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Sick with Terror
The media have been swamped with reports about the attempt to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day. When Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, now dubbed the "underwear bomber," failed in his alleged attack, close to 300 people were spared what would have been, most likely, a horrible, violent end. Since that airborne incident, the debates about terrorism and how best to protect the American people have been reignited.
Meanwhile, a killer that has stalked the U.S. public, claiming, by recent estimates, 45,000 lives annually-one dead American about every 10 minutes-goes unchecked. That's 3,750 people dead-more than the 9/11 attacks-every month who could be saved with the stroke of a pen.
This killer is the lack of adequate health care in the United States. Researchers from Harvard Medical School found in late 2009 that 45,000 people die unnecessarily every year due to lack of health insurance. Researchers also uncovered another stunning fact: In 2008, four times as many U.S. Army veterans died because they lacked health insurance than the total number of U.S. soldiers who were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan in the same period. That's right: 2,266 veterans under the age of 65 died because they were uninsured.
On Tuesday, President Barack Obama was fiery when he made his public statement after meeting with his national security team about the airline breach: In seeking to thwart plans to kill Americans "we face a challenge of the utmost urgency," he said. He talked about reviewing systemic failures and declared we must "save innocent lives, not just most of the time, but all of the time."
This is all very admirable. Imagine if this same urgency was applied to a broken system that causes 45,000 unnecessary deaths per year. Since stimulus funds will now be directed to supply more scanning equipment at airports, what about spending money to ensure mammograms and prostate exams at community health centers?
And then there's the investigation of who is responsible for the attempted Christmas Day attack and getting "actionable intelligence" from the alleged bomber to prevent future attacks. All good.
We actually have "actionable intelligence" on why people die due to lack of health care, and how insurance companies actively deny people coverage to increase their profits, but what has been done about it?
The day before the underwear bomb incident, Christmas Eve, the U.S. Senate passed The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act by a vote of 60 to 39. Obama described the bill as "the most important piece of social legislation since the Social Security Act passed in the 1930s." Yet in order to get to that magic number of 60 Senate votes, the already weak Senate bill had to be brought to its knees by the likes of Sen. Joe Lieberman, from the health insurance state of Connecticut, and conservative Democrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska. The Senate and House versions of health insurance reform now have to be reconciled in conference committee.
The conference committee process is one that is little understood in the U.S. In it major changes to legislation are often imposed, with little or no notice. That's why C-SPAN CEO Brian Lamb sent a letter to congressional leaders Dec. 30 requesting access to televise the process. He wrote, "[W]e respectfully request that you allow the public full access, through television, to legislation that will affect the lives of every single American." Rather than simply grant access, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asserted that "there has never been a more open process."
Yet Pelosi and the Democrats are now saying that the bills won't even go through a formal conference committee, but rather through informal, closed-door sessions with key committee chairs. While this would circumvent Republican opportunities to filibuster, it would also grant a very few individuals enormous power to cut deals in much the same way that Sens. Nelson and Lieberman did. Since the health insurance, medical equipment and pharmaceutical industries spent close to $1.4 million per day to influence the health care debate, we have to ask: Who will have access to those few legislators behind those closed doors?
Wendell Potter, the former CIGNA insurance spokesperson turned whistle-blower, says he knows "where the bodies are buried." Let's be consistent. If we care about saving American lives, let's take action now.Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
- Posted in
83 Comments so far
Show AllWe know who will NOT have access behind those closed doors.
Last Spring Snowbama kicked off his corporate welfare program disguised as health care reform by cutting a secret deal with Billy Tauzin that prevents the Government from negotiating drug prices.
It is therefore fitting that the final capitulation of the few marginal compromises that remain in the House Bill take place in a secret venue, thereby assuring that the Snobama Regime gets the bill they wanted to begin with...a bill that assures lots of campaign contributions from the drug and insurance industries.
what type of Health care does lie berman have?
It all comes down to the graphics. Who doesn't have the images of 9/11 seared into their brains; who doesn't have the face of the "shoe bomber" and now the "underwear bomber" also etched there, along with the images of highjacked planes carrying hundreds of people blowing up in the air and plowing into fields at 300+ MPH when the highjackers weren't caught. Most of us still retain the image of the young child being carried from the wreakage of the Oklahoma City bombing by the fireman.
But with the thousands of dying uninsured, we only have numbers. Even when we're given a name to some of them, such as the Military Veterans dying without insurance, it just doesn't have any affect on the brain centers that react so strongly to graphics. Until we can put a face to those numbers in a way that can't be ignored, nothing at all will change.
While Obama is the most energetic president we have ever seen when he is pushing legislation that enhances corporate profits, Obama lacks energy and conviction with issues affecting the rest of us.
