Defending our country's social contract of a safety net for all Americans from an extremist Congress and Senate. Basic healthcare is a human right! Now this right is being ignored. Seems like profit -driven ideologies are hell bent on taking away our rights including to affordable healthcare.

Stop Action on the ACA! Voters are about to be harmed and put in peril from not thinking this out. All the people voting on this have full healthcare either way, so why not plan it out better so that disabled, elderly, and vets are not harmed even more? Devise a plan that protects the marginalized first, then dismantle the ACA if you must, but to just drop all 28 million people from it will cause undo hardship upon too many Americans. All people in office took an oath to protect the people of this nation; to just cut the ACA with no other plan available is not protecting the people.

How will I get affordable covered health insurance with breast cancer and my husband with diabetes and gout and my mother in-law at 102 get mcaid insurance for nursing home assistance ? Health care and social security should be a priority. These cuts should not be done

I live on the lands of the Ohlone People and believe they deserve Federal and State "Recognition" .

President-elect Donald Trump's first priority when he assumes office is to take away our healthcare. He plans to issue executive orders to repeal the Affordable Care Act as soon as January 20. The Affordable Care Act has made a huge difference in my life. My son was born with a rare congenital disorder which affected his heart, airways, and kidneys. He went into respiratory distress and the pediatric surgeons saved his life. He was in intensive care for quite a while, and in his first month of life of he racked up $100,000 in medical debt. If it weren't for the ACA, my family would have to declare bankruptcy. The ACA not only helped cover my son's medical bills, but it has provided us with no lifetime limits on his coverage, and he can't be denied health coverage because of his condition. There are many families and individuals out there like me who had a major medical event happen without warning. The ACA was there for us. Protecting the ACA is not an ideological thing for us. It's affects our real lives, and repealing it would put so many of us in a bad position. As your constituents, we urge you to please stand up and protect our healthcare.

Donald Trump has promised to strengthen Social Security. However, Rep. Sam Johnson (Rep-Texas) is proposing changes that decrease taxpayer benefits. Reject Mr. Johnson's plan and allow Donald Trump to keep his promise.

This petition is addressed to more than CA (includes Oregon, Washington and Nevada with Democrat governors and legislatures) because these states, despite Democrats in power, have been unwilling to pass Single Payer legislation that would solve all the problems in health care financing and access simply. By demanding a meeting of these leaders we provide a different approach to the Republican attack on ACA, one that is solution based to the probable removal of ACA. People should also write letters, letters to the editor and march on their State officials to make this same--eminently reasonable-- demand: that they meet jointly and discuss their options once access is again further restricted and costs continue to inflate.

PETITION STATEMENT In 2012, the U.S. Department of Justice released a study (Saunders Report) that found the STANDARD and REQUIRED domestic violence training received by judges, lawyers, and evaluators does not adequately prepare them to handle abuse cases. Inadequately trained professionals tend to believe the myth that mothers frequently make false allegations. MOST contested custody cases are actually domestic abuse or child abuse cases in which abusers have been allowed to use the courts to regain control over their victims, and bankrupt the safe, primary care-giving, protective mother. PETITION BACKGROUND WE ARE PETITIONING FOR A STATEWIDE INVESTIGATION OF FAMILY COURT PRACTICES IN AN EFFORT TO STOP CONNECTICUT JUDGES FROM HARMING INNOCENT DEFENSELESS CHILDREN. Connecticut residents are being bled of our most valuable resource, the innocence of a child, and because of which, we are slowly losing our grip on the future of America. Since 1998, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has continued a lengthy investigation into adverse childhood experiences (ACE). ACE is one of the largest medical investigations ever conducted to assess associations between childhood maltreatment and later-life health and well-being. They found that a child’s exposure to certain traumas, including domestic violence, child sexual abuse, or being separated from their primary caregiving parent, resulted in more illnesses and injuries to children in childhood through adulthood, i.e., social emotional and cognitive impairment; adoption of health-risk behaviors; disease, disability and social problems; and PREMATURE DEATH. This study demonstrates how a child’s exposure to these elements are a PUBLIC HEALTH ISSUE. Yet every year, an estimated 58,000 children are court ordered into custody or unsupervised visitation with a reported abuser. Additionally, current research estimates that false allegations of sexual abuse happens less that 2% of the time, yet 85% of those children are court ordered into shared or sole custody with the parent that is raping them. Inadequately trained professionals tend to believe the myth that mothers frequently make false allegations, contrary to current research. Therefore, in thinking they have the needed expertise, family court professionals don't listen to domestic violence or child abuse evidence, experts, and they don't include current scientific research. Mothers are being forced into bankruptcy and poverty trying to protect their children, and their children are being irreparably harmed. We now have the medical research through the CDC to declare domestic violence, child abuse, and being separated from a primary attachment parent a PUBLIC HEALTH ISSUE. And the U.S. Department of Justice's Saunders report states that the STANDARD and REQUIRED domestic violence training received by judges, lawyers, and evaluators does not adequately prepare them to handle abuse cases. WE ARE PETITIONING FOR A STATEWIDE INVESTIGATION OF FAMILY COURT PRACTICES IN AN EFFORT TO STOP CONNECTICUT JUDGES FROM HARMING INNOCENT DEFENSELESS CHILDREN. We would like to see you, our leaders, echo your constituents concerns, and ensure that the HEALTH AND SAFETY OF A CHILD WILL COME FIRST IN DIVORCE AND CUSTODY LITIGATION. We thank you in advance for your support.

