Dr Noc

BKjr is going to cost people their lives.

Today's Belle

She's not usually as bold as this.

⬆︎114%

Today's Belle

Republicans are not pro-life. It's a gimmick - nothing but political theater and pretense.

Today's Robert

"... and if the lights go out for a while, fuck it. So be it. The truth shines brightest in the dark anyway."

Welcome

...to late-stage capitalism.

It's a fight between the New Robber Barons, who see you as nothing but a revenue opportunity, versus the woke mind virus that wants you to get help when you need it so your loved ones can get what they need to go on living.

Science, Bitches

Up until about 1840, half of all humans died by the time they turned 30. Over the next 60 years, we managed to add about 5 years to that, thanks to people like Pasteur and Lister.

So, in 40,000 years of human "civilization", average lifespans increased by about 17%.

In the last 125 years, that average has doubled. And it's mostly because infant mortality has fallen off a cliff (it's the vaccines, stupid), and better diagnostics, and miracle drugs, and a higher overall health consciousness, and and and.

But while we don't enjoy the longevity of many countries around the world, we're only a few years behind.

We're still behind though, and that doesn't make sense.

We used to be told it was because we're such high-achievers we put a lot of extra stress on ourselves, and that gives us ulcers and hypertensive problems, etc. But other places haven't exactly slouched in the go-getter department. So maybe it's because (eg) the French have a glass of red wine with dinner, even though French cuisine is generally loaded with butter and sugar and heavy cream and fat. And the Japanese were outliving us because they ate lots of fish and plain rice and seaweed. And everybody walked more than we did.

Nope. It's healthcare.

Pretty simply, when people have somebody looking after them - regular checkups, and proper meds, and preventive visits to the dentist, and all the stuff they're not stupid enough to put into the hands of the bean-counters and gatekeepers, THEY LIVE LONGER.

Gee - whooda thunk it, huh?

So, of course, let's turn it all over to Bobby Brainworm. What's the worst that could happen?

Big Butt-Ugly Bamboozle

Small rural hospitals are about to dry up and blow away.

The further this goes, the more urgent it becomes to start moving the whole thing to a Single Payer system.

Unfortunately, the insurance carriers and the pharmacy benefits management companies have the ability to buy more coin-operated politicians to stop efforts to make the thing work.

We have to stand up and spit in their eye.



Rural Reckoning | Beset by constant budget pressures, rural hospitals serve patients — and local economies

Colorado’s rural hospitals are teetering on the edge of financial collapse, burdened by rising costs, shrinking reimbursements and a growing list of state and federal regulations, according to the Colorado Hospital Association.

In Colorado, half of the 88 acute care hospitals are in rural or frontier counties.

The difference between rural and frontier healthcare depends on population density. A rural county in healthcare is defined as a non-metropolitan area that does not contain a city with a population of more than 50,000 people. A frontier county has a population density of six or fewer people per square mile.

Frontier counties represent the most sparsely populated areas within the broader category of rural counties, according to the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing.

In Colorado’s 64 counties, 24 of them meet rural designation requirements, while 23 are labeled as frontier.

These healthcare woes quickly become a major issue for Minority Whip Sen. Cleave Simpson, a Republican from Alamosa who said he originally entered politics because he is worried about rural water rights.

“I live in a community where just providing basic services at my rural hospital in particular always puts them under pressure and on the very near cusp of complete collapse,” said Simpson, who became more worried as he got more educated on the obstacles providers face. “As a state, we just can’t afford to have that happen. In my communities, individuals can’t afford for that to happen.”

Joe Thiene, the CEO of the Southwest Health System, a 20-bed critical access hospital in Cortez, said it serves as a corridor between Durango and Utah, noting that, without it, a resident would have to travel over a mountain pass to access higher-level care.

“The remoteness is very real for us,” Thiene said.

On June 23, Theine had joined a panel discussion on rural healthcare during the annual Western Governors’ Conference in Santa Fe.

Janessa Graves, of the Rural Health Research Center in Washington, and Christina Campos, of Guadalupe County Hospital, a 10-bed general acute care facility in Santa Rosa, N.M., joined Thiene. The three panelists agreed that, regardless of a rural hospital's location in the U.S., it is likely struggling to survive.

An economic driver

Besides providing critical healthcare, Thiene said the Cortez hospital is an economic driver, noting that it is the second-largest employer in the area.

