Obama visit celebrates ACA
GOP voter cites own health care experience in his introduction
It’s not very often that President Barack Obama gets upstaged.
But that’s what happened Thursday at the Bruce-Guadalupe Middle School when Brent Brown of Mosinee, a Republican who voted against the president in two elections, came out to introduce Obama.
“The Affordable Care Act saved my life,” said Brown, 33, who was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease while in college, couldn’t get insurance because of the pre-existing condition and saw his savings drain away.
Obamacare changed all that, he said, helping him gain insurance and receive medical treatment. He wrote the president to tell him. And in front of a Milwaukee crowd he urged Republicans to reconsider their opposition to the signature law, swallow their pride like he did, and “do what is right for the people.”
Obama came to Milwaukee to honor the city for winning the White House’s Healthy Communities Challenge, a nationwide competition among 20 cities. About 38,000 people in the Milwaukee area were newly enrolled in a health plan on the federal marketplace. In all, about 89,000 people in the Milwaukee area selected a 2016 marketplace plan, the White House said.
“That’s enough to fill Lambeau Field, still have a big tailgate party with a lot of folks outside,” Obama said. “And those tailgaters wouldn’t have to worry because Obamacare covers indigestion from too many brats.”
Obama said the nation’s uninsured rate has fallen below 10% and 20 million people have gained insurance because of the Affordable Care Act. And he defended the law against continued attacks from Republicans.
“Facts and evidence don’t comport with their conviction that the ACA means an end to the American way, and repeal has been a rallying cry,” he said. “And they say they’re going to replace, but they still haven’t come up with a replacement.”
Without naming them, Obama said the law was being criticized by key Republicans in Wisconsin: Gov. Scott Walker, House Speaker Paul Ryan and U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson.
“Your governor still refuses to expand Medicaid in this state,” Obama said. “And we could cover another 21,000 Wisconsinites with the stroke of his pen.”
Wisconsin is the only state in the country to use the Affor-
A woman who contacted the Journal Sentinel on Thursday said her 87-year-old mother was found to have the bacteria in her bloodstream before she died on Sunday.
Investigators from the CDC have swabbed the shower head and faucet at the assisted-living home in Muskego where the woman lived, her daughter said. The woman asked that the Journal Sentinel not publish her name or the name of her mother in order to protect their privacy.
The daughter said her mother was lethargic and having a hard time breathing when she was taken to Waukesha Memorial Hospital on Tuesday. She died Sunday in hospice.
Her daughter said her mother had some blood work done a month earlier with concerning results, and was planning to see a specialist soon. She also had battled two sinus infections recently.
Most of the Wisconsin patients have been over age 65 and all of the deaths have occurred in people with severe chronic conditions, such as cancer, renal disease, cirrhosis and diabetes.
Although there have been previous outbreaks of this bacterial infection, the one in Wisconsin appears to be different in two respects. The bacteria is causing severe infections this time. And the cases are not concentrated in one facility, such as a hospital or nursing home, or even in one community.
McKeown said that after learning of the first six cases, the state quickly alerted hospitals and labs. However, the public was not informed until Wednesday night.
“Deciding when to tell the public is a balancing act, between transparency and the fear that sharing the information might create,” McKeown explained.
Elizabethkingia anophelis — named after the American bacteriologist Elizabeth O. King, who first described it in 1959 — poses a challenge for doctors because it is resistant to many antibiotics. However, a few antibiotics are effective and are being used to treat the Wisconsin patients.
The infection gets into the bloodstream, causing a sepsis in the most severe cases. Sepsis is a potentially fatal reaction to infection that disrupts the circulation, diverting blood from the organs that need it most to other areas that have less urgent need.
Often the bacteria can lurk in a sink or in water and spread to those who come in contact with it. Investigators have searched for a common environmental link, and have even considered whether the bacteria could have been present in skin creams.
So far, though, “we haven’t found that common thread,” McKeown said.
The medical community has known about the bacteria for a long time, and its presence in the environment “is ubiquitous,” said Nasia Safdar, medical director of infection control at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics.
But it is people with intensive exposure to medical environments, to medical devices and to fluids who are most at risk. Even in these conditions, infections are rare, Safdar said.
“It is not the kind that is common in the community,” she said. “It is not something one gets just walking around.”
Because Elizabethkingia, a type of bacteria known as Gram-negative, is resistant to many of the antibiotics doctors typically use to treat infections, early detection is considered critical, accordingtotheCDC. Statehealthofficials have alerted doctors and hospitals to be on the lookout for possible cases.
Elizabethkingia bacteria are rarely reported to cause illness in humans.
When the CDC asked facilities in Wisconsin how often they see the infection, most said they see between zero and two cases in a given year.
No cases of the infection that match the Wisconsin strain of the bacteria have been found in Illinois, said Melaney Arnold, a spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Public Health.
No cases have been reported at the UW hospital, Safdar said, though its doctors have provided advice to another medical facility treating a case of the disease.
Leah Huibregtse, a spokeswoman for UnityPoint Health Meriter Hospital in Madison, said two cases of the infection have been treated at the hospital since 2014. She said that for privacy reasons, she could not discuss the specifics of the two cases.