By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

A recent New York Times article featured a heartbreaking account of the other side of all the screaming protests lawmakers are facing on health care reform. This is the real story, one that describes the desperate need for basic health care services that millions of Americans face every day.

Thousands of people in Los Angeles lined up starting after midnight and snaking into the early hours this week for free dental, medical, and vision services. Stan Brock, the heroic founder of a nonprofit called Remote Area Medical (RAM), usually sets services in rural areas where low and middle income people are without adequate health insurance. RAM this time opened up in a large urban area. The response was overwhelming – 8,000 people over 8 days, many in search of dental services but many also seeking multiple types of care – will be seen this week. On one day alone volunteer health care providers performed 95 tooth extractions, 470 fillings, 140 pairs of eyeglasses, 96 pap smears, and 93 tuberculosis tests.

California’s budget crisis is implicated in this overwhelming demand for basic care – MediCal enrollees have had their dental and vision coverage slashed. Some of the patients interviewed even had insurance – most did not – but those who are insured said that they have such high deductibles and co-pays they can’t afford to take advantage of their benefits.

The National Consumers League has a long history – dating back to the 1930s – of fighting for universal health care. Today we continue to work for coverage for every American.

It’s also significant that the patients seen in Los Angeles are plagued by dental problems, with the cost of dental care out of reach for many Americans. For this reason, NCL has taken a leadership role in joining dental care professionals and educators in advocating for inclusion of dental services in overall health reform. Investing in dental health for our youngest citizens is a wise investment that can prevent tooth and gum disease and thousands of dollars needed to treat those diseases later in life.

Lawmakers would be wise to read today’s NY Times story – it serves as a reality check for those who are protesting so loudly at town meetings and other events that 46 million Americans are without health care coverage and that, despite their fears, this country needs to move forward in providing universal health care to all.

By Amos Budde, NCL Public Policy Intern

Providing preventative health care is one of the most important strategies for lowering our nation’s health costs.  We hear a lot about the 46 million Americans without health insurance, but rarely do we hear that more than twice that lack dental insurance.

The case for dental coverage is the same as for health care.  People without health care coverage often get sick with illnesses that could be treated at far less cost if caught early. When it comes to dental care, kids with minor tooth problems may end up with dental disease for the rest of their lives.  This can hurt their ability to stay in school or get a job. Adults with missing teeth find it hard to get jobs as well.

But poor dental health can also kill you.  The *Washington Post ran a story about Deamonte Driver, a 12-year old who died of complications stemming from a toothache that could have been cured by an $80 tooth extraction.  Deamonte’s family had lost its Medicaid coverage, and few dentists would even take Medicaid patients anyway.  Bacteria from the tooth spread to Demonte’s brain, leading to hospitalization and two operations.  The total cost of the hospital care was about $250,000, and the hospital was still unable to keep him alive.

The National Consumers League, with our long history of work on health care, recently joined with several other groups including the American Dental Education Association, the Dental Health Foundation, and Oral Health America, in a campaign to underscore the importance of including dental care in health care reform.  The main points of the *Open Letter to Congress we are asking concerned groups to join are these:

• Dental conditions become more serious and are more costly to treat without intervention.
• Untreated dental disease can have fatal and costly consequences.
• Access to dental insurance is extremely difficult for the nation’s poorest. Half of all states’ Medicaid plans provide no or extremely limited dental coverage.
• *130 million Americans, including 16 million children and *80 percent of seniors lack dental insurance coverage.  This is more than twice the total number lacking basic health insurance.
• Poor oral health can complicate diabetes; heart disease; pneumonia; and further study is needed to determine the documented link between gum disease and preterm low birth weight babies.

Having dental insurance can be the difference between simple tooth decay and losing your teeth, or the difference between a toothache and a serious operation.  Dental care is preventive care; it saves our hospitals and taxpayers the high cost of treating life-threatening complications and helps poor and middle class people get and keep jobs.

 

*Links are no longer active as the original sources have removed the content, sometimes due to federal website changes or restructurings.

By Barbara Shaibu, NCL Public Policy Intern

In an era of media saturation, advertisers are constantly on the prowl for the next best medium for reaching and attracting potential customers. Even in the face of grueling economic conditions and the resulting cutbacks in corporate advertising budgets, more than $141 billion was spent in 2008 on advertising in the United States, *according to TNS Media Intelligence. In recognizing the critical role advertising plays in informing consumers about products and services and influencing their decision-making, NCL believes policymakers should take a proactive role in regulating the industry.