“We’re larger than the school districts,” he said. “We’re larger than the local governments within the county and municipalities. And so, I think about what we’re delivering to the community in terms of health and vibrancy. It’s more than just the impact on the individuals and their health; it shouldn’t matter where you live in terms of health outcomes.”

According to the Colorado Hospital Association’s latest numbers from 2023, rural hospitals in Colorado:

• Cared for 34,000 inpatients

• Delivered 4,860 babies

• Stabilized 310,000 people

• Cared for 500,000 patients

• Employed 16,000 employees

• Provided $6.6 billion in indirect economic impact

Thiene said rural hospitals also offer higher-paying jobs in the area.

“So, when you look at the median income for healthcare workers that we pay, it’s much higher than the average household income for families that are living in the area that we serve,” he said. “And so, as rural healthcare goes, or as our hospital goes as an employer, so goes a lot of second and third order impacts in terms of the local economy.”

Theine said employees do not just mean doctors and nurses — they also include people in food services, janitorial support and other fields that are required to keep the hospital open and meet regulatory requirements.

The problem, as outlined by Campos, is that people do not understand the cost of keeping the doors open at a rural hospital. The fees are fixed and rarely fluctuate, she stressed, noting that it costs about $40,000 per day to keep the doors open in Guadalupe County.

In Cortez, Theine said the fixed amount is approximately $215,000 per day, regardless of whether the hospital sees one or 200 patients. The hospital is open 24/7, he said, which means that x-ray machines, heart monitors, and all equipment must be ready to use at any moment — day or night and staff must be available to operate it.

While hospitals face fixed costs to stay open, it doesn’t mean the funding is stable, making it a balancing act to maneuver between state and federal funding streams, the health officials said.

Workforce shortages have also become another obstacle to managing rural healthcare facilities. The lack of affordable housing and amenities deters many from relocating to work in a rural hospital, Theine said.

That has led to hospital officials to get more creative, recruiting and educating students out of high school with the hopes that, after they get their education, they may return to work where they grew up.

In contrast, Theine said doctors and nurses who come to a hospital for residency are less inclined to stay.

The hospital in Cortez is currently working to partner with community colleges, four-year programs, local universities, and others, aimed at keeping local students interested in pursuing their goals.

Medicaid worries

As Congress recently adopted the Trump administration's budget bill, healthcare providers are worried about its implications for Medicaid.

The debate comes as Medicaid costs continue to rise under the Affordable Care Act. Forty states, including Colorado, and Washington D.C. have expanded Medicaid eligibility. Critics have argued that reforms are necessary to address increasing costs and ensure the long-term sustainability of the program. They also pointed to the nation’s $36 trillion debt, as well as the federal government's $1.8 trillion deficit from the previous year.

One study, from a group called Paragon, noted that the federal government has paid for an increasingly larger share of Medicaid expenses, with the “Obamacare” expansion responsible for much of that shift. The group claimed the expansion led to Medicaid resources being diverted from children and individuals with disabilities to “able-bodied, working-age adults.”

The new categories of eligible enrollees receive a much higher federal reimbursement rate, leading to a diversion of resources away from traditional Medicaid enrollees, particularly low-income children and people with disabilities,” a “near quadrupling” of Medicaid’s “improper payments” and a “surge of spending” that contributed to the growing federal deficit, the group said.

Another study said states employed strategies to “artificially inflate their Medicaid spending to maximize the federal reimbursement.”

Republicans also defended the Medicaid cuts as only affecting immigrants staying in the country unlawfully who shouldn’t be receiving the subsidies to begin with.

Supporters of Medicaid expansion have argued it was necessary to finally provide health insurance to millions of Americans. Democrats now say millions would lose coverage if states do not step in to fill the gaps.

Due to the Medicaid cuts, Gov. Jared Polis is currently considering calling a special session to convene the state legislature, which will have to review healthcare costs in a year that already started with a $1 billion budget deficit.

Polis told Colorado Politics that the state of rural healthcare is in the "reactive" stage, meaning action has to be taken immediately.

"This is directly because of changes federally," Polis said. "There's things in (the federal budget) that I like — no taxing on tips is good. But, any cuts to healthcare affects everybody. The big hospitals in Colorado Springs and Denver won't be put out of business, but rural hospitals cannot survive."

Like it or not, Campos said Medicaid is the system in place and it’s what rural hospitals rely on, noting that if significant cuts continue, New Mexico could see up to eight hospitals go “belly up” in the coming year.

