I think we are in agreement. Our current government IS a plutocracy. The good
thing is more and more people are seeing it. And the better news is revolution
seems to be in the air these days. The big question in my mind is: will enough
Americans turn off their teevee sets to join us in the street?

Yes, Zonth that’s why American ER medicine is the best in the world we have so much experience dealing with gunshot wounds and stabbings. Many Docs from 3 world countrys come her to learn to treat gun shot wounds…

I understand where you come from MK, I I know there are a lot good people in the system, however, government and the plutocracy, are very close to the same thing at this point.

It’s going to be up to the people, who can do a much better job of reforming their attitudes on how to get well, than the politicians or the plutocracy can to reforming a diseased system.

Every day, that someone their breast cancer with alternative means, or learns how to cure heart disease with diet Yoga and Meditation, ala Dean Ornish, we have another person who gets on the right side of things, eventually we will have critical mass…

solipsism as attractive as it sometimes seems, just isn’t tenable

Aye, government is a mess, and you do have to look out for yourself, but we’ve got
to get past this simplistic Reaganism of “government bad, market good.” That was
a ruse anyway, and look what it brought us. Plutocracy. Plutocracy sucks.

Self reliance is great, but we also have to get it together collectively. For example,
you can’t solve climate change on your own, that has to be a group effort. Same
with healthcare, education, army, etc. And for these collective endeavors we use
government. Just because our present one is totally corrupted by money doesn’t
mean the entire concept is flawed. We just need to overhaul it. Improve it. Get the
money out of the system. It’s not impossible. We can do it. It’s been done before.
It’s called revolution.

There is something to be said for looking after oneself. In fact it can be difficult to have any empathy for those whom are self destructive slobs.  However prisner, there is no avoiding some life threatening medical emergencies(ruptured appendix, stabbing, gunshot wounds, car crash- general Trauma).

Government no longer functions in any relevant capacity when it comes to the
plutocracy. If on doesn’t become consciously, aware of how to care for your own health
then you will end up dead.

Food that people by is full of cancer causing chemicals, substances that cause obesity,
diabetes, etc.  This is a well known fact, but the government instead of protecting
families and children from this toxic soup, protects the poisoners.

Further it allows unsafe, treatments and drugs to be sold to the people who suffer from
this toxic soup, which results in more carnage. Instead of protecting the people it
protects the poisoners.

There are many hundreds of thousands of permanently damaged people in this country
like the AZ shooter, beyond help, permanently crippled by food and drugs in this
country. Yet the government continues to allow the poisoners to experiment on the
public by increasing GMO’s, rerunning to remove toxic drugs from the market and
attacking companies that offer alternatives. If you don’t educate yourself you will get
sick, and either your illness or the treatment for it will kill you. However if you take matter
into your own hand you will get well.

Prisners
Yes, nothing is efficient in the realm of governing, this is for granted.  But decisions must be made as far a what the inefficient government will put their affections upon. 
We are hearing a lot about how ‘things are going to get tough’ as the governement plans on ‘cutting’.  This is because all feces will be rolling down hill.  In Chomsky’s terms we funtion in a tier down corporate run society with a 2 headed monster in the government. We all know currently American’s feces fail to roll uphill. This will remain the case until they decide to overun the current regimen.
A third party is a start.  Unfortunately an Independent third party wont get anywhere in the corporate influenced runup (thanks Supreme court).
In theory, I think universal health care is a reasonable function of government.  It is an obvious disaster when privatized.  This is the case anyway if you dont have a corporate-cancer ridden government. Thus I ultimately envision a multi-party representative government in the US. MULTI being more than 3.

