Let's just eliminate that dog.

This is who you protect when you wish for Obama to “fail”. This is the side you have chosen to stand with, protect and help defend.

Insurer ends health program

rather than pay out big

// dctile) document.write(‘n’);
// ]]>

// dctile) document.write(‘n’);
// ]]>

Ian Pearl has fought for his life every day of his 37 years. Confined to a wheelchair and hooked to a breathing tube, the muscular dystrophy victim refuses to give up.

But his insurance company already has.

Legally barred from discriminating against individuals who submit large claims, the New York-based insurer simply canceled lines of coverage altogether in entire states to avoid paying high-cost claims like Mr. Pearl’s.

In an e-mail, one Guardian Life Insurance Co. executive called high-cost patients such as Mr. Pearl “dogs” that the company could “get rid of.”

That’s right, Mr. Pearl, is a “Dog” that the company needs to “Get rid of”

Let’s put this is perspective for just a second. I told you about a friend of mine recently to try and put a face many of us know on this healthcare debate.  I wanted Chuck’s story to be on everyone’s mind as they were regurgitating the latest poison from Glenn Beck’s mouth. I wanted people to have a visual of the person they were condemning in their almost orgasmic need to have a United States President fail. A failure that  some of these people  dream of, masturbate to…pray for every chance they get. “At all costs” is the motto, “At any cost” is the pledge.

I failed of course, not even the plight of a great man and amazing friend to many of us made a scratch in the shell that surrounds these ideologues.

So I will try again.

Instead of Mr. Pearl, who has the same condition as Chuck, I want to you again put Chuck’s name, his face, his interaction with you, his “self”.. put him in this story. Does that do anything for you ideologues? Can you sit there and hear that Chuck is just a “Dog” who needs to be gotten “rid of” because he dared to buy an insurance policy, he dared to pay it, he dared to get a debilitating degenerative disease and most of all  he dared to not die quickly enough?  The company that waspaid to cover health costs  can’t cancel one ‘dog’  because it would be against the law, so they just cancel an entire state of ‘dogs’. Is there any face I can put on this problem that will make a dent?

You may say “Oh but Kelly, I’m sure the courts will stop the insurance company from canceling everyone with this kind if policy. I’m sure a judge will see that this man, Mr. Pearl will die if this insurance company is allowed to cancel his policy.” But you would be wrong.

A federal court quickly ruled that the company’s actions were legal, so on Dec. 1, barring an order by the federal Department of Health and Human Services, Mr. Pearl will lose his benefits.

So much for that ‘check and balance’.

For those that abhor government intervention, will you cry with Glenn Beck if the  Health “Czar” Kathleen Sebelius orders the company to live up to it’s contract.

Sadly, we all know the answer to that… Yes, yes  you will.

Will those of you who even thought about trying to explain just how President Obama was creating “Death Panels” care to pick up your pitchfork against this actual ‘death panel’?  Mr. Pearl needs 24 hr nursing care, he is on a ventilator and needs hourly breathing treatments and continuous intravenous medication. Without this he will die, here is your Death Panel Sara Palin, will you ‘tweet’ about how evil this is? Will you take hundreds of thousand of dollars for a speech on this kind of injustice, will the people who aped your stupidity write Mr. Pearl or even Chuck’s name on a sign and demand they not be forgotten?

Sadly, we know the answer to that is.. no, no you won’t.

Guardian, a 150-year-old mutual company, reported profits of $437 million last year, a 50 percent increase over $292 million in 2007. It paid dividends of $723 million to policyholders and had $4.3 billion in capital reserves, according to its annual report. The company’s investment income totaled $1.5 billion that year, a small increase from the year earlier.

This is who you protect with your hatred of a President. This is who you protect with  your ‘at any cost’  ideologue.

“In an e-mail to four other Guardian executives entered into evidence in the Pearls’ suit, company Vice President Tim Birely discussed how the company could “eliminate this entire block to get rid of the few dogs.”

.. and don’t think you can get away with the argument of “Well, you Democrats are in power now and we can’t do anything stop you.” It’s condescending, it’s insincere and it’s bullshit. Most insulting of all.. you know it, snicker and use it anyway.

20 years ago a friend of mine took a ride with a person he had just recently started hanging around. He didn’t know him too well but he seemed cool and they got along. That night the new guy told my friend he was going to rob a local mom & pop grocer for some extra cash. My friend wasn’t a violent person, he wasn’t a criminal, he wasn’t a bad person in any way… but he because he was 17 and stupid he didn’t speak up.

