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TechnoratiHealth Care Reform Is Moral Battle for the Soul of a Nation
I have been asked to testify Monday about my experience with health insurance to a panel of clergy who will meet to discuss the moral issues of providing health care. What a terrific idea!
In all the lobbying and bargaining in Washington, D.C., we seem to have forgotten about the moral imperative to take care of the sick. One issue that is bandied about is that a public health care option would be too expensive. Why are we counting cost? This is America. When nine miners got trapped in Quecreek Mine in western Pennsylvania, nobody talked about the high cost of saving their lives. If poor Americans are trapped inside sickly bodies, all of a sudden everybody is talking ''cost-benefit.''
Better health care plans and increased availability of services will eventually lower costs because early intervention is always cheaper than response to a catastrophe. If an uninsured man with high blood pressure and high cholesterol can't afford medications or to go to a doctor, a hospital emergency room would eventually have to absorb the cost of a preventable heart attack. Even if this were not true, even if real health care reform with a government-sponsored public insurance program was going to increase costs, ethically, we are still accountable for eating that cost.
Just look at the money we put into less ethical imperatives. We bail out other countries. We fund unnecessary and expensive wars. We bail out the richest bankers. There is no moral reason for these bailouts. The 10 percent of Americans who live in poverty do have a moral claim to the basics of life; we all ought to be blushing about these 32 million forgotten people. When the Constitution was written, medical care was very primitive. A right to health care would have meant very little. Now access to modern health care is a necessity to having an even playing field for all our citizens. It is inconceivable that one could have a right to ''the pursuit of happiness'' mentioned in the Declaration of Independence without having the basic care that makes that pursuit physically possible.
As a doctor, I have worked firsthand with insurance companies. I know how stubborn and greedy they can be. I have been told outrageous things: ''Dr. Berman, send Mrs. Jones to the state hospital so the state can pick up the cost of her care. She is 50, menopausal and her kids are moving out of the house. These women never get better.'' I also have paid a cost in time and money for ignoring insurance companies and treating anyway. One of the first things I tell medical students is never justify a medical decision based on ''the insurance company told me to do this'' or on a threat of nonpayment.
One would think the current flu pandemic would make us realize that we all can get sick and we all need access to care. But Congress seems to miss the point. It was Mark Twain who said: ''Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.''
It is time for us to back our senators and congressmen who support a fully realized health care reform package with a public option. It is time for us to turn our backs on any legislator who votes against this. November 2010 is our chance to hold our leaders accountable.
We are in the middle of an epic battle for the soul of a nation. AIG has its bailout. What about small children whose parents can't take them anywhere but a crowded emergency room and then only after they have gotten really sick? What about those parents leaving the emergency room with prescriptions they can't afford? Are we going to step up, or not? This is not about socialism, and even the Republicans in Congress who oppose health care reform know it. This is about controlling capitalism so that it doesn't victimize the poor and sick. George Bernard Shaw said of doctors, ''never trust a man who has a [financial] interest in cutting off your leg.'' But far worse is leaving us to the whims of health insurance companies that have a financial interest in collecting our premiums and a bigger interest in limiting their payouts. The rights of the people must prevail over the wishes of health insurance corporations.
46 Comments so far
Show AllI feel compelled to comment on these posts, since i have been arguing for health care reform and writing and emailing my representatives, the president and other elected officials for a while now. I am a family physician and have been for about 20 years. I never wanted to be a business woman, so I became an employee at a hospital-owned practice instead. I have become very disillusioned with my situation, because i am getting more and more pressure to see more patients, admit more patients to the hospital etc. The system is totally messed up. We should be paid to keep people out of the hospital, not to put them in. However, it is not so simple to change the situation. There is ,as far as i know no union for employed physicians. I know that I have a very good income, compared with the majority of the population.So i do not want to whine about money. But I do not drive a Mercedes since I am also an environmentally conscious person and would never spend that much money on a car.
Anyway, i and the majority of physicians would love to see Medicare for all, with better coverage (it pays only 80% of the charges) and a complete overhaul of the idiotic Part D. Healthcare is a right , and the US has signed the international Declaration of Human Rights, which states health care as a human right. As far as I know , Barack Obama was the first Major Party presidential candidate who stated this in a debate ( I know Ralph Nader and Dennis Kucinich have also expressed this, of course). I do not see how this country can achieve a Single Payer System with the current electoral system. As long as politicians are dependent on and beholden to the health industry , there will be no meaningful reform.