I want Congress to know that they cannot strip away health benefits from the people who most need it - the sick, the poor, the retired, the jobless, and the elderly.

UPDATE (11/30): Your pressure is working! Since we first posted this petition, the House of Representatives has been feeling the heat. Last night, they took out the provision letting drug companies hide kickbacks to doctors, put some limits on Donald Trump's ability to hold opioid victims hostage to his political whims, and fixed the gun provision. These changes are disappointing the lobbyists, but they're still pushing for this bill, because it's still full of industry giveaways. Keep using your voices to tell the House and the Senate to say NO to this deal and keep fighting for a better one. ------- From the beginning, I've argued that any “cures” bill must include substantial new funding for medical research (NIH), or it’s not going to cure anything. Democrats and Republicans had agreed that a medical innovation bill would not go forward without substantially more money for NIH. But the Cures deal has only a tiny fig leaf of funding for NIH. 21st Century Cures doesn’t reduce crushing drug prices. It doesn’t really expand the invention of new cures. And it doesn’t increase access to lifesaving therapies. What does it do? • Legalizes fraud: It’s against the law for drug companies to market drugs for uses not approved by the FDA. You can’t sell a headache pill as a cure for cancer. Drug companies have paid billions in penalties for “off-label marketing." Instead of following the law, they’ve cozied up to Congress to have the Cures bill shoot holes in it. • Covers up bribery: Currently, drug companies have to disclose the buckets of money, gifts, giveaways, and free trips they give doctors and hospitals as kickbacks to use certain drugs. Once again, drug companies cozied up to Congress to gut that disclosure rule – allowing any gift related to “medical education” to be exempt. • Hands out special deals to GOP donors: A major Republican donor to Mitch McConnell’s Super PAC has big business plans to sell dangerous, unproven stem cell treatments before they have been approved by the FDA as safe and effective. Now that donor is collecting on his investment. The Cures bill creates a special deal so people can sell these treatments without meeting the FDA gold standards for protecting patient safety, undermining the integrity of the FDA and the safety of untold numbers of desperate patients. And there’s another scary thing hidden in this bill: for two years, Republicans have paid lip service to our nation’s opioid crisis while refusing to spend money on it. Now that Donald Trump has won the presidency, Republicans have agreed to set aside a few million dollars to address the crisis on the condition that the Trump Administration will have complete control over the money once he takes office. There’s more: Medicare cuts, making life harder for people with disabilities, raiding money from the Affordable Care Act, even a gun provision – but not even a 1% increase in funding for NIH. Not everything in the bill is bad. Republicans have included some bipartisan, non controversial provisions in this bill – and have declared that all of those good ideas will die, today, unless we also agree to make it easier for giant drug companies to commit fraud, give out kickbacks, and put patients' lives at risk. That's not compromise. It's extortion. On November 8, a majority of voters supported Democratic Senate candidates, and a majority supported the Democratic presidential candidate over the Republican. The American people didn't give Democrats majority support so we could come back to Washington to roll over and play dead. They sent us here to say NO to efforts to sell Congress to the highest bidder. They sent us here to stand up for what's right. We need to invest in medical innovation in America – but we shouldn’t do it by handing over control to Big Pharma and Republican donors. Tell the House and Senate to say NO to this deal and keep fighting for a better 21st Century Cures Act.

Several states, so far, have banned kratom by putting its active ingredients on the controlled substance list. Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, Vermont, Indiana, and Wisconsin have banned the active ingredients in kratom. Illinois and Louisiana have banned the substance altogether. Kratom has saved the lives of many people. Kratom is not an illicit 'drug' nor is the act of its use illicit. Its main active ingredients are the alkaloids mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine, and there is evidence that these have analgesic effects without producing a 'high'. The body of this argument will be found in the testimony by the commenters attached to this petition, so I conclude with this: Kratom saves lives. There are people who suffer fibromyalgia, lupus, CRPS, MS, epilepsy, IBS, Crohn's Disease, Endometriosis, Chronic pain, Sjogrens, and those recovering and rebuilding their lives from illicit drug use. These same people cannot get doctors to help them. Several patients with these illnesses are turned away from doctors, whether because the doctors did not know how to treat them or the DEA shut these doctors down for treating their patients' pain with the only medication that is available in the kratom-illegal states: opioids. This has to stop! Please make Kratom legal in the 'illegal' states! Please keep kratom legal in all U.S. states.

Donald Trump and his advisors are stealthily planning the death of Medicare. This would be devastating to millions of Americans who could not afford health insurance without this essential, highly successful program. Read Paul Krugman’s op-ed for more info: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/18/opinion/the-medicare-killers.html