With all that’s at stake in each state, you may be startled to learn that most legislatures remain boys’ clubs, with women so severely underrepresented that the political process suffers.  (No need to single anyone out, but let’s just say that at 9%, South Carolina is a great place to be when you can’t wait long for the ladies’ room!)

Guest blogger Laurie Kretchmar, media director for The 2012 Project, delivers an impassioned plea for women to seize the opportunities open in this year’s election below.  Read the original post via Care2 here, and heed her call to consider running for state office.  There’s still time to jump into a race…and there’s clearly still a deep need for informed, engaged, experienced women (why not you?) to shape the policies that affect your family every day. 

A detailed analysis of the last three budget requests reveals that President Obama has requested on average a nominal increase of 5.2% each year for children’s programs.  2011 saw by far the biggest proposed increase of more than 7%.  This stands in stark contrast to the last requested budget by President Bush, which proposed a 3% decrease.  For ease of comparison, these numbers only include programs on the discretionary side of the budget.  Discretionary programs include things Congress decides to fund each year, like Head Start, while mandatory spending represents long term commitments where Congress has little control over yearly funding levels, like Social Security.

Though this analysis excludes mandatory spending, the President has been a strong advocate for increased funding to many mandatory areas that benefit children.  This includes positive changes during the reauthorization of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) in 2009 and the Child Nutrition Act of 2010. 

In addition to the commitments made in each budget, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), proposed by President Obama, made a tremendous investment in kids.  Almost one out of every five dollars provided in direct spending, or roughly $120 billion, from ARRA went to benefit children.[i]  ARRA provided much need boosts to education, children’s health, and children’s nutrition, as well as support to vital state run programs that impacted kids.  In 2010 alone, the ARRA support resulted in a 19% increase in the amount of federal money spent on children.

NOTE: Budgets are proposed in the current calendar year for the next fiscal year beginning in October.  For example, President Bush’s FY 2009 budget was proposed in February 2008.

Will the President Continue to Choose Kids?

Next week, President Obama will release his Fiscal Year 2013 Budget.  Analysts and commentators will pour over the numbers looking for signs of the President’s priorities for the year to come.  Over the past three years, it is clear that President Obama has chosen to make investments in kids a top priority.

Even with the President’s positive requests, Congress has authorized far less than what the President has asked for.  As a result of Congress’s decisions in conjunction with the expiration of ARRA, funding for children as a share of federal spending is still far below what is needed.  In 2011, only 8.4% of the federal budget went to children, including what’s left from ARRA.  As more and more of our children face unprecedented challenges, every dollar we invest can make the difference between a child having a balanced meal or going hungry.  As we anxiously await his budget, we call on President Obama to continue to make children a top priority.

CHIP is short for the Children’s Health Insurance Program which was reauthorized three years ago this weekend.   To mark the occasion, we at Say Ahhh! hosted a Super Blog-Off between Patriots fans and Giants fans.  But here’s the kicker – they have to compete for kids.   That’s right, we’ve taken HHS Secretary Sebelius’ “Connecting Kids to Coverage Challenge” quite literally and want the teams to compete based on how much they are doing to help uninsured children.

While we won’t likely reach over 110 million people or be able to sell ads for $3.5 million per thirty seconds, our goal is to help reach the 4.3 million uninsured children who are eligible for CHIP or Medicaid coverage but not yet insured?

Photo by Flickr user Wednesday Elf- Mountainside Crochet

Last year, the Pittsburgh Steelers won.  That’s right.  They might have lost the football game but they won in our books by going to great lengths to reach out to uninsured children.  Pittsburgh fans even swaddled newborn babies in “terrible towels” declaring that no baby should leave the hospital without an insurance card or a terrible towel.