“Because given these dramatic cuts, we will lose rural health care delivery providers,” she claimed.

Thiene said the Medicaid dilemma is that the responsibility has to be balanced between the federal and state governments.

“If we don’t have that in the right balance, then when we travel across our great nation, we're not gonna be able to rely on healthcare being where we go,” he said. “And that's part of that federal responsibility that we need to ask our elected officials to uphold it.”

Today's Belle

It's not good now, it wasn't much better before, and it's about to get a lot worse.

• 432 hospitals are already struggling, at risk of going under
• 46% of hospitals in rural areas are underwater
• the hospital in McCook NE has announced it's closing soon
• 33 hospitals in Louisiana are teetering on the brink

And all that was happening before the Big Butt-Ugly Bamboozle gets around to cutting a trillion dollars out from under them.

Anyone who's not making north of about $400K, or isn't insured up around the platinum level will be negatively affected. And even then, shortages of care - care centers, services, and caregivers - will impact everybody.

The hospitals in areas that voted Republican by 2-to-1 and 3-to-1 margins are likely to flat-out disappear starting very soon, creating (or worsening) Maternity Care Deserts, and Chemo Deserts, and Dialysis Deserts, and Elder Care Deserts, and and and.

Maybe we should begin planning for "care shortages", and come up with something like Triage Protocols so clinicians can deal with the problems they're likely to encounter because of their ethical obligation to treat the patient in front of them regardless of that patient's ability to pay.

• Alabama: Alabama Care
• Alaska: DenaliCare
• Arizona: Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS)
• Arkansas: Arkansas Medicaid/Healthcare
• California: Medi-Cal
• Colorado: Health First Colorado
• Connecticut: HUSKY Health/Connecticut Medicaid
• Delaware: Diamond State Health Plan/Delaware Medicaid
• Florida: Statewide Medicaid Managed Care (SMMC)
• Georgia: Georgia Medicaid
• Hawaii: Med-QUEST
• Idaho: Idaho Medicaid
• Illinois: Illinois Medicaid
• Indiana: Hoosier Healthwise
• Iowa: Iowa Medicaid
• Kansas: KanCare
• Kentucky: Kentucky Medicaid
• Louisiana: Louisiana Medicaid
• Maine: MaineCare
• Maryland: Maryland Medical Assistance Program
• Massachusetts: MassHealth
• Michigan: Michigan Medicaid
• Minnesota: Minnesota Health Care Programs
• Mississippi: Mississippi Medicaid
• Missouri: MO HealthNet
• Montana: Montana Medicaid
• Nebraska: Nebraska Medicaid
• Nevada: Nevada Medicaid
• New Hampshire: New Hampshire Medicaid
• New Jersey: New Jersey FamilyCare
• New Mexico: Turquoise Care
• New York: New York State Medicaid
• North Carolina: North Carolina Medicaid
• North Dakota: North Dakota Medicaid
• Ohio: Ohio Medicaid
• Oklahoma: Oklahoma Medicaid
• Oregon: Oregon Health Plan
• Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania Medicaid
• Rhode Island: Rhode Island Medicaid
• South Carolina: South Carolina Medicaid
• South Dakota: South Dakota Medicaid
• Tennessee: Tennessee Medicaid
• Texas: STAR
• Utah: Utah Medicaid
• Vermont: Vermont Medicaid
• Virginia: Virginia Medicaid
• Washington: Washington Apple Health
• West Virginia: West Virginia Medicaid
• Wisconsin: Wisconsin Medicaid
• Wyoming: Wyoming Medicaid

American Death Cult

Trump's gang is putting people's lives at risk.

The question is: Why?

• I can't say with any great conviction that the whole thing is malevolent, but that shouldn't be dismissed
• Maybe the cult effect is driving people to do whatever they think is fashionable at the moment
• Group psychosis is always an option

But there's a certain element of "branding" at work, and I think that's the gist of it. ie: Trump's brand is 'A', so people migrate to him for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is thinking they can wield power and get a good-sized paycheck out of it. And whether they actually align with his "thinking" or not is of no great concern to them.

And "the greater good" be damned.

The Kids Are Not Alright

If Republicans were at all interested in the kids - their physical, emotional, intellectual wellbeing - they wouldn't be attacking everything that supports them and their families.

