledged in 2009 that it attempts to keep its gender balance at about 50-50, which meant women's admit rate was about 13 percentage points lower than men's over the previous 10 years. Admissions officer Marilyn Hesser told CBS that men and women had about the same standardized test scores, but that male applicants' GPA was lower on average. (The college's admission rate suddenly became more gender neutral the following year, in 2010-2011, when men's acceptance rate was only 3 percentage points higher than women's.)
The same year, the College of William and Mary, a public institution in Virginia, accepted 39.4 percent of its male applicants and 27.2 percent of female applicants. The school's admissions dean, Henry Broaddus, said men have slightly higher standardized test scores but lower GPAs than women, on average.
Broaddus defended the policy, insisting that William and Mary's female students want the college to to be gender-balanced and that colleges in general risk becoming less attractive to both men and women when the gender balance tips too far toward women.
"Even women who enroll ... expect to see men on campus," Broaddus said at the time. "It's not the College of Mary and Mary; it's the College of William and Mary."
In 2005, some of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's trustees reportedly wondered whether they should instate "affirmative action for men," to counteract the declining percentage of men on campus. (The school is more than 58 percent female.)
The stories prompted admissions consultants who charge $200 per hour to caution on their web site that women applicants must try harder. "The best advice we can give female applicants is to follow the same advice we're giving everyone?only more strictly: start your college applications early, apply to an appropriate number and range of schools, and prepare each one of your applications carefully."
Interestingly, none of these revelations prompted a wave of lawsuits, or even much outrage, from feminist organizations or other groups. It's even more surprising since the issue is probably more clear-cut, legally speaking, than race-based affirmative action.
In Grutter v. Bollinger, the 2003 case that set current law around race-based affirmative action, the Supreme Court ruled that in order to achieve a "critical mass" of underrepresented minority groups, colleges can use race as a limited factor in admissions decisions. The court said at the time they believed affirmative action would no longer be necessary after 25 years, an argument the Supreme Court is now reconsidering with Fisher v. University of Texas, a case brought by a white student who was rejected by the university.
Many legal experts expect the court, which is more conservative now than it was in 2003, to rule against UT, which could mean public colleges could have to stop considering race in admissions as a way to increase on-campus diversity.
But with men, there's no "critical mass" argument to make; men are outnumbered by women on campus, but not so vastly that they can be considered an underrepresented minority. The constitution does allow for more discrimination based on gender than race. (The courts treat any classification based on race with strict scrutiny; gender-based classifications get a more relaxed degree of review.)
But Title IX pretty clearly forbids any admissions decision that discriminates based on gender, meaning Congress has already made gender-balancing admissions decisions effectively illegal. In the one known case on this issue, plaintiffs challenged the University of Georgia in 2000 for both race and gender admissions preferences, and a federal circuit court found that gender preferences were illegal and struck them down. The school declined to appeal.
Why haven't there been more lawsuits?
Gail Heriot, a conservative law professor at the University of San Diego and a member of the federal U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, said it's partly the murky politics of the issue. Liberal, feminist groups tend to support affirmative action for racial minorities, and could be wary that attacking gender preferences for men would lead them into attacking racial preferences.
Meanwhile, conservative groups that reject race-based affirmative action would rather draw attention to the "boy crisis" they believe harms men than seize the chance to deal a blow to both race and gender admissions preferences.
Heriot began a Commission investigation into whether colleges were discriminating against female applicants in 2009, but the eight-member panel voted to end it at the suggestion of a Democratic appointee in 2011. Several schools had refused to hand over the admissions data to Heriot, which made the investigation difficult.
Heriot dismissed the argument that women would rather attend gender-balanced schools, even if it means they had to get better grades in high school than their male peers to get in.
"It strikes me as a very troubling argument to say, 'Gosh, women want to be discriminated against,'" she said. "You're going to have to prove that to me."
She still believes that a case against gender preferences at public schools could win.
"I'm a conservative so I tend to be on the other side of issues from Justice [Ruth Bader] Ginsburg. But I'd be happy to argue this one to her. I think I have a shot," Heriot said.
Meanwhile, admissions officers who do not want to give a leg up to men are left to find other means to attract men to campus. Brandeis University (57 percent female) tried offering free baseball caps to their first 500 male applicants, according to Heriot.
Eric Felix, an admissions officer for the University of San Diego, a small liberal arts school that is 45 percent male, says he tries to encourage qualified men to apply by tailoring applications materials to them, highlighting the school's engineering programs and sports teams instead of the beautiful campus shots sent to women. He also visits all-boys schools and ROTC programs to recruit.
