 |
 |
||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
|
||||||||
 |
|
||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
 |
|
||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
|
||||||||
 |
|||||||||||
Daily Archives: 06/10/2013
Three quick things you should know about Obamacare
Three quick things you should know about Obamacare
Hi all —
In the past few days, we’ve received three really interesting new pieces of information about the health care law, and we wanted to share these data points with you so that you get a big picture of how things are changing for the better as the law gets implemented.
First, the Affordable Care Act is helping to make sure that insurance companies and providers have to compete for your business by creating a Health Insurance Marketplace that offers people more choice and control over their insurance choices. An estimated 80 percent of the people who will enroll in the Marketplaces live in states with five or more different insurance companies to choose from — instead of just one or two. We’ve put together a memo about that, and you can read it HERE.
Second, as the health care law is helping move to a system where data helps improve consumer choices and the quality of care, the government is making more information available to consumers, from hospital charges and quality outcomes to regional health care system performance statistics. Those may sound like dry things, but businesses are springing up across the country and using this data to power new innovation. Secretary Sebelius explains this idea in more detail HERE.
Third, we got some great news about the long-term viability of Medicare. Program cost growth, both long term and short, is down — even as new benefits for preventive care and prescription drugs are now helping tens of millions of beneficiaries. Get more information about the report that shows that Medicare is growing stronger HERE.
We’re sharing this information with you because we’re sure you hear people talk about the health care law in your communities all the time, and if you have questions we’d love to answer them.
Ask your questions about the health care law, and we’ll answer some of them next week.
Thanks,
Tara
Tara McGuinness Senior Communications Advisor The White House
P.S. — Earlier today, the President delivered remarks on the health care law in San Jose. Lean more HERE.
Stay Connected
Share this:
Official Google Blog
Posted: 07 Jun 2013 12:50 PM PDT
Dear Google users—
You may be aware of press reports alleging that Internet companies have joined a secret U.S. government program called PRISM to give the National Security Agency direct access to our servers. As Google’s CEO and Chief Legal Officer, we wanted you to have the facts.
First, we have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government—or any other government—direct access to our servers. Indeed, the U.S. government does not have direct access or a “back door” to the information stored in our data centers. We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday.
Second, we provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law. Our legal team reviews each and every request, and frequently pushes back when requests are overly broad or don’t follow the correct process. Press reports that suggest that Google is providing open-ended access to our users’ data are false, period. Until this week’s reports, we had never heard of the broad type of order that Verizon received—an order that appears to have required them to hand over millions of users’ call records. We were very surprised to learn that such broad orders exist. Any suggestion that Google is disclosing information about our users’ Internet activity on such a scale is completely false.
Finally, this episode confirms what we have long believed—there needs to be a more transparent approach. Google has worked hard, within the confines of the current laws, to be open about the data requests we receive. We post this information on our Transparency Report whenever possible. We were the first company to do this. And, of course, we understand that the U.S. and other governments need to take action to protect their citizens’ safety—including sometimes by using surveillance. But the level of secrecy around the current legal procedures undermines the freedoms we all cherish.
Posted by Larry Page, CEO and David Drummond, Chief Legal Officer
You may be aware of press reports alleging that Internet companies have joined a secret U.S. government program called PRISM to give the National Security Agency direct access to our servers. As Google’s CEO and Chief Legal Officer, we wanted you to have the facts.
First, we have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government—or any other government—direct access to our servers. Indeed, the U.S. government does not have direct access or a “back door” to the information stored in our data centers. We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday.
Second, we provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law. Our legal team reviews each and every request, and frequently pushes back when requests are overly broad or don’t follow the correct process. Press reports that suggest that Google is providing open-ended access to our users’ data are false, period. Until this week’s reports, we had never heard of the broad type of order that Verizon received—an order that appears to have required them to hand over millions of users’ call records. We were very surprised to learn that such broad orders exist. Any suggestion that Google is disclosing information about our users’ Internet activity on such a scale is completely false.
Finally, this episode confirms what we have long believed—there needs to be a more transparent approach. Google has worked hard, within the confines of the current laws, to be open about the data requests we receive. We post this information on our Transparency Report whenever possible. We were the first company to do this. And, of course, we understand that the U.S. and other governments need to take action to protect their citizens’ safety—including sometimes by using surveillance. But the level of secrecy around the current legal procedures undermines the freedoms we all cherish.
Posted by Larry Page, CEO and David Drummond, Chief Legal Officer
Share this:
Juan Sepulveda, Democrats.org
Almost every single Republican member of Congress voted to make 800,000 young people who came to the United States through no fault of their own vulnerable to deportation.
That’s a position even further to the right than the one held by the man they nominated for president last year, Mitt Romney — who advocated for self-deportation.
Share this graphic with your friends, and let them know what happened this morning:
Last year, President Obama announced that these young people — sometimes called DREAMers — who contribute to our country by serving in the military or going to college, can request relief and apply for work visas. But now Republicans in Congress are trying to take that away.
President Obama can’t create a permanent solution for these young people by himself — only Congress can do that. Today’s vote was a major step back in the fight for common-sense immigration reform, and we need to hold the House Republicans who voted to put the DREAMers at risk for deportation accountable.
The key question moving forward is whether the GOP-led House moves in the direction of common-sense immigration reform that fixes our broken system and creates a path to earned citizenship, or whether it goes backwards and targets young people that are here through no fault of their own and who are contributing to our communities every day.
Share the above graphic with your friends and family, and encourage them to join us here:
Thanks,
Juan
Juan Sepulveda
Senior Advisor for Hispanic Affairs
Democratic National Committee
P.S. — President Obama will not give up on this issue — and neither will the Democrats fighting for it.
Share this:
Palm Oil ~~ Activists and RAN
For the last month, a team of Palm Oil Activists working with RAN has been going to grocery stores to put “Warning: this snack may contain orangutan extinction” stickers on products containing palm oil that may be tied to rainforest destruction. They’ve talked to store managers about the palm oil in the snack foods they sell, they’ve had conversations with their friends and family about the rainforest destruction that palm oil is driving, and they’ve generally been all-stars at putting the snack industry on notice.
Before we launch into our next round of calling out snack food containing destructive palm oil, we wanted to give you a quick update on where our campaign is at, and invite you to get in on the action: Sign up for the Palm Oil Action Team now and you can be a part of awesomeness like this:
In April, we sent letters to 20 of the leading snack food companies—makers of some of the most popular brand name products in America. We told them that we are giving them this one chance to come clean and commit to breaking the link between their snack foods and controversial palm oil production that is tied to rainforest destruction and human rights violations.
Since then, over 40,000 people have pledged to stand with RAN and demanded that the snack food industry take rainforest destruction and human rights violations out of our snacks. Hundreds of people have signed up to take action with us as part of the Palm Oil Action Team.
Our mission is to convince these 20 companies to commit to only purchasing palm oil that has been produced responsibly, without links to rainforest destruction and human rights violations. So far, nine of the 20 snack food companies responded to our letter. Eight of these companies have agreed to meet with us.
Eleven snack food companies have not responded to our letters. We need to let them know that they can not ignore this important issue any longer.
We’re off to a great start. But we need your help to get orangutan extinction out of America’s snack foods.
Be a Seed for Change 
You must be logged in to post a comment.