It's been said, and it's been said again, and again, but it's not really getting through, so here it is one more time:

Republicans love to stomp around yelling about god and Jesus and how precious the little darlings are (their little darlings anyway) while they ignore what their lord and savior said as long as it doesn't quite jibe with the politics of the moment.

Like this from Matthew, chapter 18 verses 2-6

“‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. If anyone causes one of these little ones to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.'”

They just don't fucking care.

The Trump Administration’s War on Children

The administration is quietly putting America’s children at risk by cutting funds and manpower for investigating child abuse, enforcing child support payments, providing child care and much more.

The clear-cutting across the federal government under President Donald Trump has been dramatic, with mass terminations, the suspension of decades-old programs and the neutering of entire agencies. But this spectacle has obscured a series of moves by the administration that could profoundly harm some of the most vulnerable people in the U.S.: children.

Consider: The staff of a program that helps millions of poor families keep the electricity on, in part so that babies don’t die from extreme heat or cold, have all been fired. The federal office that oversees the enforcement of child support payments has been hollowed out. Head Start preschools, which teach toddlers their ABCs and feed them healthy meals, will likely be forced to shut down en masse, some as soon as May 1. And funding for investigating child sexual abuse and internet crimes against children; responding to reports of missing children; and preventing youth violence has been withdrawn indefinitely.

The administration has laid off thousands of workers from coast to coast who had supervised education, child care, child support and child protective services systems, and it has blocked or delayed billions of dollars in funding for things like school meals and school safety.

These stark reductions have been centered in little-known children’s services offices housed within behemoth agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice, offices with names like the Children’s Bureau, the Office of Family Assistance and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. In part because of their obscurity, the slashing has gone relatively overlooked.

“Everyone’s been talking about what the Trump administration and DOGE have been doing, but no one seems to be talking about how, in a lot of ways, it’s been an assault on kids,” said Bruce Lesley, president of advocacy group First Focus on Children. He added that “the one cabinet agency that they’re fully decimating is the kid one,” referring to Trump’s goal of shuttering the Department of Education. Already, some 2,000 staffers there have lost or left their jobs.

The impact of these cuts will be felt far beyond Washington, rippling out to thousands of state and local agencies serving children nationwide.

The Department of Education, for instance, has rescinded as much as $3 billion in pandemic-recovery funding for schools, which would have been used for everything from tutoring services for Maryland students who’ve fallen behind to making the air safer to breathe and the water safer to drink for students in Flint, Michigan. The Department of Agriculture, meanwhile, has canceled $660 million in promised grants to farm-to-school programs, which had been providing fresh meat and produce to school cafeterias while supporting small farmers.

At the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the agency’s secretary, has dismissed all of the staff that had distributed $1.7 billion annually in Social Services Block Grant money, which many states have long depended on to be able to run their child welfare, foster care and adoption systems, including birth family visitation, caseworker training and more. The grants also fund day care, counseling and disability services for kids. (It is unclear whether anyone remains at HHS who would know how to get all of that funding out the door or whether it will now be administered by White House appointees.)

Head Start will be especially affected in the wake of Kennedy’s mass firings of Office of Head Start regional staff and news that the president’s draft budget proposes eliminating funding for the program altogether. That would leave one million working-class parents who rely on Head Start not only for pre-K education but also for child care, particularly in rural areas, with nowhere to send their kids during the day.

Some local Head Start programs are already having to close their doors, and many program directors are encountering impediments to spending their current budgets. When they seek reimbursement after paying their teachers or purchasing school supplies, they’re being directed to a new “Defend the Spend” DOGE website asking them to “justify” each item, even though the spending has already been appropriated by Congress and audited by nonpartisan civil servants.

Next on the chopping block, it appears, is Medicaid, which serves children in greater numbers than any other age group. If Republicans in Congress go through with the cuts they’ve been discussing, and Trump signs those cuts into law, kids from lower- and middle-class families across the U.S. will lose access to health care at their schools, in foster care, for their disabilities or for cancer treatment.

The Trump administration has touted the president’s record of “protecting America’s children,” asserting in a recent post that Trump will “never stop fighting for their right to a healthy, productive upbringing.” The statement listed five examples of that commitment. Four were related to transgender issues (including making it U.S. government policy that there are only two sexes and keeping trans athletes out of women’s sports); the other was a ban on COVID-19 vaccine mandates at schools that receive federal funding.