This year, when you are kicking back to watch the game, think about what we could achieve if we dedicated just 1/100th of the time and effort that goes into a Super Bowl into ensuring that every child in America’s has health care coverage.
So whether you are a Pat’s fan, a Giant’s fan or wish there were a team from some place west of the Mississippi in the Super Bowl, you can bring home a victory for uninsured kids in your state by supporting efforts to enroll them in Medicaid or CHIP and keeping those programs strong.

Please visit Say’s Ahhh’s Super Blog-Off and vote for the best children’s health outreach team. Health Care for All blogged on behalf of Patriot’s fans and the Community Service Society of New York took the field for the Giants.

In California, CHIP is known as the Healthy Families Program and provides health coverage for more than 870,000 children. Healthy Families has meant that the Reick boys of Fresno can get the care they need to manage their asthma, and that the Skinner kids of Riverside can stay active in their extra-curricular sports programs. Healthy Families has provided a variety of needed care for the Magana children of Los Angeles, from immunizations and check-ups to the diagnosis and treatment of life-threatening thyroid cancer.

This success of CHIP nationally was in part boosted by federal CHIPRA incentive bonus payments for states that simplified the application process for children’s coverage and made significant progress in increasing the number of insured children. In December 2011, the federal government awarded nearly $300 million in CHIPRA performance bonuses to 23 states.

Unfortunately, for the third year in a row, California failed to qualify for a bonus, losing out on millions of dollars of federal funds that are desperately needed. While California has made efforts to streamline enrollment for children, and launched a new online enrollment tool for Healthy Families (available in English and Spanish at www.healtheapp.net), the state has not made significant enough strides at enrolling uninsured children into health coverage.

The state’s inadequate enrollment gains are made more stark by the fact that two out of every three uninsured children in California, close to 700,000 kids, are currently eligible for Medi-Cal or Healthy Families but not enrolled.

In 2012, California must do better at connecting uninsured children with the quality, comprehensive, affordable health coverage they need to grow healthy and learn well. To that end, the 100% Campaign (a collaborative effort of The Children’s Partnership, Children Now, and Children’s Defense Fund-California) have developed a Healthy Child Checklist to remind parents of some easy ways to ensure their child stays healthy this year, including applying for Medi-Cal or Healthy Families coverage, which families can do at any time of the year, and with www.healtheapp.net, at any hour.

In addition, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) which President Obama signed in March 2010, further strengthens coverage for children by no longer allowing private insurers to deny coverage to children because of a pre-existing condition. Further, the ACA has already benefited children by requiring coverage of preventive services without co-payments, eliminating lifetime or annual limits, and prohibiting insurers from rescinding coverage.

Looking back on how much has changed for children’s coverage in the past three years, there is much to celebrate. More children have health insurance today than at any point in American history. The opportunity to improve children’s health will continue to grow as California moves forward with implementation of important provisions of CHIPRA and the ACA.

To make these opportunities most meaningful and successful for children in California, we need to focus now on enrolling eligible children and creating a “culture of coverage.” If we work together, we can ensure that more California children have the health coverage they need to grow up healthy.

California parents can learn more about children’s health coverage by calling

1-877-KIDS-NOW (1-877-543-7669) or apply for children’s health coverage directly online at www.healtheapp.net or www.benefitscal.org.

In their small town, there were no women’s health clinics. She did not have access to breast cancer screening. She found the lumps herself. By the time she was diagnosed, it was too late.

Yesterday, the Susan G. Komen Foundation pulled hundreds of thousands of dollars in breast cancer screening funds from Planned Parenthood.[1]

*Urge the Komen Foundation’s Board of Directors to restore the funding that allows hundreds of thousands of women to get breast cancer screening through Planned Parenthood–and tell them that regardless of where people stand on pro-choice/pro-life issues, breast cancer exams for low income women shouldn’t be a political football.

http://action.momsrising.org/letter/KomenDefundsBreasts/

Each year, millions of women are screened for breast cancer at Planned Parenthood health centers, and Susan G. Komen’s funding pays for about 170,000 of those screenings. [2]   These services are particularly important for women from under-served communities like my grandmother.

