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Whatever happened to a women's choice?  Yes, the health of the baby is important but so is the birth experience for the mother.  I had a baby 3 month ago and, we ultimately decided to have our child at Providence St. Vincent because it made my husband most comfortable.  But we used a midwife and it was the most amazing experience.  My husband was adamant that we go to a hospital "in case something went wrong" but I think he'd be okay with a homebirth now after the experience we had with the midwife in the hospital.

In my mind, a midwife focuses on letting the mother have a good birth experience and delivering a healthy baby.  An OB is only focused on the later (s/he is only there for the final few minutes of labor and tends to be very quick to jump to a C-section)

posted 2 years, 10 months ago
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I consciously choose BPA-free containers when I shop and generally try to avoid plastic if possible.  I support this bill but certainly wish that the EPA would take a more strict stance in dealing with container additives.  The FDA must approve the container that your bottle of drugs comes in to make sure that it doesn't contain "leachables" - why can't that occur for the materials that everyone uses on a daily basis? 

posted 3 years, 4 months ago
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The reason I listen to OPB (and have been an NPR listener for years) is because all news is presented.  Unfortunately this is a time of less than great news.  The world is not all rainbows and butterflies and it's the less-than-wonderful news that spurs me onto action to improve that situation.  Please, please, please, do not change your format to include all the puppies and unicorns stories and avoid reality.

posted 4 years, 3 months ago
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I have worked for some of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, most recently with AstraZeneca. Their lobbying organization is so powerful (in third quarter alone, they spent $1.3 million on lobbying alone). They feel that any change to the payor-payee system will threaten their profit margin and they will spend whatever it takes to defend that. Unless Congress and Pres-Elect Obama is willing to reject the drug company PAC money and stand up to this organization, I fear that the status-quo will remain in place.

One thing though... the drug companies provide MUCH better health insurance than any other industry that my husband or I have ever worked for. Premiums of $17/month for both of us that is a very high level of coverage, no discrimination between generic and branded drugs, great preventive care (on-site mammograms, skin cancer checks, bloodwork, etc.). I certainly wish I still had that coverage!

posted 4 years, 5 months ago
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I'm an avid recycler and a recent transplant from Delaware. Delaware has a deposit on plastic and glass beverage bottles but I found it impossible to redeem them. I took them to my local grocery store (a big national chain) and it took them 15 minutes before they knew what to do. Until they offered curbside recycling in 2005 (at $6/month), I often just tossed my recyclables because I didn't know what else to do with them.

The piles of deposit containers in my garage annoys me and when I go to redeem them and the machines don't work, I'm annoyed even more. I'd put them out with my recycling, but then our neighborhood is crawling with people rooting through our recycling bins in search of those elusive depositable containers. I'd recycle with or without a deposit but I'm not sure others would. Isn't there some way that the curbside collection could credit our accounts with the deposit items in our bin so we don't have to waste fuel to take them somewhere?

posted 5 years ago
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