April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

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United Health Care

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the same company that has more than one of these types of charges against it

The United Healthcare Insurance Company, a unit of UnitedHealth Group, will pay $3.5 million to settle charges that it defrauded the federal Medicare program, the Justice Department said yesterday. United Healthcare ”knowingly mishandled” phone inquiries from Medicare beneficiaries and health care providers, then made false reports to the federal government about how it handled the calls, the department said in a news release. The activities took place for five years ending in 2000, the government said. United Healthcare did not admit wrongdoing in reaching the settlement. UnitedHealth’s press office did not return a phone call. A former United Healthcare employee began the case in 2001 by filing a whistleblower lawsuit, in which the Justice Department intervened.

[Read more…] about United Health Care

Hmm where have I seen this before?

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The Bush administration guts another set of laws and policies that protect workplace equity for women.
And this example of the Bush administration’s efforts to weaken women’s rights is not the only case. For example, the Administration has repeatedly sought to weaken the 86-year-old Women’s Bureau, the only federal agency whose work is solely devoted to the concerns of women in the workplace. Early on in the Bush administration, the Department of Labor erased all information about eradicating the wage gap from the Women’s Bureau website. Recently, it announced a plan to outsource half of the career positions at the Women’s Bureau national office, which would cripple the Bureau’s ability to advance working women’s concerns. And in 2001, the Department of Labor tried but failed to close the 10 regional offices of the Women’s Bureau.

The administration has also championed efforts to restrict the availability of overtime pay for workers, both by narrowing the categories of employees eligible for overtime, and by enabling employers to coerce their workers to take comp time rather overtime. This is especially harmful for women, because many women rely on overtime pay to supplement their inadequate wages.

Moreover, in an alarming example of selecting the fox to guard the henhouse, President Bush recently recess-appointed Paul DeCamp, an attorney who has spent his career trying to curtail legal remedies for women, to head the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division. Among other things, DeCamp represented Wal-Mart in trying to prevent a class of 1.5 million women — the largest employment class action ever certified — from suing the company for sex discrimination in pay and promotions.
AlterNet

Defining Pro life

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Pro life, as I have said before, is a term that needs to be reclaimed by those who feel that a woman is entitled to the basic human right of having control over her own body.

Anti abortionists are not pro life. They are pro shame, pro blame, pro control, pro legislating wombs as wards of the state, and they are pro caring about the unborn as opposed to the already born, but they are most certainly not pro life.

This excellent article describes one woman’s journey from black and white to the multitudes of gray.

To engage in productive dialogue about abortion, we must account for justice and equity; we must strive to make our country one where laws, practices, programs, and attitudes nurture women and allow them the opportunity to bring babies into the world when they can support them, provide them excellent healthcare, send them to college without putting themselves in massive debt, and promise them truthfully there are living-wage jobs waiting for them.

Come to think of it, if this isn’t a genuinely pro-life position, I don’t know what is.

Reflections from a Former Anti-Abortion Activist

Anti abortion/anti woman

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The latest tact by the anti abortionists is to say that women cannot make their own decision re abortion.

The task force took as a statement of biological and psychological fact that a mother’s connection to her unborn baby was more authentic than her own statement of desire not to be pregnant.

They trot out women who have regrets about their abortion, stats on women who have committed suicide, (perhaps the suicides had more to do with other things in their lives but lets not go there)and generally manipulate the tear ducts like a maudlin Disney film. [Read more…] about Anti abortion/anti woman

The good old days?

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Life if R.E.A.L.(ly out of touch) women get their way;

The following is from a 1950’s Home Economics textbook intended for high school girls, teaching how to prepare for married life.

1. Have dinner ready: Plan ahead even the night before, to have a delicious meal on time. This is a way of letting him know that you have been thinking about him, and are concerned about his needs. Most men are hungry when they come home and the prospects of a good meal are part of the warm welcome needed.
2. Prepare yourself: Take 15 minutes to rest so you will be refreshed when he arrives. Touch up your make-up, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh looking. He has just been with a lot or work-weary people. Be a little gay and a little more interesting. His boring day may need a lift.
3. Clear away the clutter: make one last trip through the main part of the house just before your husband arrives, gathering up school books, toys, paper, etc. Then run a dust cloth over the tables. Your husband will feel he has reached a haven of rest and order, and it will give you a lift too. [Read more…] about The good old days?

Oh say, can you see?

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Being able to see and therefore work helps people stay out of poverty.

CBC

About 153 million people worldwide have easily correctable vision problems that lead children to fail at school and leave adults unable to work, according to a new report released Wednesday.

A simple sight test and glasses or contact lenses could allow people to live productive working lives, said the authors of the report by the World Health Organization. [Read more…] about Oh say, can you see?