"Obama lacks energy and conviction with issues affecting the rest of us."
Right. Obama lacks conviction, Bush lacks conviction, Cheney lacks conviction, The whole Pentagon lacks conviction, the Military-Industrial-Congressional complex lacks conviction. Hell, they even lack trials.
We've got enough war criminals and grifters in this administration, in this country, to clog the courts for years. However, as they are in charge of this asylum, we'll never see them get "conviction."
So true, graphics are important for the brain.
I would add to your important point, if we had those private pictures of dying Americans without heath care, would the media air them?
There are plenty graphics of what Depleted Uranium does to Innocent victims and the children of returning soldiers.. you can google them... but have you ever seen them or the bodies of those killed in this War on TV?
I believe they don't show it because the media is not against the war.
Graphics do rule the brain and that is why they are hidden.
I don't have the image of the "panties patsy" etched in my brain.
Don't think I've ever even looked at a picture of him.
We need Universal Single Payer as the rest of the civilized world has. Fat chance with our Congressional Gangsters.
Last summer Senator Baucus had doctors and nurses arrested when they showed up to advocate single-payer.
Thank you for commenting on the article and what Amy is talking about.
Humbaba
A word of caution, if I may. Do not confuse or conflate a "single payer" system with the general term of universal health care. T. R. Reid discusses the differences in his must read book The Healing of America: A Global Quest For Better, Cheaper, And Fairer Health Care. Steven Hill also drives this point home quite effectively in his chapter La Sante D'Abord ["health comes first" in English] in his most relevant and incisive book: Europe's Promise: Why The European Way Is The Best Hope In An Insecure Age. As Mr. Hill tells his readers, "contrary to stereotypes portrayed in the American media, France and many other European nations do not use what is commonly known as "socialized medicine" or "single payer" health care. He points out that "under single payer, the principle source of funding is general taxation and the centralized system is mostly owned and operated by the national or local governments, which establish price levels and cost controls. In most cases the doctors, nurses, and medical bureaucracy work for the government. Britain uses a single payer system, as do Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Spain, Canada [except that in Canada most doctors and nurses work for private health organizations]." Mr. Hill is not against the idea of a single payer system. He is attempting to inform the reader that a single payer system is not necessarily synonymous with all universal health care systems and that these other systems can be just as effective as a single payer system.
As Mr. Hill states, "France and other nations [such as Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and others] have health care systems based on the principle of "shared responsibility" [instead of single payer] among workers, employers and the government, all of which contribute their fair share to guarantee universal coverage, reasonable costs, and quality care. Participation for individuals is mandatory, not optional, just as a driver's license is mandatory for driving an auto. Also, the backbone of the French system is private insurance companies, as in the United States, and most French doctors and nurses work in private practice or for private health organizations, not for the government. There's no "in-network" or "pre-authorization"; you can pick any doctor or hospital and be covered by your health insurance. Doctors are required to post their prices on the wall of the waiting room, so the unaccountability of American style medical billing is removed."
But Mr. Hill notes two crucial differences; first, is that unlike in the United States, "the French insurance companies are NONPROFITS. There are three of them, called Sickness Insurance Funds, or SIFs, with national insurance headquarters and regional networks. These funds are financed by compulsory payroll deductions that amount to 13 percent of employees' wages, with employers paying 70 percent of this amount and employees the other 30 percent [much like Americans have wages deducted for Social Security]. However, French employers contribute a smaller amount toward their employees' health care than U.S. employers pay toward their employees' health care."
The other key difference that Mr. Hill makes is that of cost controls. "As in the U.S. system of Medicare, charges for services in France are negotiated among representatives of the health care professions, the govt., patient consumer representatives, and the three principal SIFs. Together they establish a national agreement for treatment procedures, fee structures, and rate ceilings that prevent health care costs from spiraling out of control. For some services patients may pay a small out-of-pocket fee, and the average charge for an office visit, whether to a general practitioner or to a specialist, is around twenty dollars." Mr. Hill emphasizes that "these kinds of government-regulated price controls keep cost levels well below those in the United States. That's not only good for health care consumers, it's also good for French businesses, since they are paying less money for their employees' health care and can forecast with greater assurance their health care costs. Mr. Hill goes on to add that "in fact, because America has nothing like these sorts of price controls [outside Medicare], some of Europe's drug companies make one-third of their profits in the U.S. market, where they can sell their prescription drugs for a lot more money than they can in their own countries. Sometimes the same tablet made in the same factory costs a dollar in the U.S. and twenty cents in Europe."
