It Is Nothing Short of Murder

Keith Olbermann:

It's Health Care Rationing

Whatever "good" Obamacare is, the fact is people who are not rich are being screwed, just as it was intended to do.

People who don't have health insurance through their employers find they can't afford the monthly premiums.

People who can afford monthly premiums and aren't rich find they can't afford the high deductables.

People who are too poor to buy these lousy plans are forced into Medicaid, whose patients few doctors will take.

It's the same old shit as before Obamacare, only corporate America is getting more rich off of other people's misfortune.

Hardest hit were lower to middle-income adults. That's someone who earned from $16,200 to $29,199 last year, or a family of three earning from $27,400 to $49,499. Almost one out of three of these adults said they went without needed medical care because the out-of-pocket cost was too high.

"The key culprit as to why people have been unable to afford medical care despite having year-round coverage is high deductibles," said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA.

A deductible is the amount consumers owe for covered health-care services before their insurance plan begins to pay. The report defines high deductibles as $1,500 or more per person.

The only insurance worth a shit is the platinum type, which cost hundreds of dollars a month but are the only plans that rival large company/public employment plans.

Zeke is an Evil S.O.B.

I am glad it isn't just the right that has taken issue with this twerp's article which has echoes of Peter Singer, politician Richard Lamm, and Adolf Hitler in the guise of thinking older people have outlived their usefulness by the time they hit their early sixties.

It's all about providing cover for what he REALLY wants, and that's health care rationing for the masses while rich bastards like him have all kinds of goodies no matter how sick they are.

The WSWS calls him out on his bullshit:

He claims that he is not trying to convince anyone that he is right, or saying that anyone who chooses otherwise is unethical. He then insists: “And I am not advocating 75 as the official statistic of a complete, good life in order to save resources, ration health care, or address public-policy issues arising from the increases in life expectancy.” Excuse us for rejecting this disingenuous disclaimer, based on Dr. Emanuel’s long record of promoting the “free-market” model of health care delivery.

In the same Hastings Center Report quoted above, Emanuel advises that under conditions where the “free market,” i.e., for-profit health care under capitalism, limits resources, he favors “a two-tiered health system—some citizens will receive only basic services while others will receive both basic and some discretionary health services. Within the discretionary tier, some citizens will receive very few discretionary services, other richer citizens will receive almost all available services, creating a multiple-tiered system.” According to Emanuel’s “Hope to Die at 75” vision, it is the wealthy who would have the “choice” of life-prolonging treatments for themselves and their families, while workers and the poor would be relegated to substandard palliative care in understaffed nursing homes.

Which brings us to the doctor’s conclusion, where he writes after badgering his readers on the correctness of his viewpoint: “I retain the right to change my mind and offer a vigorous and reasoned defense of living as long as possible.” What cynicism! But it is not surprising, as his argument was never really about him. Rather, the promotion of early death is a particularly sinister component of a campaign aimed at realigning health care in America even more heavily in the interest of the rich.

Eugenics has no place in any civilized society.

Take Your Ageist, Eugenicist Bullshit, Zeke,

and stick it up your ass.

The fact you are corrupt Chicago mayor Rahm's brother makes you look worse.

Nobody has a "duty" to die. This "right to die" shit needs to go into the trash can where it belongs.

We need MORE access to health care regardless of our age--and not rationed shit.

Even Surgeons Aren't Cutting It Anymore

It's pretty obvious the "fee for service" system doctors have enjoyed for decades, making many of them well-to-do and Republican in the process, is just about done for.

Not that health care is going to be cheaper thanks to the greedheads running both the hospitals and health insurance companies, but private practice doctors are going the way of home visits.

Another thing that will certainly happen is medical schools will no longer have limited spaces, which helped drive up doctors' annual salaries because the supply of doctors had been artificially limited, thus creating an artificial demand.

In other countries, there are still plenty of physicians, but they don't make the big bucks so many of them do here.

American physicians, worried about changes in the health care market, are streaming into salaried jobs with hospitals. Though the shift from private practice has been most pronounced in primary care, specialists are following.

