More information at http://www.nature.com/news/more-cuts-loom-for-us-science-1.13720

My beloved mother passed away last year due to the poor standards of the nursing home system.

Mental illnesses are medical conditions that disrupt a person's thinking, feeling, mood, ability to relate to others and daily functioning. This petition will help provide funding to teach students, faculty, friends and family to recognize warning signs in themselves and others, encourage early treatment, combat the stigma that surrounds mental illness, discourage bullying and abusive behavior, and create a more compassionate and concerned society. Please pass this on, so our voices shall be heard and we can "Break the Silence" together. Thanks for your support!

The MaineCare Transportation Contract with CTS has proven that working with an out of state broker,specifically CTS is a failed experiment that has greatly effected the quality of healthcare for MaineCare and Medicaid recipients. In the Department's own words, "The launch has not gone as planned and there have been widespread problems. Rides have been missed, people have not been able to reach the broker due to high call volume and some rides have been delivered inappropriately.The performance to date has been unacceptable and we are doing all that we can to hold the brokers accountable." This has effected the quality of care, the ability for providers to earn a living and deliver services and the revenue streams of agency. It has placed great burdens on those already dealing with difficult situations and will only serve to increase emergency room care, raise healthcare costs and limit access to healthcare for our most vulnerable populations.

Once again, anti-women’s health lawmakers and organizations like the Family Research Council think they should decide how and when a woman can receive medical care: this time by trying to forbid congressional staffers from accessing health plans that cover abortion–with their own money. Under Obamacare’s new health exchanges, many congressional staffers will purchase the same private health insurance plans as you and me. But if our opponents have their way, these staffers would be completely forbidden from buying insurance plans that cover abortion. We only have until Monday to tell the administration to reject these ridiculous restrictions. These anti-women’s health lawmakers and organizations think they can sneak this latest restriction in without our noticing. But we aren’t going to sit back and let a small but vocal group of extremists take away any woman’s right to choose the best health care plan for her and her family, or make it harder for women to access the care they need. Tell the Obama administration you support comprehensive health insurance for all women.

http://pix11.com/2013/07/08/mold-from-hurricane-sandy-making-life-tough-on-staten-island/#axzz2cRvfLLWZ My life and Health have been Horribly affected due to Exposure from Toxic Mold. For 18 Years had been living in a Garden Apartment On Staten Island that was contaminated by Molds. Sadly No one from the NYC Health Department or Local or State agencies helped with my situation. Naturally I am very concerned for the People on the East Coast dealing with Molds. There are hundreds of Thousands more People Like myself from all over , who are at this moment suffering from Toxic Mold Exposures . We stand united on this Issue , wanting Change on these Issues ! These are Very Serious Issue that needs to be addressed Now ! Please lend your support and sign our petition,,,, Mold affects Everyone !

New York Health offers high quality, comprehensive health care for all New Yorkers, with access to medical services and providers of their choice, without regard to age, income, existing health conditions or employment status. A cost benefit analysis of possible New York State sponsored health insurance programs found that only New York Health's publicly funded, single payer system would improve the quality of health care delivery, provide comprehensive healthcare for all New Yorkers and reduce NYS healthcare spending by $20 billion annually by 2019. New York Health would ensure additional savings by eliminating the estimated 30% of unnecessary expense currently generated by the private health insurance industry, with their excessive executive compensation, high administrative overhead, and profit-driven policies and operation. There is no place for profiteering in healthcare. In adopting the New York Health single payer plan, New York would be joining with other states, such as Montana, Vermont, Maryland, Oregon, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and California to develop a universal health care alternative with better health coverage at significantly less cost for the greatest number of people.

"If you continue to do what you've always done, you will always get what you've always gotten"...and in the case the HIV epidemic is rising in the South. The gaps in care, testing, linkage to care, and retention services must be addressed to reduce the rising new rates of infection.

Teachers state-wide are struggling financially as a result of education funding cuts despite surpluses in the school aid fund in the hundereds of millions of dollars. All state employees had a 3% tax to pay for retirement healthcare imposed on them in 2010, which was refunded to everyone except public school employees. Many teachers from districts such as Buena Vista, Ypsilanti, Willow Run, and Inkster are now without jobs and need this refund to help pay for basic living expenses. The state appeals court ruled almost one year ago that imposing this tax was unconstitutional. The state supreme court needs to make this hearing case a priority and refund and our money.

"Our lyme doctor in Destin is being forced to quit by the FL Board of Medicine. It's a state issue but similar situations have occurred in the north east, Virginia, Kansas, and North Carolina. We need a national law protecting lyme doctors" Dr Lentz has assisted us part of the last 4 years with our son's devastating lyme disease. Because he treated two people with negative western blots, he has two weeks to either pay $20k and practice with probationary supervision OR give up his license. This is totally ludicrous. 1) The VA legislature and governor passed, Feb 2013, a law that all doctors must inform patients of inaccurate Western Blots and Elisa lab tests for lyme. They are not the first state to do so. 2) The CDC has stated for lyme disease to IGNORE testing and diagnose clinically. But because evidencuary medicine is so prevalent, physicians ignore the CDC instructions. 3) The CDC announced last week that over 300,000 were contracting lyme every year and their previous estimates were 10 times to low (30,000). What they didn't say was, they were too low basically because lab testing is so poor and should not be trusted. Our son has consumed over $1,000,000 in health care in the last 4.5 years, with over $300,000 of that coming out of our pockets. Dr Lentz's portion has been very, very, little of that, and yet he has helped us tremendously. Please help him for the sake of all the other lyme patients in Florida and the US Jimmy and Alice Branch allison_dudley@doh.state.fl.us (director of FL medical board)

If the federal health care law is not changed to require coverage of an employee's spouse and family it will encourage other companies to eliminate this benefit. Already 70% of American are struggling everyday to make it and salaries have not kept up with inflation since 1973. Fewer companies then ever offer healthcare benefits or find a loophole around it by only hiring part time employees. Companies need to start paying their employees better and preserve the healthcare benefits provided to employees, spouses, children and retirees. We need to change the federal law to make companies do what is right because otherwise they will just do what is in their financial best interest their employees be damned. This is a loophole that needs to be closed. Let's close it. Please sign this petition to change the Federal healthcare law to require employers to cover the spouses of employees along with their children.

Medicaid expansion in Michigan has been half-passed. It only narrowly passed in the Senate thanks to reckless opposition from right-wing conservatives. But without immediate effect, Michigan stands to lose $7 million a day in federal funding until Medicaid expansion is implemented in April 2014. Senate Republicans not only delayed the Medicaid vote for months, they’ve put Michigan in a position where we’ll lose out on millions of dollars by half-passing Medicaid expansion. The time for immediate effect is now! If you want to save Michigan millions of dollars and help immediately improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of fellow Michiganders, sign the petition and tell Senate Republicans to stop half-passing their jobs and give Medicaid expansion immediate effect.