People who donate a kidney, part of their liver, or bone marrow for transplant surgeries can receive tax breaks in 17 states; however, a new study finds that incentives did not increase the number of organ donations. That does not mean states should end the tax breaks, the report’s researchers said. Instead, states should focus on improving them, said Dr. Atheendar Venkataramani, a Massachusetts General Hospital resident who led the study. Increasing the amounts could be one change, according to NPR:

Typically states offer a deduction of up to $10,000 from taxable income. For a typical family that translates to less than $1,000 in reduced taxes. But the financial burden for a living kidney donor can range from $907 to $3,089, according to one study.

The tax incentives are intended to defray the organ donor’s cost in medical care, travel and lost wages. By federal statute, it’s illegal to pay someone for the organ itself.

Authors of the new study suggest increasing the value of the tax deductions or converting them into a tax credit, which would lower the donor’s tax bill on a dollar-for-dollar basis. So far only Iowa offers donors a tax credit.

There’s also reason to think that few people in states with tax credits know about them. Study authors found that even organ donation advocate groups were unaware. So were people being evaluated as living donors, including even the most educated and informed prospective donors.

“These tax incentives cost the states very little, so there is no real reason to do away with them,” Venkataramani said.

With more than 100,000 people on waiting lists, officials consider how to increase the number of donations from living donors. At the same time, rising obesity rates could lead to fewer organ donations. More than 60 percent of Americans support the idea of compensating donors with credits for health care needs, but this new report shows that tax breaks will not immediately lead to more organ transplants.

Tampa, Florida — As Republicans gathered for the final day of their national convention here in Tampa, a small but vocal group of doctors, medical students and patients marched in the heat to deliver thousands of petitions in support of the Affordable Care Act.

One of the marchers, Kenya Wheeler, was a grad student last year when he was diagnosed with CNS lymphoma, a form of blood cancer in his brain. Despite being covered through his university’s insurance plan, Wheeler quickly hit the lifetime cap on his coverage. On Thursday, he marched as a representative for thousands of other patients who stand to benefit when the lifetime cap provision of Obamacare goes into effect in 2014.

Another marcher, Dr. Donald Nguyen, is a pediatric urologist in Dayton, Ohio. For much of the march, he helped carry a banner reading “Patients Over Politics”, a mantra shouted out by the participants and plastered on signs, stickers, brochures and disposable paper fans handed out to combat the withering heat.

“I am sincerely sick and tired of the political fighting over patients’ health,” he said. “The Affordable Care Act passed in Congress. It was upheld by the Supreme Court. Now it’s time to focus on making sure patients receive proper care.”

Check out some photos from the rally:

Dr. Robert Luedecke, an anesthesiologist from San Antonio, Texas, spoke at the end of the parade. His 23-year-old son is not eligible for insurance at his current job, but thanks to provisions in Obamacare, he will be able to remain on his father’s plan for three more years.

Luedecke himself stands to benefit from Obamacare, too. A pre-existing condition (a problem with his neck) makes obtaining health insurance incredibly difficult for him. Even though he’s a doctor, he’s had to enroll in his wife’s plan.

“Do you really want to take these benefits away?” he asked. “It’s detestable.”

Hurricane Isaac tore through Louisiana this week, flooding sections of the state and leaving hundreds of thousands of residents without power. Isaac came right on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the storm that devastated New Orleans seven years ago, but fortunately did not impact the region with the same magnitude. As the Times-Picayune points out, though, Louisiana’s health care system is still struggling to recover from the damage wreaked by this week’s storm:

Overall, 21.5 percent of the state’s nursing homes were operating on generator power after losing electrical service, state officials said. Across the state on Thursday, at least 59 nursing homes housing 6,366 residents, along with 36 hospitals, were operating on generator power.Officials were planning to evacuate six more nursing homes across the state that were endangered by floodwaters. [...]

Another concern for health officials was what to do about residents who rely on home medical equipment, many of whom did not evacuate the city and lost power during the storm. A medical special needs shelter was set up in New Orleans on Thursday to provide electricity and support with the help of federal disaster medical teams.

City officials worked well into the night Wednesday for a third night to help bring back a range of healthcare assets that, [New Orleans' health commissioner] said, “often get forgotten.” Those included dialysis units, psychiatric hospitals, and substance abuse and mental health living programs.