Felix said he does not use gender preferences, but that male applicants can often make up for their on average lower GPAs through "non-cognitive" factors such as leadership roles in extracurriculars. "We're only going to admit students that we feel are successful," Felix said. "Once you get to the non-academic pieces then men start to shine, because they put an emphasis on extracurriculars."
Felix said that although men may not be an oppressed minority, they are often discouraged from emphasizing academics because they are expected to get a part-time job or join the military. Felix also argued that gender is part of diversity on campus.
"Students need to be able to interact with a diverse population and part of that diversity is gender," Felix said. "If there's a discussion about rape and sexual assault in court cases [in class] and there's not men to add a voice, that's a conversation that's really missing."
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CALGARY, Alberta (AP) ? Flooding forced the western Canadian city of Calgary to order the evacuation of its entire downtown Friday, as the waters reached the 10th row of the city's hockey arena.
Communities throughout southern Alberta were inundated by overflowing rivers that washed out roads and bridges, soaked homes and turned streets into dirt-brown waterways. Police say as many as four people might have died.
About 350,000 people work in downtown Calgary on a typical day. However, officials said very few people need to be moved out, since many heeded warnings and did not go to work Friday.
Twenty-five neighborhoods in the city, with an estimated population of 75,000, have already been evacuated due to floodwaters in Calgary, a city of more than a million people that hosted the 1988 Winter Olympics and serves as the center of Canada's oil industry.
Outside the city, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said two men were seen floating lifeless in the Highwood River near the hard-hit community of High River on Thursday, but no bodies have been found. They also say a woman who was swept away with her camper has not been located. And it wasn't clear whether a man who was seen falling out of a canoe in the High River area was able to climb back in.
In the downtown Calgary, water was inundating homes and businesses in the shadow of skyscrapers. Water has swamped cars and train tracks.
The city said the home rink of the National Hockey League's Calgary Flames flooded and the water inside was 10 rows deep.
At the grounds for the world-famous Calgary Stampede fair, water reached up to the roofs of the chuck wagon barns. The popular rodeo and festival is the city's signature event. Mayor Naheed Nenshi said it will occur no matter what.
About 1,500 have gone to emergency shelters while the rest have found shelter with family or friends, Nenshi said.
Nenshi said he's never seen the rivers reach so high or flow so fast, but said the flooding situation was as under control as it could be. Nenshi said the Elbow River, one of two rivers that flow through the southern Alberta city, has peaked.
The mayor suggested that levels on the Bow River ? which, in Nenshi's words, looked like an ocean ? would remain steady for the rest of the day as long as conditions didn't change.
Police urged people to stay away from downtown and not go to work.
The flood was forcing emergency plans at the Calgary Zoo, which is situated on an island near where the Elbow and Bow rivers meet. Lions and tigers were being prepared for transfer, if necessary, to prisoner holding cells at the courthouse.
Schools and court trials were cancelled Friday and residents urged to avoid downtown. Transit service in the core was shut down.
Residents were left to wander and wade through streets waist-deep in water.
"In all the years I've been down here, I've never seen the water this high," resident John Doherty said.
"I've got two antique pianos in the garage that I was going to rebuild and they're probably under water," he said. "We're shell-shocked."
Alberta Premier Alison Redford promised the province would help flood victims put their lives back together and provide financial aid to communities that need to rebuild. The premier said at a briefing that she had spoken to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who was heading to Calgary and promised disaster relief.
Redford urged people to heed evacuation orders, so authorities could do their jobs. She called the flooding that has hit most of southern Alberta an "absolutely tragic situation."
The premier warned that communities downstream of Calgary had not yet felt the full force of the floodwaters.
It had been a rainy week throughout much of Alberta, but on Thursday the Bow River Basin was battered with up to 100 millimeters (four inches) of rain. Environment Canada's forecast called for more rain in the area, but in much smaller amounts.
Calgary was not alone in its weather-related woes. Flashpoints of chaos spread from towns in the Rockies south to Lethbridge.
More than a dozen towns declared states of emergency. Entire communities, including High River and Bragg Creek, near Calgary, were under mandatory evacuation orders.
Some of the worst flooding hit High River, where an estimated half of the town's residents experienced flooding in their homes.
Military helicopters plucked about 30 people off rooftops in the area. Others were rescued by boat or in buckets of heavy machinery. Some even swam for their lives from stranded cars.