Once again insurance companies make their money by denying care. They have gotten
into trouble in the past over deaths related to treatment they won’t provide. So now they
try and hide those decisions from public scrutiny, by having contracted doctors who
know what procedures the company will pay for, and allow the insurance companies to
dictate the kinds of treatments they provide. They also have contacted hospitals that
follow their treatment guidelines. Innovative treatments are discouraged, and usually
considered experimental. Experimental treatments will be excluded. The result has been
a collapsing medical delivery system of hospitals folding, Doctors unable to practice
medicine, getting out of the field, cures suppressed, and billions in profits including
yearly multiple million dollar bonuses for the CEOs that run these companies.
With lots of money donated to political campaigns to keep things just the way they are.

No I don’t, not to long ago I would have thought that single payer was the answer, but
now, no.

Would you want to invest in a company that has lost 2 trillion dollars in the last year,
and is 44 trillion dollars in debt?

The government is not going to be our savior, they are in bed with Wall Street. Both
have blown it. The only thing that really works well at this point is self care taking
responsibility for your own health, and finding the tools you need to stay well. There are
emerging health organizations who offer self care strategies that work much better than
the ones offered by health insurers. That is where he future of health care will come
from.

At some level the the large so called health companies understand this, that’s why they
are trying to use their puppet governmental agencies to destroy grass roots self care
organizations.

Governmental and insurance sources of health care, are just too incompetent to change
in a responsive way.The are living in the past.

The future is being created by consumers who are more informed, and who are taking
the initiative away from insurance companies, they cannot really compete.

Government and insurance is like a two headed monster that can only argue with itself.

prisners:

No I’m not opposed. Do you think single payer, government run health care is free enterprise?

No they can’t advertise that it’s an anti cancer drug. They make their money by keeping
people sick. If people were not sick and didn’t need their services they would go broke.

For example medical tests are much cheaper when you are the one paying for them
online. If you go to your insurance company you will be told which ones they will pay for,
and it will cost you a lot more.

So, that’s how comparison saves you money and gives you better health in the process
are you opposed to free enterprise Rico?

zonth_:

“So why would you want these providers to continue as is ... it IS the insurance providers whom need to be purged. Think of it as business evolution with a guiding hand.”

Because, if we get down to just one provider, the government in this case, we lose the checks and balances which competition provides, and no punishment for bad behavior. And nothing is scarier to me than to contemplate some fat lazy DC health bureaucrat’s “guiding hand” telling me what’s in my best interest. I’ll take my chances with Prudential or Blue Cross thank you very much.

And insurance companies are no more “middle men” that can be inconsequentially eliminated than a refinery is a “middle man” between the oil field and your gas tank.

prsiners;

Again, are you complaining because aspirin manufacturers can’t advertise? I for one was appalled years ago, when drug companies were allowed to advertise their products on TV. The last thing this hypochondriac society needs is a company telling them “You’re sick, buy our pill.”

And look at the pressure it puts on doctors to prescribe these things: “Hey, doc, I saw this ad on TV last night for this pill. I think I have that disease. Write me a prescription.

“What do you mean I don’t need it?! The TV said I did, you quack! I’m going to someone else!”

Independent studies are done all the time, not just by the FDA, on the efficacy of all sorts of drugs, including aspirin. In fact, just last month the Economist had a great article on some new-found magic in an aspirin a day. I don’t buy your thesis that news about aspirin’s usefulness is being suppressed.

” As I said these companies make there money by
denying care and suppressing cures. And donating money to political parties.”

What? Do you know anything about economics? Drug and medical supply companies are in business for one reason- to make money. You may be mortified by that concept, but it is true.

How is it to their benefit to withhold their products from the marketplace? If they put a shoddy or dangerous product on the market, people will stop using it and go to the competition. How is that to their benefit? How is it to their benefit to suppress products that cure disease? (Now, when your dream comes true and there is only one provider, the government, and THEY put a bad product out there, what will be the consequence? Nothing. They’ll look at you and say, “Tough. You don’t like US health care, go to Canada.”)

Rico
“mandatory coverage protects the insurance providers’ solvency (private companies or monopoly government) by requiring that everybody, healthy or sick, pay to play.”