By the way, I have not heard a single person complain about the fact that ALL the bills now being considered have a provision that would allow pharmaceutical companies to extend the patent life of their drugs another TWELVE YEARS! Is anybody paying attention? This is insane ! Where is the outrage?
susanneshine -
Thanks for your comments. I for one am outraged, but I think many people simply aren't aware of much of what is in these current bills. They're massive, 1000+ page abominations that the average person can't pore through or understand completely.
You mentioned income. One question I would have for you as a doctor is: would you and your colleagues be willing to accept getting paid as like from Medicaid/Medicare, with a 20% reduction in pay, if that would help to cover all people's needs? I know much of the high health care costs today are from excessive administrative costs as well, but what about doctors, surgeons, administrators, researchers, chemists, and others, who in many cases are compensated (IMO) excessively?
seditious- I wholeheartedly agree that doctors get paid too much. I do include myself in this.
i do accept Medicaid, and I get extremely frustrated when I cannot find specialists who will see Medicaid patients. I am afraid if the reimbursement for primary care physicians gets reduced any more, we will get even fewer medical students to go into these specialties. The AMA largely represents specialists and has blocked payment reform for a long time. Consider this: an ophthalmologist can perform cataract surgery in about 30 minutes . The payment for this is several thousand dollars. If a physician sits down and talks with a patient for 30 minutes, s/he gets paid between $50 and $75 .If I freeze a few precancerous places on someone's skin, I can get paid several hundred dollars, and it takes almost no time.
That needs to change. And all physicians will have to make an effort to reduce unnecessary expenses.
one more thing: since direct advertisement of pharmaceuticals have been legalized, the costs for drugs/ prescriptions have gone up a lot. the researchers who test new drugs are paid by the pharma industry, so I feel they cannot be objective . I plead guilty to having been way too naive about medications. Medical schools do not usually generate a healthy skepticism toward pharmaceuticals in their medical students.
Well, it seems there is a whole slew of issues here. Taking just one: would it be all that difficult if like-minded doctors such as yourself were to start an alternative organization to the AMA, if there is not one already? Or is the power/influence of the AMA too great to be challenged, with the threat of punitive consequences?
I suppose once one gets used to the lifestyle of largess and control, it's nearly impossible to dislodge. I know, I was married to a pharmacist, whose sister is a nurse practitioner, brother-in-law a pediatrician, and other sister a psychologist. To be honest and in short, it was a fairly disgusting 'sense-of-entitlement' mindset to be around, especially when I could see first-hand how all manner of justifications were used for the corrupting influence that Big Pharma and the insurance industry exerted on all of them.
I think the doctor's diagnosis of the illness at the heart of the US health care system is accurate, but his prescribed cure (support a public option) will not help the patient. All of the so-called "public options" on the table now are nothing but schemes to preserve the profiteering of the health insurance companies. They are merely health insurance reform, not healthcare reform.
The real danger in supporting this type of false reform is that it will certainly delay real healthcare reform, which we desperately need right now. People are dying, lots of people, simply because they do not have health insurance. This is inexcusable.
Single payer with no restrictions on access to care is the most direct, efficient, and humane approach to healthcare reform. Let's make it happen.
"One issue that is bandied about is that a public health care option would be too expensive. Why are we counting cost? This is America. When nine miners got trapped in Quecreek Mine in western Pennsylvania, nobody talked about the high cost of saving their lives."
Because those that saved their lives were part of a publicly funded (socialized) emergency services apparatus - which obviously works well. Health care in the US is for-profit (capitalist), and does not function nearly as well for the majority of those it is intended to help.
To Sioux Rose---
Your concern is much appreciated.
Your suggestion to take Vitamin C and "live food" I generally follow. A couple of weeks ago I had an abscessed tooth removed by a dentist I have known since the 1970s when we had a very public dispute over fluoridation of public water supplies. (My regular dentist just retired...) When he said "you're not taking care of yourself" I replied that I was taking at least three grams a day of Vitamin C based on the work of Linus Pauling, he replied that he had recently attended a seminar on nutrition and that "Pauling's work has been debunked."
