On November 22, 1963, I was hired by Peace Corps headquarters at Lafayette Square [in DC] and was shopping at Garfinkel’s when I heard that John Kennedy had been shot. That death tore me out of the ‘50s and flung me into the ‘60s. Peace Corps Director Sargent Shriver, a vestige of Kennedy glamour, once appeared in a white linen suit, tanned and gorgeous. I worked for a moody Baptist minister, a Texan and friend of Bill Moyers. Another Texan, Lyndon Johnson, was willing to lose the Dixiecrats to the Republicans because of his civil rights stand. While on a Peace Corps recruiting trip to the U. of Alabama, Gov. George Wallace gave a speech. I happened to be standing at the door when he exited and extended his hand to me. He had tried to stop integration at that same door the year before, and I refused to shake his hand. He said, “You don’t like me very much, do you?” Uppity women and blacks just didn’t seem to “know their place” anymore. Add Comment Some of you know I’m a big fan of Time Magazine writer Nancy Gibbs. I was thrilled to see they assigned her to write this week’s cover story, part of a package including research and opinion on the status of women in the U.S. today. Don’t miss it! You can read the whole thing for free online at http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1930277_1930145,00.html Here’s how the main story opens: If you were a woman reading this magazine 40 years ago, the odds were good that your husband provided the money to buy it. That you voted the same way he did. That if you got breast cancer, he might be asked to sign the form authorizing a mastectomy. That your son was heading to college but not your daughter. That your boss, if you had a job, could explain that he was paying you less because, after all, you were probably working just for pocket money. It's funny how things change slowly, until the day we realize they've changed completely. It's expected that by the end of the year, for the first time in history the majority of workers in the U.S. will be women — largely because the downturn has hit men so hard. This is an extraordinary change in a single generation, and it is gathering speed: the growth prospects, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, are in typically female jobs like nursing, retail and customer service. More and more women are the primary breadwinner in their household (almost 40%) or are providing essential income for the family's bottom line. Their buying power has never been greater — and their choices have seldom been harder. It is in this context that the Rockefeller Foundation, in collaboration with TIME, conducted a landmark survey of gender issues to assess how individual Americans are reacting. Is the battle of the sexes really over, and if so, did anyone win? How do men now view female power? How much resentment or confusion or gratitude is there for the forces that have rearranged family life, rewired the economy and reinvented gender roles? And what, if anything, does everyone agree needs to happen to make all this work? The study found that men and women were in broad agreement about what matters most to them; gone is the notion that women's rise comes at men's expense. As the Old Economy dissolves and pressures on working parents grow, they share their fears about what this means for their children and their frustration with institutions that refuse to admit how much has changed. In the new age, the battles we fight together are the ones that define us.  For those of you confused over where we are in the health care reform progression, there’s an excellent graphic in the New York Times showing the status of health care legislation before Congress. Click here to see it. Basicially, there are five bills on the table: two in the Senate and three in the House. Each body must merge multiple bills into one, and vote on that single bill. Then, two houses work to negotiate one bill between themselves. After that, the combined bill must pass both houses. The resulting bill will be sent to the White House and, presumably, signed as law. In the Friday conference call with Sen. Harry Reid’s office, aides told five or six bloggers (including me) they were hopeful the Senate would pass a bill by Thanksgiving. The president has said he wants legislation on his desk by the end of the year. Whether that’s possible or not remains to be seen. Four or five bloggers (including this one) had a second opportunity to talk to several aides from Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid's office this morning. This call and the last gave us a chance to ask questions, pass along some comments from our readers and find out what the next steps are in the legislative process. Several interesting bits of information came out of this call, including these: 1. Your opinions count! All calls, emails and letters to Senators are tallied and included in daily/weekly reports that members read to learn how many contacts they have received regarding pending legislation, pro or con. These contacts actually affect voting, according to the aides. If you want to comment on a Senate bill, they recommend you contact Reid’s office and/or your own senator. 