The new guy went into the store while my friend waited in the car, he could have left at that point but for whatever reason he didn’t. After a few minutes the new guy came running back out, jumped in the car and away they went. They never spoke of what went on inside the store and it wasn’t until the next morning when the police showed up at his parents house to arrest him that my friend found out that the store owner had been shot and killed by the new guy. My friend was tried and convicted as an accessory to the crime and is on death row awaiting his date with the executioner. Does he deserve to die for a crime he had no part in? Some would say yes he does, but then again.. they would also be the ones to tell Mr. Pearl to go out and get a job if he wants health care.

The real “Dog” here isn’t Mr. Pearl and it isn’t Chuck or any of the other poor souls who have paid their premiums each month only to have them canceled because they did not die quick enough. The real “dogs” are the insurance company who cares more about an enormous bottom line over the lives they are supposed to be protecting. You all fighting reform at all costs.. at any cost, this is the dog you have allowed into your bed by not saying anything even when you know what they are doing is not only wrong, dangerous and against humanity, but could possibly be murderous. Just like the saying “Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas”  this is on you whether you like it or not.

Lindsey Graham is currently finding that sad fact out. Arlen Specter and Colin Powell could have told him, but a conservative republican of Grahams stature, with his conservative record would have ignored their warnings just as the rest of the ideologues will ignore this liberal’s warning. When you go against the beast you create, the beast you’ve allowed to take over to fight your battle for you, when you go against it… you pay their price. It’s apropos that Graham is now the one to fight off charges that can not be defended because they have no basis in reality. “Fake Republican,” “RINO” (Republican in name only), a “traitor,” “disgrace,” “asshat,” “democrat in drag,” and a “wussypants, girly-man, half-a-sissy”.

The beast you fed,nurtured, appeased every step of the way while pretending “that’s  not what my belief..it’s theirs”.. and “Hey, you guys are in power not us”.. that beast is self-aware and is devouring your party.  That is who your next leaders will have no choice but to cater to. The metaphorically date with the executioner that you await for being an accessory to the crime, would be justice in and of itself if so many truly innocent people weren’t being punished along with you. Don’t believe there are ‘truly innocent’ people being punished? Well, I give you one final story

17-Pound, 4-Month-Old Baby

Denied Health Insurance

for Being Too Fat

Underwriters, the people who are in charge of assessing risk for insurance companies, have decided that baby Alex’s pre-existing condition — obesity — makes him a high-risk patient and have denied him coverage.

His parents were shocked.

“I could understand if we could control what he’s eating. But he’s 4 months old. He’s breast-feeding. We can’t put him on the Atkins diet or on a treadmill,” joked his frustrated father, Bernie Lange, a part-time news anchor at KKCO-TV in Grand Junction. “There is just something absurd about denying an infant.”

The beast you continue to actively support or just ignore because the end is justified by the means for you… denied a 4 month old, breastfed baby for the pre-existing condition of  obesity.

I hope you are happy with your creation.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Fox wonders why White House sees them as reflexively anti-Obama. Then its pundits bitch about his Nobel Prize (crooksandliars.com)
• Gov’t investigates health insurance company mailer (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Obama’s Health-Care Speech: A Test of National Character – TIME (time.com)

why a non-profit public option is important..

This was brought up on the MucheDumbre forum today in regards to a government involvement in healthcare..

Essentially, that is my problem with all of this. I already have a problem with the FDA and AMA being owned by drug companies, why make the problem bigger?

If this is how you feel, that private companies already have too many fingers in the political arena and are turning policy in their favor, then the only option for you is the public option.

As it stands now all healthcare options are  owned,regulated,price marked and everything else relating to  them by the for-profit health insurance companies. Your doctor doesn’t decide his fee, Cigna,Aetna,BCBS decide what and if they will pay him.It is the insurance company who decides what they will pay, who they will pay, where they will pay.. who can get their product and  who can keep their product even after paying for it for decades. Without a public option, the way it is now will look like the ‘better’ way in 5 years..

Think about it for  second… A not-for-profit public option that would be self-sufficient and rely on the premiums it collects, going from the Government to the healthcare provider(i.e.. doctor,clinic,hospital)  is  a direct line to the ones doing the service. Yet, this has been deemed evil,socialistic,freedom robbing and bad because it is the government who is collecting the money and giving it out to the providers…

The other alternative is that we subsidized[pay for] not just the >5% who would chose a public option but all 45 million uninsured American with a credit that comes from private and public funds{i.e. taxpayers} . The difference is  that the money goes directly to the insurance company where they take their 30% cut and then decide whether to pay the doctors/hospitals the rest. It is a mainline from your wallet into the wallets of the same types you say you are against, the private companies- NOT the doctors and hospitals proving your care.