I've had dental problems all my life and have seen dozens of dentists and this one is among the most competent, intelligent, and even funny. (I suspect a calcium imbalance; I suspect that my brain sucked calcium out of my body due to cognitive dissonance at an early age.) Our (dental) disagreements are essentially honest. I read Pauling's book on Vitamin C decades ago and gave a copy of his 1957 Nobel book, "The Nature of the Chemical Bond" (being on the chemistry of water) to my daughter while she was an undergraduate and she now has a degree in chemistry and another in math.
What is going on here is, I suspect, a genuine paucity of scientific information on the "pandemic" "swine flu" or H1N1.
I suspect that this H1N1 virus is highly labile (like my old-age handwriting, so that day to day my signature changes!). Some days I wake up feeling as though I am recovering, eat lightly, and then get kicked by a wave of nausea. So far, fever has been a minor issue while I suspect that pneumonia (which can occur with low incidence of fever) should be an ever-present concern in this so-called pandemic.
Something insidious is going on with this "flu." Back in the day, when doctors suspected a particular illness, they would take throat and mouth swabs and do Petri dish growths in various gelatins and then study them under a microscope. I grew up surrounded by medical practitioners who had labs. Medicine used to be an art as well as a science.
I am listening to CBS re-runs of the news right now and their reports on H1N1 deaths are choppy at best. And, as I have posted before, there are other anecdotal reports on-line of people experiencing WEEKS of debilitation. So far, I make it day-to-day, but I am rendered essentially incapable of carrying out any long-term plans such as causing the repair of my leaking roof.
As I have said, this is an insidious dis-ease. I am, meanwhile, genuinely curious as to how your Mars/Venus world view deals with this. My lungs are on fire. I am a nicotine addict. I suspect that codeine could relieve this but they refuse a scrip! If I enter the ER they will administer it and charge dearly for it.
Methinks the Taliban have it right! Poppies! Opium. Their antidote to Big Pharma. We've all seen the movie. Follow the Yellow Brick Road...Dorothy. We need a Back to Kansas Movement. Our governmewnt is killing us. They are better at delivering a Ft. Detrick deadly envelope that shut down the Congress after 9/11 than they are at delivering HEALTH CARE. Were I Mars based I have the mind to do the same. I choose Life.
I brought in my green tomatoes before the frost. Meanwhile, CBS is breaking up; their signal on the new HD systems cannot hold. There is much to be said for the old analogue system, to say nothing of dots and dashes. SOS!
You are loved and respected, Sioux Rose, even by idiots like me! Be well. And again, thanks.
-30-
Sioux Rose
Good afternoon, OLE MAN RIVER. Years ago when I was studying in London and knew NOTHING about healthy diet (I liked eating the nut-rich Arab breads found a few tube stops from the flat I shared with two adorable young British women, and cheese) I came down with mono. They called it "Glandular Fever" in U.K. A lot of factors work together when we succumb to illness. I was so weak I could barely walk to the bathroom, and had a pounding headache. My life force was dim.
Years ago I attended a session with one of the three trance-mediums I have encountered across a span of 40 years of interest & research into esoteric fields. There were about 35 people attending this event and we all got to ask a question. I asked if AIDS was a naturally occuring event or created. The answer given was "some of both," which I suspect is also true of this new flu. As someone else on the site related, it was pretty "convenient" to have so many doses ready.
I don't want to believe that some of the puppet masters are actually designing ways to decrease the population, although this planning for war after war (most on fixed pretenses) suggests as much...
As for dental: About 10 years ago I attended a Thanksgiving in South Florida where my parents relocated along with some of their friends. The son of a friend, 2 years older than me, was invited and he related how dentists drilled into so many of his teeth. I added that the same thing happened to me. The medical world, and its dental cousins are prone to fads. The fad when I was a kid was to take the tonsils out, and they also took tiny pinpricks and converted them into the equivalent of toxic moon craters filled with some kind of mercury-derivative. Today, half the women over 50 are instructed to get hysterectomies, and how many had breasts lobbed off? American Medicine/medical practice is so violent! I notice the influence of Mars-rules in this field, too. Rather than take the path of NURTURE or NOURISHMENT (doctors are not required to study nutrition, plenty of THEM smoke, are overweight, eat meat, and drink too much alcohol), the gentle approach that assists the body in its innate healing capacities, they tend to cut, tear, poison, and remove living tissue.
