MaddowBlog: Why Jeb Bush's line on Alzheimer's matters

[Panich52]

MaddowBlog:

Why Jeb Bush's line on Alzheimer's matters

Like most Republican presidential candidates, former Gov. Jeb Bush (R) tends to emphasize his support for cutting spending on most domestic priorities. But as NBC News reported yesterday, there are apparently exceptions to Bush’s preferred approach.

Presidential candidate Jeb Bush says that the nation should increase funding to find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease and should speed up the approval process for medications to treat it.

The GOP presidential hopeful, who spoke last week about his mother-in-law’s struggle with the disease, proposed the ideas to NBC News Special Anchor Maria Shriver during an email exchange

Bush specifically said, “We need to increase funding to find a cure. We need to reform FDA [regulations] to accelerate the approval process for drug and device approval at a much lower cost. We need to find more community based solutions for care.”
. ...

But in Bush’s case, there are some notable angles to keep in mind. The Tampa Bay Times’ Adam C. Smith, for example, noted that the Florida Republican’s current position is likely to annoy the state lawmakers in both parties who “recall Bush vetoing their budget items targeting Alzheimer’s research and care while at the same time approving tax cuts often mainly for the benefit of specific businesses or wealthier Floridians.”
 
Smith noted several key measures, including Bush vetoing funding in 2003 for daycare centers in Boynton Beach serving 100 adults with Alzheimer’s Disease, and then in 2004 also vetoing funding for construction of outpatient treatment centers connected with the University of South Florida’s Alzheimer’s Research Institute.
 
At the time, the Republican governor called it a “want,” not a “need.”
 
But this also reminded me of something we talked about a couple of years ago, when then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) endorsed increased funding on medical research, in part because of his father’s struggle with a neurological disorder. Jeb Bush’s line – he wants spending cuts, except on Alzheimer’s research, in part because of his mother-in-law’s ailment – is quite similar.

More
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/why-jeb-bushs-line-alzheimers-matters?cid=eml_mra_20150530

[Frustratedlady]

1. For them, it's a need...for everyone else, it's a want.

No surprise there!

[hifiguy]

2. It's never a priority until a repuke's

personal ox gets gored. Disgusting.

[Thinkingabout]

3. Do you remember in the Reagan years he cut funding to Alzheimer's research.

My father had been diagnosed during that time and I thought how cruel to cut funding. In the years afterwards when Reagan began to show signs I thought he should have been pushing funding. I saw the same looks in Reagans face as I had with my father. Until you have experienced seeing a loved one affected by Alzheimer's you may not know but it is terrible.

[sheshe2]

6. I am with you on that, Thinkingabout.

I had to watch the light fade to darkness.

[DawgHouse]

4. I just assumed his family owned stock in a company

that is developing medication to treat it.

[Jackpine Radical]

5. It's always that way. It's an empathy impairment.

Republicans can't empathize with anyone different from them, or outside their narrow world. Not until someone they identify as a member of their very close in-group gets a given disease do they give an shit about that disease or its sufferers, and then only for that specific disease. So, instead of health care and programmatic research, we get this unGodly patchwork of little, individual causes, each with its little foundation.

Lately when various veterans' groups & single-issue charities call on me for donations, I tell them I'm already committed to their cause, and have decided that the most effective thing I can do is send money to the progressive politicians whose positions embrace single-payer health care, more funding for the VA, & biomedical research of all sorts. They don't seem to have an answer ready for that one in their little response files.