The city’s emergency rooms saw an influx of patients over the past few days, and medical professionals had to pool their resources to cope with evacuations, blackouts, and compromised facilities. One hospital CEO noted that the public health sector in Louisiana is able to be resourceful partly because they are already accustomed to dealing with shortages and budget cuts.

While Isaac was hitting the Gulf Coast, Republicans were gathering at their national convention in Tampa, focusing most of their time on decrying government assistance’s role in bolstering the success of American individuals and programs. However, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) adopted somewhat of a different attitude after contending with the hurricane’s effect on his state — he reached out to President Obama for more federal aid to provide emergency disaster relief services for his constituents. His party has endorsed a budget that would slash these very funds.

The U.S. is going through the worst outbreak of West Nile virus in history, a problem likely to be exacerbated by climate change. Today, new research from the University of Michigan suggests that climate change is also likely to spread the flu:

[C]limate change could upset the carefully choreographed interactions between ruddy turnstone shorebirds and the horseshoe crabs that provide the bulk of their food during the birds’ annual stopover.

Climate change caused disruptions to the well-timed interplay between the birds and crabs could lead to an increase in the avian flu infection rate among ruddy turnstones and resident ducks, a Michigan University statement said.

Researchers say because Delaware Bay is a crossroads for many bird species traveling between continents, an increase in the avian infection rate there could conceivably help spread novel subtypes of the influenza virus among North American wild bird populations.

“We’re not suggesting that our findings necessarily indicate an increased risk to human health,” said Rohani, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, a professor of complex systems and a professor of epidemiology at the School of Public Health.

“But every single pandemic influenza virus that has been studied has included gene segments from avian influenza viruses. So from that perspective, understanding avian influenza transmission in its natural reservoir is, in itself, very important,” Rohani said.

The common flu may sound harmless (though it still kills thousands of Americans per year), flu pandemics are deadly serious. The 2009 H1N1 pandemic killed between between 151,700 and 575,400 people, according to an estimate from Lancet. While this research is new, a longstanding and robust body of work suggests that global warming is likely to increase the incidence of a variety of illnesses.

A new prong in the crusade against women’s reproductive freedom, according to a profile in the Colorado Independent, is an outsized concern for women who may be coerced into getting an abortion that they don’t want. Anti-choice activists are pushing legislation they say will help address the alarming rates of coerced abortions in the U.S. — despite a lack of scientific evidence to bolster their claims — and often employ testimonies from women who regret their abortions to make their point.

So far this year, at least 11 states have considered anti-abortion legislation that include provisions about coercion. Arizona, Wisconsin, and Michigan have already passed anti-coercion provisions into law. In the other eight states, the anti-coercion policies are often part of larger restrictions and regulations intended to limit women’s access to abortion, such as requiring doctors to do mandatory screenings to make sure a woman isn’t being coerced into the procedure against her will. Advocates claim they are fighting for the best interests of women:

Supporters of anti-coercion abortion bills argue that these policies are meant to protect women. But critics claim that – like laws that single out abortion clinics by imposing difficult-to-meet construction requirements – anti-coercion policies are really meant to make accessing abortion more complicated in the short term, and illegal in the long term. [...]

Legal scholars, such as Yale University law professor Reva Siegel, have described the rationale underpinning these types of laws as the “woman-protective” anti-abortion argument. Siegel, who has written extensively about anti-coercion efforts in South Dakota and elsewhere, observed in a 2008 Duke Law Journal article that the anti-abortion movement has begun to “supplant the constitutional argument ‘Abortion kills a baby’ with a new claim ‘Abortion hurts women.’”

But framing anti-coercion legislation as the best way to protect women is a distortion. In fact, many public health professionals believe that anti-coercion abortion restrictions do a disservice to vulnerable women because focusing on abortion bypasses the broader issue — domestic and sexual violence, which is often the root cause of coercion. Showing true concern for the women who are at risk for coercion means addressing the dangerous culture of domestic abuse within intimate relationships.