I am no expert on vitamins, and each of us is unique in our chemistry. Rest can help, visualizing yourself feeling better. When I was fortunate enough to reside in the Florida Keys I had a 'magic spot' I'd go to daily while my daughters were at school. It was there in that expanse facing the sea that I'd proof my columns, work on new ideas, letters to magazines and so forth. I would also take time to float on the water and remembering that Carlos Casteneda's teacher Don Juan placed him into the water (a stream), to recover after a very taxing mystical session... that water is the template, the womb from which our anatomies develop. Lay in the bathtub... try to visualize yourself returned to "the mold of matter," and ask your guardian spirits to help HEAL your LIGHT BODY. When I would lay atop the waters I would put forth this prayer and intention and I believe it held power. We are foremost LIGHT bodies ensconced in matter for the experience of evolving our total beings, portions which I truly believe remain intact after the death of the physical organism.
Currently I live near the Gulf of Mexico, and a man I met told me if I ever flew over it in a low flying aircraft I would never swim there again. The waters here are shark infected. We also have sting rays and the type of oysters that not only cut the skin, but leave a bacterial infection behind. I prefer to swim in the springs.
Thank you for the note of "love" and respect. Too often I find myself attacked in this forum, so I appreciate hearing from persons who--whether they agree with my mystical ideas or otherwise--respond affirmatively to hearing them. I TRULY hope you feel better... you might want to keep a journal of the journey of recovery? Usually something is gained even from our most trying experiences.
Just don't get sick! Also, don't get old!
Shadre writes on this thread:
"I wish there was a panel to go through the tons of paperwork seniors receive yearly that lists the changes in cost, what care and medications will no longer be provided in the coming year, and just the total hell in general that seniors have to go through every year trying to make sense of what their health care will and will not provide in the coming year, and all that they'll need to go through to get the care and medications they depend on.
"I consider myself to be a fairly intellegent senior, with a background in reading and understanding rules and regulations and compiling government reports for federally funded school programs, but having been retired a couple of decades, and trying to make sense of this mountain of information makes me want to say, 'screw it.'"
I hope a lot of people reading CD read that post. I just started receiving Medicare Part B this year (and the $96.40 per month premium taken out of my poverty-level SS check), and it rapidly became obvious that understanding Medicare and SS is a FULL-TIME JOB!
Also, from what I've read so far, here and on other venues, both doctors and hospitals all over the country are losing money on Medicare/SS patients, and under various proposals in Congress for health care "reform" may be scheduled to lose more. I've been really ill for several weeks now with flu-like symptoms that change literally day by day, but I haven't seen a doctor and haven't gone to a hospital because, frankly, the prospect of giving myself over to our institutional SYSTEM just about scares me to death.
I think my reaction here goes far to explain the popularity of the "death panels" Palin call. There is a subliminal fear of the System. It has yet to be rationalized, but it sure is out there, and with justification. Do we expect THIS CONGRESS AND THIS PRESIDENT and this country to abate it?
As for Senate Majority Leader Harry Ried's inclusion of a "public option" with a State "opt out provision," I sure hope that while he's at it he slips in another "defense" contract for CA Dem Sen D Feinstein's millionaire husband so we can keep bombing those overseas "peasants."
Maybe we should start calling ourselves the "peasants" we really have become, "possession" of SUVs to the contrary notwithstanding...
Daily, I wrack my brain (and my body) trying to find a way out of the Disaster this nation has become. Sensible calls for "justice" by the likes of the psychiatrist Berman will fall on deaf ears. Washington has no interest in mitigating suffering. Washington imposes suffering. That's its job. Globally.
The "over-the-hill gang" better get crackin. Time's awastin and so are we.
-30-
The 45,000 dead each year are casualties in the american/world war of the haves against the have-nots and have-lesses---
President Grover Cleveland– said in the 1880s!!:
"As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel. Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people's masters."...
"Income inequality in the US is now the most extreme of all countries. The 2008 OECD report, “Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries,” concludes that the US is the country with the highest inequality and poverty rate across the OECD and that since 2000 nowhere has there been such a stark rise in income inequality as in the US. The OECD finds that in the US the distribution of wealth is even more unequal than the distribution of income.
