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Senate Dems pass sweeping health care, tax, climate bill Tribune Content Agency
Anne Wernikoff for CalMatters file (2019)
Mental health care workers picket outside of Sacramento Medical Center in protest of long wait times for patients
and overwhelming caseloads at Kaiser Permanente facilities. Dec. 16, 2019.
Kaiser mental health workers signal strike Jocelyn Wiener
‘Right now we’re at a crisis point. Things are worse than ever.’
CALMATTERS
A union representing 2,000 Kaiser Northern California mental health workers this morning announced plans for an open-ended strike beginning Aug. 15. Among the reasons union representatives outlined: high clinician workloads and patients waiting weeks or even months for mental health care. Even as
— Sarah Soroken, a therapist at Kaiser Fairfield
demand for care has surged, frustrated therapists are abandoning the health giant, said union spokesperson Matt Artz.
“We don’t take striking lightly,” Sal Rosselli, president of the National Union of Healthcare Workers, which represents the clinicians, said in a prepared statement, “but it’s time to take a stand and make Kaiser spend some of its billions on mental health care.” Deb Catsavas, a senior vice president at Kaiser Permanente, said in an emailed statement that the threat of a strike is “sadly, a See Strike, Page A8
WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats on Sunday passed a sweeping health care, tax and climate change bill that will allow Medicare to negotiate prescription drug costs – a significant political win as the party tries to send a message before the midterm election that it is delivering on its promises. The drug price plan is the centerpiece of the Democrats’ bill, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. The measure would also establish incentives to combat the climate crisis, impose new taxes on corporations and provide $4 billion for the Bureau of Reclamation to combat drought in the West – a last-minute addition. The bill, approved via a fast-track legislative procedure that didn’t allow for a Republican filibuster, passed on a 50-50 vote, with Vice President Kamala Harris
breaking the tie. No Republicans supported the bill. It will now go before the House, where a vote is expected Friday. Before passage, senators slogged through dozens of unsuccessful votes on amendments put forward mainly by Republicans to try to stop the bill or at least make it politically difficult for Democrats. Republicans succeeded in killing one provision that violated Senate budget rules. It would have capped the price of insulin at $35 a month in the private insurance market. President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats sorely need the legislative victory as they head toward the midterm elections, which traditionally favor the party out of power. The package comes at the end of a remarkably See Senate, Page A8
Nature can affect human well-being in many ways The Washington Post
Salwan Georges/The Washington Post (file)
An elk walks past the Roosevelt Arch, near the north entrance to Yellowstone National Park in Gardiner, Mont., June 20.
Humans have long benefited from nature’s offerings. But beyond being an essential source of food, water and raw materials, the natural world can contribute to people’s overall well-being through a host of intangible effects–and, according to new research, there are many more critical connections between humans and nature than one
might think. After reviewing hundreds of scientific papers on “cultural ecosystem services,” or the nonmaterial benefits of nature, researchers have identified 227 unique pathways through which people’s interactions with nature can positively or negatively affect well-being, according to a paper published Friday in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances.
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The paper is believed to be the first of its kind to provide a comprehensive framework for understanding and quantifying the complex ways in which people and nature are connected. And its findings could have significant real-world implications, said Lam Thi Mai Huynh, the paper’s lead author and a doctoral candidate at the University of Tokyo. “For the modernized
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world, people tend to disconnect from nature,” she said. “For ecosystem management, the best solution, the most sustainable solution, is to connect people back to nature and let the local people be the ones who help to maintain and manage the ecosystem services.” For Huynh, the ambitious research–an undertaking that even her academic supervisor
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See Nature, Page A8
