Nations That Have Universal Health Care

Yes, nations that have universal health care--health care for all--and so, don't tie its cost to profit like we in America. A partial list.

Check that out.

Slovenia, for God's sake.

But no, we can't do it.

Idiots.

If Hotels Were Run In America Like Our Hospitals

American health care--from a doctor and patient

On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day: more unequal than ever on health care, too

Health care in America

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what health care in America looks like (click on the picture for legible view)

More than 50 million Americans don't have health care coverage because they can't afford it. America is ranked 37th in mortality rates, internationally. That means you are more likely to die younger in the US than 36 other nations. We are ranked worse for deaths than Costa Rica. And do you know why? Costa Rica has universal health care. How dare anyone deride the 2010 Health Care Reform Act or say we don't need it or that it's a government takeover of the health care system. What gall. What nerve.

Think "Obamacare" is such a horrible thing?

If you think the Health Care Reform Act was such a horrible thing, you should read Forbes Magazine today. You know, the BUSINESS magazine? They have this terrific article out on HOW GOOD IT IS and how a terrific provision of it took effect yesterday. Check it out: The Bomb Buried In Obamacare Explodes Today-Hallelujah! "If you think insurance companies should be able to gouge customers - then you should probably not read this. That would be the provision of the law, called the medical loss ratio, that requires health insurance companies to spend 80% of the consumers’ premium dollars they collect—85% for large group insurers—on actual medical care rather than overhead, marketing expenses and profit. Failure on the part of insurers to meet this requirement will result in the insurers having to send their customers a rebate check representing the amount in which they underspend on actual medical care." So there--to any and all disbelievers in this Health Care Reform Act--this is/was for you. Unless, of course, you're an executive of a health insurance company. Link: http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2011/12/02/the-bomb-buried-in-obamacare-explodes-today-halleluja/

KCK/KCMO No. 26 on "Most Dangerous Cities for Pedestrians"

You read correctly and it's out today on Yahoo! News. CarInsurance.com ranks our metropolitan area as the 26th worst city in the nation for pedestrians to get around. Sure, we could be worse and be in the top 25 or 15 or 10 but it still isn't good. We're one spot worse than the Los Angeles metropolitan area and they show 2533 deaths from being a pedestrian so you know something's not good. (Notes: St. Louis is no. 23--yay, at least we're not that bad--and Florida is worst of all with the top four worst places for pedestrians in that state). What did they used to say on the old TV show "Hill Street Blues"? Let's be careful out there. Link: http://www.carinsurance.com/Articles/how-not-to-get-hit-by-a-car.aspx?WT.qs_osrc=fxb-6922510

Senators Bond, Mitchell and McCain were way out of line

If you haven't read the front page story of The Kansas City Star today, you need to.

The three Senators listed above were in town and held a very small (100 people), "invitation only" meeting to discuss health care reform here in town at Children's Mercy Hospital.

What chutzpah.

They all said "compromise with Democrats hasn't been found."

Well, no kidding.

And why would it?

If the Republicans won't compromise, how can you get a compromise?

They were, it seems, in effect, blaming the Democrats for not giving them the compromise they were denying and wanting to deny.

Talk about blaming the victim.

"They blasted President Barack Obama's vision of health care reform, calling it outlandishly expensive, and predicted it could lead to rationing and outsized budget deficits for years to come."

There they go again--putting out nothing but fear.

Oh, and that rationing? We already have that, since rich people can and do get care and the poor and uninsured don't.

Get this beauty from Sen. McCain: "No country can continue to spend more than it takes in..."

That's good, coming from the Republicans. How come we got those huge deficits from that last 8 years of Republican rule, then? Where was the concern then?

Then there's this: "McConnell, the Senate minority leader from Kentucky, said if government got into the insurance business, it would wipe out the private insurance industry."

Ah, NOW we've struck on what--and whom--they're really concerned about--the insurance industry.

Their benefactors.

These Senators aren't concerned about you and me, ladies and gentlemen.

The insurance corporations are spending thousands and millions of dollars to make sure government stays out of the insurance business because then they won't be able to keep increasing our premiums while reducing care, all across the country.

What's stunning is that Sen. McConnell would even blurt that quote out for the press. He should know better than to make it clear who he's really working for.

"The three Republican senators said they are more interested in incremental health care reform..."

You bet they are. That way they can say they did something about health care in the US while ensuring that the insurance companies and other big business operations continue to clean the financial clocks of Americans.

But real, far-reaching, intelligent, all-encompassing health care reform that addresses the problems of the American public, their constituents?

No way.