On October 21, 2009, Business Week highlighted a new report from the United Nations Development Program concluded that the US ranked third among states with the worst income inequality. As number one and number two, Hong Kong and Singapore, are both essentially city states, not countries, the US actually has the shame of being the country with the most inequality in the distribution of income." ....(reported by J.P. Roberts)
Sioux Rose
OLE MAN RIVER: I hope you feel your strength and vitality return soon. Are you getting any live food--by that I mean fresh produce? Do you take Vitamin C? Try to boost your immune system with healthy food, that's the end run around not getting help from the orthodox medical system. As I often remark, to the degree our nation identifies with conquest and the mores of Mars rules, any capacity towards becoming a caring society is diminished. Seems the bottom is falling out, various forms of collapse are afoot, and eventually out of the debris will come the will to rebuild on a more CARE-ful and CARING basis.
The moral battle for the soul of the nation. Ha ha! A nation that has no morals and even less of a soul.
Medicare for all, aka single payer health care, is favored by a majority of Americans.
How can we convince Congress to actually do what the people want?
Tell your members of Congress that unless they support Medicare for all, you won't support them.
Take the Medicare For All Pledge today:
http://bit.ly/medicareforallpledge
This article is exactly why Blanche Lincoln of AR is in BIG TROUBLE for being a wishy washy crook and she could very well lose her Senate seat:
http://washingtontimes.com/news
/2009/oct/26/glimmering-new-dawn-for-the-gop
I'll bet you 1000 to 1 that most Arkansans would prefer single payer to Obamacare.
The Washington Times is a mouthpiece for a bizarre cult, but the underlying point that Lincoln is in trouble holds true.
The only progressive running for Lincoln's seat is John Gray of the Green Party, a supporter of Medicare For All. For more about Gray, check out
http://www.greenpartywatch.org/2009/09/29/john-gray/
That looks promising. I hope the Green Party makes it through even if AR appears to be a long shot at first.
Dead peasant insurance
How can
a
"nation"
that was founded on
genocide
and
slavery
have
a
soul?
I don't believe it for a minute.
it does have a soul. it just belongs to the devil
When I was born my mother paid the Hospital $75.00. Today you can count on a 10K bill for this service. In Japan an MRI today costs $100.00 in NYC the same MRI costs $2400.00.
Really? I live in Cleveland and my MRI cost $5000. Wow! I should move to NYC!
Really? I live in Cleveland and my MRI cost $5000. Wow! I should move to NYC!
BUTCHER MEDICINE ---- SAVE US FROM DOCTORS
(1) Virtually all doctors in the U.S. retire millionaires.
(2) All doctors get a 40% referral fee, a full 40% kick-back of all
money paid to a specialist they recommend.
(3) Thanks to the processed food industry, the average American
diet is 50% fats. This the major cause of illness, and yet no doctor
is required to take one course in nutrition, and most all doctors say
that diet has little or no effect on poor health.
(4) To make a profit off the misery of the sick, surely this would corrupt
the morals of the most honest doctor on earth.
SAVE US FROM ANTI-FAT ZEALOTS
Thanks to brainwashing from anti-fat zealots, many of whom are doctors, the average American believes that all dietary fat is unhealthy, whereas in truth certain fats are ESSENTIAL, and carbohydrates can be equally unhealthy. Despite the ultra high carbohydrate, ultra low fat, ultra low protein diet being shown to be a failure, doctors and anti-fat zealots continue to try to promote it. And anti-fat zealots will continue to tell you that healthy foods such as eggs, olives, are the major cause of disease when then opposite is true.
