“I’m just curious though, why is it that low income women have to go to PP for these services? If Medicaid is their ACA plan, they must have a health care provider that accepts Medicaid for their non reproductive health issues? Is there some reason they can’t use that provider for reproductive needs well.”
There are something like 38 states which chose not to expand Medicaid, so millions of women and men have no health insurance in those states. They earn to little to get subsidized insurance under ACA and don’t qualify got Medicaid in non expansion states.
CF … I would have to say this qualifies as saying “gun owners should pay for mental health care”, so yes.
Thanks to all providing clarification on the PP/Medicaid/ACA question. I had heard the discussion concerning possible redundancy between PP/ACA but apparently it doesn’t apply in all areas. Good to know.
Many providers don’t accept medicaid so options might be limited in some areas. Also, PP provides sliding scale services to young women who might be covered as dependents on their parent’s plan but would rather not disclose the care that they are receiving so choose to receive care based on their personal financial status.
Even if a person is over the age of 18, billing information would be mailed to the parent. which could be problematic in many cases. That could be an impediment to a person seeking the care that they might need. I am not talking about abortions here, but even birth control services.
I’m just listening to Rachel Maddow as I cook dinner and read this thread, and I learn that Gavin Newsom plans to put gun control measures on the California ballot next year. He wants background checks for ammunition buyers.
@Wolverine86, you were the one who suggested several posts ago that PP funding be diverted to mental health care. I was merely responding to that suggestion. However, it is VERY common after a mass shooting for the gun lobby to bring up mental health issues as the “reason” for the shooting to try to divert the discussion away from the problem of easy access to guns. So since it appears that they think a combination of mental health issues and access to guns is a cause of these incidents (because you can’t deny that guns were involved), why not tax the tool used to help get better mental health treatment and thus potentially reduce gun violence? But… I don’t think solutions to the gun violence problem are what you are here to promote.
@intparent … No, as usual on this thread you simply shouted down any post that doesn’t completely align with your particular point of view. If you’d bothered to read my post, I was responding to CF’s question with a theory I had heard a few weeks back. I never in any way, shape, or form suggested it was my idea or whether I agreed with it or not.
It’s true that one of us has an agenda, but it sure ain’t me.
Oh, I readily admit that I have an agenda. No more mass shootings at elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, movie theaters, malls, churches, colleges, or workplaces. No more accidents where little kids get their hands on guns and kill or wound people. No more accidental shootings of family members or friends by people “defending” their homes. No more suicides by firearms. No more intimidation of average citizens by gun owners who feel the need to openly carry in order to pump up their egos. I have no problem saying that I have an agenda.
Great. Now try opening your mind to the fact that most, if not all, of your agenda is an impossibility and that common sense centrists having intelligent dialogue might actually get something accomplished while mocking, snarky comments are counter productive. You ridicule anyone who says guns are safe in the hands of responsible owners, and somehow think you can legislate stupidity and irresponsibility out of people. Reality check…you can’t. Criminals won’t stop being criminals because you pass more laws. Stupid people won’t stop being stupid because you pass more laws. Irresponsible people won’t keep guns away from children or family members just because you pass a law saying they have to. Hopefully you can accept the fact that people who’s opinions may differ from yours can still offer valuable insight and deserve better than to be ridiculed by you. If not…snark on. CC loves it.
Have you read the whole thread? I am a gun owner. But I am fed up with gun owners whining “It’s too harddd” and chanting “My rights! My rights! My rights!” (thump chest while chanting). Meanwhile, 20 six year olds can be gunned down in their classroom – but you have no suggestions from keeping that from happening again.
No civilian needs to own guns solely intended for killing other human beings. Semi-automatics, large magazines, and handguns have no legitimate use except killing other people. Gun and ammo manufacturers should have no special liability protections. The CDC should be unfettered from restrictions to research and publish regarding gun violence, and make recommendations regarding firearms to improve the health of our citizens.
The NRA has helped turn too many gun owners into zombies pushing their and the manufacturer agendas. You are duped as surely as tobacco users were for so many years. Wake up – you are promoting a guns arms race between men (and they are mostly men) with thousands of innocent people caught in the crossfire every year. You aren’t protecting anybody, you are putting your own family at risk, and mine as well.
I have read the whole thread, and I saw no suggestions from you or anyone else that could prevent a mass shooting from happening again. What I did see was anyone who offered an opposing viewpoint mocked as a gun nut and a ridiculous fixation on an inanimate object as the root cause for mass shootings/suicides/murders/accidental shootings instead of the people who committed the acts. You don’t want to see 20 six year olds killed in a classroom…nobody does. Would you feel better about it if it were only 10 kids? How about 6 kids? What if the perpetrator used a bomb/knife/“insert random weapon here” instead of a gun? Exactly what number are you comfortable with? I’d be thrilled with zero, but unfortunately that’s probably never going to be a reality because there will ALWAYS be perpetrators that will find an excuse and means to commit atrocities. You focus on the tool used and think you can legislate the problem into non-existence. Anyone who tried to suggest otherwise was shouted down by you and a handful of others.
You know nothing about me, yet you claim I’m being duped and putting my family and your family at risk? You have no clue whether I even own a gun or not. Yet because I dared to put forth an opinion that differed from yours I somehow need to “wake up”? That would be funny if it weren’t so sad. You’d make a great elected official. Set up your tent in the extremist camp, dig in your heels, and refuse to listen to common sense.