The White House, and multiple agencies, declined to respond to most of ProPublica’s questions. Madi Biedermann, a Department of Education spokesperson, addressed the elimination of pandemic recovery funding, saying that “COVID is over”; that the Biden administration established an “irresponsible precedent” by extending the deadline to spend these funds (and exceeding their original purpose); and that the department will consider extensions if individual projects show a clear connection between COVID and student learning.

An HHS spokesperson, in response to ProPublica’s questions about cuts to children’s programs across that agency, sent a short statement saying that the department, guided by Trump, is restructuring with a focus on cutting wasteful bureaucracy. The offices serving children, the statement said, will be merged into a newly established “Administration for Healthy America.”

Programs that serve kids have historically fared the worst when those in power are looking for ways to cut the budget. That’s in part because kids can’t vote, and they typically don’t belong to political organizations. International aid groups, another constituency devastated by Trump’s policy agenda, also can’t say that they represent many U.S. voters.

This dynamic may be part of why cuts on the health side of the Department of Health and Human Services — layoffs of doctors, medical researchers and the like — have received more political and press attention than those on the human services side, where the Administration for Children and Families is located. That’s where you can find the Office of Child Support Services, the Office of Head Start, the Office of Child Care (which promotes minimum health and safety standards for child care programs nationally and helps states reduce the cost of child care for families), the Office of Family Assistance (which helps states administer direct aid to lower-income parents and kids), the Children’s Bureau (which oversees child protective services, foster care and adoption) and the Family and Youth Services Bureau (which aids runaway and homeless teens, among others).

All told, these programs have seen their staffs cut from roughly 2,400 employees as of January to 1,500 now, according to a shared Google document that is being regularly updated by former HHS officials. (Neither the White House nor agency leadership have released the exact numbers of cuts.)

Those losses have been most acutely felt in the agency’s regional offices, five out of 10 of which — covering over 20 states — have been closed by the Trump administration. They were dissolved this month without notice to their own employees or to the local providers they worked with. It was these outposts that had monitored Head Start programs to make sure that they had fences around their playgrounds, gates at the top of their stairs and enough staffing to keep an eye on even the most energetic little ones. It was also the regional staff who had helped state child support programs modernize their computer systems and navigate federal law. That allowed them, among other things, to be able to “pass through” more money to families instead of depositing it in state coffers to reimburse themselves for costs.

And it was the regional staff who’d had the relationships with tribal officials that allowed them to routinely work together to address child support, child care and child welfare challenges faced by Native families. Together, they had worked to overcome sometimes deep distrust of the federal government among tribal leaders, who may now have no one to ask for help with their children’s programs other than political appointees in D.C.

In the wake of the regional office cuts, local child services program directors have no idea who in the federal government to call when they have urgent concerns, many told ProPublica. “No one knows anything,” said one state child support director, asking not to be named in order to speak candidly about the administration’s actions. “We have no idea who will be auditing us.”

“We’re trying to be reassuring to our families,” the official said, “but if the national system goes down, so does ours.”

That national system includes the complex web of databases and technical support maintained and provided by the Office of Child Support Services at HHS, which helps states locate parents who owe child support in order to withhold part of their paychecks or otherwise obtain the money they owe, which is then sent to the parent who has custody of the child. Without this federal data and assistance, child support orders would have little way of being enforced across state lines.

For that reason, the Trump administration is making a risky gamble by slashing staffing at the federal child support office, said Vicki Turetsky, who headed that office under the Obama administration. She worries that the layoffs create a danger of system outages that would cause child support payments to be missed or delayed. (“That’s a family’s rent,” she said.) The instability is compounded, she said, by DOGE’s recent unexplained move to access a highly confidential national child support database.

But even if the worst doesn’t come to pass, there will still be concrete consequences for the delivery of child support to families, Turetsky said. The staff members who’ve been pushed out include those who’d helped manage complicated, outdated IT systems; without updates, these programs might over- or undershoot the amount of child support that a parent owes, misdirect the money or fail to give notice to the dad or mom about a change in the case.

When Liz Ryan departed as administrator of the Department of Justice’s juvenile division in January, its website was flush with opportunities for state and local law enforcement as well as nonprofits to apply for federal funding for a myriad of initiatives that help children. There were funds for local police task forces that investigate child exploitation on the internet; for programs where abused children are interviewed by police and mental health professionals; and for court-appointed advocates for victimized kids. Grants were also available for mentoring programs like Big Brothers Big Sisters and the Boys & Girls Clubs of America.