Last year, 64 percent of job offers filled through Merritt Hawkins, one of the nation’s leading physician placement firms, involved hospital employment, compared with only 11 percent in 2004. The firm anticipates a rise to 75 percent in the next two years.

Today, about 60 percent of family doctors and pediatricians, 50 percent of surgeons and 25 percent of surgical subspecialists — such as ophthalmologists and ear, nose and throat surgeons — are employees rather than independent, according to the American Medical Association. “We’re seeing it changing fast,” said Mark E. Smith, president of Merritt Hawkins.

We all knew that was going to happen. Let's see: It appears we have a pattern here of the gutting of professions. Lots of legal work is being "outsourced" to other countries; teaching in all grade levels, including college, is under relentless assault; and now the medical profession, which seemed to be resistant to "globalization" and other neoliberal crap, seems to be headed toward the same fate.

After all, the pie is only just "so" big, and we can't allow the billionaires to share any more of that wealth and provide more crumbs from the crust to us peons.

The gradual removal of the medical profession from the high middle class or top five percent of income earners is far more likely than we ever get single-payer in this country. This despite more and more support for single-payer from many doctors.

It's About Shielding Assets

I think this is what it is...the Dragons want to be able to preserve assets before Daryl gets incapacitated and winds up in nursing home care. Medicare doesn't pay for nursing home coverage--Medicaid does, and you HAVE to spend all of your assets down before you qualify for it. You HAVE to be destitute to get it. Getting a divorce preserves the healthy spouse's share of the estate and that spouse doesn't wind up destitute. However, there are all kinds of regulations in there such as a "five-year lookback rule" so that people aren't shielding assets that can be seized such as the family home, bank accounts, and so on. Contrary to widespread myth, Medicaid is NOT "free" health care. It is a giant loan leveled at people who have the unmitigated gall of being poor, which can happen to ANYBODY who is not Bill Gates. If you qualify for it as a part of ACA and are over 55, you MUST sign away your estate so that any expenses on Medicaid--including monthly premiums--are subject to asset recovery when you die or your spouse dies if that spouse outlives you. Asset recovery is a part of the federal code, which has been in effect for over 20 years. States HAVE to recover those assets to pay for Medicaid. It's very lucrative for lawyers.

Lots of older couples "divorce" not because they decided they hate each other after living together 40, 50, or more years but because of these rules designed to prevent "abuse" of the system.

More

Obamacare is Junk

People will soon find that out when they can't afford to pay for the "affordable" insurance premiums or when they can't afford the out-of-pocket costs thanks to sky-high deductibles. There are no cost controls, either.

The health insurance industry, one that shouldn't even exist in the first place, wants people to purchase the worthless bronze plans to further increase their obscene profits.

Meanwhile, corporations all over the country will be gutting their health plans entirely for their workers, dumping these people onto the "exchanges" they cannot afford to pay for or to use.

This is nothing more than mass murder as far as I am concerned:

Private insurance companies are charging steep premiums on the Obamacare exchanges—some 30 percent higher than in the present individual market.

The least expensive “bronze” plans carry deductibles as high as $6,350 for an individual and $12,700 for families, which must be paid in full before most coverage kicks in.

A large percentage of bronze plans require full payment of the deductible before they cover many doctor visits, including for the flu, childhood illnesses or treatment for injuries.

Co-payments for doctor visits average $41 for bronze plans, compared to $28 in the current individual market.

Many bronze plans require cost sharing of as much as 40 percent of the price of some prescription medications. Many expensive drugs are not covered at all because they are not included in plans’ drug formularies.

Insurers are significantly limiting the choice of doctors and hospitals available on their plans; in many states, only one or two hospitals are included in the Obamacare networks.

It took a "Democrat" to push such horseshit.

This New Year? Same As the Old One. We Are Screwed.

Obamacare has so many things wrong with it, which, to get to the bottom of it, is what happens when you have Wall Street and corporate interests calling the shots, even and especially with alleged "Democrats" like this disaster we have in the White House.