Yes
So why would you want these providers to continue as is.  I realize it is a radical idea, but it IS the insurance providers whom need to be purged. Think of it as business evolution with a guiding hand.  After all we dont really function in a laisez fair capitalism, everything is currently willfully guided (ie bank bailout)
As mk ‘getting rid of the middle man’. And what a friggin middle man it is!  Universal health care is in a way a redistribution of wealth, however the middle man is about pure profit AND redistribution.  Look at the current state of the ‘middle man’ redistribution plus profit.  My friends premium for he and his wife (16k/year) is allocated to profiteering AND redistribution.

Yes that’s what I am saying aspirin helps prevent cancer, and statistically there would be
112,000 less cancer deaths a year if people took 81mgs a day. But aspirin producers
are not allowed to inform the public of aspirins anti cancer and anti heart disease
properties. There are many foods and substances like Aspirin. Instead FDA is waging a
war on the alternative health industry, suppressing information, threatening incarceration
of producers all to protect drug company profits, while at the same time approving drugs
they know to have lethal effects. As I said these companies make there money by
denying care and suppressing cures. And donating money to political parties.

zonth:

“...the inclusion of mandatory ... purchasing by individuals…It was to pacify the Private ins Providers.”

Yes, you’re right, but for a less nefarious reason than you think.

But for mandatory coverage, the Obamacare provision that eliminates pre-existing conditions as a reason to deny coverage would be a total financial disaster for insurance providers- either multiple, competitive, private companies, or a government single-payer agency, it doesn’t matter. The reason is simple.

Insurance premiums spread costs. If you knew you could get coverage anytime after you got sick, why would you buy health insurance if you were healthy? Only sick people would buy coverage and the companies/government would quickly go broke writing checks bigger than the premiums they collect.

Can you imagine if that were the case with car insurance? You get in a wreck, and only then, call GEICO, set up coverage, pay a small premium, then file a huge claim. After the car is fixed, you cancel the policy and wait for your next wreck. COOL!

So mandatory coverage protects the insurance providers’ solvency (private companies or monopoly government) by requiring that everybody, healthy or sick, pay to play. (We can argue about “obscene profits” some other time, but I hope you get the spread-the-cost principle driving “mandatory participation”.)

The big debate is how to determine how to subsidize the premiums for people who obviously can’t afford them, and what those premium levels must be to cover anticipated health care costs for everybody in the country.

Republicans are saying that the cost and premium assumptions of Obamacare are pie in the sky dreams, and that the program will cost hundreds of billions more than anticipated over the next fifty years, and the Treasury can’t afford it the way things are.

prisners:

I have SO many questions-

1. Are you saying that if everybody took 81mg of aspirin a day, there would be 112,000 fewer cancer deaths per year? What types of cancer?

2. Are you saying the FDA somehow “prevents” people from taking aspirin merely because some “alternative medicine” company isn’t allowed to say that “aspirin cures cancer”? That seems to be your implication.

I know the FDA has this big bug up their ass about “efficacy”, but I don’t see how they are “preventing” anyone from taking aspirin. It’s like the old shark cartilage debate. Just because the FDA won’t sign off on it’s effectiveness doesn’t mean you “can’t” use it if you think it will help. No, it’s even simpler than shark cartilage, because aspirin is virtually free and ubiquitous, so insurance coverage is a non-issue.

3. What political or economic or social mechanism “prevents” anyone from taking aspirin if they want to and can medically tolerate it?

Despite the fact that the “alternative medicine” company you have in mind can’t advertise their theory, I dare say a vast majority of the world’s population has heard of, and probably knows most of the benefits of aspirin. It’s probably THE most widely understood, most widely produced, cheapest, and most available medicine in the world! I bet you can even get it in Cuba!