The battle is even more fundamental than Mr. Berman can describe. It is more about whether a capitalistic market system that treats health care as a commodity should prevail, it is not just about, "controlling capitalism so that it doesn't victimize the poor and sick." I don't want to control or reign them in, I want to eliminate them as middleman-gatekeepers who keep me from the Health care that I see as a right. The Doctor equivocates. If HealthCare as a human right meant that his fees for service would go down--I wonder what side he would be on. Like our president and most of our Congress he seems to think there is a middle ground--if only we could get private insurers to behave better. "They have a right to make a "respectable profit" but they must be accountable," said our president in a town hall meeting. No voice was raised in opposition. That's what we want to believe but the private insurance industry has had 50 years to reform itself and behave better. Twenty years ago they agreed to common billing practices to lower costs and have yet to enact even that modest reform voluntarily. The "public option" is also just another private insurer in the market place. The not for profit insurers that we now have behave exactly like their for profit cousins. Morally decent ethical behavoir from those entities that follow market rules for lowering costs and/or increasing profits is not going to happen. They are not going to behave any better than they have been unless perhaps they are so closely supervised that they become in effect an arm of the government, (the Swiss model--a public utility) but no one in Congress is talking like that. Everyone who puts their faith in insurance companies and a private market approach is going to have to be dissapointed once again. Once again they will have to get their noses rubbed in the futility of what they are asking and suffer consequences for themselves and their families. Corporations are souless, amoral and not concerned about human rights-- haven't we learned that lesson at this point in our history.
I'm glad Dr. Berman talks about health care reform, instead of what Washington likes to call it: insurance reform. I've been saying this for months, for so long I'm tired of going over the same thing so many times.
The question before us now as a nation is merely: do we care about each other? My hope is that by putting aside our corporate capitalist heartlessness to care for our own countrymen, it will open the door to caring what happens to those of other countries.
Putting health above profit could even open the door to caring about the health of the planet as a whole, in regards to whether the planet will be healthy enough to support the human and other forms of life on it.
Oops.
"The question before us now as a nation is merely: do we care about each other?"
People do; corporations do not.
MEDICINE FOR PROFIT ---- IS THIS DARKNESS?
Darkness being an illusion of good hiding misery, as those with
wealth and power are now enriching themselves upon our misery,
for a moment let us sojourn upon a window into reality.
Now can one make a profit off the misery of the sĭck, without doing harm
to the sĭck? That would depend upon many factors and to name just a few:
(1) If a mechanic does harm to your car so it will need future repairs, he would
be guilty of criminal fraud but only if you could prove intent, a near impossible
thing to do. And a million times more impossible would it be to prove a healthcare
provider with intent to defraud did harm to your body. And that is why it is impossible
to regulate honesty or enforce honest in a for-profit healthcare system.
(2) Only the rich can afford the luxury of unlimited healthcare, so the rest of us
when faced with healthcare needs that exceeded our ability to pay would suffer
some degree of harm. With those who charged the least for services causing
us to suffer the least harm. those who charged the most causing the greatest
harm and those who charged what the traffic would bear actually doing criminal
harm.
(3) Always putting the good of a patient above profit is what a nonprofit
healthcare provider is all about. Surely as any company out to make a profit
must always do what is in the best interest of profit. So if you were poor
and had to ration care, the greater a service provider’s desire for profit
the greater the harm to your health would result.
The public option should lower costs, not raise them. Countries with the most robust public option possible, single-payer, pay HALF as much as we do for healthcare, i.e. we pay an extra $1 trillion a year for healthcare to maintain our 'for profit' system.
I hate to read articles like this defending the public option 'despite its costs'. If the public option is projected to cost extra to implement, then someone (read: the insurance industry) is cooking the books to make it look unpalatable.
I think what the author means about 'extra cost', is the expansion of our healthcare system to cover everyone: universal healthcare. Universal healthcare is a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT ISSUE than the public option, and to the extent the two are conflated (even by their defenders) is the extent the PRIVATE HEALTH INSURERS are winning this debate.
Its obvious from a study of any developed country other than America: going to a robust public option, single-payer, is the traditional way to extend healthcare benefits to everyone (universal healthcare) and, at the same time, SAVE MONEY. The cost of universal healthcare in America is completely a reflection of our horribly expensive FOR PROFIT healthcare system (esp private insurance) and NOT of universal healthcare, per se.
As much as this Health Care issue about greed and profits, it also has at its heart the desire to protect the Hierachy of the powerful and the powerless.
When a "good" or "service" or what many see as a "right" are witheld by one group of power from the masses it helps to preserve the system of one small group dominating another and keeping them "in their place".
Social programs that provide equal access to all without having to consider ones income or "status" are a threat to this system.
This the same underlying motivation that saw people fight to preserve slavery, to keep women from having the right to vote or to introduce things like the Jim Crow laws.