The private system truly doesn't work when it comes to health insurance and even health care. We KNOW it doesn't work when it comes to education, but Obama is a neolib or "economic libertarian," so it shouldn't surprise anybody his policies are shit.

What we now call Obamacare was conceived at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and birthed in Massachusetts by Mitt Romney, then the governor. The president took Romneycare, a program designed to keep the private insurance industry intact, and just improved some of its provisions. In effect, the president was simply trying to put lipstick on the dog in the carrier on top of Mitt Romney’s car. And we knew it.

By 2017, we will be funneling over $100 billion annually to private insurance companies. You can be sure they’ll use some of that to try to privatize Medicare.

Sure, they are going to try and repeal Medicare even when the reason Medicare was created in the first place was because seniors couldn't get affordable health care, let alone insurance, because they happen to have health problems, just like old cars are more likely to have mechanical problems.

When you have too many miles on you, you fall apart, and you need an affordable mechanic to be able to fix you up again.

Privatizing Medicare would be a license to kill. Period.

The Gravy Train May Soon Run Dry

For once in his life (maybe twice or three times), Matt Yglesias is right in his point of view, this time about doctors making way too much money. The reason they make too much, as I mentioned on this blog a long time ago, was that they limit the supply by limiting enrollment in medical schools. Open up the enrollment and create more medical schools, and the income is sure to lower drastically for physicians as a group.

It always reminded me of the Jockey Club's requirement that all thoroughbred foals had to be conceived by natural means rather than by artificial insemination. By limiting the supply, the price of thoroughbred racehorses could stay high. AI would drastically lower the price of racehorses because there would be too many of them.

Getting back to doctors, there might some who make and will continue to make seven figures in areas like cosmetic surgery, but for the garden variety doc, the income will go down quite a bit.

Doctors in the old days loved the fee-for-service system because insurance companies back then would simply shell out the money and didn't question the prices the docs charged. But then things got out of hand, and we got stuck with HMOs and the like. It didn't make too much dent in the profitability of physicians' practices or in the for-profit hospital sector.

Fear of the gravy train running dry is the biggest reason why the American Medical Association was adamant in its opposition to national health insurance or single-payer. It's that simple.

The US Health Care System is a Mess

Not only because fewer people have access to it because of the lack of health insurance, but because of private health insurance, costs are through the roof.

The simple fact of the matter is the medical profession is going to have realize the gravy train they have ridden on for decades is just about done. There is no doubt someday there will be some kind of national health care plan, and that is going to cut on their profits. Well, that is too bad. They will soon not be able to make the extravagant salaries for which they have become accustomed.

Of course many doctors now are not making the big bucks, but fewer still won't be making them.

Ditto for the insurers. Ditto for the pharmaceutical manufacturers. Ditto for for-profit hospitals.

This insanity of overcharging for basic services has GOT to stop.

Whether directly from their wallets or through insurance policies, Americans pay more for almost every interaction with the medical system. They are typically prescribed more expensive procedures and tests than people in other countries, no matter if those nations operate a private or national health system. A list of drug, scan and procedure prices compiled by the International Federation of Health Plans, a global network of health insurers, found that the United States came out the most costly in all 21 categories — and often by a huge margin.

Americans pay, on average, about four times as much for a hip replacement as patients in Switzerland or France and more than three times as much for a Caesarean section as those in New Zealand or Britain. The average price for Nasonex, a common nasal spray for allergies, is $108 in the United States compared with $21 in Spain. The costs of hospital stays here are about triple those in other developed countries, even though they last no longer, according to a recent report by the Commonwealth Fund, a foundation that studies health policy.

That's because health care became a for-profit enterprise, not something that is a public good.

It needs to be seen as a public good, like police protection and education, and the profit motive needs to be scrapped.

For This Mother's Day

this piece about how women are really treated in this country, especially mothers and would-be mothers.

We've got a long way to go to treat women like they truly own their bodies:

While the rights and dignity of pregnant women are further eroded, forced sterilization and laws that cap the number of children a woman can have if she uses public assistance continue a shameful history in this country of dictating who gets to add to their family. Indeed, lawmakers play a dangerous game when they think they should decide whether a woman becomes a parent, instead of ensuring that every woman can make her own decision based on what is best for her and her family. This is especially true when it comes to the decision to seek an abortion.