However, the restrictive anti-choice legislation that far-right politicians advocate often undermines this very goal. The official platform of the Republican party includes a stringent abortion ban with no exceptions even the case of rape, which means that women who are in coercive and sexually abusive relationships would be forced to carry their rapist’s child to term. If anti-choice activists are genuinely concerned about women’s autonomy and freedom, punishing clinics who provide access to the medical services they need — including Planned Parenthood, which is often the biggest target in campaigns against coerced abortion — is certainly not the way to go about it.

TAMPA, Florida — There should be no federal law preventing insurance companies from denying coverage to leukemia patients, according to a leading Republican congresswoman.

In an interview with ThinkProgress, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) argued that, contra Obamacare’s new protections, insurance companies should not be prevented by federal law from denying insurance to people with pre-existing conditions, including those with leukemia. “What you don’t have to do is federalize everything,” Blackburn, one of the GOP leaders in the health care fight, explained. She preferred state-run high-risk pools instead, but refused to entertain the idea that it should be illegal for insurance companies to deny care for those with pre-existing conditions.

KEYES: Should that be a federal law that insurance companies can’t deny insurance to, say, leukemia patients?

BLACKBURN: Republicans have for years worked on how to handle pre-existing conditions. Some of the states have state-run high-risk pools and those have been very successful. [...]

KEYES: So you’re saying a state thing rather than a federal law?

BLACKBURN: Yeah. And when you look at the way some of these risk pools have been handled, they’ve been handled at the state level, some at the local level, but I think that you’ve got some models there for doing it. Not every good idea originates in Washington DC. [...] There’s a different way to handle it.

KEYES: Rather than a one-size-fits-all law?

BLACKBURN: Handling pre-existing conditions, having something to handle that, was a Republican idea. What you don’t have to do is federalize everything. That’s what Democrats want to do. They want to bring it all into Washington D.C.

Listen to it:

Blackburn isn’t the only one expressing this view. In June, Indiana Senate nominee Richard Mourdock (R) declared that businesses should be allowed to deny health insurance to cancer patients if they wanted. In an interview with ThinkProgress later that month, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) echoed the same belief, arguing that employers should be permitted to deny insurance to cancer patients because “our nation was based on freedom.” In fact, 239 Republicans (and five Democrats) voted again last month to repeal the landmark health reform law that will make it illegal for insurance companies to deny coverage for people with pre-existing conditions.

MSNBC host Krystal Ball raked Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) over the coals Wednesday afternoon for resorting to an incoherent and disingenuous right-wing talking point on Medicare. Steve Kornacki asked Rep. Duffy what will happens to seniors when the premium support Paul Ryan would provide them under his altered form of Medicare doesn’t keep up with the costs of health care. Duffy first evaded the question — by praising Paul Ryan for inspiring a serious debate on Medicare, ironically enough — then switched to accusing Obama of taking $716 billion of seniors’ money out of Medicare. That’s when Ball jumped in:

SEAN DUFFY: They have a choice in our plan. They can pick traditional Medicare or they can go with premium support. But the way that the president has it today, they won’t get there. They won’t get there because the program is going broke. And when a program is going broke like Medicare, why would President Obama take $716 billion out of the program? Our seniors paid for it, they deserve it.

KRYSTAL BALL: Congressman, I gotta stop you there, because that is just really misleading and untrue. The same $716 billion in savings from Medicare is also in the Paul Ryan budget plan, which again you voted on. [...]

DUFFY: $716 billion in savings that would stay in Medicare to preserve and protect it is one thing. But to take that money out of Medicare and use it for someone else, that is a shame. [...]

BALL: And who is that somebody else? I think that is such an underhanded tactic. Who is that somebody else?

That $716 billion in cutting the growth in Medicare comes from insurers. It’s not reducing benefits, it’s reducing a taxpayer giveaway to insurers and hospitals. And you know that, and that’s why you voted for it in the Paul Ryan plan.

DUFFY: If the president says he can save $716 billion, our seniors paid for that, they’re entitled to it. Why does he lift that money out and use it for somebody else when the program is going bankrupt?

BALL: They’re getting the same benefits. They’re increased benefits. Nothing is being taken away.

Watch it:

Ball is correct: the $716 billion in Medicare savings in both Ryan and Obama’s budget are not cuts to seniors’ benefits. They are in the form of cuts and reforms to the reimbursement rates Medicare pays providers and hospitals for those benefits.