Forgive the lengthy post but I though it important to point out why France was ranked #1 by the WHO in terms of "overall health system performance" even though, as Mr. Hill notes, "France spends only a fraction per capita of what the United States spends." It should also be remembered that when Obama convened a meeting to discuss how to best tackle the health care crisis in this country after he had become president, not one of those 100 plus people who attended his summit had been from other advanced countries who could have advised Obama why their citizens, as opposed to the citizens of the U.S., do not have to worry if their basic health care needs will be met and do not have to be concerned if their medical bills will be paid. American exceptionalism at its finest [or worst].
Profit seems the big evil here. As opposed to France's NON-PROFIT institutions. If only the co-op option wasn't a fig-leaf. Is it even in the Senate bill?
Gary
Amy Goodman continues to show her light on the corrunpt and corrosive political class in this country. A necessary act in this time of media prostitution.
So, we know this stuff, don't we? We see it everywhere, every day. The rich and connected are fighting us to keep their riches and connections and we are dying, figuratively and literally. My question is: Besides chronicling what we already know (which is important but not enough), what do we do?
Thank you, Ted: yours is the query we need to adress above all else.
What can we do to break many of the ties between the Health Insurance industry and Congress?
What can we do to change the minds of a dauntingly large number of people in this country who palpably fear tax-dollar-sponsored, universal health insurance?
It is in some way astonishing to have reached a point where universal health care has been a topic for discussion, however much in passing, at the national conference table. And it is instructive and sobering to discover how insular and how lassez faire the prevailing responses have been. What now, indeed?
Even the fraudulent bill won't start to take effect until 2013, after the worthless Obama is out of office. It's impossible to imagine his reelection after this dismal domestic failure and the impending catastrophe in Afghanistan. And Congress absolutley doesn't give a shit what the public thinks about health care, so they're going to shove through any bill at all, and Obummer will sign it. Big Insurance and Pharma wins hands down, since they alone wrote this bill.
It has nothing to do with health care, it's only about profits flowing to them, and Obysmal is fine with that. What can we do? Wait for the truth to slowly sink in to the distracted, ill-informed American consciousness (ignorance abounding), and see if there's a populist uprising from the left. Urge it along. The Palinite fascists will twist this thing to its most perverse form, making the ignoramuses believe that even worse health care than we have now, with coerced payments to mafia insurance companies, equals "socialism," so the biggest obstacle for progressives is countering the Mt. Everest of stupidity out there. Anyone figuring out how to do that should be our nominee for president.
Register Independent or a truly progressive Third Party by Jan. 13. Let the Dems know you will no longer vote for ANY pro-corporate, pro-war candidate.
Tell everyone else to do the same.
Withdraw all accounts from the mega-banks and only use community banks and credit unions.
Begin organizing for a General Strike.
Stop military recruiting in your neighborhood schools and make sure atudents get op-out forms with instructions about filling them out.
Boycott warmonger products.
Boycott pro-war media.
Hear, Hear!
These are actions we must take.
Rather than simply grant access, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asserted that "there has never been a more open process."
------------------
Cockroaches, rats, worms and our Democracy.
Things that thrive in dark underground secrecy.
Pelosi is correct !
The process has been open to anybody willing to spend a couple of million dollars per day buying influence from the criminals crafting this toxic legislation.
>>The process has been open to anybody willing to spend a couple of million dollars per day buying influence from the criminals crafting this toxic legislation.<<
Is that all it takes? Well let me buy my way... Opps. I'm a little short. Can anyone spare me a couple of mill?
Gary
I would rather have cockeroaches, rats and worms rule the USA
Indeed, what if the coverage given the "underwear bomber" had been given to giving us the faces of the families that had lost loved ones due to lack of health insurance. Would outrage have welled up and the Congress overwhelmed with e-aims, letters, and phone calls demanding real reform?
One likes to think so. But it didn't (and won't) happen in a media where insurance companies are major sponsors. Even on PBS.
Gary
Someone on HuffPo provided this excellent link. Not that we haven't seen a lot of these articles and the bleak reality of the U.S., but this one really lays it out in stark terms:
http://dailycensored.com/2010/01/05/poverty-and-unemployment-equal-misery-in-america/
Here's the article on HuffPo, entitled Obama: Hurry Up On Health Care, Bypass Usual Negotiations
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/06/obama-health-care_n_412820.html
>>47.4 million Americans, 15.8 percent of the population, were living below the official poverty line.<<
Thanks for the link (and Daily Censored goes on my bookmarks).
At least I think I thank you, I don't know. Sort of a buzzkill.
Gary
Reality is a buzzkill, no doubt about that.
Amy Goodman's voice must be heard. Instead we are preoccupied with the underwear bomber, the shoe bomber, Tiger Woods and his affairs.
Yes let's fight terror but also focus on those who die because of inadequate health care, on those without employment, on those without homes on those who are hungry, on those Wall Street billionaires who rip us off.