In recent years, hundreds of laws were introduced with the goal of making it harder and more expensive to get an abortion or closing clinics to shut off availability of care. Many of these restrictions make the news (hello, North Dakota) and cause a big uproar among advocates (think Virginia's mandatory ultrasound law) and rightly so, but there are efforts that are just as widespread, but simply do not get the same attention - legislation that effectively withholds abortion care altogether.

Those politicians who don't want abortion to be legal at all push bans that deny health care coverage of abortion in order to make it unaffordable. At the federal level, politicians have cut off care for women who use Medicaid or Medicare, as well as Medicare beneficiaries, federal employees and their dependents, Peace Corps volunteers, service members and their families, Native American women utilizing Indian Health Services, and women in federal prisons.

I am glad I don't have to worry about pregnancy and all, but now I have to worry about health care and approaching my so-called "golden years."

It's a bitch.

Etc.

Prominent feminist writer Mary Thom, 68, died Friday from injuries sustained in a motorcycle crash.

She was one of the founders of Ms. magazine.
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Speaking of obituaries, is there anything that can be learned from the rise and crashing fall of one of the nation's leading sociopaths?

I am not kidding when I say Michelle Rhee is a sociopath. She fits the description to a "t."
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Tell me about it:

Forty-six percent of all US adults did not have insurance for the full year, or had coverage that provided insufficient protection from health costs. Nearly a third—55 million—were uninsured at some time in 2012. Some 30 million people—an additional 16 percent—were insured, but had such high out-of-pocket costs that they could be considered underinsured, according to the report.

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Whatever you do, don't do it.

Don't go into teaching anyway; you will be used and abused and tossed out like garbage if you are unlucky enough to have a bad administrator.

I had two terrible ones in a row, and they made my life hell.

Etc.

Is "Obamacare" needed?
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The Broad Foundation is at it again.
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Being a test proctor isn't being a teacher.
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A former teacher shares his horror story in the NYC school system.
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Etc.

This is what happens when people make education policy when they are people who haven't got a clue about education. I would say it is deliberately cynical in order to destroy public education and make money off the taxpayers putting in subpar or outright fraudulent schools.
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The assholes are out to destroy Medicare and Medicaid, and they don't care what the voters think.
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Employers are getting more and more ballsy. They want your credit report if you live in a state that hasn't outlawed credit checks, they require urine or saliva tests, they ask intrusive questions, and they can sit there and ask for your FB account and password despite this being a violation of the FB terms of service.

I doubt any employer would ask me for blog or FB information, but if any employer did, I'd thank them and say I plan to go elsewhere to find employment.
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Unreal. Now Amanda Knox's parents are scheduled to go on trial in Perugia.
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Is the Kony 2012 video a major fraud? According to this piece, it is.

I watched the video last night. I thought it was little more than a fundraising infomercial for the organization that created it.
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Etc.

With Democrats like what we have in Congress, who needs Republicans?

By the way, George W. Bush signed the extended benefits program for UI which created the four tiers.
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Democrats acting like Republicans isn't limited to Congress, as Obama showed with the contraceptive debacle:

The deal offered by Obama is based loosely on regulations in effect in Hawaii and three other states, which require insurers to provide birth control “riders” for women who work at religious-affiliated institutions. Presently in Hawaii, these women can still get coverage at the price their employer would pay, but neither the employer nor the insurer is required to pick up the tab. Under Obama’s plan the insurers would be required to pay for it.

However, questions remain about how the regulation would be implemented in practice. As religious-affiliated employers would not be required to inform their employees of the availability of the coverage, women might be unaware that it was being offered. It is also not a given that insurers will voluntarily provide the coverage, although the Obama administration claims to have the authority to compel them to do so. Nor is there a clear mechanism to prevent insurers from passing on costs in the form of higher premiums.

News, Etc.