Now isn’t the time to cut funds to ANY entity that provides affordable breast cancer screenings.   In fact, more funds are needed for education, care, and screenings as a combination of these are necessary to save lives.

*Join us in urging the Komen Foundation’s Board of Directors to restore the funding that allows hundreds of thousands of women to get breast cancer screening through Planned Parenthood:

http://action.momsrising.org/letter/KomenDefundsBreasts/

Please forward this e-mail to your family, neighbors and friends–and post this action link on your Facebook page too.

Together, we are a powerful force for women and families.

[1] http://www.npr.org/2012/01/31/146160911/susan-g-komen-halts-grants-to-planned-parenthood

[2] http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/31/susan-g-komen-drops-funding-for-planned-parenthood/

Photo by flickr user Mananetwork

Earlier this week, Thao Nguyen covered some important improvements that will make the future brighter for all American dragon babies.  Significantly, dragon babies can not be denied insurance due to preexisting conditions under President Obama’s health care reform law.

Yet, for Asian American mothers, this lucky year may be more dangerous than fortunate. Certain health barriers pose serious hazards for many Asian Americans mothers and their dragon babies. Here are some trends that may fire you up:

Higher HBV Infection Rate for Babies

Hepatitis B (HBV), which attacks the liver, is one of the most common infectious diseases in the United States and can be transmitted from moms to babies at birth. Nationally, Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders account for less than 6% of the U.S. population, but more than 50% of chronic HBV cases. Up to 10,000 Asian American, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander women who have HBV infection give birth in the U.S. each year, and babies infected at birth have a 90% chance of developing chronic HBV infection. Thankfully, there is an effective vaccine, but uptake is far from universal. This year, let’s make sure that all babies at risk for HBV infection have the opportunity to receive this lifesaving preventive care.

Higher Rate of C-Sections

According to research, the rate of cesarean section for first time Asian and Pacific Islander moms increased by 70% between 1991 and 2008. C-section rates for these women are also 19% higher than the cesarean rate for first time mothers who are white. In addition, some studies indicate that Asian American moms who have white partners are more likely to give birth by cesarean.  It’s unclear why there’s a disparity in this important health outcome, or what information Asian American mothers are receiving about this increased risk. However, what is clear is that improving the quality of health care through cultural competency trainings, increased language access and the development of a diverse workforce is critical to improving the care that moms and babies receive.

Higher Risk of Gestational Diabetes

Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AA and NHPI) women are more likely to suffer from gestational diabetes. Yet, health care providers do not yet fully understand why there are significant differences between ethnic subgroups. For example, among AA and NHPI moms who develop gestational diabetes, Native Hawaiian and Filipino women are more likely to suffer poor outcomes related to the condition.

More Data Please

While there’s predictability in the movement of the stars and the cycle of our calendar, some Asian American health issues remain mysterious. It’s clear we need more data concerning Asian American moms and their babies. Let’s make some progress in data collection in the Year of the Dragon 2012!

Over the years I’ve worked with some leaders/employees who suggested, some more strongly, that we base employment related decisions such as hiring, promotion, benefits, terminations, etc. on an employee’s health. One such manager who had fortunately always been healthy and hadn’t been impacted by access to health care and hadn’t faced issues with cost proposed that “sick” employees pay more of the health care premiums. Some of these “sick” people were simply pregnant. A few months after we moved ahead with our benefits plans without incorporating his recommended changes, he was involved in a serious accident. He returned to me and apologized for not understanding how an accident could impact his life in so many ways. He was grateful for his insurance and certainly did not expect to pay more due to anticipated long-term care for his injuries. Sometimes it takes an experience to change a person’s perception and you’ve done a great job of giving real life examples to impress upon us all how health insurance or lack thereof can impact our lives and the lives of our loved ones.

For the last couple of weeks, we’ve been pasting blog posts from NWLC staff about how they are affected by the health care law like this one and this one.  Stay tuned for more posts from our staff about their personal stories about what the health care law means to them.  You can add your personal story by joining our story blog here.