A spokesman for Defense Minister Peter MacKay said 354 soldiers are being deployed to the entire flood zone.
Further west, in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, photos from the mountain town of Canmore depicted a raging river ripping at house foundations.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/flooding-forces-75-000-western-canadian-homes-205858183.html
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Thabiso Boya, adds his get-well message on a poster for former South African President Nelson Mandela, at the Education Expo in Johannesburg, South Africa Thursday, June 20, 2013. Mandela remains in the hospital for the 13th day. The 94-year-old was hospitalized for a recurring lung infection. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)
Thabiso Boya, adds his get-well message on a poster for former South African President Nelson Mandela, at the Education Expo in Johannesburg, South Africa Thursday, June 20, 2013. Mandela remains in the hospital for the 13th day. The 94-year-old was hospitalized for a recurring lung infection. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)
Daughter Zenani Dlamini-Mandela, left, with granddaughters Swati Dlamini, second right, and Zaziwe Dlamini-Manaway, right, and an unidentified family member arrive at the Mediclinic Heart Hospital where former South African President Nelson Mandela is being treated in Pretoria, South Africa Wednesday, June 19, 2013. Mandela remains in the hospital for a ninth day. The 94-year-old was hospitalized for a recurring lung infection. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, the former wife of Nelson Mandela, leaves after visiting the Mediclinic Heart Hospital where former South African President Nelson Mandela is being treated in Pretoria, South Africa Tuesday, June 18, 2013. Well-wishers continued to send messages of love and support to Nelson Mandela, as he remained in hospital in a serious condition with a lung infection. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)
Women from Alpha World Social Center in Soweto, sing, as they hold flowers to lay them outside the Mediclinic Heart Hospital where former South African President Nelson Mandela is being treated in Pretoria, South Africa Tuesday, June 18, 2013. Well-wishers continued to send messages of love and support to Nelson Mandela, as he remained in hospital in a serious condition with a lung infection. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)
JOHANNESBURG (AP) ? An ambulance carrying Nelson Mandela to a hospital two weeks ago had engine trouble, so the 94-year-old was transferred to another ambulance for his journey to the hospital, the South African government said Saturday.
Care was taken to ensure the condition of the former president was not affected, it said.
The anti-apartheid leader remains in serious but stable condition in a hospital, the office of President Jacob Zuma said in a statement.
The government confirmed reports about transport problems when the former leader was taken to the hospital for what officials have said is a recurring lung infection. CBS News reported that Mandela had to be transferred in wintertime temperatures to another ambulance in the early morning of June 8 after waiting on the side of the highway for 40 minutes.
The government said doctors are satisfied that the Nobel Peace Prize laureate suffered "no harm" at the time.
Mandela was taken from his home in the Johannesburg neighborhood of Houghton to a hospital in Pretoria, the capital, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) away.
"The fully equipped military ICU ambulance had a full complement of specialist medical staff including intensive care specialists and ICU nurses. The convoy also included two quick response vehicles," the presidency said. "When the ambulance experienced engine problems it was decided that it would be best to transfer to another military ambulance which itself was accompanied for the rest of the journey by a civilian ambulance."
The statement added: "All care was taken to ensure that the former president Mandela's medical condition was not compromised by the unforeseen incident."
In recent days, reports from the government, former President Thabo Mbeki and a grandson of Mandela have indicated that the health of Mandela is improving, although he has been in the hospital for treatment several times in recent months.
Close family members have been visiting him daily in a Pretoria hospital amid an outpouring of prayers and messages of support from South Africans and people around the world.
Zuma's office appealed for Mandela's privacy to be respected "and that he be accorded the doctor-patient confidentiality that all patients are entitled to in terms of medical ethics."
Mandela was jailed for 27 years under white racist rule and was released in 1990. He then played a leading role in steering the divided country from the apartheid era to democracy, becoming South Africa's first black president in all-race elections in 1994. As a result of his sacrifice and peacemaking efforts, he is seen by many around the world as a symbol of reconciliation.
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It looks like Aol will be the latest company to toss its hat in as a possible replacement for for Google Reader. Some crafty Internet sleuths have discovered a login page for a private beta for Aol Reader, just a week before Mountain View is set to pull the plug on its beloved client. Do you think Aol can get it done?
Source: http://gizmodo.com/it-looks-like-aol-will-be-the-latest-company-to-toss-it-533790956
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