Teachers in Tacoma, Washington, have made a gutsy move and continue to strike despite a judge's order to return to work.

More

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Obama continues his assault on health care.
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Rahm Emanuel is an idiot and a bigot.  "Obesity" isn't a matter of eating too much or exercising too little--most of it is genetic or is a result of an underlying disease such as hypothryoidism, Hashimoto's thyroiditis, or diabetes.

"Dieting" is a failure because it goes against nature and doesn't address possible other causes for weight gain and fluid retention.

Singling out people to penalize them is discriminatory and ignorant.  Washoe County School District had one of those stupid "wellness" programs in there.  I doubt they saved any kind of money; they just simply fired people when they used FMLA.
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In all of the years I lived in Reno, I never had any desire to go to its signature event, the National Air Races.  I always went to the balloon races, but not the air races.

There was a horrible tragedy there this afternoon:



A spokesman describes the scene as a "mass casualty situation."  link

At least 3 are dead, including the 80-year-old pilot, with at least 75 injured, and of those, 25 are critical.

Marshall Carter was working on some fuel tanks nearby said he saw the plane pull up, "and it looked like he had major mechanical malfunction, like the controls failed."

Carter said the plane was about 100 feet off the ground and was rolling over at that point. It appeared he purposely pulled back on the stick so the plane went into the ground, instead of the stands, saving hundreds of lives.

Greg Erny, 57, who was sitting in the VIP section, said the plane disintegrated as its pieces flew into the crowd.

"It was the most sickening thing I've ever seen just watching the plane, there was no plane left," he said.

Michael Haughton, the president and CEO of the National Championship Air Races, said the rest of the event is canceled.

Leeward was 74, not 80 as earlier reported.  The latest report says 54 were injured.

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Alan Grayson Was Right

If you are uninsured or otherwise needy, the "Tea Party" types and libertarian/fascists believe you should just die:



Unfortunately, Obama isn't much better.

News, Etc.

Of course companies are going to drop health care coverage for their employees once the "reform"
takes effect.

Let's be cynical and say this was the intent of the legislation in the first place, and that is to simply give corporations a way out of paying health care benefits at all.

Just as companies took advantage of loopholes in ERISA to gut pensions and force employees on worthless defined contribution plans like 401(k)s.
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If this deal about foreclosures isn't proof Barack Obama is a corrupt son of a bitch, I don't know what is:

The idea behind this federally-guided “settlement” is to concentrate and centralize all the legal exposure accrued by this generation of grotesque banker corruption in one place, put one single price tag on it that everyone can live with, and then stuff the details into a titanium canister before shooting it into deep space.

This is all about protecting the banks from future enforcement actions on both the civil and criminal sides. The plan is to provide year-after-year, repeat-offending banks like Bank of America with cost certainty, so that they know exactly how much they’ll have to pay in fines (trust me, it will end up being a tiny fraction of what they made off the fraudulent practices) and will also get to know for sure that there are no more criminal investigations in the pipeline.

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Well, the Goal of the Neoliberals

is apparently to ration medical services such as lung cancer tests, and never mind many people who get this horrible disease never smoked.

Well, they are looking at gutting Social Security to the point of it being "means tested," which isn't based on reality at all but on ideology promoted like liars such as the Cato Institute and the Concord Coalition. Why not medical care? People are living too damned long as it is.

It's coming very close to the time this country will experience massive social unrest. It can't happen soon enough for me.

Obama, in the meantime, needs to be shown the door. If people don't realize he's a faker, I don't know what can be done otherwise to prove it.

Medical Care Gets Put on the Back Burner

by millions of people for the simple reason they have to be able to eat and put roofs over their heads:

The economic crisis has adversely affected access to medical care for millions of Americans, according to a recent study. Cutbacks in obtaining routine medical care have been particularly sharp, and have been much deeper in the US than in countries with government-run health care systems.

The study, “The Economic Crisis and Medical Care Usage,” co-authored by Annamaria Lusardi, Daniel Schneider, and Peter Tufano and published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, analyzed data from surveys conducted in the US, Britain, Canada, France and Germany.

The report is right here.