2. If you’re in favor of a public option (or not), be sure to voice your opinion NOW. Majority Leader Reid is in an interesting position, at the moment. The Senate bill could go either way, when it comes to the public option. It's really up to Reid. Here is something very interesting that Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) said on The Rachel Maddow Show earlier this week, that's in keeping with what aides told us this morning: WANTED: A partner for richer or poorer and for better or worse and absolutely, positively in sickness and in health. I love this column from the Boston Globe, and you’ll see why: Will he hold your purse? By Robin Schoenthaler October 4, 2009 As a breast cancer doctor, I’ve learned how to spot a devoted husband -- a skill I try to share with my single and searching girlfriends. “Everything I know about marriage I learned in my cancer clinic.” I’ve been known to say this to my friends, maybe more than once, maybe even causing some of them to grind their teeth and grumble about Robin and Her Infernal Life Lessons. I can’t help myself. I’ve worked as a breast cancer doctor for 20 years, I’ve watched thousands of couples cope with every conceivable (and sometimes unimaginable) kind of crisis, and I’ve seen all kinds of marriages, including those that rise like a beacon out of the scorched-earth terror that is a cancer clinic. It’s a privilege to witness these couples, but the downside is I find myself muttering under my breath when my single female friends show me their ads for online dating. “Must like long walks on beach at sunset, cats,” they write, or “French food, kayaking, travel.” Or a perennial favorite: “Looking for fishing buddy; must be good with bait.” These ads make me want to climb onto my cancer doctor soapbox and proclaim, “Finding friends with fine fishing poles may be great in the short term. But what you really want to look for is somebody who will hold your purse in the cancer clinic.” It’s one of the biggest take-home lessons from my years as an oncologist: When you’re a single woman picturing the guy of your dreams, what matters a heck of lot more than how he handles a kayak is how he handles things when you’re sick. And one shining example of this is how a guy deals with your purse. I became acquainted with what I’ve come to call great “purse partners” at a cancer clinic in Waltham. Every day these husbands drove their wives in for their radiation treatments, and every day these couples sat side by side in the waiting room, without much fuss and without much chitchat. Each wife, when her name was called, would stand, take a breath, and hand her purse over to her husband. Then she’d disappear into the recesses of the radiation room, leaving behind a stony-faced man holding what was typically a white vinyl pocketbook. On his lap. The guy -- usually retired from the trades, a grandfather a dozen times over, a Sox fan since date of conception -- sat there silently with that purse. He didn’t read, he didn’t talk, he just sat there with the knowledge that 20 feet away technologists were preparing to program an unimaginably complicated X-ray machine and aim it at the mother of his kids. I’d walk by and catch him staring into space, holding hard onto the pocketbook, his big gnarled knuckles clamped around the clasp, and think, “What a prince.” I’ve worked at cancer clinics all around Boston since then, and I’ve seen purse partners from every walk of life, every age and stage. Of course, not every great guy accompanies his wife to her oncology appointment every day -- some husbands are home holding down the fort, or out earning a paycheck and paying the health insurance premiums -- but I continue to have a soft spot for the pocketbook guy. Men like him make me want to rewrite dating ads from scratch. WANTED: A partner for richer or poorer and for better or worse and absolutely, positively in sickness and in health. A partner for fishing and French food and beach walks and kayak trips, but also for phone calls from physicians with biopsy results. A guy who knows that while much of marriage is a 50-50 give-and-take, sometimes it’s more like 80-20, and that’s OK, even when the 80-20 phase goes on and on. A man who truly doesn’t care what somebody’s breast looks like after cancer surgery, or at least will never reveal that he’s given it a moment’s thought. A guy who’s got some comfort level with secretions and knows the value of a cool, damp washcloth. A partner who knows to remove the computer mouse from a woman’s hand when she types phrases like “breast cancer death sentence” in a Google search. And, most of all, a partner who will sit in a cancer clinic waiting room and hold hard onto the purse on his lap. Robin Schoenthaler is a radiation oncologist at the MGH Department of Radiation Oncology at Emerson Hospital in Concord. http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/articles/2009/10/04/will_he_hold_your_purse/  Here are a few photos I took yesterday, which turned out to be peak. It was 26 last night, and tonight we’ll get our first snow of the season. Farewell autumn!     In the ongoing health care reform debate, we’ve heard and read how health care reform will or will not work, what it will or will not cost, and how it will or will not impact each one of us as individuals. We’ve also heard from those who have great faith in our current system and sincerely believe we should leave it alone. It may work well for some people, but, on the whole, our nation does not hold up well in international comparisons. In fact, we came in 37th on the World Health Report 2000 and, according to a London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine report, the U.S. has the highest rate of preventable deaths among 19 industrialized nations. Clearly, there’s room for improvement. My question is, if we spend billions on health care reform, will that improve public health, or not? For answers, I turned to Howard K. Koh, M.D., assistant secretary for health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Koh is senior health advisor to the Secretary of HHS, and he oversees the Office of Public Health and Science, the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service, and the Office of the Surgeon General. Previously, he served as associate dean and director of the Division of Public Health Practice and Center for Public Health Preparedness at