Let me point out three simple, brief statistics, to show we need health care reform:

1) We have, above and beyond, the most expensive health care system in the world;

2) We rank, internationally, in mortality rates, 37th--behind Costa Rica and

3) Nearly 50 million Americans have no health care insurance or coverage at all and the number is growing daily.

There are more statistics available, quickly and easily. (See some here: http://www.michaelmoore.com/sicko/_media/SiCKO_sickofactoids.pdf)

So lets stop putting out all the fear, untruths and misrepresentations.

The health care system in America is broken. It is badly broken. It is financially breaking both households and businesses.

The Republicans need to stop being "The Party of No" and get behind a fix for this mess.

It's irresponsible to not offer true solutions and put the American public first and it's plainly bad for the country now and into our future.

Link to story: http://www.kansascity.com/105/story/1417107.html

Never mind

No, there's just too bloody much insanity and stupidity to not write.

Check this out:

"Insurance premiums have risen by 73.8% from 2000 to 2006, while the U.S. median income has increased 11.6% during that same period, according to a study released Tuesday by Families USA, the Helena Independent Record reports (Harrington, Helena Independent Record, 10/18)."

This report just came out in the middle of trying to get our health care overhauled in the US.

Read it again, ladies and gentlemen, and remember this.

The above statistic is further proof that, not only do we need health care reform in the US but we need it badly and it must, by necessity, include the government-run "public option" of insurance.

The corporations, I will say again, are eating us alive.

And we're letting them.

If you aren’t for health care reform in general and the “public option”, in particular, you’re voting against your own self-interests, in favor of the corporations.

Which, normally, would be fine except the rest of us would all suffer along with you, with much higher costs, ad infinitum.

Link to story:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/54522.php

Frustrating fights on several fronts--for all of us

More than anything else, it really frustrates me to hear working class people--people of not a great deal of money or "means", the middle and lower classes, if you will--rail against a new, government-sponsored single-payer health care system or other things we need.

Our health care system is broken, much as our financial system is, and needs fixing. The President is trying to bring solutions to the country.

Instead of fighting him and these programs, all of us in those middle and lower classes should be working with him, together, to bring about these fixes.

Keep in mind, we have to be unified and fight together with this White House and President on several fronts:

1) We have to push and fight back right now against the very wealthy, entrenched and powerful banking lobby which has virtually always gotten its way in Washington and which has been described as owning Congress, at least, if not Washington;
2) We have to fight the institutional investment firms;
3) We have to beat the hedge fund companies and their trillions of dollars;
4) We have to fight back against several fronts in this health care fight to fix our system:
a) We have to fight the doctors and their lobbies
b) We have to push back against “Big Pharm”, the drug and pharmaceutical companies
c) We have to win out against the hospital companies
d) We have to beat back the health insurance companies and their lobbies
5) We have to fight the oil companies and their ability to speculate on their products, raise the price of their products and cripple our household and national economies;
6) We need to fight the coal industry and its dirty mining and coal burning processes so we can clean up our air and reduce carbon and greenhouse gas emissions

So we have all this to do. It’s a big list and they are going to be long, tough, ugly fights, folks.

We have to hang together or we’re all hang.

And the President isn’t doing this because it’s fun or because he’s a “Socialist”, no matter what people like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly or others say.

He’s doing it because it’s good for the country—it’s good for you and me—and it’s the right thing to do.

All Americans need to see this

US Health Care

While everyone else, on both sides of the aisle, rant and rave, one way or another about Sonia Sotomayor as the next Justice on the Supreme Court, I'm going to let them and go on to something different, if not more important.

And that is, as you see above, health care in America.

I've said for a long time, the way we need to fix health care in the US is to take the gross, ridiculous profits out of it, the way the rest of virtually all of the world has so it's more a right instead of a privilege.

We're the only people on the planet that do it this way, ours is the most expensive, we don't have the highest mortality rates and yet Americans have been convinced ours is the only and best system to distribute health care.

Insane. Insanity. Fools.

Anyway, as I write this, I saw, a few days ago, some writing by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship that asks the question: "How can we expect an industry that profits from disease and sickness to police itself?"

Followed by this note: "The health care industry has spent $134 million on lobbying this year to keep its profits high and public health in the shadows."

And it is crazy.

Why would we even expect them to be involved in the conversation? They're only going to have one answer, again and again, and that is to either NOT CHANGE anything about the current system or, at worst, to change it as little as posssible from its current form.

They'll be thrashing about all over, saying how horrible it will be to change virtually anything about our health care system.