Obama bastardized a sixty-year Democratic priority, substituting an insurance
company scam for health care reform. The Republicans will not repeal it,
because the insurance companies wont let them, but the Courts will save us
from the Obama and Democratic fiasco of non-reform.

The real question is who will save us from the Republicans and the Democrats?

it is time for all of us to move to a third party.

“But it’s crazy to vote third party!”

Well, here’s what we’ve gotten from a majority Democratic House, majority of
Democratic Senate and Democratic President:

1 The American people wanted a government administered plan like Medicare -
for everyone. (72% - CBS/New York Times poll June 2009)

Instead, Democrats gave private sector insurers a windfall: mandated
customers, with a taxpayer-paid overhead rate of 20% for ‘mandated
customers’ (20% of our premium spent on administration, CEO salaries,
bonuses, Boards to set rates and decide who’s covered and ‘profits’).

2 64% of the American people opposed expanding the war in Afghanistan and
wanted to disentangle from Bush-era ‘War on Terror’ and ‘preventive war’
policies.
Instead, Democrats gave us an expansion of the war in Afghanistan.

3 The vast majority of Americans opposed the transfer of taxpayer wealth to
cover private company debt – the bailout.
Instead, Democrats kept the 6 too-big-to-fail banks – now bigger than ever;
kept deposits at risk by maintaining huge grey areas between commercial and
investment banking; didn’t ‘punish’ the financial industry - now even more
profitable, with bonuses among the biggest ever.

So, is any ‘crazier’ to vote third party than to vote Democratic and Republican?

The evidence speaks for itself.

indeed Prisnersdilema,
Busting up the corrupt Health Care Providers would be a direct effect of ‘universal health or single payer’.  Not sure who is responsible for the inclusion of mandatory (i have read it was R. Emanuel) purchasing by individuals, but the reasoning is obvious.  It was to pacify the Private ins Providers.  Therefore if under the poverty line, than you will meet requirement for ‘health care for all’, but if not than one keeps purchasing the plan already present.  A continuation of the status quo.  Which means contributors to society (a neurosurgeon friend) will continue to pay 16,000 dollars/year for his private insurance. 
For me that is unethical.  Basic Seneca/Cicero ethics of ‘fair dealing for mankind’.
Well No thanks Ojimbo, I’ll opt for the free health care myself just like the folks under the poverty line. It is afterall fair dealing.

The current medical system and it’s plutocratic controlled agencies like the FDA kills, to
maintain the current system that could care less about the health of Americans, but
instead protects so called Health Companies, by stifling cures and inexpensive
treatments that save lives.

For example low dose daily aspirin has been show to cut the risk of heart disease and
cancer. But since the FDA makes it illegal for alternative health care companies to
promote the anti cancer benefits of taking 81 mligrams of Aspirin a day, 112,000
Americans will die agonizing deaths from cancer each year.

Health care reform will bankrupt this country, it’s unfunded liabilities alone will sink this
nation. Yet they are the result of the broken system itself, and could be easily rectified.

The health insurance companies are monopolies and need to be broken up with anti
trust legislation. The FDA needs to be purged of a revolving door policy of hiring
employees from companies they regulate, and vice versa it’s killing us and bankrupting
the country. This would do more good for this country than any amount of OJama care.

” And no other health care system in the world has more innovation, patents, “firsts” and advanced medical care available”

that is incorrect.  Europe, usually France is usually way out in front of the US in introducing chemotherapeutics.  Likely because we have such a web of self-important administrators, regulators, getting in the way debating profitability and marketing, and when to have the next meeting.
Ill take my universal health care please.  30-35% taxed at this point and get nothing.  Australia tax rate 40% and they have universal health care.  Glaringling obvious to see the priority contrast. Citizenry, and not to its military complex and global hegemony

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But it is true, there is no inovation, Doctors are driven out of the field by endless paper work, and demands that have nothing to do with patient care.

The number of MD’s leaving, has caused severe shortages in some parts of the country.

