(To contact your Congressional representatives about saving telehealth for Medicare patients, or to forward them this essay, click on these links for your personal contacts in the House or the Senate.)
For me, the government shutdown became personal with an early Wednesday phone call informing me that my telehealth appointment with my nurse practitioner scheduled for today would no longer be supported for Medicare patients.
What is a major inconvenience and scary development for me must be a complete disaster for many other elderly and disabled patients.
Telehealth has without a doubt improved medical care for millions of people. It became popular during the pandemic but has persisted since for the most vulnerable among us — those too ill and/or too weak to get themselves to their doctor’s office in person.
Video appointments can allow health care providers to manage larger patient loads because remote appointments can be faster and more efficient than in-person appointments. In-person checkups are preferable for other reasons, of course.
I’m not going to get into the politics of the government shutdown other than to say there appears to be plenty of blame all around. Republican cuts to Medicare are embedded in Trump’s “big (ugly) bill” and the continuing care for millions of people like me is at serious risk going forward.
My reaction to this news was seething hatred for everything associated with the Trump regime. This awful man is systematically wrecking our society piece by piece. Every decent, kind, humane policy is at risk now.
Jane Fonda is right once again. All of us need to find ways to resist this authoritarian in our midst. Trump is a cancer. Democracy is the patient. The treatment is for us to somehow contain and limit the spread of this tumor.
HEADLINES:
YouTube Bends the Knee (Atlantic)
Hegseth escalates war on leakers with lie detector tests and nondisclosure agreements (WP)
Vote to end government shutdown fails as Democrats hold firm on health care demands (AP)
Supreme Court Allows Lisa Cook to Remain at Fed, for Now (NYT)
White House fires much of the National Council on the Humanities (WP)
Pope Leo appeared to offer his strongest criticism yet of Trump’s hard-line immigration policies, questioning whether they were in line with the Catholic Church’s pro-life teachings. (Reuters)
Israel orders Palestinians to leave Gaza City, saying those who stay will be considered militants (AP)
Blue Angels cancel S.F. Fleet Week over government shutdown (SFC)
Jane Goodall, conservationist renowned for chimpanzee research and environmental advocacy, has died (AP)
Robots are learning to make human babies. Twenty have already been born. (WP)
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