Iraq death toll

Preisty Saint

VATICAN CITY – A 19th-century Belgian priest who ministered to leprosy patients in Hawaii will be declared a saint Oct. 11 at a Vatican ceremony presided over by Pope Benedict XVI.

The Rev. Damien de Veuster's canonization date was set Saturday during a meeting between Benedict and cardinals at the Apostolic Palace.

De Veuster will be canonized along with four other people, the Vatican said.

In July, Benedict approved a miracle attributed to the priest's intercession, declaring that a Honolulu woman's recovery in 1999 from terminal lung cancer was the miracle needed for him to be made a saint.

He was beatified — a step toward sainthood — in 1995 by Pope John Paul II.

Born Joseph de Veuster in 1840, he took the name Damien and went to Hawaii in 1864 to join other missionaries of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. Nine years later he began ministering to leprosy patients on the remote Kalaupapa peninsula of Molokai island, where some 8,000 people had been banished amid an epidemic in Hawaii in the 1850s.

The priest eventually contracted the disease, also known as Hansen's disease, and died in 1889 at age 49.

The Rev. Alfred Bell, who spearheaded Damien's canonization cause, said the priest had given his all to help those in need. "He went there (to Hawaii) knowing that he could never return," Bell told Vatican Radio. "He suffered a lot, but he stayed."

Bell said Damien's concern for others was a model for all the faithful today, particularly the young.

"Father Damien's example helps us to not forget those who are forgettable in the world," he said.

The Vatican's saint-making procedures require that a miracle attributed to the candidate's intercession be confirmed in order for him or her to be beatified. Damien de Veuster was beatified after the Vatican declared that the 1987 recovery of a nun of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary was a miracle. The nun recovered from an illness after praying to Damien.

After beatification, a second miracle is needed for sainthood.

The Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints said Audrey Toguchi's 1999 recovery from lung cancer defied medical explanation, and in July, Benedict agreed. Toguchi, too, had prayed to Damien.

The Vatican announced the date for Damien's canonization and that of nine other people. Five will be declared saints at a ceremony April 26, five others, including Damien, on Oct. 11.

02/21/09

Obama-Healthcare

WASHINGTON – Now for the hard part. Even if the national credit card is maxed out and partisanship remains the rule for Washington's political tribes, President Barack Obama and Congress are plunging ahead with a health care overhaul.

This week, Obama will start the dialogue on how to increase coverage, restrain costs and improve quality.

Whether a bill can get through Congress and to Obama this year is uncertain. For half a century, the track record on health care has been one of missed opportunities, spectacular failures and hard-won incremental gains.

Obama plans to stress the need for major changes in his address to Congress on Tuesday, administration officials say. He quickly will follow up with a budget that includes a commitment to expand coverage for the uninsured. A White House summit on health care is being planned in coming weeks.

"They don't intend to blink. They intend to plow ahead," said health economist Len Nichols of the nonpartisan New America Foundation. "Health reform is seen as essential to balancing the federal budget and economic recovery in the long run."

People in the U.S. spend $2.4 trillion a year on health care, or about $7,900 per person. That's more than twice as much per capita as in other advanced countries. But few would claim those dollars are buying good value. The costs are a staggering burden for taxpayers, employers and families, and the recession is leaving more people without insurance.

Yet even a self-described optimist such as Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., says he has doubts about prospects for overhauling health care. "It needs to be done up front and quickly," said Enzi, the senior Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. "I'm not so sure that we haven't already lost that, with so many other things coming in and weighing us down."

In the 1990s, President Bill Clinton took the better part of a year to deliver a 1,300-page health care bill to Congress and later waved his veto pen at lawmakers who might have given him half a loaf. He got nothing. Obama has shown a tendency to be more pragmatic.

Administration and congressional officials say Obama will lay out a vision and see if Congress can make the details work. The Senate has gotten an early start and is shaping up as the proving ground for legislation.

"The Obama administration has said they are going to give the Senate a very wide berth," said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who for years has tried to get Democrats and Republicans working together. "There are areas in which there is going to be spirited debate. But there are four or five major areas where there's a lot of common ground."

Polls show most people support coverage for all and believe government should help guarantee it. But what looks like consensus starts to break down once thorny details such as costs and the government's influence on the doctor-patient relationship come into the picture.

Administration officials say Obama has made a down payment by expanding coverage for children of low-income working families and by providing subsidies to help people who lose their jobs keep health benefits.

As he moves forward, Obama will follow the plan laid out in his campaign.

It calls for government, employers, families and individuals to keep sharing financial responsibility for health care. The approach would overhaul the health insurance market, particularly for self-employed people and small businesses. It would set up a national insurance purchasing "exchange" through which people would be guaranteed access to private health insurance or the choice of a new public plan.

Obama sees coverage for all as a goal to be reached in steps. His plan would not require every individual to purchase insurance. The estimated cost is about $90 billion a year, to start with.

The plan might sound simple in a brief summary, but it's not. Potential dealbreakers lurk at every turn.

Many liberals can't get excited about doing battle for just a promise — not an immediate guarantee — of coverage for all.

Conservatives and insurance companies fear that a public plan offered to workers and their families could become the gateway for Canada-style government health care for all.

Employers, hospitals, doctors, and drug companies worry that the government's already pervasive influence in health care will become stifling.

The initial work has fallen to the Senate, where Democratic Sens. Max Baucus of Montana and Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts want to present a bill by the summer.

Baucus is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees Medicare and taxes. Kennedy, who is under treatment for brain cancer, leads the Senate health committee. He has pursued the goal of coverage for all his entire career and doesn't want this opportunity to slip away.

Baucus has already outlined a plan that differs in some key details from Obama's. For example, it contemplates taxing some health insurance benefits to raise money for expanded coverage. That's an idea Obama has rejected but one that certain Republicans favor.

It takes 60 votes to get a bill through the Senate, and Democrats don't have them.

In the House, the effort seems to be moving more slowly. Senior aides from leadership offices and committees are talking. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is expected to take a leading role.

Some experts believe the issue is too complicated to try to accomplish in one year and one bill.

Watching and waiting are people such as Robyn Perry, 56, of Lake Worth, Fla., who recently lost a job with health benefits. She has struggled to find coverage now that she is self-employed. Private plans are either too expensive or won't take her because she had a ministroke several years ago. A plan sponsored by local government accepted her, but won't cover her outside her county.

"Something has to be done," said Perry. "I work. I make decent money. But I still can't get coverage. I would really like to find a normal health insurance plan that would cover me wherever I get sick, not just in Palm Beach county."

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02/21/09