Because the Medicare cuts are aimed at provider payments, they do not “take $716 billion” out of the program. In fact, these savings make the dollars in Medicare go further by spending fewer of those dollars at a time to buy the same benefits. That’s why Obama’s plan actually extends the solvency of the Medicare trust fund, delaying the date the fund runs out, while Romney’s insistence on undoing the cuts also undoes that delay.

So when Duffy suggests the cuts are acceptable only if they “stay in Medicare to preserve and protect it,” he’s not even incorrect, much less correct. He’s simply nonsensical.

TAMPA, Florida — No employer-sponsored health insurance. High-risk profession. Young adults with unsteady wages.

If there are people in one industry that will benefit from most of the protections in Obamacare, it’s strippers.

Countless columns have been written in the past month about how strip clubs in Tampa have been gearing up for the Republican National Convention, even importing additional dancers to meet expected demand. As Republican convention-goers enjoy Tampa’s nightlife, however, the untold story is how the policies they want to implement tomorrow will hurt the very strippers they patronize tonight.

“I can’t wait for 2014,” Dixie, a petite blonde with a subtle Southern accent told ThinkProgress, “because then I won’t have the pre-existing condition issue.” Dixie (who declined to give her last name) is quite allergic to nickel. It’s a pre-existing condition that, as for many Americans, has made finding affordable health insurance difficult. “Seriously? Even allergies?” she asked rhetorically, disgusted at insurance companies classifying her as having a pre-existing condition.

Like most strippers, Dixie isn’t offered health insurance by her employer. Though she’s worked at the same club for three years, she has no choice but to purchase expensive health insurance as an individual, made all the more complicated by her pre-existing condition. Despite conservative views on most issues, Dixie is a fan of Obamacare’s protections. “I think that’s really going to help a lot of Americans,” she said. “There’s no reason you should be denied health care for a pre-existing condition.”

There are a number of other factors preventing many strippers from getting affordable, quality care. Pre-existing conditions are a widespread issue, and the nature of the work can be fairly risky from a health perspective. They often struggle to make ends meet, like Taylor, a Tampa dancer who told ThinkProgress that she doesn’t have health insurance because she just can’t afford it as an individual.

Obamacare addresses all these factors, not just for strippers, but for millions around the country who struggle to get affordable insurance. It gives tax credits to small businesses that offers their employees health insurance, and creates new marketplaces for individuals who want to purchase comprehensive coverage, with subsidies for lower-income individuals. The new law also allows young adults to stay on their parents’ plan until they turn 26. Finally, it has a host of consumer protections, including preventing insurers from discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions, banning them from charging women more just because of their gender, and offering women preventive services like contraception at no additional cost.

Yet it’s these exact protections that would vanish if Republicans in Tampa get their wish. The newly-approved party platform calls for repealing Obamacare in its entirety, and numerous GOP politicians have argued that businesses should be allowed to deny health insurance to people with pre-existing conditions.

Stacey Swimme, co-founder of the Sex Workers Outreach Project, which helps prevent violence against sex workers and advocate for their rights, praised the impact that Obamacare will have on strippers. “The Affordable Care Act may be the best opportunity we have to access an individual, affordable healthcare plan for ourselves and our children,” she told ThinkProgress.

Unfortunately for strippers like Dixie, their Republican clientele in Tampa this week may prevent them from ever enjoying that opportunity to get affordable health insurance.

Now that the Republican Party has officially endorsed a stringent abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest, it’s worth considering what widespread state-level abortion bans would mean for women across the country. According to new research, giving states the power to determine their own abortion legislation would create further divisions along racial and socioeconomic lines, since it would have an outsized impact on limiting the procedure for low-income women of color.

Researchers at Yale University and the City University of New York imagined a hypothetical situation in which Roe v. Wade was repealed and states were left to determine their own abortion legislation, projecting scenarios where either 31 or 46 states with anti-choice lawmakers banned the procedure. Within those two scenarios, researchers examined the average distance that women in each state would need to travel to get to the nearest abortion clinic. Since distance can be a huge deterrent in abortion access, they suggest that this data can be used to estimate future abortion rates across the country:

Researchers extrapolated the data on distance to find that the abortion rates among minorities would be 1.8 points lower than the rates among white women in the scenario involving a 31-state ban. Under the hypothetical 46-state ban, the difference between white women and nonwhite women would be even more stark, at 12.3 points. This suggests that poorer, nonwhite women would struggle more than their privileged counterparts to access a safe, affordable abortion procedure — potentially leading those women to seek harmful, illegal alternatives.