But the Trump administration removed those grant applications, which total over $400 million in a typical year. And Ryan said there still hasn’t been any communication, including in what used to be regular emails with grant recipients, many of whom she remains in touch with, about whether this congressionally approved money even still exists or whether some of it might eventually be made available again.

A spokesperson for the Office of Justice Programs within the DOJ said the agency is reviewing programs, policies and materials and “taking action as appropriate” in accordance with Trump’s executive orders and guidance. When that review has been completed, local agencies and programs seeking grants will be notified.

Multiple nonprofits serving exploited children declined to speak on the record to ProPublica, fearing that doing so might undermine what chance they still had of getting potential grants.

“Look at what happened to the law firms,” one official said, adding that time is running out to fund his program’s services for victims of child abuse for the upcoming fiscal year.

“I never anticipated that programs and services and opportunities for young people wouldn’t be funded at all by the federal government,” Ryan said, adding that local children’s organizations likely can’t go to states, whose budgets are already underwater, to make up the funding gap. “When you look at this alongside what they’re doing at HHS and the Department of Education and to Medicaid, it’s undercutting every single effort that we have to serve kids.”

Call It What You Want

... but it's prophecy, not science.

BKjr is doing what conspiracy fantasists always do. ie: He starts with his own pet conclusion, and then sets about fixing the "evidence" around it.

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It Makes Sense To Somebody

The state of American healthcare
byu/bigbusta inThatsInsane

True North

Strong and free.

On Stupid

Two days ago, I went in for the COVID booster I should've gotten 3 months ago, and as the nurse was entering my info into the records system, she noticed I was behind on other vaccinations as well.

So I got 5 jabs all at once. COVID, flu, pneumonia, tentanus (every ten years - I didn't know that), and pertussis.

Pertussis. Whooping cough. We're having to inoculate old people against whooping cough now because dumbass anti-vaxxers are convinced there's something wrong with the vaccines, so they're refusing to get the shot for their kids.

Sometimes, I just hate people.

(I felt like shit most of the day yesterday, but I seem to be in fine fettle today, thank you very much)

Anyway, here's a new guy talking about how Stupid can be more destructive than Evil.

Dunning Kruger is confirmed.

via Hawk

"Welcome to a regular Tuesday at school in America"

About That Dead CEO

I won't celebrate the destruction of any human being - not even a blood-sucker like Brian Thompson.

I'd much rather just tax these individual pricks out of existence, and starve their rent-seeking middleman companies into oblivion.

That said, it's really easy to hear a musical quality in the righteous vitriol raining down on the whole fucked up system.

BKjr

Nerves. A neurological disorder called spasmodic dysphonia.

And yes - it's easy to suspect it ties in with the brain worm thing (prob'ly not), but BKjr has had it for quite a while now, and apparently, one of the things that doesn't help is a strict regimen of diet and exercise, which kinda puts the lie to the guy's insistence that all anybody needs is a better diet, more exercise, and no drugs.

And this is the dude they want to put in charge of America's public health policy?

RFK Jr. says he has spasmodic dysphonia, a voice disorder. What is it?

A neurological movement disorder, it causes difficulty in speaking, and a voice that often breaks and sounds strained or strangled.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., president-elect Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, has said he has spasmodic dysphonia. It is a voice disorder characterized by involuntary spasms in the muscles that control the vocal cords, or folds. This causes difficulty in speaking, and a voice that often breaks and sounds strained or strangled.

It is known as a focal dystonia, a neurological movement disorder that affects one specific part of the body. Writer’s cramp, where there are spasms in the hands or fingers, or persistent eye spasms or eye closure are others in the same category.

Spasmodic dysphonia most often develops at midlife — in one’s 30s or 40s — and can be life altering, particularly for those whose careers depend on speech.

“Most people take their voice for granted until they don’t have it,” said Pryor Brenner, a otolaryngologist in D.C. “It can be very discouraging. People don’t feel comfortable speaking, or don’t want to speak. They are embarrassed. It has a huge impact because they aren’t able to express themselves.”

Moreover, “it’s an invisible condition, meaning others can’t see it,” said Michael M. Johns, professor of clinical otolaryngology at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California and director of the USC Voice Center. “It’s not associated with any cognitive impairment, and these people look normal to the eye.”

Scientists agree that the disorder is neurological but don’t know its exact cause, according to Dysphonia International. Researchers are still trying to identify which part of the brain is involved and whether there may be a genetic component, according to the organization.