Somehow the government  paying the insurance company with taxpayer’s money instead of the provider being paid with the fees that those in the option have paid for is the better option for some. How it’s  better or less socialist for the government to subsidize the insurance companies is something I haven’t had explained to me even though I keep asking,but let’s keep moving.

Not only will the government subsidize the insurance company, but without regulation or something in the market competing with them, the insurance companies can get their ‘asking price’ for any policy they offer, meaning they can start charging the government whatever they want for the healthcare the government is buying from them..while still retaining the right to decide how much they will reimburse the doctors,hospitals or if they even will reimburse them.

What is being asked for here to control this is the choice of a public option, for  less than 5% of the uninsured in the United States .   Less than 5% of those uninsured now, not 20% of the entire population, 50% all of the United States of America, but >5% of the 18% who are without insurance..

I’m not being a smart-ass.. but read that again before moving on…

“Let me be clear — it would only be an option for those who don’t have insurance,” he said.

“No one would be forced to choose it, and it would not impact those of you who already have insurance. In fact, based on Congressional Budget Office estimates,

we believe that less than 5 percent of Americans would

sign up.”-Obama health speech before congress

we’re talking millions of people yes,  but single digit millions.

The not-for-profit public  option will force these unregulated companies to atleast keep their fees reasonable. It won’t put them out of business, the creation of any reform will ensure 45 million more people buy their product. That’s not taking money away from them… that is a windfall of fat cash coming their direction.

The not-for-profit public option will force these companies to own up to their contracts and actually pay out more claims, because to deny someone coverage because of a preexisting condition will become illegal.  It will force them to become a better product than they are right now, because  right now the ‘free market’ is allowing them to have all the marbles whether those be taxpayers marbles or private marbles. It is allowing them to collect whatever amount of money they want while choosing when and who to pay it out to. You purchased your insurance plan to cover your medical costs, you didn’t  purchase it so they company you chose could have complete autonomy to do with your money as they saw fit and thus leaving you responsible for the doctor bill at the same time.

Again, read this again. You pay the insurance company to cover your health care costs.. if they deem your claim unworthy, you are still responsible for the payment  to the doctor/clinic or hospital who treated you. So now you have paid the insurance company to keep your money and the doctor to treat you. Seriously people, if you just want to send your money to someone while still being responsible for your bills, I’ll be glad to accept it instead.

To put it simply, there are only two choices here.. .We either pay the insurance companies to insure the uninsured and thus, paying their fee for doing this  or we pay the doctors directly to treat the uninsured. If you don’t like big Pharma being involved in the politics and decision making, then you can’t be against something that  takes big insurance out of the politics and decision making on people lives.

What is wrong with giving the overwhelming majority of the people a choice of what is out there?  That’s all, a choice.

I found a quote from Bill Moyers on another blog that said

“we should be treating health as a condition, not a commodity.”

I can’t imagine it being put into simpler terms.

If you are wondering just how much around the fingers of the insurance CEO’s the politicians have wrapped themselves, there are calls for ‘tort reform’.  This will in essence regulate how much money a lawyer can be paid for his services. Why are we so against providers of the actual services being reimbursed for their product and so much in favor of the companies who offer no other service than to hold our money and decide who or if they will pay with it. If the doctors and lawyers charge too much, isn’t one of the tenents of ‘free market capitalism’ that they will be weeded out as their competitors  offered the same for less?  Isn’t government imposing the will of   a select few companies, who service is solely to pay these doctors and lawyers the money you gave them, isn’t imposing those companies will over the will of the ones doing  the service you hired them for,  more detrimental to  the idea of Capitalism?

****UPDATE****

sometimes a good video says it all…

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

Related articles by Zemanta

• 44,789 Die Annually For Lack of Health Insurance (mydd.com)
• BUYING HEALTH INSURANCE FROM PRIVATE INSURERS IS NOT THE SOLUTION FOR MANY AMERICANS. We need a public option or better FIRST! (iflizwerequeen.com)
• The Healing of America (tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com)

Does this mean he failed?- Chrysler and others pay back TARP loan.

I’m sitting here refreshing Drudge and Cnn while simultaneously flipping through all the headline news shows… and no hoopla!