The explosion of cable television and the Internet has contributed to the growth of the industry. However, when flipping the channels or surfing the Internet, consumers are bombarded with advertisements with questionable guarantees of weight loss, baldness cures, and business opportunities. NCL believes that new media have fueled an increase in deceptive advertisements that prey on consumers and leave them less knowledgeable about their rights and responsibilities with regards to products and services.

In response to this issue, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has proposed revisions to its Guides Concerning Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising (“the Guides”). The proposed revisions require that advertisers who use testimonials be able to substantiate the claims made by consumers, experts, or celebrity endorsers in the ads. For example, when extreme results are promoted in advertisements (such as for weight-loss or baldness cures), advertisers would be required to clearly disclose the average results actual users of the product received.

Consumer advocates believe that the current disclaimers on such advertisements, such as “Results May Vary” or “Results Not Typical,” are insufficient. Another revision to the Guides would require that experts who testify on the effectiveness of a particular product must actually be qualified to make a claim. For example, an “expert doctor” whose PhD is in philosophy would not be qualified, under the proposed rules, to make a claim about the effectiveness of a diet pill. Lastly, the Commission has proposed significant revisions to section 255.1 (“General Consideration”) and 255.5 (“Disclosure of Material Connection”) of the Guides to address the growing problem of bloggers and other users of social media platforms failing to disclose compensatory relationships with advertisers in product and service reviews and endorsements.

Recently, appearing before a subcommittee of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, NCL Executive Director Sally Greenberg testified on this issue. In her testimony, she expressed NCL’s strong support of the proposed revisions to the Guides, indicating that such revisions were necessary and long overdue. (The Guides were last revised in 1980—when the primary means of disseminating advertisements were via traditional print, radio, and television outlets.)

Greenberg’s testimony addressed how enhanced blogger disclosure would bolster consumer confidence. NCL maintains that consumers should be informed when bloggers post information about a sponsor’s product or write opinions that aren’t necessarily their own. Without reasonable guidelines for disclosure, there is the threat that consumer distrust of the value of product reviews in the blogosphere and other social media platforms will grow substantially.

Greenberg also expressed NCL’s dismay at the undisclosed use of Video News Releases (VNRs) by media organizations and urged the FTC to investigate whether VNRs violate deceptive advertising regulations. “We believe that consumer trust in media has been compromised by the use of VNRs that purport to be news but are really paid advertising,” she noted in her testimony.

For more information on Greenberg’s Senate testimony, click *here. To view a Webcast of the hearings, click here.

 

*Links are no longer active as the original sources have removed the content, sometimes due to federal website changes or restructurings.

Earlier this month, the Washington Post ran *a piece on the terrible working conditions of kiln workers in Pakistan. People spend their entire lives under grueling labor and breathing toxic fumes.  Entire families are indebted to the kiln owners, and the pay is so low that they have little opportunity of ever repaying their debts.  If they move to work at another kiln, their debt follows them. If they try to escape their life of virtual serfdom, they are chased down.The article interviewed a kiln worked named Abdul Wakil, who explained, “The problem is that you can never earn enough to leave. If your wife needs an operation or the rainy seasons lasts too long, you have to borrow from the kiln owners… the debt stays with you, sometimes for your whole life.”

Even children are pulled into this system of bondage through debt.  As young as six, kids are taken out of school to help work on the kiln. Wakil’s son, age 7, is already rolling up mud balls for his father. The article describes the life of Zarfran Khan, “a bright-eyed, 8-year-old quarry boy.”  “I liked school,” he says, “but I don’t go there anymore.”

Born into a life of perpetual debt, these kids never have the option of an education or of trainings in other skills. Knowing only the life of a kiln worker, they end up starting their own families in the same dangerous places, and the cycle repeats itself.

The National Consumers League established the Child Labor Coalition (CLC) in 1989 to end the exploitation of children in the workplace.  It is a top priority for us to spread awareness of the child exploitation in workplaces around the world. NCL and the American Federation of Teachers currently co-chair the CLC.

Progress is being made on child labor rights in the region, as earlier this week the *Dehli High Court in India asked the government to start action to eliminate child labor from the state of Delhi in six months. This is an important step to end child labor exploitation, and we think that this could end up being a model for other state and national governments in the region. We hope that the Pakistani government can place a higher priority on ending child labor exploitation, so that kids like Zarfran will be able to get an education and escape their lives of perpetual poverty.

 

*Links are no longer active as the original sources have removed the content, sometimes due to federal website changes or restructurings.