Some cases also may be triggered by a viral illness such as a cold or influenza, or a traumatic life event such as the death of a loved one, Brenner said. “An incredibly stressful event in life can turn it on,” he said.

Andrew Tritter, a laryngologist at UTHealth Houston, said such cases are rare, but they do occur. “I’ve seen them from a traumatic experience to going in for routine surgery,” he said. “I had one patient who woke up with it after she had a hysterectomy. Her voice was terrible, and it became chronic.”

Tritter said for people with spasmodic dysphonia, it “can be frustrating and upsetting to not be understood or heard, or be asked to constantly repeat yourself.”

There also are idiopathic cases, which occur spontaneously with no obvious cause. “It just happens,” Brenner said.

There are three kinds of spasmodic dysphonia.

Adductor spasmodic dysphonia is the most common type, which accounts for 80 percent of cases, including Kennedy’s, experts said. It causes sudden involuntary spasms that trigger the vocal cords to stiffen and close. The spasms disrupt the vibration of the vocal cords and the ability to make sounds.

Abductor spasmodic dysphonia is less common — accounting for about 20 percent of cases, experts said. It results in involuntary spasms that trigger the vocal cords to open, making vibration impossible and forming words difficult. Also, the open position lets air escape during speech, making the person sound weak, quiet and breathy.

Mixed spasmodic dysphonia is very rare and has symptoms common to the other two types.

How is spasmodic dysphonia diagnosed?

An otolaryngologist and speech-language pathologist will evaluate a patient’s symptoms and medical history and visualize their vocal cord movement through a stroboscopy exam, which is an endoscopy through the nose or mouth with a special camera and light that provides a detailed visual of vocal cord vibration to diagnose the condition.

They also will rate voice quality, record the voice to obtain acoustic measures and may palpate the neck to determine the presence of tension in and around the larynx. They may also ask the patient to read or repeat several specific sentences.

At times, the condition can be confused with other vocal issues such as a vocal tremor, Brenner said. But there is a distinction.

“Someone who has a vocal tremor can’t hold a pitch.” he said, describing a wavering that occurs when the person tries. Someone with spasmodic dysphonia, on the other hand, “can usually hold a single pitch but has trouble forming and articulating words.

How is spasmodic dysphonia treated?

Spasmodic dysphonia can’t be cured, experts said. Usually, once someone has it, “it doesn’t fluctuate over time,” Brenner said. “It levels off fairly quickly, with not a lot of variation over the years.”

Also, “I’ve never seen a child with it,” he added.

But there are several treatments, including surgery and voice therapy, though injections with botulinum toxin (Botox) is the gold standard in providing temporary relief, usually for several months, experts said.

It’s an office-based procedure using local anesthesia. Needles are passed into the neck and through the vocal cords, Johns said, and “it helps the vast majority of people become more functional in their lives.”

Botox works by blocking nerve impulses at the muscle receptor site, which normally signal the muscle to contract, and must be repeated periodically. The response varies, but the average relief lasts for about three to four months, according to Dysphonia International.

There can be some side effects, including breathiness, difficulty swallowing and pain at the injection site. Still, “it is a great treatment for most people,” Brenner said.

There also are at least two surgeries available, experts said. “Both are operations on the larynx and vocal cords to try to separate and relax them,” Johns said. “But they are fraught with complications and not considered standard treatment for the condition.”

The Bamboozlement Of Innocents

She was bargaining on Facebook.

She asked friends with dead relatives.

She scored some in parking lots.

Why We Can't Have Nice Things

At the upper levels, "American entrepreneurship" is plain old ordinary bullshit.

• Start with your brilliant new idea
• Set it up as a "non-profit"
• Get government to pitch in
• Wire it so the tax-payer money being syphoned into your shell company is laundered and hidden, so it can be funneled into your very profitable subsidiaries
• Buy some politicians to cement your scheme in place, basically making it illegal not to do business with you

You pay a premium every month, but when you need care that shades even slightly away from the sweet spot on your insurance company's Favorites List, they'll deny you the care you need to live your bestest healthiest life.

50 million Americans are denied care in one way or another every year.

The big insurance companies have strangled healthcare providers to the point where they can own any given "private" practice, and have taken on the doctors as hired hands - subjecting them to all the shitty labor-fucking laws that they've paid their coin-operated legislators to put in place.

Corporate Plutocracy

is not coming.

It's already here.