You’d think with months of screaming, ranting,crying, and those  tea-parties, someone would have mentioned that we are now  ‘less Socialistic’ …

If I could stomach listening to Boss Limbaugh, I would see if he was sweating and dancing to the tune of Beck’s  “Loser”. Since President Obama has most certainly failed in his attempt to turn the USA into the county of the New National Socialist Party,  with his ingenious take over of the banks and car companies.. whilst driving the rest of the country into the shittier by stealing our wealth and spreading it amongst the elites…

but nope, nothing.. instead I get the news from my favorite ‘Mo…

Chrysler Financial repays $1.5

bln US gov’t loans

DETROIT, July 14 (Reuters) – Chrysler Financial said on Tuesday it has paid off $1.5 billion in loans it had received from the U.S. Department of Treasury in January to fund vehicle loans and incentive programs for Chrysler consumers…

BB&T repays TARP money

Seven months after it accepted $3.1 billion from the federal government, BB&T Corp. – a longtime opponent of big government – repaid the money with interest Wednesday.

$93 million in profit was made off that investment.. Not too shabby in my opinion.

FirstMerit repaying TARP

loan this month

An Ohio bank with more than a dozen branches in the region announced plans this week to repay the federal government’s more than $125 million investment under the Capital Purchase Program.

In fact, if it had not been for the ‘mo..and the 2nd story I never would have known that American Express, Bank of New York Mellon, Capital One, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Northern Trust, State Street and U.S. Bancorp also announced that they had repaid their loans from TARP, or the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

I should be surprised that I haven’t heard anything from the biased and untrue liberal MSM.. right?

Then again, if the media really was a ‘liberal slanted monster’ this would be on every headline news crawler and program just to rub it in to the faces of the Chicken Littles who were screaming that we were being taken over by our government…ironically while ignoring that were already  ‘taken over’ by our government..

I guess they are moving on to make more accusation about the Democrats evil attempt to bring socialism to the shores of the country by giving every baby born, house cleaner working, and any one else who likes to choose things for themselves instead of having someone else choose for them, that deplorable option of…. Health Care. So like everything else we’ve seen ignored in the last week.. Chrysler’s repayment will go unnoticed because it’s easier to keep throwing the kitchen sink of accusations than it is to actually give it a minute to see if it just might work.. It’s more patriotic to wish failure for the Government attempt to stop the slide into another depression era than it is to say “OK, that was my bad.. Carry on”.

Anyway, thank you for the $93 million in profit BB&T.. it was a pleasure doing business with you.. Come again soon.

Related articles by Zemanta

• 10 banks to repay $68B in TARP money (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Jill Schlesinger: Payback’s Not a Bitch: 10 TARP Recipients Get Green Light to Repay $68 Billion to Treasury (huffingtonpost.com)

My reply to lil mike

ekg here…what you’re about to read is  what lil Mike and I do, this is where we are in our comfort zone and where we excel. It’s long, it’s tedious, but the final result is an all out information explosive.. We have done this kind of exchange for years on muchedumbre.com. When we started ‘blogging’, we forgot that which made us great… the quote/reply debate, because it’s hard to get into that sort of debate in a ‘blog-comment’ section..

well, not anymore…

Here is my rebuttal to Lil Mike’s

Public Option? -> Only Option

Feel free to join in the debate in the comment sections.

..

” But one thing is clear, if it’s going to be reform in any way that Obama and the far left of the Democratic Party care about, it’s got to have the “Public Option.”  Right now the administration is having it both ways.  On the one hand it’s saying that it has no intention of driving private insurers out of business, but on the other hand, reassuring Congressional Democrats that the President is still committed to having a public option as part of his vision of health care reform.

Why the Public Option?  The formal answer was included in Obama’s letter to Senators Kennedy and Baucus:

“I strongly believe that Americans should have the choice of a public health insurance option operating alongside private plans. This will give them a better range of choices, make the health care market more competitive, and keep insurance companies honest.”

Competition?  There are approximately 1300 health insurance providers in the US.  Really, will 1301 really make the difference and suddenly lead to “a better range of choices, make the health care market more competitive, and keep insurance companies honest?”  That’s all it would take, just one more provider?  The idea is so ridiculous that you would have to be a White House journalist to buy it.”

Ok, will one more provider really make a difference? Absofuckinglutley!  Yes, 1300 companies offering the same shitty product would actually have to offer a better option if a bigger and better player came on to the scene. Your debate isn’t whether the Government can offer a product that will make the other companies provide a better choice, your argument is… Should the Government offer that product at all.. So let’s not play games with throwing in all this other stuff..

