Originally published at: GOP Sens Worried About Trump’s NIH Cuts Turn To Limp Public Negotiations With RFK, Trump - TPM – Talking Points Memo
Earlier this month, the Trump administration took a sledgehammer to a key way in which the National Institutes of Health funds major research institutions across the country. As the country has scrambled to understand the implications of the directive, many Republicans are hearing from their constituents — and walking a tight rope: They’re publicly expressing…
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“While the administration works to achieve this goal at NIH, a smart, targeted approach is needed in order to not hinder life-saving, groundbreaking research at high-achieving institutions like those in Alabama,” she added.
Everything for me (AL), but not for thee!
h/t to Quaker Oats
“Nothing is better for thee, than me.”
Well, except my pancake mix. That’s killer. No, really.
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Ron Wyden compliments Republican senators for voicing their meek suggestions on the potential loss of millions that helps their constituents in their respective states - as if that’s COURAGEOUS?
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Just like the gangster days. The mood of the boss is life or death, and disagreeing is without question death.
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Most are just worried about getting primaried, but I’m sure some are worried that their families will be doxed and their children threatened if they don’t toe the line.
(See Jeff Flake.)
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Cassidy wants NIH research funding to go to Louisiana instead of Massachusetts and California, California and Massachusetts do receive more NIH funding than Louisiana, but they have more universities and molecular biology research institutes, have a higher accumulation of world acclaimed researchers, a more educated and skilled workforce, put more into research support, and pay a lot more in taxes each year. NIH grants are awarded on the basis of who submits the best proposals, as determined by peer scientific experts, and not on patronage. So much for Republican meritocracy.
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Get the government out of my Medicare!
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Meanwhile, in fierce competition for the Darwin awards, Montana attempts to outdo Louisiana’s gambit of making all vaccinations voluntary by just outright banning mRNA vaccines.
ETA: Please note this is the state of Montana and not the Federal government (yet) trying to ban mRNA vaccines - seems to be a little confusion in some of the replies.
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This is the initial awakening of Republican politicians to the leopard that is about to eat their face.
But, until Republican politicians are fully and royally screwed with their constituents, nothing will change. That fear has to be greater than the fear of a primary challenge.
So this all revolves around Republican constituents. Of course, I do not have a cozy feeling about that, they have proven particularly dense, but here we are.
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How many of those politicians have invested in Novovax?
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Purple Kool-Aid for everyone!
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It helps to recount our record of success in building a government-supported healthcare system that we all benefit from, rich and poor alike.
There were lessons gained from World War II, in addition to the need to provide medical insurance coverage as a benefit to attract and retain employees during a time of strictly enforced wage controls.
Millions of men called up for military service in WW II were found to be medically unfit for service, partly due to the depredations of the Great Depression, malnutrition, and the general lack of access to medical services, and the government studied the problem and came up with a multi-pronged approach to health and wellness.
Soon, after a government-issued report that determined the need for a specific number of hospital beds for every 1,000 of population, a large number of public, private, and non-profit hospitals sprang up across the country to serve people’s medical needs.
Also, nutrition was studied, and minimum daily standards were set to promote a balanced diet and prevent the scourge of malnutrition that ravaged Americans during the Depression, and price supports on milk and other farm products brought healthy, affordable food to the kitchen table and the school lunch counter.
The government poured millions of dollars into preventative treatment and medical research, and millions of people were vaccinated against diseases that once devastated entire populations.
Federally-funded medical research became a staple of academic health centers, teaching hospitals and medical schools. Polio and tuberculosis were almost wiped out, infant mortality was sharply reduced, life expectancies grew, and modern sanitation and water and wastewater treatment plants helped enhance personal health and hygiene by inhibiting the spread of diseases.
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Truly brain dead
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However, by the 1970s things began to happen that served to reverse some of these gains, because of ongoing financialization of the economy by powerful entrenched interests.
There was the financialization in the healthcare sector which began with the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973 which fueled the rise of HMOs. Whereas healthcare providers who saw patients as revenue centers were once in the driver’s seat in terms of healthcare decision-making, newly-empowered third-party payers such as HMOs instead increasingly saw subscribers of their services as cost centers, and did everything short of medical malpractice to limit costs by denying them timely and appropriate health care.
On the provider front, huge investor-owned corporations began to consolidate and acquire hospitals across the country — and immediately began to shut down almost as many — to achieve “corporate efficiency” which reversed the gains in community healthcare access achieved in previous decades.
Another trend that began in the 1970s was granting private pharmaceutical firms exclusive rights to commercial patents, without compensation, for medications that were developed with taxpayer funding: public investment, private profits.
It is true that privately run systems can coexist with government programs, but we need the political will to implement a coherent system that regards the provision of medical service as a vital and necessary public service that contributes to our national well-being, and not a Wild West arena for unregulated profiteering.
I would argue that it has been the granting of certain rights and privileges to profit-driven corporate special interests, and not government involvement focused on enhancing public well-being, that has skewed values and made the delivery of health care so inefficient and expensive in this country.
Also, I would counter arguments to “get government out of the healthcare system” with, “Without the government, there would be no healthcare system as we now know it and benefit from it.”
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100 years from now you are going to look up ASSHOLE in the dictionary and the definition will be MAGAt Senators during the Trump epoch.
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About that ‘pause’: I think it would be great to see how these legislators would feel if we ‘paused’ their salaries and projects and perks for, say, an unknown period of time. Would they just stick around, if the engines on their planes ‘paused’ mid flight? Or would they jump out and save themselves?
Asking the research staff of medical institutes to hang out in clinics and hospitals until Congress decides its random review is over is the same thing. By the time you go to restart the thing, many talented people will have bailed out and the plane may be in an uncontrolled dive. You can’t just pull the clutch out of an engine in motion and then expect it to go right back into gear. It doesn’t work that way. The NIH is not a useless business like Twitter.
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trump brought us DOGE and Musk. Government destruction is on them. Meanwhile trump cuts Ukraine and EU nations out of “peace talks” between Putin and donnie. And trump is considering boltingbout of NATO while Vance and Hegseth deeply insult our European allies in speeches over the last couple days.
Welcome to Monday
Sheesh!
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One of the reasons, perhaps the primary reason Canada would never agree to become the 51st state is universal healthcare. It’s not perfect, but we would never ever give it up. We would be insane to give it up. Worth noting, universal healthcare includes what is Medicare and Medicaid and VA health in the US. There is nothing to take away from us because these agencies don’t exist to be dismantled.
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Mrs dont has been part of a study out of U Alabama for over ten years. She gets a call about every six months and answers a series of questions.
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