December 2, 2009

                                                  Health Care Reform Links

           As you might imagine, TPS has been doing a lot of net searching for health care reform information and how people are feeling about it. I'll put up the better links here as I go along.

          Since the new "word" here is National Health Care, I thought you might not mind some actual research, followed by opinions by some people that have been exposed to both our non-system and other systems.

                 Here's a piece from Boston.com called  Healthy Examples

             Watching the health care reform legislation in progress reminds me of a skit I saw on Sesame Street years ago. It showed a woman unwrapping something, then throwing the wrapper on the ground. Next, a man took something out of a bag and dropped the bag on the ground. This goes on for a few people. The camera than pans the scene which now looks trashed.

             The leader calls everyone over and demands to know who made the mess. Everyone denies doing it, admitting to only a single incident, picking up what they left behind. At the end of this, the area is clean again.

               It seems every Senator or Congressman has their little “item” or motive for the way they vote. Not surprisingly, not a lot of them are claiming to be insurance company knights in shining armor, but nonetheless, nearly half of them protect the insurance companies like Gepetto protected Pinoccchio.


               As I write this, Senator Blanch Lincoln declares her first priority her state. Yesterday, I read that Senator Mary Landrieu is allowing the bill to be debated because her state got a tidy financial sum.

           Huh. It boggles the average citizen with the average sense of decency doesn’t it?

           Let’s use my technique of breaking down the circumstances to portions you and I can identify with more easily. That can help us more easily understand the ethics or implications here.

           Let’s make every state a home. Let each home have two or three family members that speak for the interests of that home. Let’s make the total group together a “Neighborhood Group.” The Neighborhood Group wants to make rules that care for all individuals living in all homes.

           Let’s say that the insurance companies have behaved the same as they really have. Price gouging, monopolies, negligent homicide etc.

           Okay. Now, we are all having meetings to try and sort out what our expectations are for these companies.

            Keep in mind that these companies offer us nothing as far as true health care. If your son gets his finger cut off while mowing the lawn, you can’t run to the place where the insurance companies offices are. You still have to rush him to our local hospital.

            Now, in our meetings, some people want to keep the insurance companies as wealthy and running exactly as they are. Others, want to force the insurance companies to use better moral behavior and cover us all, offering some help extra inexpensively for those among us that are unable to work.

            As our representatives talk and prepare to vote, three members that represent three homes in our neighborhood, stand up and act paralyzed. In reality, they want to be “seduced” into cooperating with the next step of working this out.


               Add these miscellaneous facts to your knowledge:

           The insurance company have a special law that protects them from the Neighborhood Group suing them for doing bad things, like promoting monopolies, price fixing and etc. This is called “Antitrust Protection”.

            The insurance companies are getting “subsidies” from the Neighborhood Group. That is they get special tax breaks and other money helps.


           Okay. What’s keeping the ball from reaching the goalpost in the need for healthcare reform here?

          Use this model to evaluate what you hear about this “health care reform”.

***


When you watch the so-called debates, you get “facts” that are in direct conflict with each other. In real life, this means someone is being less than honest, doesn’t it? You and I could spend time in jail for lying to the FBI. Remember Martha Stewart? Why then, is it alright for our legislators to lie to us?

Let’s touch on the phrase “government takeover”. This is what the “me-first” types cry every time the Neighborhood Group wants to set rules that keep the insurance companies or whomever the offending group is, home mortgage providers, etc. from behaving in a way that is bad for all of us.

The me-firsters say they don’t want anyone telling them what to do. These same folks fought creating Medicare and Medicaid too. Applying this principle, we wouldn’t have jails or laws, would we? We certainly wouldn’t have a system of taxation for building roads and hospitals would we?

It’s ironic that these same people are claiming that getting health care reform will hurt Medicare and Medicaid. If we had true health care, the elderly and the poor wouldn’t have to have special protections because everyone would be covered.
None of us want more government interference than we need. However, when the people in charge rewrite the laws and allow the big bucks corporations to conduct their businesses using tactics that you and I would get arrested for, it’s well past time to put a stop to it.



Again, use this model to evaluate all of this. It may help you sort things out. Before I go, I’d like to encourage you to think about this:

Why are we, as a group, incorporating the health insurance companies into our health care reform? The very same companies that have operated with the ethics jackals would be embarrassed to admit to?

What kind of ethics do you think our legislators are showing us? Remember, a government’s (Neighborhood Group) first and most important job is to: Protect It’s People

Are our legislators doing their job?



Why don’t we just pool all of our health care dollars and purchase health care directly?

                       Volume Buying and Elimination of the Middle Man.


That’s the ticket.

           (See the Stray’s ideas for real Health Care Reform if you want to read more)








                                      Watching the House Bill Being Debated

I’m sitting here watching Rep Steve King as he rails about Americans having the right to work and fail, how terrible it is that we would let the government “take over” health care.

Why if left alone, the government will be the only entity covering student loans soon too.


He conveniently left out how, thanks to our lenders, students are graduating with thousands and thousands of dollars of debt - how no one can afford the outlandish rates of insurance coverage to cover health care where it’s okay to charge someone thirty-five dollars for two aspirin.

*shaking head*

I wonder how these people sleep at night. It makes me physically ill to listen to the whoppers they tell, particularly when I think of whom they’re hurting and who pays their salary.

If I was there, I’d have to control myself to keep from decking these nurks. I wouldn’t of course. I don’t think violence solves anything in spite of how good it might make us feel at the moment. Then there’s the fact that they are so oily, I’d contaminate my hand.

As we speak, Rep. Steve King is going on and on.

God. The things I go through for you.

Rep King in his brilliance, is holding up former Senator Gramm (Phil) as the hero that stopped us from getting health care the last time.

Phil Gramm.

If the Political Stray had to pick one man as the most destructive to Americans and the American way of life, he would be the one. After him, Chris Dodd.

Phil Gramm wrote the complicated legislation (under the guise of economics) that threw the net of destruction over us.

He wrote the legislation that removed the careful protections placed on what lenders could do with our money. He helped remove the controls from how institutions could invest in oil – allowing a “false demand” to raise prices so people could use our commodities like a casino for short term gain. (That gives us high gas prices).

He wove in regular DECREASES to the doctors that care for our elderly through Medicare. Why are we worrying about the Middle East and Russia? We should be afraid of these people that we are paying a fortune to stab us in the back.

If it were up to me, Phil Gramm would be sitting in a cell, starting payment on all of the deaths and failed businesses he’s responsible for. Negligent homicide and loan sharking has been illegal for a long time. Chris Dodd with be with him.

I’d also put Rep King, Rep Todd Akin and Rep Michele Bachmann in jail for lying to the FBI. Surely there are some FBI agents watching these House Sessions.

No… I guess not.

Well, I’d find something.

Let’s pass a law against this kind of dishonesty in our House of Representatives. That’s it!!

Done. Get on it. Call one of the House Reps that actually do care for us to get on that. There are some, right? Right?


Why are these people still in office?

Hm?

I’m not going to keep sitting through this torture if you don’t start living up to YOUR part of this deal.

Get some people in office that care about you!