“What makes the public option the crown jewel of any health care reform plan?  It’s the camel’s nose under the tent for single payer government healthcare.  No, this isn’t just Republican scare-mongering.  I can hardly imagine any other conclusion for the insistence on a government healthcare plan.  And it’s easy to see how it would happen.  The logic is this:  One of the keys of health care reform is an individual mandate, but you can’t very well have one if people cannot afford to buy health insurance, so you have to provide an option for people too poor to pay.  Enter the public option.  An analysis of several public option scenarios shows that premiums could be 30 to 40 percent less than comparable private plans.  That of course hinges on the government paying reimbursement rates comparable to Medicare, which are 70-80 percent of what private insurers pay.”

I read your Lewin Group PDF analysis it was interesting.. until I Googled them and found out that..

Lewin Group is) part of Ingenix, which is owned by United Healthcare Group, the insurance behemoth that has been buying up insurance companies left and right, expanding its reach into just about every segment of the health-insurance market. Its flagship, UnitedHealthcare, helps make it the largest health insurer in the country. It’s a safe bet that United is not too keen on a public plan that might shrink its business.

Now I don’t find them credible in this discussion..Sorry about that but seriously, you wouldn’t allow me to use Rahm’s notes as actual unbiased data would you?But let’s address this ‘fear-mongering’ warpath scream of “Single Payer Healthcare-Oh My”..  Why is it that every time a Democrat tries to do anything you Pub’s start screaming ‘Government take-over!” “Government Control” “States Right!” and“Give me Liberty” , when after 8 years of massive Government abuse, Lenin-ish intrustion, insane Government spending,  and obscene Government entitlements there was nothing but the sound-bite of “If you’re not with the President, you are with the terrorists” to anyone who raised a fart of a question?

But now, Oh My God! We’re killing health care…!! We’re taxing people too much..!! Businesses will crumble..!!

really?

Did you know that Bush’s medicare proposal was…

…aimed to inject market forces into Medicare by encouraging beneficiaries to enroll in government-subsidized private health plans that would compete directly with the traditional government-run, fee-for-service program. The drug benefit would be the chief inducement for seniors to make the switch to private plans.

Maybe I missed it, but were there Fox News sponsored Tea-parties for that?

Something else I just found out (by the way, this is why Mike and I do this so well… during our hunt for facts we often find other facts that come in handy in other debates) “The Patriot Act and Department of Homeland Security was the brainchild of one William Jefferson Clinton.” Sure the website is a little nutty and over the top in it’s ‘doomsday’ opinions, and in all seriousness I shouldn’t link it because you will use it against me, but what the hell.. it pretty much spells out everything I’m saying about what the Pubs were happy to do with a Pub leader and shit themselves when it’s a Democrat doing the same thing. Best of all, it does it with the same chicken-little hyperbole you guys are using now..

In short, Bush’s encouragement to beneficiaries to enroll out of their private plans and into the government plan didn’t bring about “Single-Payer Storm troopers” and neither will President Obama’s. But if… if it did, once again you can thank Bush for that ummm…camel nose under the tent… since he started the ball rolling… 😉

Of course I loathe the ‘It’s Bush’s fault” argument.. It was fun for a few years there, but now it’s just old,crusty and only garners a slight roll of the eyes… The problem is, there are just so many fucking things that are his fault and you Pubs are just now finding that out because Obama is following in his footsteps on alot of them. So as loathsome as it is to say.. it’s still applicable.

Moving on…

“So one of the ways the Obama plan controls costs is just by paying the doctors and hospitals less.  I’m sure that will make a great incentive for people to go into the medical field.  And who wouldn’t want to be taxed to subsidize their competitor?”

President Obama will pay doctors less and therefore who would ever go into the med field.. An addendum to this argument is the.. “we will become a 3rd world health care system because there will be no incentives (money) for research”… OK 1st, we already are below many 3rd world countries when it comes to our health care and as for the rest? Well,  I can think of one disease that if it wasn’t for the French, not only would we still be calling it GRID, who knows when someone would have been able to isolate the AIDS retrovirus. Hell, it was a German who discovered that HPV was the leading cause in cervical cancer…

As for being paid less? When did we lose that ‘country doctor’ mentality of people becoming a doctor to help people? Was it around the same time insurance companies first started popping up? I’d really love to see a study on the correlation of the emergence of insurance companies and their control and doctors treating people less because it’s what they dream of doing and more to try and become a million by the time they are 30.

In short, I don’t know what President Obama’s plans on the pay scale for doctors and hospitals is. I know that right now we spend more money on administration costs than just about anything else. Medicare proves that you only need to spend 2% on admin costs and still function admirably.. $230 billion a year is spent in California alone on administration costs, Obama’s plan cost less than 1/2 that for the entire country.. so why those  massive saving would not trickle down throughout the system is beyond me.  To me, it would seem that if $25 from every $100 doctor visit that went to insurance administration now, was cut to $2, the doctor would be seeing a hell of alot better of a return.

