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Oysters for Health Care
This is a story of health care and two Americans; a tale of two citizens, if you will.
This week, Regina Benjamin was nominated by President Obama as our next surgeon general, charged with educating Americans on medical issues and overseeing the United States Public Health Service. She was the first African American woman to head a state medical society, a member of the board of trustees of the American Medical Association and last year was named the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation genius award.
But more important, she's a country doctor, a family physician along the Gulf Coast of Alabama, serving the poor and uninsured -- white, black and Asian. After Hurricane Katrina destroyed her clinic -- the second time a hurricane had done so -- she mortgaged her own home to rebuild it. The day it was to reopen, a fire burned the clinic to the ground. Moving to a trailer, Dr. Benjamin and her staff never missed a day of work.
Stan Wright, the tobacco-chewing mayor of Bayou La Batre, the small shrimp-fishing community in which Dr. Benjamin practices, told National Public Radio, "She'll do whatever she's gotta do to make sure everyone's taken care of."
Benjamin will no doubt bring that same ethic to the fight for health care reform. When President Obama announced her nomination in a Rose Garden ceremony Monday, Dr. Benjamin said, "These are trying times in the health care field, and as a nation, we have reached a sobering realization. Our health care system simply cannot continue on the path that we're on. Millions of Americans can't afford health insurance or they don't have the basic health services available where they live."
Although the clinic has not been able to give Dr. Benjamin a salary for years -- Mayor Wright says she's owed over $300,000 -- she buys medicine for her patients out of her own pocket.
In fact, many of the folks in Regina Benjamin's bayou town are so poor that sometimes she's paid with a pint of oysters or a couple of fish. She's fine with that. And she makes house calls.
Now meet H. Edward Hanway, the chairman and CEO of CIGNA, the country's fourth largest insurance company. At the beginning of the year, CIGNA blamed hard economic times when it announced the layoff of 1100 employees, but it reported first quarter profits of $208 million on revenues of nearly $5 billion. Mr. Hanway has announced his retirement at the end of the year, and the living will be easy, financially at least. He made $11.4 million in 2008, according to the Associated Press, and some years more than that.
That's a lot of oysters, although he lags behind Ron Williams, the CEO of Aetna Insurance, who made $17.4 million last year, or John Hammergren, the head of McKesson, the biggest health care company in the world. His compensation was $29.7 million.
Here's the difference. To Dr. Regina Benjamin, health care is a public service, helping people in need with grace and compassion. To Ed Hanway and his highly paid friends, it's big business, a commodity to be sold to those who can afford it. And woe to anyone who gets between them and the profits they reap from sick people.
That's what Wendell Potter, the former CIGNA executive turned health care reform advocate, told us on last week's edition of Bill Moyers Journal.
"Just about every time there has been significant legislation before Congress, the industry has been able to kill it," he said. "Yeah, the status quo works for them. They don't like to have any regulation forced on them or laws forced on them. They don't want to have any competition from the federal government, or any additional regulation from the federal government. They say they will accept it. But the behavior is that they will not."
As we reported last week, that behavior includes spending nearly a million and a half a day to make sure health care reform comes out their way. Over the years they've lavished millions on the politicians who are writing and voting on health care reform. Now it's payback time.
Proposed legislation finally is coming out of House and Senate committees, and Thursday's Los Angeles Times reported "signs that the debate was moving into a more bruising phase in which insurance companies, hospitals and others fight to shape the details of legislative provisions that affect them."
It's going to get ugly, especially now that some Democrats, according to ABC News, are contemplating new taxes on health insurance and pharmaceutical companies to help pay for reform, perhaps as much as $100 billion worth.
In other words, no more Mister Nice Guy. Those TV commercials you've been seeing from the health care companies about their generosity and miracles of modern medicine are about to change, as the opposition shifts gears from charm to alarm. It's the war against the Clinton health care plan all over again.
This time, don't let them scare you. "It should not be this hard for doctors and other health care providers to care for their patients," Dr. Regina Benjamin said when she was nominated this week. "It shouldn't be this expensive for Americans to get health care in this country."
32 Comments so far
Show AllMaybe people will start to see health as a right not a profit center.
It might be considered to be obscene that sickness is used as a way to make money.
Medicare is single payer. But it doesn't get so much as a single prayer from our conservative representatives. These are the people that say we can't afford Medicare. When we use all of our money to destroy Iraq, that is probably true.
Pray for single payer.
Praying is OK, but we're going to have to fight, too. And the fight is on right now. Don't give up. Publicly humiliate your representative if he/she is in favor of the status quo, allowing the vampires to continue to rob, bankrupt, trample the dignity of, and outright kill the public in the health "business".
So, what say you Dr. Regina Benjamin? Will you openly advocate for and support the only health care reform that answers all of your expressed concerns regarding cost, equal access and quality of care?