Harvard School of Public Health. From 1997-2003, he was commissioner of public health for Massachusetts. In a recent interview, Koh told me we can “absolutely” expect overall public health to improve if we provide quality, affordable health care coverage for all Americans. “Health insurance reform will link people to health care services and assure access to quality health care,” he said. “Reform will also protect people against unfair insurance practices so they won’t be denied coverage as a result of a job loss or a pre-existing condition. ”Right now, millions of Americans cannot get coverage and 14,000 more lose their insurance every day," Koh said. “When Americans go without health insurance, they suffer.” That suffering isn’t limited to the uninsured. Many with insurance fear they will lose their benefits. According to Koh, one in six Americans who had employer-sponsored insurance coverage in 2006 lost that coverage by 2008. As a result, many children and adults went without preventive care, immunizations, basic dental services and prescription medicine. “When sick, [the uninsured] are more likely to experience poorer health outcomes” than the insured. “We are the only advanced democracy that allows this hardship on millions of its people,” according to Koh. So exactly how will health care reform impact public health in the US? Koh explained: 1.Reform will promote prevention. “We’re developing a wellness care system that protects health, promotes healthy behaviors and strengthens community prevention… “A national report recently found that 100,000 lives could be saved each year by investing in five basic preventive services that are available through a doctor’s office…[including] flu shots [for] adults and daily aspirin use counseling for men over 40 and women over 50.“ 2.Reform will lead to better quality and continuity of care, in part through the expansion of health information technology. "Expanding the use of electronic health records is fundamental to reforming health care and reducing preventable medical errors.” 3.Reform will help address chronic diseases. “Right now, seven out of every 10 Americans who die each year die of a chronic disease. That’s 1.7 million people. And without health insurance reform and an emphasis on regular primary care and prevention, that number is only going to get bigger.” 4.Reform will end denial of coverage based on a person’s medical history, a practice that disproportionately hurts minority populations. “Many minorities are discriminated against by health insurance companies when they try to get insurance, and we can’t continue to allow this.” “We can’t eliminate all disease,” Koh said, “but …we can reduce chronic disease by ensuring Americans have the care they need to prevent and treat these diseases so that if they do get sick and need care, they have the best possible chance of getting better.” In our current system, low-income Americans, including racial and ethnic minorities, are less likely to receive preventive care than others. “The data are undisputed,” he said. “Minority groups have higher rates of disease, fewer treatment options, and reduced access to health care….this contributes to widening health disparities in our country.” When it comes to closing the gap on health disparities, Koh said, “we should remember that this isn’t a partisan issue. It’s a moral issue.”   Dear Wonderful Women! Just a reminder to you that October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and if you haven't done it lately, it's time to schedule your yearly mammogram!! Yeah, yeah, it's not fun, but I can tell you from personal experience, breast cancer is a pretty scary experience. And don't think you're safe just because your mother, grandmother, or sisters never had it. No one in my family had had breast cancer, but there I was, with a diagnosis that knocked the wind out of my sails. But I was lucky: It was discovered early - through a routine mammogram - and a radical mastectomy was all the treatment I needed. No radiation, no chemo. It's been 12 ½ years since the diagnosis/surgery, and I'm in great shape. Tomorrow is my mammogram appointment. I hope to see you there! Love and life!! Karen PS: Don't forget regular self exams, too!  Guest Photo: Visiting readers 10/14/2009
 I caught up with June in Delaware several weeks ago. Those of you who remember June from high school will see she hasn’t changed much. But, we have! Joanie in New Jersey shares her experience buying prescription drugs directly from a pharmacy in Canada: Here is the update on my daughter’s meds. Feel free to pass this on so that others will know what a rip off the pharmaceutical companies are pulling on Americans. The company that manufactured her drug changed the formula, and the old one was no longer available. The new one was not effective for her. Consequently, her symptoms returned and she became quite ill again. Well, since the Internet is the door to the world, I went online. I put in the name of the old drug and there it was (!), available from an international pharmacy in Canada. Now, here is the rip off: When she bought it here, through her insurance, she was charged a $65 copay for about 200 capsules. When we ordered it directly from the Canadian company, the total cost for 100 was $29US. If you can get 100 for $29 and the copay was $65 for 200, it appears that the copay actually pays for the drug. So, what the insurance paid to the manufacturer was pure profit! Oh, by the way the drug is sold over the counter in Canada. Here they treat it like it is some big-time cancer drug! When you buy just one bottle from the Canadian pharmacy, there is a shipping charge. But if you buy more than a certain amount, shipping is free! | Blogger Profile
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