Despite the Republican politicians who tout rolling back Roe v. Wade as a panacea to abortion rates, leaving abortion laws up to the states would — in addition to severely limiting women’s reproductive freedom — introduce a host of new problems to contend with. By threatening equal access to medical services like abortion, state-level abortion bans would only further reinforce the racial and socioeconomic inequality that is already prevalent across the country.

Mitt Romney’s sister assured “Women for Mitt” that if her brother is elected President, he won’t pursue the anti-abortion policies he espouses on the campaign trail.

In an interview with National Journal, Mitt’s sister Jane Romney said that her brother won’t “be touching” the issue of abortion:

Mitt Romney would never make abortions illegal as president, Jane Romney said when National Journal asked her about the subject after a “Women for Mitt” event. “He’s not going to be touching any of that,” she said. “It’s not his focus.”

Democratic warnings that abortion rights are under threat are an ungrounded fear tactic, Jane Romney said. “That’s what women are afraid of, but that’s conjured,” she said. “Personally, I don’t think abortion should be used as a football in the political arena.” [...]

[The Republican platform] does not specify any exceptions.

But as Jane Romney put it, “Mitt’s much more in the middle” when it comes to abortion.

Though he recently told CBS News that he supports abortion in cases of rape, incest, and when the “health and life” of the woman is in danger, Romney has sought to cultivate a anti-abortion image that resonates with the Republican base. He’s said he’d be “delighted” to sign a bill banning all abortions, and has pledged to appoint to the Supreme Court conservative judges who would likely overturn Roe v Wade, and allow sates to outlaw the procedure.

Jane and Mitt Romney might not be ideological equivalents. At least on one occasion, Jane donated $250 to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), the pro-choice Democrat from California.

Although Republican governors across the country have pledged to reject the expansion of the Medicaid program under Obamacare — turning down nearly $300 billion in federal funds and leaving millions of low-income Americans without coverage — they are standing in direct opposition to medical professionals. Hospital officials across the country have advocated for expanding the program to extend coverage to Americans with incomes up to 133 percent of the poverty line.

Hospital officials in Iowa unanimously support expanding the Medicaid program in their state, warning that Gov. Terry Branstad’s (R-IA) decision to turn down the funds will have “crippling” effects on their hospitals:

The Iowa Hospital Association board recently voted unanimously to support expansion of Medicaid, which it termed a “historic opportunity to significantly address the plight of uninsured Iowans.” Association members plan to aggressively lobby legislators on the subject.

The group said turning down the federal money could cripple hospitals. The association said hospital leaders nationally agreed to billions of dollars in Medicare payment cuts because they expected the overall health reform program to relieve them of much of the financial burden of caring for people who now lack health insurance. [...]

Cuts to that program “are real, whether or not a state chooses to expand its Medicaid program,” the hospital association said. If Medicaid is not expanded, the hospitals would lose $2.3 billion in Medicare money over the next decade while still bearing much of the cost of caring for poor, uninsured patients, the association said.

In response to the hospital association’s vote, Branstad’s office reiterated the governor’s position against Medicaid expansion, saying his previous comments on the issue illustrate why he remains opposed to expanding the program. “We’re willing to help people who are willing to help themselves. But we’re certainly not going to buy into this federal effort,” Branstad said last month. “We’re going to fight it in every way we can.”

Other states also understand the benefits of Medicaid expansion. In Missouri, hospital officials report that hospitals would stand to lose up to $400 million if Gov. Jay Nixon (D-MO) decides against implementing the expansion. In Texas, where Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) has already pledged to reject the federal funds for Medicaid, state officials are taking matters into their own hands and considering setting up their own expansions of the program on a local level. If GOP governors hold firm in their opposition to the program’s expansion, despite the increasing popular support for Obamacare’s Medicaid provision among both the general public and healthcare employees, more states may follow Texas’ example.