The Prez and Rancid Reid, not to mention Pointless Pelosi ...

Either Barack Obama is only faking it about Health Care for all Americans or Rancid Reid is Obama's enemy. Either-or or both are very definite possibilities. Can you name any populist strategy that Obama has carried through?

Harry Reid wimps on Health Care

The Democrats plan to shoot themselves in the foot by failing to provide honest healthcare for all Americans. Even after all these years I'm still amazed at how blind and stupid Democrats can be. The Republicans are shouting in their faces --as well as all over the media-- about how much they want Obama, and thus Dems in general, to self destruct and yet Democrats regurgitate the Republican's --and the medias-- crap on virtually everything. Letting one's avowed enemy lead one by the nose is shortsighted at a minimum. In this case it is utterly insane, but every indication is that they intend, through the 'leadership' of Rancid Reid and Pointless Pelosi, to do so. Good Luck in the 2010 Dems. The Thugs have you boxed and it's your own doing.

Does anyone really believe ...

Does anyone really believe ...
... that the those who hold corporate and political power in the U.S. actually believe in those 'free markets' they tout so repetitively?

Free Market definition: an economic system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition between privately owned businesses.

Those who hold corporate power believe in a market where they control the rules which change (or can be ignored) as needed to ensure their continued ascendency. And apparently the vast majority of our elected politicians and political appointees either agree or have been effectively neutralized. Greed and power are the characteristics of this environment. The health of our society has no importance. The welfare of our citizens has no importance.

Does anyone really believe ...
... that insurance is the proper approach to providing health care for all of us?

Healthcare definition: the maintenance and improvement of physical and mental health, esp. through the provision of medical services

Insurances definition:
1) a practice or arrangement by which a company or government agency provides a guarantee of compensation for specified loss, damage, illness, or death in return for payment of a premium : many new borrowers take out insurance against unemployment or sickness.

• the business of providing such an arrangement : Howard is in insurance.
• money paid for this : my insurance has gone up.
• money paid out as compensation under such an arrangement : when will I be able to collect the insurance?
• an insurance policy.

2) a thing providing protection against a possible eventuality : seeking closer ties with other oil-supplying nations as insurance against disruption of Middle East supplies | young people are not an insurance against loneliness in old age.

Does anyone really believe ...
... that insurance companies which were designed to provide a hedge against a 'possible eventuality' in an economic system based on greed and control where denying service is a sign of success will ever be able to provide acceptable healthcare? The requirement for healthcare is not a 'possible' eventuality, but instead an eventuality that everyone will eventually, is not sooner, require.

Statistics are always right ... except when they are beside the point.

In any case, Gerberding cites the well-known evidence that eliminating access problems would resolve -- at best -- 25% of health disparities.

Only 25% huh. In other words, if I were uninsured [and I have been] and I break my foot then most likely I will go to the emergency room and might even get it treated adequately right there [after they attempt to get my house and everything I own] or I may have to suffer for a week or so to get into someone's office who will treat my foot as long as I max out the remainder of my credit card (assuming I have one to max out) but in the end my broken foot will probably be addressed and I even may be able to walk on it. Ojalá.

So this encounter with the medical establishment will probably fall in to the 75% of the medical problems which get resolved, albeit at the cost of additional pain and suffering and the loss of my house, perhaps. But no big deal, that, to certain people at least. So there's a case that demonstrates the 'well-known evidence' that universal health care only solves 25% of the problem. No, you say? I don't think so either.

The health 'issues' that aren't addressed by access alone is the actual subject of the post: On the Very Idea of Health

Prevention, understood in the sense Starfield et al. intend it, is too important a concept to let become so conceptually diffuse.

I suppose it's too late for them to come up with new terminology but they need it desperately. Prevention is to weak a term to encompass humanity's entire life conduct, behavior, customs, culture, habits, ways, mores, genetic predispositions etc.

ADDED: A particularly interesting post at the same blog (Medical Humanities Blog):

On Income Inequality and Population Health

I want to like Obama, but ...

... he keeps doing things like this:

Obama does Harry and Louise, again

I don't understand it. No matter how Obama tries to couch it, he's just doesn't seem very progressive. He does not believe in universal health care. Based of this and what he's said about Social Security we really can't trust him to work for us, can we ...

Another uniter who's motto is give to the rich and take from the poor?

Yesterday's QUOTES ...

Even the baby? In Blackwater's only statement regarding the Sept. 16 incident, Anne Tyrell, the company's spokeswoman, denied that the dead were civilians. "The 'civilians' reportedly fired upon by Blackwater professionals were in fact armed enemies," she said in an e-mail, "and Blackwater personnel returned defensive fire."

[Michael] Moore at least has a vision of getting everyone in that pool and making sure that neither the least of us, nor those who got hurt in their finest hour, get left out. Which is a hell of a lot more than can be said for most of those attacking him and defending the status quo.