Cross-posted from WomenStake

Let me go back a little. I should start by saying that like many other Asian cultures, the Vietnamese use the Gregorian or Western calendar for our day-to-day activities, but still celebrate our New Year’s according to the lunar calendar. The Vietnamese New Year, our biggest holiday, is called Tet and follows the Asian zodiac, which means each year is associated with a different animal with a total of 12 animal years.

So for many Asian people, this week, not three weeks ago, starts our new year. And this year is like no other year – it’s the year of luck and fortune, also known as the year of the dragon. It’s believed that major events taking place during the year of the dragon are lucky. And a major event that people commonly aim for is having a baby. This weekend, as I celebrated New Year’s eve with my fiancé at our favorite Chinese restaurant in the DC area (also former President George H. Bush’s favorite Chinese restaurant – probably the only thing I’ll ever have in common with him), we talked endlessly about how to set a wedding date in the midst of an oncoming baby boom. Every person I know (most importantly my sisters) are either pregnant or trying to get pregnant and would have trouble traveling to our wedding.

However, our conversation quickly veered from our wedding to why I thought mothers of dragon babies would be particularly lucky:

• Most employers are required to allow women reasonable breaks and a location to pump breast milk.
• Starting in August, breastfeeding expenses will be covered in most plans without a co-pay.
• And most significantly, no dragon baby this year will ever have to think about whether a pre-existing condition will affect their ability to get health coverage. Currently, children under 19 cannot be denied health coverage due to a pre-existing condition.

And by the time these children turn two years old, they will never know of the day when a person can be denied of health coverage due to a pre-existing condition.

Okay – it’s not luck – it’s thanks to the health care law.

For the many of us who fought hard for this law, it’s for people like the baby dragons coming this year (and the baby rabbits of last year, and the baby tigers of the year before). Knowing that we will have a boon of American babies – tiny dragons who can dream just a bit bigger because they will not be tethered to a job they don’t enjoy or can pursue a business they dreamt up in their basement even though they were born with asthma / diabetes / (fill the blank with an illness) is one of the most exciting things about the coming year. So let the baby boon come – and other exciting things (like getting married) can wait for the year of the snake.

Cross-posted from WomenStake.

Don’t forget what the Affordable Care Act means for women:

* Free preventative screenings like mammograms

* Your children cannot be denied for a pre-existing medical condition – a new benefit already in place right now

* The end of higher medical insurance costs just because you are a woman

* No co-pay on birth control

* Your parents will benefit from stronger Medicare protections

Here’s a look at the top stories:

1)    The Supreme Court ruling: More than 100 law professors, 35 economists, and three Nobel Prize winners say there’s no doubt the new health law is constitutional.  A majority of bipartisan circuit court judges have ruled in favor of the law’s “individual responsibility” requirement where everyone must have health insurance.  This is an essential element of the Act, without which its goals to improve access, affordability and quality, could not endure.

2)    The battle for the White House: The GOP candidates want to eviscerate the Act, but even if one of them were to prevail in the general election,  it would take overwhelming agreement with a majority House Vote, White House support and 67 votes in the Senate, to abolish a law already on the books.  Don’t expect the 2012 election to be an upset for the Affordable Care Act.  The likely GOP nominee, Mitt Romney, also advocated for an individual responsibility requirement previously and passed similar health care legislation in Massachusetts. Reversing bans on lifetime limits, discrimination against those with preexisting conditions, reduced medication costs, free preventative care, and better quality, already in effect for millions of Americans will not be popular, or easy.  Americans know that the quality of their lives depends on the quality of their health.