They'll say the same things they always do--

--"We have the finest and best health care system in the world" (we don't)

--"In Canada and Europe, you have to wait for hours or days to see a doctor" (you don't)

--"In the rest of the world, you can't see the doctor you want" (yes, you can and in the US, for lots of us, we can't--and we know it)

And more.

But it's all just rubbish.

We have the MOST EXPENSIVE health care system IN THE WORLD;

We are not the healthiest group of people on the planet;

Millions of us in this country are going WITHOUT health care, because it's so expensive;

The numbers of us that are going without health care in the US is growing--the situation is getting worse;

The doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, insurance company executives, pharmaceutical companies and their executives are all GETTING RICH, on the backs of the working people of this country, just so we can have health care--and that's an insane, unsupportable, unsustainable outrage.

We need to change the health care system in America.

We need to change it radically.

We will need to fight the health care, insurance, pharmaceutical and hospital corporations and lobbyists TOOTH AND NAIL, so to speak, to get a good, smart, workable system for us all, instead of for them.

They shouldn't even be let into the conversation, frankly.

There needs to be an organized riot, of sorts, by us, regarding health care in America.

We need to be strong. We need to be forceful. We need to push to make this happen.

Frankly and sadly, I don't think the American people have the stomach for it.

I don't even think the average American on the street knows we have a problem.

I salute Bill Moyers and Michael Winship for trying to educate us.

Link to story:
http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/140226/bill_moyers%3A_how_can_we_expect_an_industry_that_profits_from_disease_and_sickness_to_police_itself/

Hear that sound?

It's the sound of our chances of getting good, single-payer health care with a workable system for all Americans being sucked out of reach.

Have you heard about this yet?

The Obama Administration is doing the right thing--to an extent--in going along with the health care community's promis to cut 1 trillion dollars from their costs.

Actually, what happened is that the health care community--hospitals, doctors, pharmaceutical and insurance companies--all got together when they realized the kind of clout President Obama has right now, due to his election and goodwill with the American public and said we'll cut our costs that much.

They are threatened.

They also know our health care system doesn't work and that President Obama was going to do something about it. They knew he had the backing of the American public to do something about it.

So instead of letting him do something, they pre-empted him and offered this "1 trillion dollar cost cut."

All well and good, sure.

But it's 2009.

What's to keep them from reneging on this deal?

Nothing.

What penalties are being set, to make sure they come through for us all?

None.

This buys all of them--the hospitals, the doctors, the pharmaceutical and insurance companies, all of them--time. They get time until this popularity and power the current President has blows away--as they know it will. It's inevitable.

Right now, President Obama is at the height of his popularity and power and they know it.

This gives them the ability to delay any meaningful cuts in our health care costs, all with the idea and promise that they'll do just that, until he's dragged down by W's war for oil and the financial mess the US and the world is in and everything else that's on our national plate.

But they won't follow through on this completely and effectively and this will all come to nothing.

If not forced--and right now, no one's talking force--nothing will happen. They'll hold down their cost increases for a while and then later go back to business as usual and we won't get the health care solutions we need.

Health care will continue to just be for the wealthier of us and it will grow worse.

Energy and power

Energy and the sources for energy and electricity in the United States--and the world, really--need to change.

Our old power structures used to work but they don't any longer.

The whole idea of having an electric company that creates the power, only to dole it out to all of us is extremely outdated, particularly here in America, where corporations own and run the power-generating facilities and they exploit their customers with whatever charges and price increases they want to put forward, just because they want it and because they have the government officials in their own financial pockets.

That's one reason it no longer works.

The other reason the old way doesn't work is because the way of creating the electricity--having turbines moved by water, usually--is so damaging and polluting to the environment.

Added to that the global warming, it's just a recipe for needing replacement.

And the thing is, we have a solution for this.

The fact is, we need to have photovoltaic cells on our commercial and residential buildings so each facility can create its own energy.

There's no reason this can't happen, technically.

It would solve the problems of people not being able to afford energy for heating and cooling, along with the environmental and global warming problems.

But the fact is, we have the power structures in existence now, in our governments and society, that want and need--for their own existence--to keep things just the way they are.

In Missouri, right now, for instance, the Kansas City Star reported that, even if you wanted to put solar panels on your home, you legally can't get insurance to cover it, thus making it virtually impossible to do.

Corporations are aligned against this advance in technology for our society.

It's probably much more possilbe in Europe, where they don't let corporations have a stranglehold on the citizen's actions and lives.

This is why I've said here that, with this new President, we have work ahead of us--a great deal of work--and we have to keep pushing and take our country and society back from the corporations.