Yeah, I would feel better if some nutcase came into a kindergarten and tried to kill kids with a knife, killed six kids before he was subdued (though I think it would probably be fewer), and we found out later he’d tried to get guns but was prevented by sensible gun control. Six dead children is better than twenty dead children. That would be fourteen sets of parents who didn’t have their world destroyed.*
I have no idea how a parent wakes up in the morning and goes on if their child is murdered. Especially if it's an only child.
So let me ask you CF…where do the rights of the “nutcase” fall relative to the rights of the victims? Does their “right” to refuse medication trump the rights of their victims to live? If they refuse to take medication, should they be institutionalized like was done in the past? If fourteen less sets of grieving parents are wonderful, then wouldn’t 20 sets be even better if the “nutcase” were stopped before using ANY tool to commit a heinous act?
No matter where one’s opinion falls, someone’s rights are going to be infringed upon. Focusing on the tool rather than the actor is just rationalization IMO.
IMO, neither nutcases nor anyone else has the right to own the kind of guns that the Sandy Hook nutcase used to shoot up a first grade classroom.
Which of the recent shooters seem to have mental health problems that could have been diagnosed and then treated with medication? I don’t think that applies to many of them. The Aurora guy, and the Gabby Giffords shooter, maybe, but not the Sandy Hook guy. Schizophrenia responds to medication, sometimes, but there’s no medication to make people on the autism spectrum un-autistic. The Sandy Hook shooter clearly had mental problems, but that his mental problems could have been treated by medication, or by any other treatment, is dubious.
The way to stop him from shooting up classrooms was to keep him from having guns that made it easy to kill six-year-olds. The right of twenty sets of parents to have their kids still alive trumps any right for anyone to have guns that can be used to spray bullets at children.
By the way, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has just upheld New York’s and Connecticut’s ban on semiautomatic weapons and large magazines. We’ll see what happens with the Supreme Court-- my money is on them upholding the law.
I’d say they all had recognized mental issues. Umpqua, Sandy Hook, Aurora, Virginia Tech, Columbine…are there any of these acts that came “out of the blue”? Whether medication could fix those issues or not, no one knows…it was simply one aspect of their “rights” that I mentioned. My point is similar to yours but I’d say NO ONE’s rights trumps the victims’ rights to live, but least of all the “right” of the perpetrator that in many cases told people they were going to act. Why is it always after the fact that we discover someone knew these people were likely to commit these atrocities but chose to say or do nothing? Do their HIPAA rights trump the victims’ rights?
I’d rather see their mental health professional (if they’re seeing one) notify public safety about the potential dangers instead of worrying about a HIPAA violation. Just as you’d willingly give up some of the rights of gun owners (and some would advocate giving up all their rights) I’d willingly give up the rights of those with mental health issues who show an intent to harm others or themselves. Take away the tool and they’ll find another tool, and I don’t think it’s ok to simply decrease the number. Take away the opportunity to perform the act and the number decreases to zero.
As always, the best answer lies in compromise but these days no one wants to.
I’m perfectly willing to posit that all those shooters had mental health problems. What I dispute is the facile notion that the kind of problems they had were treatable. Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook shooter, was on the autism spectrum. I wish that there were drug treatments for autism, or any treatments for autism, that would have cured him, or even made him not want to shoot kindergarteners. But so far, there aren’t.
If there was a treatment that cured autistic people, I would pay any amount of money I had to give that treatment to my son. There is no such treatment!
It would also be good to be able to distinguish the many young men who are on the autism spectrum, but would never commit a mass shooting, from the few young men who are on the autism spectrum and who are inclined to shoot up schools. There is no way to tell them apart.
While it would be nice to think that there is a nice tidy way either to cure mentally ill people, or even to identify the ones that are dangerous, there is not. That is, some people are identifiably both mentally ill and dangerous, but for some mental disorders, it’s not currently known how to separate the few dangerous ones from the many non-dangerous ones.
This is where your proposal falls down. It falls down in two ways. First, mental health professionals can’t pick out potential mass shooters. Second, if they could, what would the response be? Sure, deny them guns from licensed dealers, but in the current system, anyone can buy a gun from a private seller with no check at all.
While there is not at this time a “cure” for ASD, have you seen this upcoming research study, CF? They are looking for volunteers. http://www.vanillaautismstudy.com/index.htm Hope this helps.
This is where I feel like we need to also talk about a cultural shift away from glorifying guns and gun violence. If guns are merely a tool let’s treat them as a tool. Or, if they are a personal right but public safety hazard let’s treat them like that. We have laws around smoking now, recognizing that while individuals have a right to smoke, they don’t have a right to endanger others. It has been a major cultural shift in my lifetime. It hasn’t happened everywhere at the same pace, but it is creeping along. The culture around guns seems to me moving in the opposite direction. The same people who smoke at bars out in the rain or on their back patio will keep a loaded gun on top of the fridge.
I am thinking about that shootout reenactment that went wrong over the weekend. It is a family entertainment event because we have mythologized the idea of “good guys” running around town shooting guns down occupied streets. Are we going to sell tickets to urban gang warfare reenactments next?
I am forgetting where I read it now, but I read a piece that suggested that culturally we need a shift in what we encourage young men on the spectrum to fixate on. If a person is predisposed to zeroing in on a topic or hobby, a healthier culture would not suggest that guns might be a good outlet for their energy. The idea and promotion of shooting these military style weapons at the range being good, clean, family fun does lead directly to putting those weapons in the hands of people who shouldn’t have them. And then there’s that poor child who accidentally shot the gun range attendant while on vacation. What is up with that!? If guns are a “tool / deadly means of family protection” then lets have a culture that treats them as such.