3) Oh, Florida! Not much good news from the nation’s most unpopular governor, Rick Scott.  Scott’s extreme response in Florida to block the reforms and the federal money provided for health care access are a big political risk. Florida isn’t accepting federal monies to ready itself for the exchanges, isn’t working on accountable care projects, isn’t working to expand benefits through Medicaid, and is spending its resources in delay and legal actions against the government in order to preserve industry profit at citizen expense.  The consequence: Florida isn’t ready; its citizens aren’t covered; its healthcare future is in limbo. The federal government is poised to step in to set up the insurance exchange for its residents and has refused its request to allow Medicaid vendors to spend less money on health care.  What other assaults will the governor cook up this year? Stay tuned.

4) Expanded access to health care coverage:  Watch for those hard numbers tracking the increases in people covered under the ACA, increased protections for those covered, and increased use of services.  No more lifetime limits; more prevention, more people covered in the high risk pool, and more jobs created to fuel an effective and expanded private sector health care engine.

5)  Increased affordability of health care: Follow the money!  We’ll see more savings through better quality and less tolerance for abusive, wasteful and frankly fraudulent services.  Seniors receiving rebates as the pharmacy cost (donut hole) is reduced.  Industry will foot some of the bill for research, and caps on profit at the expense of quality.    Expect reports on the cost of premiums for states, employers, and individuals as the Health Care Exchanges rev up.  And expect stories on what its like for people who need and use care, health care professionals who provide care, and hospitals and systems that support care as our health care delivery system adjusts to a new and effective system focused on patient oriented outcomes that matter, rather than on transactions and money.

6)  Better quality of care. This year is about quality. Thirty-two health provider organizations will roll out innovative care delivery programs, called accountable care organizations, for Medicare enrollees with payment based on quality of care outcomes, rather than procedures and number of visits.   Look for stories about getting ready for evidence-based medicine approach to treatment.  The insurance industry will be contributing to the funding for the governments comparative effectiveness research initiative. The goal of this project is to make sure patients receive care that is effective.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither will be the ACA. This is a big law with a big agenda for a great nation.  Already,  it is improving access.  More people are protected, covered and getting care.   Now, we are moving on to the issues of affordability and quality, initiatives that will continue to return benefits for years to come.  The individual responsibility requirement, up for a challenge in the Supreme Court this year, and health exchanges are critical to solving the affordability puzzle.

Equally important to affordability are the provisions to reduce waste, fraud and abuse, reduce payment to hospitals for avoidable readmissions, and oversight to ensure that the insurance and pharmaceutical industries contribute to fund quality initiatives and the acquire medications at competitive prices.

And for quality, this year is huge! This year, the nation’s health care entrepreneurs and providers begin the hard work to find programs that are based on innovative care models, improving quality, proving home-based care for seniors, and receiving payment based on the quality of the patient oriented outcomes that matter to people, rather than the number of procedures or visits that someone gets. This means better care, better outcomes for people, and more jobs.

The ACA solves big problems with innovative and entrepreneurial solutions.  There’s nothing more American than rolling up our sleeves and using our ingenuity to meet the important challenge of fixing our health care system.

A truly clueless if well-intentioned column by Gene Marks titled “If I Were A Poor Black Kid” in Forbes magazine is getting righteously ripped from journalists all around the web. They’re correctly pointing out how bereft Marks’ column is of history, research, practical awareness, racial sensitivity, or the sheer realities of hunger or even homelessness that low-income children face. Marks seems to suggest that kids from impoverished backgrounds – all too many of whom are African American – can simply access computers and lift themselves up by their digital bootstraps to use free websites and enter elite prep schools or colleges. Maybe a handful of motivated kids will manage a heroic feat like that despite all the odds, but is this going to work for the majority of poor kids?

And here’s exactly what’s wrong with Marks’ perspective and why it’s indicative of a 1% mentality among billionaire education philanthropists (Silicon Valley included) that results in failure to truly invest in public schools, despite those same businesses relying on a highly skilled and educated workforce: solutions lie in privatization — individuals hands on individual (digital) bootstraps.