Single payer, cradle to grave, everyone in, no one out, regardless of one's ability to pay.
For anyone who has studied the "American Health Care Problem" to any extent, the realization that the entire system is in the direct control of just a relative few corporations, and those are in the control of just a few people --mostly men--
which is the same thing that the Americans allowed with their economic system, twice---in less than one century, both are a disaster.
This has led the USA to be listed by the WHO as no. 37 on the international scale for level of care. So their economy is in a disaster because they gave the control to just a few. The USA can put people into space, but they can't take care of the health needs of all of them that are on the 'ground'---back home.
Then, some 'freak' like Michael Jackson can have 'his very own anesthesiologist ---at home'---just to serve his needs.
Which is a good indication that one of the reasons the health care in the USA is in such a tragic situation is that a vast majority of the Doctors help to make it that way.
The USA has never been a 'democracy'--instead a very wealthy Plutocratic Oligarchy
'funded by the majority to benefit the few' .
The 'people' were'sheeple' and have allowed things too far now however, and the tolerance of the world for the USA is most likely at its end. War crimes of the most severe have been committed by the 'elected leaders' of the USA, and while the USA plays the 'shell game for blame'. Thousands of innocent people are either being killed maimed or burned out of their homes, their families torn apart, their lives and nations destroyed; all for the whims of just a relative few---and those were America's 'best'---didn't they put them into power? Isn't that a legacy for history to ponder, GW Bush and Dick Cheney were 'Americas Best'......?
There is most likely a very small 'window of opportunity' for the USA to make the needed changes, but very small, and the likely hood that the Obama administration, and the 'rest of the people' will make the needed changes is slim---to maybe--- none.
It might make a large difference in the health care area.
The Chinese make a move to 'cut off all lines of credit'--then the USA finds that all of 'their' friends--like them---will stop being 'friends' to them, when the 'shit hits the fan' and ---the Americans will devour themselves. There most likely would not be 'as many patients' for those Doctors---but then---most of them would 'cease needing patients'.
Actually in reality, the world most likely would be a safer place without the USA---or at least it would be safe 'from' the USA----those Americans are destructive and dangerous -- --------even to themselves.
America, you made your own mess, but the irony is that you have the potential to change it---more than any other people in history---you have the potential to truly be 'great'; you just may not have the time left to do it.
Good Luck America, you really need it.
"America, you made your own mess, but the irony is that you have the potential to change it---more than any other people in history---you have the potential to truly be 'great'; you just may not have the time left to do it.
Good Luck America, you really need it."
Here again, we really agree.
Henry8,
I am glad to see you make progressive comments here on a progressive website. It makes me think,'Hmm, he isn't a troll type as I thought yesterday on the flag thread." I'm sorry about your blind spot where the 1st amendment and the flag overlap but welcome here nevertheless:)
America's best what?
America's best easily manipulated sack of egotistical entitlement shit: GWB
America's best fear monger: Dick the dick Cheney, who also wins for America's best contemptive sneer
America's best cover-our-complicit-asses association: the US congress
America's best placebo: religion
America's best distraction: sports
America's best addiction: tied for first are the legal drugs of alcohol, tobacco and sugar
America's best swindlers: another tie between K Street and Wall Street
America's best bullshit slingers: Television "news"-casters
America's best kept secret: America is not run by the people, nor their allegedly elected representatives, but by the behind-the-scenes-billionaires who buy them and bully them and bilk them
Did I miss anything?
Sioux Rose
ELAINE: MOST excellent post! You go girl!
Well, I wouldn't get too carried away on sports being a distraction. Plenty of people in Europe like to follow soccer and other sports, and they're not interested in having the corporations run their health care system.
Hey, don't take it personally, sports fans. I realize I got a little carried away, but the question about "America's best" is a little like "success in Iraq"; a lot depends on what your definitions are...
Go Pittsburgh Penguins! Canada's favorite team...and they have single payer!
NMLib, whether it's America or Europe, when so much money is involved in sports, it's never a good thing, and it's especially bad in the U.S. It's obscene that many of the people who get to roll in money and wealth (sports, entertainment, traders and speculators, medical insurance companies, etc.) actually DO NOT produce anything essential - such as food, clothing, shelter, transportation, communication, etc. In a nation that already has so much disparity, big sports shows only serve to distract. Those who have a TV (big screen is better!), and a house and beer might feel they've got it made while watching sports with "the guys". So much of it is manufactured hype. I have seen how much importance is given to football teams in high schools and universities. I have seen how much food is wasted by the football teams at the university cafeteria after their practice. This was some 20 years ago, and I remember thinking, my goodness, how can they be mindless about so much waste. All the money that's involved in a mega sporting event comes from within the country - money that could be spent on something productive. If a society TRULY has surplus wealth, then it could splurge on sports or whatever.
