Funny how this winds up on Page 9 while this nasty, warmongering monster hits page 1 for a week and may lose his job over nepotism. Ed
"Scaling back family planning funding "would have a tremendous impact because the World Bank is a major lender in the health sector, particularly in the poorest countries," said Bea Edwards, international director at the nonprofit Government Accountability Project." http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-worldbank19apr19,1,1317976.story?coll=la-headlines-nation World Bank may target family planning Repeated absence of references to birth control in internal reports alarms women's health advocates. By Nicole Gaouette, Times Staff Writer April 19, 2007 WASHINGTON - Under beleaguered President Paul D. Wolfowitz, the World Bank may be scaling back its long-standing support for family planning, which many countries consider essential to women's health and the fight against AIDS. In an internal e-mail, the bank's team leader for Madagascar indicated that one of two managing directors appointed by Wolfowitz ordered the removal of all references to family planning from a document laying out strategy for the African nation. And a draft of the bank's long-term health program strategy overseen by the same official makes almost no mention of family planning, suggesting a wider rollback may be underway. The World Bank has traditionally championed birth control and other methods of family planning as a key strategy to improve women's health and economic status. The controversy has raised worries among some bank officials and health advocates that the Bush administration's conservative stance on family planning issues may be seeping into the institution. The managing director, Juan Jose Daboub, denied he was making substantial changes to the bank's policy or that he demanded deletions to the Madagascar report. Daboub, a Roman Catholic with ties to a conservative Salvadoran political party, questioned staff outrage directed at him. "To me this sounds like a storm in a glass of water," he said in a recent interview. "There is no reason understandable for this." Bank staff members dispute Daboub's claim that he made no changes to the Madagascar report. "It's a blatant lie," said one staffer who has seen the document. Like other internal critics, the employee requested anonymity because he said he feared for his job. A copy of the report obtained by the Los Angeles Times shows repeated deletions of references to family planning and contraception. Women's health advocates said the situation was worrisome. "There's mismanagement there," said Carmen Barroso, a regional director for the International Planned Parenthood Federation. "Wolfowitz appointed a guy in a very high position who felt free to censor in line with his personal beliefs. I think that's good grounds for sacking." The controversy has added fuel to anger at the bank over Wolfowitz's management style and his involvement in two unusual and large pay raises given to his girlfriend, Shaha Ali Riza, a bank employee on loan to the State Department. Wolfowitz's problems have been compounded by revelations that Defense Department officials told one of their contractors to hire Riza for a short-term contract while Wolfowitz was the deputy Defense secretary. The Pentagon announced Wednesday that it was looking into the matter. These issues will be on the table as the bank's board of directors meets today to debate Wolfowitz's future. The board reportedly met Tuesday to discuss changes made to a draft document that lays out a long-term "Strategy for Health, Nutrition and Population Results." These papers, periodically revised, set bank policy and shape funding. Overseen by Daboub's office, a draft version raised alarms among some staff members because it contained only one reference to family planning, and that was to a past project. The current policy paper refers to family planning at least 23 times, repeatedly identifying it as a fundamental tool for tackling poverty and disease. Scaling back family planning funding "would have a tremendous impact because the World Bank is a major lender in the health sector, particularly in the poorest countries," said Bea Edwards, international director at the nonprofit Government Accountability Project. The bank lends to private organizations such as the Gates Foundation as well as the United Nations Capital Development Fund. The Bush administration has imposed its beliefs about family planning and abortion on other international organizations. It has cut funding for U.N. agencies that promote family planning, forbidden any group it funds to discuss abortion and pushed abstinence programs. Bank staff members say the Madagascar plan has been finalized and worry that other country plans may be altered as well. Daboub said he would send at least 11 country reports, including Benin, Chad and Cameroon, to the board before December. "I respect the freedom of our partner countries to decide" on family planning, he wrote in an e-mail to colleagues meant to quell their anger. Daboub said he did not ask that family planning be struck from the Madagascar report. "It is not true," he said. Yet internal e-mails obtained by the Government Accountability Project appear to indicate otherwise. Referring to Daboub as the "MD," an acronym for his title as managing director, Madagascar country program coordinator Lilia Burunciuc wrote to colleagues on March 8, 2007: "One of the requests received from the MD was to take out all references to family planning. We did that." Burunciuc added that this is "a potential problem for us" because Madagascar had made a "strong request for help" on family planning in the document, which serves as a three- to four-year plan for the goals a country