To this group of people ,different levels of Social and Economic Status are seen as a "Divine right" and especially since those who support this status quo see themselves as more deserved of this elevated status then those below them on the social ladder.
This also explains why so many Churches will not come on board with this given one would think they would be Champions of "healing The Sick" (I do not think Jesus said Go out and heal the poor but make sure they can pay you first)
The Church IS a Hierachy. Power is intended to flow from those at the Top of that Hierachy who somehow have the direct ear of "God" down through its Priests and then to the "followers".
The Churches battle against the Gnostics and other groups who preached equality and claimed that all people have "The Direct ear of God" was similar in many respects.
"This also explains why so many Churches will not come on board with this given one would think they would be Champions of "healing The Sick" (I do not think Jesus said Go out and heal the poor but make sure they can pay you first)
The Church IS a Hierachy. Power is intended to flow from those at the Top of that Hierachy who somehow have the direct ear of "God" down through its Priests and then to the "followers".
The Churches battle against the Gnostics and other groups who preached equality and claimed that all people have "The Direct ear of God" was similar in many respects."
I disagree. There are a lot of churches and clergy out there who are advocating for health insurance for all. The pastors at my church are both openly gay, as are the majority of our members.
Saying that "the church" operates in a completely top-down manner isn't fair to the many progressive churches who are governed by lay leaders.
"When a "good" or "service" or what many see as a "right" are witheld by one group of power from the masses it helps to preserve the system of one small group dominating another and keeping them "in their place".
GENOCIDE by poverty is still genocide.
The wealthy have the power to deny health care and "infect" the uninsured.
Q. Guess who made health insurance so darned expensive?
A. The wealthy.
Americans are appalled when genocide is committed in other countries but never notice when they do it in their own.
Also in the GwNorth.
Ah, the clergy. A very silent bunch on health care for all, but screaming about abortion. It's okay to have 45,000 a year lost because of lack of insurance and countless more who are living under terrific stress just trying to pay for the premiums of these blood-sucking agencies. So let's scream about abortion, something that can be lowered through proper reproductive education and, I dare say, better economic circumstances for people, and who cares about the men, women and children who are suffering and dying because of our archaic for-profit employer-based health insurance system. Save the fetus at all costs, but once that fetus becomes a real human being, tough luck, you're on your own.
Please go see Moore's most recent movie, and your views on "the clergy" may open up a bit.
That was an uplifting little set of interviews, wasn't it?
The last time I heard such inspired rhetoric from the clergy they were compas Nicaraguenses in the '80's.
"This is about controlling capitalism so that it doesn't victimize the poor and sick."
Dr. Berman hits the nail on the head. How much is enough?
Unfettered greed is a result and a symptom of a government that aids and abetts it.
Dennis Kucinich voted against the latest bill to fund war.
As President, he would have the power to end war and fund single-payer health care. Neither the Democratic party or the Republican party would have the justification to vote against health care for all if the funds were there.
Dennis Kucinich 2012.
Also, as far as the title: This country has pretty much lost its Soul to T.V., propaganda, "team politics", sports, celebrity idolatry, fear mongering, and apathy.
This "christian nation" is the model of hypocrisy and the antithesis of what their "leader" taught. Awareness is as missing as planes in the Bermuda Triangle.
Sue1403: "Dennis Kucinich voted against the latest bill to fund war."
Not only that but, as you know, Dennis has CONSISTENTLY voted FOR "We the People" in ALL issues. He takes NO, Zero, Zip, Zilch corporate "bribes" and in in his words is, "owned only by the people".
If alleged Progressives hadn't been so cowardly, fear-based, and win-at-all-costs driven, Mr. Kucinich would be in the W.H. and we would be headed for Single-Payer, military given orders for pull out of BOTH illegal occupations, NAFTA repealed, and on and on with Progressive issues started.
Can we start waaaay early and begin getting his name and what he stands for out there? I still talk about him in "cafe debates" and constantly here the refrain, "Dennis who?" This is NOT acceptable to me and should not be acceptable to any TRUE Progressive who sincerely wants "change". (Remember that word?!)
"If alleged Progressives hadn't been so cowardly, fear-based, and win-at-all-costs driven, Mr. Kucinich would be in the W.H. and we would be headed for Single-Payer, military given orders for pull out of BOTH illegal occupations, NAFTA repealed, and on and on with Progressive issues started."