Meanwhile profits increase, CEO bonus remain the same, and states fine the insurance companies millions, upon millions for failing to provide the services they sell, but they have so much money it’s considered chump change compared to how much they make.

The inovation, in medical care is happening elsewhere, in the PRC, in South America, while this country falls further and further behind, as promising new treatments are developed off shore.

This has led to increase medical tourism, of people leaving this country to go to India and China for treatments, we do not have the expertise to perform in this country.

Yes, the USA is the best in emergency medicine because we treat so many gunshot vitims, stabbings, and drug overdoses.

It is true the profit that those companies make is by denying care, limiting access, delaying payments, and worst of all pushing drugs on healthy people to make them drug dependent.

prisners:

“Every dollar in profit they make means someone’s goes without”

That’s just not true! Sure, you can find bad actors, but by far, most “profit” goes toward improving products and services and growing businesses to make their products more available to more people. Profit is NOT theft, despite the progressive mantra to the contrary.

And what does “health freedom” mean anyway? Free health care? Dream on. NOTHING is free.

And, IMHO, your characterization of current healthcare is a thought-free riff, so characteristic of a truthdig post.

Every dollar in profit they make means someone’s goes without, maybe your child, your
mother even you, that’s how they make billions every year..

No I am not interested in central planning. Instead, I am interested in restoring health
freedom to all Americans. Obamacare does not do that, instead it allows the profits of
health care and pharmaceutical companies to increase astronomically, while providing
inadequate care, stifling competition, eliminating alternative treatments, and profiting
form keeping people sick when they can be cured instead, by banned treatments. 

It also forces medical providers out of the system, and kills people due to unsafe
medical practices mandated by insurance companies and poisonous medicines. Further
it will protect corporations from liabilities by limiting liability.

American medicine is lethal to your health, and that’s the way insurers and
pharmaceutical companies like it. It keeps you sick, because that’s the most profitable
way for them.

Obama care is not about health it is about continuing the exorbitant profits of the so
called health insurance industry.

chelsea:

“...capped drug prices like every other nation in the world has adopted)”

Yes, prices to consumers are capped, but the costs of the drugs are not- governments pick up the difference. But then, where do governments get the money to pay the difference between cost and price?

“Health care is a basic human right…”

No, chelsea, it is NOT.

“No other industrialized country has a for-profit third party medical model”

Probably not. And no other health care system in the world has more innovation, patents, “firsts” and advanced medical care available to so many people, precisely because there is profit in it.

If you just pay a doctor to dispense aspirin and give him no incentive to develope something better, you’ll be stuck with aspirin forever. As I’ve harped on these pages over and over- look at Cuba, the progressive nirvana- free health care in theory- YAY!- ancient and scarce health care in reality- BOO!

prisners:

It’s obvious you didn’t read Obama’s statement. His plan is to turn programs over to the states ONLY IF they are at least as comprehensive than the federal one. Comprehensive Obamacare isn’t reduced, it’s merely moved bureaucratically closer to the end user- you.

In my humble opinion, your unhappiness with his move shows your true colors- a central planning fan who is suspicious of anything that loosens his grip on the power over other peoples’ lives.

LOL, the, contradiction exists only in your mind Rico. That’s just the point it’s not power
to the people at all. I should probably be celebrating, because it means Health care
reform is dead. And California can put into place single payer which they wanted to do
all along. No my comment is more reflective of my continued unhappiness with president
OJama and the spineless Democratic party. But then a lot can happen between now and
2017. How do you think the insurance companies will feel about single payer for
California?

chelsea, prizners, knute:

I thought all you guys were “power to the people” types. Here Obama moves YOUR health care decisions one bureaucratic step closer to your control and you bitch. Please explain the contradiciton there.

WTF?

Why did go through all that B.S., then?

So you can just toss it into the trash?

The phrase, gutless wonder comes to mind, but I guess that’s what your owners paid for…