I included medical insurance companies in the "non-essential" list deliberately. I should have said, "for profit m.i. companies". Beyond the salaries for those who work for the company, THERE IS NO ROOM for profit in medical insurance. The ONLY WAY profit can be made is by overcharging on premiums and underpaying on or denying claims. If there is a surplus year after year, the only thing to do is to reduce the premiums - period!
NativeSon, Do you really think a bunch of pasty white, BT corn and chemically enhanced, hormone beef, supersized, Carl Rove cloned Pillsbury Dough Boys have any potential to be great? I seriously doubt it. America is going down. Permaculture is coming up. America doesn't need luck, it need its eulogy read.
"...she's paid with a pint of oysters or a couple of fish."
Is Humanity a cure for Capitalism?
Permaculture is the cure for capitalism.
Any bipartisan efforts to address collusion and price fixing?
US hospital sues CSL for price fixing
Eli Greenblat
July 18, 2009
A SMALL, publicly owned hospital in the US state of Missouri has launched a class action lawsuit against Australia's biggest health-care company, CSL, and its main rival, Baxter International, claiming a conspiracy to fix the prices of life-saving blood plasma products.
Lawyers for Pemiscot Memorial Hospital, which services several counties in south-east Missouri, allege CSL and Baxter had illegal agreements to restrict supply and push up prices through co-ordinating their individual output.
It comes one month after the nightmare of CSL's failed $US3.1 billion ($A3.9 billion) takeover bid for Talecris Therapeutics and allegations of market manipulation used at the time by the US Federal Trade Commission to block the deal.
The hospital is relying heavily on the statements and findings of the FTC in June that claimed that CSL, Talecris and Baxter operated as a "tight oligopoly" and had learnt they could maximise profits if each company did its part to pull back on supply to avoid driving prices lower.
http://business.theage.com.au/business/us-hospital-sues-csl-for-price-fixing-20090717-doas.html
The sickness and disease industry is very profitable. Will reform address the issue of monopolies and exploitation?
Economically, the main reason health care access is a public good and why private health insurance for basic care needs to be illegal is that anyone with half a brain will pay almost anything for something they think is necessary to gain more years of life. So the consumers are by definition desperate from right out of the box. This, in turn, vastly increases the already substantial pressures in favor of monopolization in modern day fake free market economies. So just from the standpoint of basic economics, the whole US health care set-up is a huge fiasco from the get-go, an economics catastrophe waiting to happen if there ever was one..
The Democrats' twisted "reform" proposals have now been officially predicted by the Congressional Budget Office to not slow the growth of health care spending and therefore to not save the Government (the Government as a whole I believe, Federal, state, and local levels) one nickle compared with doing nothing, which has suddenly increased the probability that nothing at all will pass when all is said and done.
The Democrats' proposals involve new taxes. The new taxation would have both progressive and regressive components. The regressive taxation falls on those making between 133% of the Federal poverty line and about $40,000 a year. The regressive taxation also falls on small business owners, in particular ones who have payrolls in excess of $250,000 or maybe $350,000 up to $1,000,000 or perhaps a little more than that.
As for Obama, he appears to be hell-bent to get something passed even if it is doomed to failure in the longer term which, along with the collapsing economy, is another reason why as of right now it is very unlikely he can be reelected.
The bottom line is that it is not simply that single payer would save a lot of money. As the CBO just reported, it is that it is the only thing that will save any money at all! And that money must be saved has become obvious to everyone with half a brain.
"The sickness and disease industry is very profitable. Will reform address the issue of monopolies and exploitation?"
Real reform would. This isn't it.
If these low lifes pass this farce of a bill under the guise of "health care reform" our health care will be less and cost more. Anyone that reads the proposed bill can see that. The CBO is one government agency that does its job well and gives you the truth if you don't read it.
This bill will only increase the profit of the very ones that profit the most right now.
If its not Single Payer, you will know immediately who's behind it.
I still have the receipt from the hospital where my daughter was born in 1954. It's for $50. That covered the delivery room, one week care of mother and daughter, and medical treatment for both of them for bronchitis. That was without insurance.
Now it would cost that much for the cotton ball used to swab your arm before a shot.
From my husband's last hospital stay (April 09): one aspirin = $4
Yikes! I was in hospital a few days after a major surgery last year- 2 pain pills every 4 hours, and they billed $6 per pill. When I was released, the pharmacy where I filled the prescription charged $10 for an entire bottle.
NMLib
Okay a quick calculation here - $216 for pain pills.
Rumor has it that a report on Comparative Effectiveness Research will conclude that managing pain with "pain medication" is not cost effective, nor will it serve to improve outcomes - unless the "outcome" involves the pharmaceutical industry profiting mightily from it.
