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Sunday, January 14, 2018

Trump is Still in Office-Resources for Defending the Attack on Your Health

Donald Trump has been the President for a year and it has been as nightmarish as imagined. This article provides information on organizations which are providing government reports and consumer information which have been stricken from government web sites. The federal government, under orders from the Trump Administration and his cabinet, are no longer protecting citizens. We must be vigilant in our clarion call to the electorate and disseminate documents which are based on scientific rigor and impact your health and well being.
Further, since 2018 launches a new year, whether you follow the Christian or Lunar calendar, it is a time for reflection and renewal. Despite dislocating my shoulder in a bike accident on Burlington Northern Railroad tracks and later getting hit by a car in March of 2017, I still managed to log over 3,000 miles (4,828 kilometers) on bike, which is my preferred mode of transportation. In addition to publishing this column for eleven years, I have also been a health and public policy book reviewer for the New York Journal of Books for the past seven years. My advocacy work extends to promotion of the Lown Institute's Right Care Campaign and scientific research projects conducted at universities and foundations.

Books which will inspire the awake state and include helpful information on resources to help you:
Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal's An American Sickness-How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back is chock full of examples and tips on how to avoid opportunistic behavior in the U.S. healthcare sector. Rosenthal provides direct references for identifying medical procedure prices, how to vet hospitals (as I did in my 2013 book, Unraveling U.S. Healthcare-A Personal Guide), understanding medical bills, assessing whether a test or procedure is necessary, and how to protest against surprise bills and outrageous charges.
https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/sickness

Geoff Dembicki's Are We Screwed? How a New Generation is Fighting to Survive Climate Change, shows how social media and the millenial generation are forging consumer driven organizations to promote incorporation of healthy environmental stewardship and action.
https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/are-we-screwed

David Cay Johnson's It's Even Worse Than You Think-What The Trump Administration is Doing to America is released this month. He provides information on how you can get access to workplace injury and deaths, which have been stricken from the Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration site.(David Cay Johnston, It's Even Worse Than You Think, p. 61) As a part of the Trump Administration's war on regulation, they don't want to report workplace deaths. Jordan Barab, former administrator at OSHA has created a site to post this information, which is found at:
http://jordanbarab.com/confinedspace/2017/08/25/osha-hides-workplace-fatalities/
Other rules which will impact workers include silica, widely used in construction and dental labs . The Trump Administration has ordered a freeze on regulations to protect workers from silica dust. Here is a link to an article detailing mortality with exposure to silica dust, from the Centers for Disease Control. (David Cay Johnson, It's Even Worse Than You Think, p.66)
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/pdf/wk/mm6405.pdf

https://www.amazon.com/Even-Worse-Than-Think-Administration/dp/1501174169/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1515964111&sr=1-1&keywords=its+even+worse+than+y

And this is the healthpolicymaven signing off wishing you good health informed by information you can trust. Roberta Winter is an independent journalist, health policy analyst, and author of the 2013 guidebook, Unraveling U.S. Healthcare-A Personal Guide, Rowman and Littlefield.