“First, the same analysis shows that depending on the premium rate for the public option, 119 million people could lose their private health insurance…If the public plan has lower premiums, what do they care what rate their doctor gets paid at?  Others would find themselves dumped.  Why would companies want the expense of maintaining their own health insurance coverage when a public plan can offer lower premiums?”

I addressed this somewhat above when I brought Bush’s plan to get people off the private rolls and onto the public ones  to your attention already, but that’s not my argument against it, a bad plan is a bad plan no matter who the President is, something the Republican  religion doesn’t like to admit..My argument is this… I believe you are wrong.. those insurance companies will be forced to compete with the new plan.. they will have to offer something else, whether it be a lower premium or more coverage or an annual trip to Bermuda..whatever.. I mean do you seriously think they’ll just keel over and die? Hell no, they’ll find something that their competitor doesn’t have and offer it..

Back in the 90’s I was fired for being pregnant, lost my insurance(not that I had prenatal anyway), and was forced to go on Medicaid. HMO’s were exploding at that time and you were forced to pick either an HMO or straight medicaid. There was many HMO’s to chose from  and they all pretty much offered the same plans as each other and medicaid but since there was competition, the HMO’s decided to offer other incentives to get people to enroll in their plan. It was piddly shit like  children vitamins each month with this one, free contacts with that one, free vitamins,contacts and bubble gum with the other..(ok, not really on the bubble gum.. but you get the point).. the catch was you had to use their doctors,their hospitals and their pharmacies. Or you could stick with medicaid and go with pretty much whoever you wanted. I liked my doctor and she took medicaid so I chose that path. So when you tell me that a government sponsored plan will not only force people out of their private plan but will force private plans to close up shop and move away.. I laugh! These companies want to succeed today just as much as they want to succeed tomorrow and they will find a way to entice employers to keep paying them.. Whether that be free vitamins or a free trip to Bora-Bora for the employer who signs up the most employees onto their plan.Most, if not all, will adapt and  survive… and those that don’t? Well, you don’t mind when they fall in a full capitalistic society do you?

So why is a Public plan the only option? Because without it there is no change.. With it there is a crack in the monopoly-like hold insurance companies have on this country and it’s leaders. They have never had to worry about regulation and competition before and now they are throwing out all the buzz words that make  conservative hard.. “Socialism”..”Government sponsored”..”Government entitlement”… and to that I say Pshaw! Look what the debate has already done for health care… before a person was actually denied  treatment for her cancer because her insurance company said an outbreak of pimples in her past constituted a ‘pre-existing conditions’.Pimples!  But now all of a sudden insurance companies are screaming that sure,  they can get rid of the pre-existing conditions clause. The debate alone is forcing other companies to offer more benefits at a lower cost to women in some states.. The debate alone is changing health care for the better.. If the debate is cleaning up health care and the conglomerate-do-as-they-please  hold on health care that the insurance companies have.. then I am encouraged as to what an actual Public Plan will be able to do.

So, the cost factor? One state already pays 1 and 1/2 times more for just the administrative costs than the public plan for an entire country.

The reduction of doctor’s fee and hospital costs? The savings from the decrease in administration costs should increase what the medical providers see.

The loss of research and cutting edge medicine? You walk into the  Pasteur Institute and tell them they’re a 2nd tier institute.

Socialism? Please.. George Socialist Bush!

The loss of a free market? No, more like the opening of a closed market and forcing it to become competitive to survive..

Yes… Public Option? is the only Option

Related articles by Zemanta

• Poll Shows Most Americans Want Public Health Care (themoderatevoice.com)
• NYTimes Poll: 72% of Americans favor Public Option in healthcare (masbury.wordpress.com)
• What’s a public health plan anyway? (money.cnn.com)
• 18,000 dead: The moral issues of health care (masbury.wordpress.com)

Let them eat cake… and how we barter in human life…

I have had the honor and horror of watching both ends of the health care spectrum over the last couple of weeks. My grandmother, who is 86, has spent 17 of the last 22 days in the hospital. The first go around was because her lung collapsed from an injection given in the wrong place. The end result of that stay was a new prescription of coumadin, a blood thinner, to keep her from having a stroke from the collapsed lung. The second and current reason is that after a few days of coumadin she started feeling extremely sick and dizzy, the hospital did a few tests and found a blood clot on her brain. She had fallen a few weeks ago, she was fine after the fall but apparently she suffered a pretty bad bruising that normally would have healed on it’s own, but which the blood thinner  had since made

it worse because it made injury bleed a little more.