The President of the US as Zeus, Jupiter Optimus Maximus, Athena, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and Mary, the Muslim God, Siddharta Gautama, Kuan Yin, Brahma, Lucifer, Lilith, Santa Claus, all rolled into one. Did I miss someone? I'm sure that I did.
Regardless of whether Nader or Kucinich wins the presidency, he isn't going to be able to force through his policies without control of Congress. Not to mention the states. Like it or not, there are no easy shortcuts to building alternatives to the Democrats / Republicans.
Unless you want an authoritarian dictator as president.
Get the clergy in there and they'll make sure the health care issue dies once again because it doesn't have the provision in blazing red that says abortions will not be covered; dooming millions of living souls to death to protect unborn souls not yet conceived.
I wish there was a panel to go through the tons of paperwork seniors receive yearly that lists the changes in cost, what care and medications will no longer be provided in the coming year, and just the total hell in general that seniors have to go through every year trying to make sense of what their health care will and will not provide in the coming year, and all that they'll need to go through to get the care and medications they depend on.
I consider myself to be a fairly intellegent senior, with a background in reading and understanding rules and regulations and compiling government reports for federally funded school programs, but having been retired a couple of decades, and trying to make sense of this mountain of information makes me want to say, "screw it." It certainly seems like the premise behind the whole sadistic mess of Medicare, the prescription drug program, and Med Advantage senior care is to assure that many of us who're considered to be just taking up space and wasting dwindling resourses, will drop by the wayside.
"A battle for the Soul of a Nation"? This nation has no Soul. They sold it to Moloch in return for the glories of Empire compounded by perpetuation of Authoritarian Patriarchy, Male Supremacy, Gender Slavery, the Rights of Conquest, with Feral Blood Drinking Oligarchy as the glue that binds them all...the plebs are merely standing around waiting to be fitted with their RDIF chips and docilator collars.
The days of honoring themselves will soon be at an end.
..."As bad, millions will be left uninsured or underinsured as Washington cuts back on its obligation to provide universal quality care as a human right. Instead, final legislation will be class-based on the ability to pay with growing millions of poor and lower income people offered sub-standard care, millions left out entirely, and a time coming when only those who can afford it will be covered, no others. That's Obamacare's bottom line, but expect no public discourse to explain it.",,,S.J. Lendman...
The problem is that we are thinking and acting as though it were a time of peace, when actually we are right in the middle of a real war, a war of the haves against he have-nots or have-lesses, where the winners win and the losers are allowed to die...
The origin of the war is the state of steadily increasing scarcity across the earth,-a state that did not and does not have to be, but is becoming more and more an operational reality. The 45,000 dead from lack of insurance are just some of the casualties.
Competition functions to create scarcity, scarcity demands there be winners and losers,..there MUST be...
Real scarcity means that NO meaningful health care plan can be permitted.....
Abundance is of the earth and nature's ecological integrative functioning, both physical and meta-physical. It has nothing to do with the industry/oil created confusion that is modern civilization. Another way of saying it is to say that life's functioning within the universe is syntropic, not entropic...
I will give the 'good doctor' the 'benefit of the doubt' and presume that he is 'embarking on his own crusade to improve the lives of others'-----------
His article above is simply an 'echo' of what many others know, hopefully it is not 'news' to him and he is imagining himself a 'reporter'---'reporting the news that things are really screwed up in his chosen profession, i.e. MD.
I would think he would be more effective if he were to use his superior education and privilege it has afforded him to organize other 'MDs' to come together and 'force the changes' he is 'parroting' here-----in other words 'actions speak louder that words'----but then there is that one thing that all of the 'MD's seem to have in mind; their bottom line; and can they 'really afford that new Mercedes, or keep that 'old---(three year old)---luxury model' they are 'forced' to drive now.
The vast majority of the Doctors of the USA have through their collective silence and tacit participation, been a major contribution to the current problem. With just a few exceptions they have been major players in the problem by allowing themselves to become 'delivery boys and girls' for a defective product.
They could change things almost over night---if enough of them truly wanted the needed changes.
But then, they just may be forced to keep that three year old luxury model---for a few more years, and that just might be 'tragic', what would they think at the 'country club' if the 'good doctor' did not keep up with the ' Doc. Joneses'?