wants to achieve with the bank's help. Madagascar identified improved family planning as one of its national commitments. Yet a copy of the report includes edits and deletions, which a bank staffer said were made by Daboub's office, showing that specific targets to boost contraceptive use were cut and broader aims were rewritten. In one graphic, the words "improved quality of health services to ensure easy access, affordability and reliability" were inserted in place of "improved access and provision of contraceptives." [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** From: "Hagit Borer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, April 20, 2007 3:05 AM Subject: URGENT !!!!!! Support the Freedom of Choice Act Petition In light of the Supreme Court decision, we must take action to protect women's rights - this means massive pressure on Congress to pass new legislation. Please go to this site and sign petition - and forward to your lists. http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/677700153?z00m=9426090<l=1177029115 *** http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/20/opinion/20krugman.html?th&emc=th The Plot Against Medicare By PAUL KRUGMAN NY Times Op-Ed: April 20, 2007 The plot against Social Security failed: President Bush's attempt to privatize the system crashed and burned when the public realized what he was up to. But the plot against Medicare is faring better: the stealth privatization embedded in the Medicare Modernization Act, which Congress literally passed in the dead of night back in 2003, is proceeding apace. Worse yet, the forces behind privatization not only continue to have the G.O.P. in their pocket, but they have also been finding useful idiots within the newly powerful Democratic coalition. And it's not just politicians with an eye on campaign contributions. There's no nice way to say it: the NAACP and the League of United Latin American Citizens have become patsies for the insurance industry. To appreciate what's going on, you need to know what has been happening to Medicare in the last few years. The 2003 Medicare legislation created Part D, the drug benefit for seniors - but unlike the rest of Medicare, Part D isn't provided directly by the government. Instead, you can get it only through a private drug plan, provided by an insurance company. At the same time, the bill sharply increased payments to Medicare Advantage plans, which also funnel Medicare funds through insurance companies. As a result, Medicare - originally a system in which the government paid people's medical bills - is becoming, instead, a system in which the government pays the insurance industry to provide coverage. And a lot of the money never makes it to the people Medicare is supposed to help. In the case of the drug benefit, the private drug plans add an extra, costly layer of bureaucracy. Worse yet, they have much less ability to bargain for lower drug prices than government programs like Medicaid and the Veterans Health Administration. Reasonable estimates suggest that if Congress had eliminated the middlemen, it could have created a much better drug plan - one without the notorious "doughnut hole," the gap in coverage once your annual expenses exceed $2,400 per year - at no higher cost. Meanwhile, those Medicare Advantage plans cost taxpayers 12 percent more per recipient than standard Medicare. In the next five years that subsidy will cost more than $50 billion - about what it would cost to provide all children in America with health insurance. Some of that $50 billion will be passed on to seniors in extra benefits, but a lot of it will go to overhead, marketing expenses and profits. With the Democratic victory last fall, you might have expected these things to change. But the political news over the last few days has been grim. First, the Senate failed to end debate on a bill - in effect, killing it - that would have allowed Medicare to negotiate over drug prices. The bill was too weak to have allowed Medicare to get large discounts. Still, it would at least have established the principle of using government bargaining power to get a better deal. But in spite of overwhelming public support for price negotiation, 42 senators, all Republicans, voted no on allowing the bill to go forward. If we can't even establish the principle of negotiation, a true repair of the damage done in 2003 - which would require having Medicare offer seniors the option of getting their drug coverage directly, without involving the insurance companies - seems politically far out of reach. At the same time, attempts to rein in those Medicare Advantage payments seem to be running aground. Everyone knew that reducing payments would be politically tough. What comes as a bitter surprise is the fact that minority advocacy groups are now part of the problem, with both the NAACP and the League of United Latin American Citizens sending letters to Congressional leaders opposing plans to scale back the subsidy. What seems to have happened is that both groups have been taken in by insurance industry disinformation, which falsely claims that minorities benefit disproportionately from this subsidy. It's a claim that has been thoroughly debunked in a study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities - but apparently the truth isn't getting through. Public opinion is strongly in favor of universal health care, and for good reason: fear of losing health insurance has become a constant anxiety of the middle class. Yet even as we talk about guaranteeing insurance to all, privatization is undermining Medicare - and people who should know better are aiding and abetting the process. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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