She is doing fine by the way.. or as fine as an 86 year old, end stage renal failure, 3 days a week dialysis patient with a recently re-inflated lung and a blood clot on her brain would be expected to be doing. This isn’t about her as much as it’s about the specrum of health care in this country.

My grandmother has spend most of her time in the hospital in the  brand new section called the “The Heart Center“. They offer more of a personal and intensive medical service, not too mention all the comfort of a 4-star hotel. The ‘suite’ she is in really is better than most hotels I’ve stayed at. I’m not complaining about her treatment or her room or any of the other services she has been fortunate to receive. In fact just the opposite. I have been completely impressed with this new section of the hospital. When they decided to call the rooms ‘suites’ they didn’t exaggerate. The rooms are the size of a normal 2 patient room, but they are private with hardwood floors,wood wainscoting and cabinetry. There is a personal desk that has all the ‘technological’ necessities such as an internet port,cell phone charger hook up, iPod/mp3 port, there is even a personal fan and temperature control. Finally a medium size plasma-screen tv and DVD player for each room.

For visitors the suite offers recliners, extremely  comfortable chairs and a couch that makes into a bed. Oh, did I mention the view of the river?

Yes, the “Heart Center” is a top of the line stay for anyone who is lucky enough to get sick and admitted to it and I am glad that her stay has been as comfortable as it has.

I don’t know much about insurances, but I know that she has
“Tri-care for life” add that in with their medicare and both of my grandparents haven’t a care in the world when it comes to health care and I am thankful for this. They are of the ‘Greatest Generation‘ who were asked by their country to sacrifice and serve and they stepped up and happily did their duty.  They deserve to be cared for in the older years.

But compare my grandmother’s care to that of her house cleaner’s. I know there is a stigma attached to the  ‘house cleaners’ as somehow being beneath us in some way, but I think that’s because we’ve never really thought about them. I want you to take a minute and do just that. If you have a house cleaner she probably spends 2-4 hrs at your house every 1-2 weeks doing the things for you that you don’t want to do. You pay her to vacuum,dust,pick up the living room and not only do you pay her $20-25 a hour to do your job for you, but you are not her only client. If she spends 4 hrs at your house she still has enough time, to do another 4 hours house and at $25 an hour.. well she just made $200 that day to do something a simple as cleaning your kitchen. No, I don’t believe house cleaners are beneath us, I believe they are smarter than any of us give them credit for. They wear whatever they want to work,they are their own boss working their own hours, telling people which product to buy them so they can use. They work in comfortable climates and pretty much have the run of your home while they are there, watching tv and listening to your radio as they go.  A good one, with an established clientele and the time to work a 10-12hr day can make as much as $1500 a week for their uneducated labor. Yes, we are beneath them in them grand scheme of things.

My grandmothers house cleaner was a family friend who started her business very late in  life. She had been married and was never required to work or pay her own bills but one day her husband decided to take off and live with his new girlfriend and Dot was left with nothing to turn to, so she did the only thing she knew… she cleaned houses. She was just starting to get back on her feet again when she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. It was a devastating diagnosis because there is no recovery and the outlook is a fast and painful death. That wasn’t the problem though. She had no money to stop working and she had no insurance to cover her. She was building up to all of these creature comforts and just hadn’t had the time to get there yet, another year maybe and she would have attained some of what the rest of us take for granted. But that still wasn’t her problem, her problem was that she wasn’t going to die fast enough.

Because her type of work depends on her actually working, she couldn’t take days off, because while she was diagnosed to die within the next 6-9 months, she still needed to pay her mortgage, utilities,food, car payments, gas and then if anything was left after that, her prescriptions and other medical costs. Her doctor of course tried to get her into the public health systemts but unfortunately she made too much money to qualify and if she were to reduce her income she wouldn’t be able to survive. Her doctor, knowing that she had nothing, spent hours calling around to various hosiptals in and out of the state to see if he could find anyone to give their time to her for free so that she could be treated in some way or helped in some way to die in whatever peace she could.

He couldn’t find anyone out there willing to help.

Dot didn’t let any of this phase her, it was what it was and that’s all there was to it. She did finally find another house cleaner to take on her work and split the pay with her. The house cleaner she found had to drop many of her full-paying clients in order to take on Dot’s clients for 1/2 the price she was getting on her own, but even at 1/2 the price she could survive and she knew that at that point Dot didn’t have much time left anyway so she wouldn’t working at the reduced rate for long.

