WASHINGTON – A Republican senator contended today during rancorous floor debate that President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul will shorten the lives of America’s seniors by cutting Medicare.

“I have a message for you: You’re going to die sooner,” said Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., an obstetrician-turned-lawmaker.

A senior Democrat decried such comments by Republicans as scare tactics designed to kill legislation that he said would improve some benefits for the elderly. As the Senate pushed toward the first votes on the sweeping legislation, the debate recalled the raw charges and countercharges of the summer’s town hall meetings.

Going to the floor after Coburn had spoken, Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said the cuts would make Medicare a smarter buyer and would improve prescription coverage.

“I hate to say it … these are scare tactics,” Baucus said. “Sometimes you’ve got to call a spade a spade.”

The Senate was debating an amendment by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., that would strip from the bill more than $400 billion in Medicare cuts to home health providers, hospitals, hospices and others.

Polls show that seniors are concerned that expanding coverage for the uninsured will come at their expense. But Medicare spending actually would keep growing under the Democrats’ legislation, albeit at a somewhat slower rate.

Despite the partisan tone, the first amendment offered was bipartisan, a measure to increase preventive care for women co-sponsored by Sens. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine. Snowe was the only Senate Republican to vote in favor of Democrats’ health care legislation in committee.

Their amendment would give the Health and Human Services secretary authority to require health plans to cover additional preventive services for women and was inspired in part by controversial recommendations last month that women undergo fewer mammograms and Pap smears to test for cancer. Republicans seized on those recommendations as early signs of rationing of care they say would happen under the Democrats’ 10-year, nearly $1 trillion health bill.

“The Sen. Mikulski amendment also makes clear, no matter what the Republicans claim, that the decision whether or when to get a mammogram should be left up to the patient and the doctor,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. “That decision should not be made by some bureaucrat, a member of Congress or someone they’ve never met.”

However the amendment doesn’t specifically address mammograms or spell out what additional services would be covered, leaving that to the discretion of the HHS secretary. The Congressional Budget Office said the amendment would cost $940 million over a decade.

Last month, a government-appointed but independent panel of doctors and scientists said women generally should begin routine mammograms in their 50s, rather than their 40s. Then, in an apparent coincidence, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said most women in their 20s can have a Pap test every two years — instead of annually — to catch slow-growing cervical cancer.

Neither the task force, which provides advice to government officials who may or may not act on it, nor the doctor’s group sets federal policy.

But the recommendations could not have come at a worse time for majority Democrats, especially Senate leaders trying to hold together the 60 votes required to advance the health care overhaul.

“We know that some in Washington have wanted government-run health care for years. And it’s hard to escape the conclusion that these same people saw the current economic crisis as their moment,” said Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. “Earlier this year, some in the administration said that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. Americans are hoping this bill isn’t what they meant. But they’re concerned it is.”

The legislative struggle is expected to last for weeks in a test that pits GOP senators determined not to give ground against Senate Democrats intent on delivering on Obama’s signature issue.

Dozens of amendments are likely to be offered, with the measures seemingly designed as much to court a skeptical public as to reshape Reid’s 2,074-page bill.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that 31 million uninsured individuals would receive insurance if the bill were enacted, many of them assisted by federal subsidies. The legislation would be paid for through a combination of cuts in projected Medicare payments, a payroll tax on the wealthy and taxes on drug makers, medical device manufacturers, owners of high-cost insurance and others.

By MARY SHEDDEN | The Tampa Tribune
Published: November 30, 2009

Ignorance is anything but bliss when it comes to food safety.

None of us wants to think about the invisible organisms lurking in our lunch, but bacterial and parasitic pathogens sicken more than 76 million Americans a year, including 325,000 who head to the hospital. And foodborne illness kills 5,000 people a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Consumers have no control over some of the contamination, something we learned from high-profile recalls of peanut butter, ground beef and fresh spinach. But a lot can be done to control contamination.

For example, people don’t realize as much as half of all the chicken they buy contains some kind of bacterial or parasitic pathogen, says Glenn Morris, director of the Emerging Pathogens Institute at the University of Florida.

That isn’t so scary if you recall proper cleaning and cooking practices learned from Grandma or in home economics class, he says. “Good food handling in the kitchen can take care of 95 percent of the problem.”

Those practices — washing cutting boards, plates and utensils with hot water — are the first line of defense in dealing with raw meats. The Food and Drug Administration suggests cleaning cutting surfaces with a solution of one teaspoon of chlorine bleach to one quart of water. Produce also should be thoroughly scrubbed and washed with water, and dried with a clean cloth or paper towel before eating.

“It’s simple stuff,” Morris says.

So simple, people may have grown complacent. But as concern about the government’s role in food safety increases, the public may be taking those food safety tips more seriously. A recent consumer survey found that 73 percent of adults polled were as concerned about food safety as the war on terror.

According to the American Society for Quality survey of nearly 2,100 Americans, 61 percent felt the current U.S. food recall process was fair or poor. That response likely reflects the increased use of corporate farms or processing plants in American food production. For example, if one chicken at a farm of 20,000 is contaminated, the risk for spreading illness, and a subsequent recall, is higher than it would be at a small, local farm.

“We’ve moved into a factory farming age,” says Morris, whose institute looks at how pathogens and infectious disease affect humans, plants and animals. “We’ve created new opportunities for food-borne illness to get into the food supply.”

Morris is most concerned about E. coli O157:H7, which emerged in humans in just the past 30 years. It has been responsible for multiple high-profile recalls in recent years, from ground beef to fresh spinach. Recalls related to that illness have been responsible in part for changes to federal legislation, including the Food Safety Enhancement Act, which is undergoing review in the U.S. Senate.

Currently, the U.S. Department of Agriculture oversees meat and poultry, and the FDA is responsible for inspecting all other foods and drugs.

Morris says regardless of politics, many Americans understand the need for government food inspectors. The consumer survey went a step further: 82 percent of respondents said the food industry should be required to follow international food safety standards.

Morris says the final solution involves a balance of oversight and commonsense.

“Be aware there’s a risk and the government is working to reduce the risk,” Morris says. “But also know that humans have dealt with foodborne illness for millennia.”