The issue is how to make politicians fear the public as they should.

The greed principle continued ...

Our health care system isn't designed to make people healthier: It is designed for extracting money from the vulnerable and putting it into the pockets of the rich

Consider the private, profit-making, insurance industry that Bush is so determined to defend. What "innovations" has it produced? The deductible, the co-pay, and the pre-existing condition are the only ones that leap to mind. In general, the great accomplishment of the private health insurance industry has been to overturn the very meaning of "insurance," which is risk-sharing: We all put in some money, though only some of us will need to draw on the common pool by using expensive health care. And the insurance companies have overturned it by refusing to insure the people who need care the most - those who are already, or are likely to become, sick.

A nurse, Micheal Moore, and an ingrate ...

The $12,000 Question

The market place saves money farce ...

If we believed Republicans, the GOP and/or Conservatives (which I did once-upon-a-time) then business can always perform more efficiently than the government.

Well, not exactly. It appears that big business cannot even operate without handouts from the government to ensure their obscene profits. The government still subsidizes Medicare private insurance plans:

... study after study, by MedPAC, the Congressional Budget Office, the Commonwealth Fund, and numerous scholars, show that taxpayers are paying at least 12% more to private plans than would be paid for the same beneficiaries in traditional Medicare. The Congressional Budget Offices estimates that these subsidies will cost taxpayers $54 billion over the next five years and $149 billion dollars over the next ten years. As former Medicare Administrator Bruce Vladeck has said, the experiment with privatizing Medicare has not saved Medicare a nickel. [Give The Real Medicare Program A Chance, USA]

Get that? I'll repeat it: " ... the experiment with privatizing Medicare has not saved Medicare a nickel."

But then the Republican goal was not to save Medicare any money. The goal was to destroy Medicare.

The Medicare Part D drug plan was also set up with subsidies to ensure even more profit for the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. In addition the government by law cannot negotiate drug prices for medicare. So those who financially support our government (that us, the rich don't pay anymore) are paying twice, at least. First we pay the insurance companies extra in order to guarantee they will make obscene profits. Then we pay (directly or through an insurance provider) whatever the drug companies decide they want to extract out of the American consumer for their obscene profits. Oh, and if you are on Medicare Part D there is always the potential that you will be fleeced a third time with the bait-and-switch program built into the legislation. Legislation written by the pharmaceutical industry and probably not even read by your Congress Critter.

The article quoted above has this to say about AARP's entrance into the Medicare Advantage Insurance market:

Unfortunately, AARP's entrance into the private Medicare market provides a major boost to the privatization of Medicare. It also significantly reduces the organization's ability to speak as an objective voice for the interests of Medicare beneficiaries and the future of Medicare. The Center for Medicare Advocacy's mission is to advance fair access to Medicare and health care. Private Medicare is not best for beneficiaries and it's more expensive for taxpayers. Based on these standards and the history of Medicare, we can not support the privatization of Medicare, and we regret AARP's decision to do so.

I agree. Democrats had better start working on universal health care coverage. Letting the insurance companies chip away at this is disastrous. It can only get worse when greed is the sole motivation of these entities.

This is really bad news ...

AARP is expanding as an insurance company to carry individual policies for people from 50 to 64.

AARP should stop pretending that they an advocacy organization. They are just another greedy corporation who will put their obscene profits ahead of the citizens of this country who need universal health care, not another insurance company taking their cut.

AARP ENTERS THE PRIVATE INSURANCE MARKET - Great. Yet another powerful group with a vested interest in experience-rated private healthcare that works for everyone except, you know, the people who actually need it. That's just peachy.

We need universal health care in the U.S. ...

Arizona Daily Star: Dems slowed in try to cut Medicare HMO costs by David Espo

Attacking the health care problem piece meal will never get us anywhere but deeper in debt to the health care industry and pharmaceutical industry crooks. It's time for Democrats to step up to the proposition that this country needs universal health care. Not just for the rich. Not just for politicians and Washington government workers. Not just for children. Not just for seniors.

For everyone.

The title's right ...

The book's out of print, or at least one can only get used copies through amazon.com, so I don't know what the author's take is. Too often those who take AARP on are working from an interest in eliminating all universal social programs and attempting to cause a divide between generations instead of promoting an interest in the welfare of all.

If AARP took their role seriously they would be concerned that all Americans, present and future are guaranteed a healthy and livable retirement. To ensure that they would have to be interested in what is happening to the economy, to the jobs, to the health care of all Americans.

We are in a fight for the future of America. AARP is in marketing mode. Their aim is profit and obscene salaries for their executives like all for-profit American corporations in this day and age.

They start from the position that they own their membership -- not the other way around.

That's the same attitude that the GOP has about the United States. They believe they do (or at least should) own us. Not the other way around.