After buying her own pain medication and paying to keep her electric on, Dot didn’t really have much money left over. She was approved for hospice towards the end but that was of littel comfort since she only lived 5 days in their care. Through it all Dot never cried about the pain she was living through or the predicament she was in. She was proud of what she had accomplished after her husband left her without a penny and all the monthly bills. She didn’t cry that she had been forced from the home she had shared with her husband because she could no longer afford it, she was proud of the 2 bedroom cottage she fixed up with the money she made from her job. She had started from nothing, lost everything and had built up a pretty decent life-style all on her own when most people at that time of  their lives are starting to wind down and think of the vacations they will take when they retire in the next few years. No, Dot never asked “why me” or “who will help me”.. And Sherry, the cleaner Dot  got to work for her, never complained when she had to trade in her car for a cheaper one or when she had to put off paying for her own daughters wedding. Sherry sacrificed her time and lively hood, her daughter’s wedding and many other things when she didn’t have to but it was just the ‘human’ thing to do. I sometimes wonder if the doctors who told Dot’s physican that they just didn’t have the time to take on a non-paying patient or couldn’t afford to write off her care.. how would they feel if they heard that a relative stranger and lowly house-keeper stepped up and offered her sacrifice and service when they wouldn’t.

There is a class-warfare going on in this country right now and it ‘s called “Health care”. I am more grateful than I can express at the coverage my grandparents receive. I know that if  they hadn’t had the great insurance that they have, they would have been dead a long time ago. But at the same time, I can’t help but ask.. why couldn’t Dot have had just a part of that golden coverage? Throughout time there has always been the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ and there is nothing wrong with that. For it takes the ‘have-nots’ to spur on new innovations and creativity.  It’s when you do without that you find out exactly what you are missing and you find a way to get it. Our country couldn’t have become the power it is had everybody been given everything equally. What do I want to ‘keep up with the Jones’ for if they are going to get what I have given to them? Why do I want to work 80 hrs a week if Slacker-Billy is going to get a steak dinner and  comfortable roof over his head for working a 3rd of the hours. Why do I have to go to school and study,  then incur thousands of dollars of debt, when 1.0 GPA Sam is going to get the same things I am. I understand the tenants and the benefits of Free-Market Capitilism and I agree those who promote this type of lively-hood.

What I don’t understand is… why does health care have to be one of those things that only the rich and insured are entitled to. Why is the  health of someone a pawn in the Political and Pundit game of ‘Capitalism V. Socialism’. It’s a person’s health. Not their education, status,wealth.. it’s their health, their vision, hearing.. their life.

Is there anyone out there that can explain to me why the ones who could have afforded to help Dot, ignored her plight and the one who couldn’t afford it sacrificed and helped a dying woman who did nothing wrong except be unable to afford a platinum health care policy? Or instead..  explain why we are forced to have platinum policies in the 1st place. We are not talking about giving a Rolex out for Christmas to every peon worker-bee we employ.. we’re talking about giving them doctor visit when they have a cold, giving them a shot when they are in pain, giving them a test to see what the blood in the toilet is from..or what the newly discovered lump on a breast is.. Who cares how we pay for it, seriously..who fucking cares!  We pay for the research of fruit flies sexual reproduction, we pay for prisoners and death row inmates to have better health care than 75% of our population, we pay for roads,bridges,statues, humanitarian aid to other countries.. Forget the money for once, if we were attacked tomorrow we would pay for the latest and greatest defense system.. Forget the money for once..

There is a ‘let them eat cake’ philosophy on people’s health.  .. On their health! Why?

Someone… anyone… Please tell me why a dollar… your dollar.. is worth more than a persons life? Because they didn’t work for it and you did? Because if they received the same benefit as you, well then you will just quit your job, give up everything else you have and live off the government tit? Would you really just decide to up and quit everything and go from Prince to Pauper just because everyone has health care?

Why are we bartering in human life? Instead of asking me how to pay for it, how about you tell me what I have to give up to help those around me.  We’ve been asked to sacrifice and serve this country before and many people stood up when asked, so tell us what we need to sacrifice now to save a human life.. Because I am done bartering with the souls of the people around me.. You tell me what a life costs and what I have to give up to save it and we’ll go from there.

What is the point of having these elite medical centers that could compete with a 4-start hotel, if most of the people living in this country can’t afford to use them?

Why have we let someone’s ability to be treated when they are sick, become the latest  status symbol of elitism?

Related articles by Zemanta

• Health Care War: How America Sees It (oliverwillis.com)