But also privatization of another kind: web-assisted businesses that hollow out the public school system and see it as nothing but a lucrative market. Marks’ list of ed-tech resources is lengthy and a roll call of ideas, good and bad, to bring education into the computer age. But as recent article after article has pointed out, online education companies hawking virtual schooling are providing low quality schooling to at-risk kids with no accountability, and at the same time siphoning off public money intended for neighborhood schools on the corner. Billionaire philanthropists thwart democratic decision-making about taxpayer priorities by using string-laden foundation donations as a form of education policy, instead of those same businesses or their owners paying taxes to fund public education. For example, in Seattle, titans of Microsoft corporation donated to groups that swatted down a 2010 ballot initiative to tax millionaire incomes that would’ve funded public schools in Washington state.

This isn’t a partisan issue, it’s a greed issue. Many of these well-meaning “edupreneurs” are Democrats who are reliably liberal on stopping climate change, or banning genetically modified foods. But when it comes to the nation’s schools and cherishing the fact that every public school serves every child who comes to the door as they are, conveying important ideas about citizenship, diversity, democracy, and a common good to the nation’s children, “edupreneurs” miss the rainforest for the money tree. Our open, publicly-funded public school system, deeply woven into the fabric of our open, freedom- and innovation-loving society, is the gem in the crown of America that people from around the world for decades have tried to replicate. Certainly it’s our bricks-and-mortar universities, and not mediocre for-profit online colleges, that are still the envy of the world. Close the door of equal opportunity to children, especially poor children, and we turn our backs on our legacy as the land of opportunity.

Is the answer to reject technology, to do as 19th century Luddites did and smash laptops, the equivalent of mechanized looms, in order to save schools? Emphatically no, and here’s where I think many miss an important point about Marks’ misguided piece. The internet provides the same frictionless means to disintermediate middle men as it provides opportunities to insert middle men. And today’s education middle men are testing companies, textbook publishers, online learning companies, teacher certification companies, and standardized test prep companies, sometimes all rolled into the same conglomerate — taking a giant, profitable chunk from states and school districts even as money that goes to classrooms where kids are gets cut.

So here’s what I’d like to see: flip this state of affairs. Disintermediate high-tech middlemen selling silicon snake oil. State departments of education could start acting in the public interest and creating FREE and OPEN SOURCE websites where best practices in teaching, outstanding examples of curriculum, test prep materials, tests themselves, teacher certification, syllabi and other resources are made available to teachers and any student who wants to improve herself. With the millions saved from not buying an international conglomerate’s tests, curriculum, online school materials, test prep, or online teacher certification, there’d be plenty of money for small, intimate classrooms, plentiful well-trained and well-paid teachers, and every child who needs wrap-around services would have them. With the money saved from eliminating the middle man, we’d have plenty to invest in after-school enrichment, high-quality daycare, remedial help, special ed shadows, children’s dental or medical care, fully-funded music/art/sports programs, nutritious real vegetables (not pizza-like vegetables), and gifted and talented education.

The longstanding problems that kids from disadvantaged backgrounds face need a broad social and political response, not solutions that are occasional feel-good stories about one or two motivated kids who figure out how to do calculus online. Realizing you can use library computers to access the internet for free isn’t going to fill the stomachs of some 20% of all children –white, African American, Latino, Asian, Native American — under 18 who are struggling this very minute.

Poverty, hunger, homelessness, parents who are ineffective or unable to parent – these are all analog problems kids have that need the help of other people, not only computers, to solve. What Gene Marks and other Silicon Valley “edupreneurs” forget is that we live in a complicated three-dimensional world that doesn’t fit on a spreadsheet or a computer screen. Digital bootstraps aren’t enough; to help all the nation’s kids we need lifelines offered face to face to real kids, from a person who cares in their neighborhood schools.

Cynthia Liu is founder of the grassroots education news site K12NewsNetwork.com, which empowers parents, educators, and students to report on important events at their local neighborhood schools and provides tools for maximum civic engagement in support of public education. This piece originally appeared in Technorati.