If you can't afford it, expect to bring your own. Remember that bottle of whiskey and leather strap to bite down on that we talked about? I understand that will be the approved pain medication in the formulary as part of congress' health care reform plan! And BTW, only one bottle of the cheap stuff per hospitalization.
Believe me, candrew, I needed those meds after that surgery. No health insurance here, so indigent funding covered hospitalization (but not the surgery or anesthesia)-- I'm sure the county worked out a much lower rate for the bill than I could have gotten if I had to pay cash. Ask anyone with health insurance, though, and they'll tell you that they'll be billed for such things as meds during hospital stays- and the hospitals will forbid patients from bringing their own meds. What a scam.
RE: "...and the hospitals will forbid patients from bringing their own meds. What a scam. "
Another variant: Memphis Baptist Hospital refused to dispense the Rx my wife had taken for years and offered a substitute that she had tried previously and didn't work. I asked the nurse which Dr. prescribed the substitute. She said "The Pharmacy does that". I asked why. "It's hospital policy." My wife told her that med had been proven not to work for her GIRD condition and, unless a Dr. gave her a medical reason for the substitution, she refused to take it. The nurse indignantly wrote "patient refused medication" on her chart. I brought the correct Rx from home and gave it to my wife for the next 6 days. Months later I saw a copy of the insurance claim filed by Baptist Hospital - it included a charge of $385 for "self administered medication". When I raised an objection with my employer's health insurance manager he told me that every major medical bill is full of crap like that - especially those from hospitals -- and he added, Baptist Hospital was the worst of the lot in Memphis. But, he said, no one could afford the time and effort required to audit and argue these issues - better to pay and move on.
I pointed out that a Single Payer plan could fix a lot of that "crap" as I had seen when Medicare audited my mother-in-law's hospital bills and cut up to 35% from the initial charges. He began railing about socialism and how those plans work so badly in Europe and Canada. Sixteen months later my employer announced they were forced to slash the quality and raise the price of our health insurance by $400 /month "due to unsustainable increases in medical bills".
Nevertheless, we mustn't allow the patients to run the asylum. Much better to leave the assholes in charge.
A(wo)men to that!
Speaking of Oysters for Health Care
With the unemployment reaching over 15% don't forget to add to your local food bank. There is a collection bin in my local post office. This is a good time to clean out your cupboards and rotate your can goods.
one reform should be a "smokers lounge where patients can
administer the own pain management " if you get my drift.
she sounds like a great choice and reminds one of the scene
in sicko where the french doctor makes a house call.
this will be the greatest heavy weight fight since ali-
frazier 3 the "thrilla in manila" as our great brother
and genius promoter ali said. get your tickets here
get your tickets.
If I had to bet right now I'd say a plan doomed to economically fail will pass, but I would not be shocked or even very surprised if little in the way of even doomed reform passes.
There is a very substantial probability that the "public option," which if you are a true progressive you know is not a true or long term solution, will be lost in a final scramble to get something, anything passed for the hell bent Obama and his rabid supporters. Specifically, public option can be lost if the Senate Democrats, due to a complete lack of Republican support and perhaps a defection or two or three among their own ranks, are forced to use a procedure called reconciliation.
In reconciliation, public option can be stripped (by the ultra right wing Republicans and extreme right wing Democrats) because it is not an established "budgetary item". Although either way the "reform" fails, this would be the ultimate doomsday scenario. No public option would make the taxes on certain lower income people and certain small businesses staggeringly regressive, and would in fact result in large scale refusal of such individuals and businesses to participate in any "health care exchange".
YOU GOT IT! Designed to FAIL...got almost 50 years of history of programs designed to fail, our Overseers for Master will not disappoint...unless you're still sucking on the "Hopa-Hope" ropa-dope lollipop....available at all Wal-Mart, Target, and K-Mart stores and fine boutiques for the "upbeat" everywhere...have a sucker...
can you mentally create a world that functions without money?
DR.REGINA BENJAMIN.......... AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT HEROISM Is!
One of the family posted, "we have a brief window of opportunity to enact meaningful health-care reform ",which is one of many "windows of opportunities" we are currently experiencing.
If we build "CITIZEN CENTRAL" we can collectively pass through all the windows.
There are at least thirty million people in this country who believe that the world will end in their lifetime,and it can't end soon enough.
Do we have thirty million people that can be mobilized in a day?
Until all the various progressive organizations, along with
people that are out of the loop, but who can be approached
for support,(believe me we need all the support we can get)
can unite issue by issue, we are all fiddling while America
continues in its free-fall.
As long as Health Care is purely market-driven, people will die ... not because of what it says on a medical chart, but because of what it says on a spreadsheet.