The current mental health laws Do Not Help the patient who is expected to make important strategic decisions in the midst of full blown episodes. Many of these individuals suffer the loss of jobs, marriages, homes. Families and caregivers, have to stand aside, helpless and unable to assist their loved ones, as I have personally experienced, and many, often and tragically, experience the grief of suicide. The current mental health laws benefit only the doctors and other mental health professionals involved, as they get repeat customers. Let us change the laws to empower family & caregivers in treatment decisions.

Congress, Supreme and lower courts,etc get free lifetime insurance. Why are paying for their insurance in the first place much less after they leave. We leave a job, we lose insurance..Want true deficit reduction? Start there..Cut off the bennefits...

Medicaid is an integral part of our social safety net. I am concerned that a vulnerable sector of our population will be at risk if federal funding is rejected in North Carolina. Please encourage Governor Perdue to accept federal funding for Medicaid.

Millions of lives and our economy as a whole are being ruined due to the stranglehold of the insurance companies and the drug companies on our health care system. As a percentage of gross domestic product, we spend twice the average of other comparable countries on health care and get the worst results for it. (the absolute worst of other comparable countries) I waste time and money making unnecessary appointments with my primary care physician in order to see a specialist, and too many of the doctors that I do see are obviously in it more for the money than for the vocation. Millions of dollars and millions of hours of labor are wasted on paperwork to prop up an untenable system that benefits very few. We all live in fear of a health crisis ruining our finances. The issue is not really that complicated and the solution is simple, but nobody in Washington is going near it. Let's present them with something. We pay 1.45% tax our entire working lives in order to have health care when we retire. Why not pay 4% instead and have health care now and forever, for us and our children? (happy side effect: my plan's 14% surtax on exorbitant salaries will help keep that scourge in check as well)

Most people don't realize it, but their insurance card that they use to pay for prescriptions generates incredible profits for the issuers of the cards, the Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBM's) How do they do this? By reimbursing your pharmacist less than it costs him to fill your prescriptions! In many cases, the reimbursement received from the PBM (plus the patient's copay) total less than the acquisition cost to the pharmacy for the drug, not to mention any consideration for pharmacy overhead expenses. The pharmacy's ability to negotiate with the PBM stops before the point at which the pharmacy breaks even on the transaction. Reimbursement for extra services provided by the pharmacy (emergency service, delivery, time spent on the phone with PBM's who won't authorize refills of a patient's prescripton, is totally absent and non-negotiable. Additionally, often after your pharmacist has spent his non-reimbursed time and effort to assure that you get your medication, the PBM will notify the patient that henceforth they will be required to use the PBM's own pharmacy, and receive their medication by mail, which results in the patient receiving their refills too late, and having heat and cold sensitive drugs exposed to harmful weather conditions. This is an impingement on patients' rights, a danger to their health and can result in the pharmacy losing core business to the PBM's, who still must rely on the neighborhood pharmacy to be around when the patient requires a new medication quickly. Call on Congress to pass legislation to assure fair reimbursement to the pharmacists who have for years, provided prompt and effective service, even in emergency situations. Stop PBM's from mandating mail-order prescriptions.

This petition is about how I, as a 33 yr old who never had insurance, became eligible for Obamacare, and a healthcare plan I could actually afford.

I am a plasma doner who not only helps those who need it but I get help by getting paid to donate. It has helped me afford my perscriptions, food, gas, and pay bills when I have been short on cash.

Randy Leonard would like to fluoridate Portland's water. Please sign this petition if you do not want fluoride in your water. Even the EPA now has concerns about fluoride in water. Those that want fluoride can be given free fluoride prescriptions, please don't force everyone to ingest fluoride!

To force Kaiser Permanente to begin construction of an adequate hospital facility in th Antelope Valley.

To protect public health by clarifying the authority of the Secretary of Agriculture to prescribe performance standards for the reduction of pathogens in meat, meat products, poultry, and poultry products processed by establishments receiving inspection services and to enforce the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) System requirements, sanitation requirements, and the performance standards.

I am a single mother of a son with multiple disabilities. He needs total care and despite his needs, I must, and have worked full time all of his life, because I have had three other sons to provide for. Since he is now an adult his care is chopped in half, but the need is greater for I am older, and so is he, and yet I still need to work. There is no room for me to take care of normal errands because the hours of care stop the minute I arrive home from work. The services that are available have denied him due to his level of needed care and yet our policies word it so that they won't supply him with level he requires. Although they say it is our right to keep them home the funds provided doesn't afford us a realistic ability to do so! It is time for us to make a concerted effort to care for our feeble and those who care for them diligently, respectfully, and loyally.

Congress is allowed to create a special health care insurance program for itself that only they have access to. They should be forced to buy the same health care insurance available to the citizens whom they govern wtih no special provisions for them alone.