From the AP article "Officials: Suspected US drones kill 12 in Pakistan"
"In the first attack Wednesday, a suspected drone fired two missiles at a house in the Datta Khel region of North Waziristan, killing seven people, said intelligence officials.
A second strike occurred as locals were retrieving bodies from the rubble of the house, killing five people, said the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. The identities of those killed in the attacks were unknown."
This would have been like blowing up ground zero again while rescuers were trying to reach victims. Can people read this and not have their stomachs turn?
The terror in Pakistan perpetrated by manned, unmanned drones is terror from the same source as health care profiterring. This culture of ours is sick and getting sicker
Just belly up to the bar boys I'll have 10,000 of those little gadgets that lets me see how big her titties really are--and Barney says he might switch jobs to be able to use the sexrayscam machine He's just not getting good help lately. These things are really going to sell--what a bargain at only $150,000.00 each.
Will they work-NO of course they wont--the terrifying terrorists will put the goodies where the sun don't shine and the scan can't peek. BOOM! not only are you broke--you're dead! Thank God for that Christmas Miracle 2009--Amen?
Well put. I wonder how they are going to deal with the inevitable sexual harassment issue.
The reality of the situation, Amy, is that the most powerful, the wealthiest forces in America are dead set against any reform that has any meaning. Why? Because it would effect their bottom lines. Nothing is going to happen. These forces (health insurance, pharmaceuticals, etc.) don't give a rat's ass if 3750 people die every month because of inadequate health care. They don't pay premiums. We, that is the common people, are expendable. And the poor are just criminals waiting to happen. Look at the way people were treated in New Orleans during Katrina. Private security forces were there, not to protect people or help them, but to shoot them if they were caught taking food from stores to keep from starving. I remember seeing it all on TV. I saw black people herded into a famous stadium by the thousands and left there to rot. I saw bodies floating down the streets while the Bush government sat on their asses. This went on for days. I couldn't believe my eyes. New Orleans was definitely not being treated like those wealthy towns on the Florida coast that experience hurricanes. You of all people, Amy, should know what kind of country you are living in. The only thing that counts in the U.S.A. is greed. The greedy are running the show and there's not a damn thing you or any other 'progressive' can do about it, short of taking up arms.
Well Wendell, time to de-Potter in favor of exhumation! Spill the offal!! NOW!!!
If I remember correctly the Head Honcho of you Nation in 1991 gave his New World Order speech to your Congress. Richard Nixon was one of the first of your Head Honcho's to speak a blurb about the NWO when he was going to open up China for the Multi-National Corporations.
Henry Kissinger who has called for the NWO repeatedly even in the past year or two around that time said he considered people to "Useless Eaters."
The Origins of the New World Order trace back through Europe, perhaps beyond before you were ever even a Nation.
The Founders of your Nation were mostly Freemasons & Deists who were setting up their Branch of the New Order of the Ages that the packaged, marketed, & sold to you as America.
When the reality according to my reading they stated they patterned your Nation after Rome. When your Nation as saying goodbye to lots of Native people's while also swiping the land a Sect called the Seventh Day Adventists considered at that time your Nation was the Beast of Revelation according to my reading.
Many prophetic researchers consider you Nation may be Mystery Babylon in the Book of Revelation. If they are correct then Creator hates your Nation through & through which would be paradoxically humorous all things considered.
Whoever said Creator didn't have a sense of humor?
All these things should be happening according to prophecy. Even though the Seventh Day Adventist put things into prophetic terms they could not stop these things from happening. They weren't a part of the Religious system that supported these things, but they couldn't stop these things from happening.
The Religious system that supports these things that is not necessarily limited to any one Religion may be those who help give power unto Beast?
It's all very strange.
Just another closer to my journey through your world being completed.
Life is good. What an experience! It's always best to forgive.
All the religious drivel you refer to, especially the Book of Revelation, is just organized madness. Those "prophetic researchers" are gullible nut cases. Anything can be asserted by appeals to all this vague "prophetic literature." One man's "Beast" is the next man's savior. It's all a bunch of garbled hocus pocus.
Ephraim 11:21 am, YOU, sir, are a party pooper. He did get one thing right: The richfilth, kiddie raping, slave holding animals who founded this country, by their own statement, wanted the Roman 'Republic'. This was actually a cleaned up deletion. What they meant was "The Roman Slave Republic" ruled by feral kiddie raping slave holding patrician clans with TOTAL impunity over the proles. And now they have it. That is our history. This looks more like 6000 years of slave societies than any NWO.
Yep. They didn't name part of congress the Senate because they liked democracy; that's for sure.
I do not belong to Organized Religion, nor any religion. Jesus taught his Father's Spiritual Kingdom that is not of the world of man, this world. Jesus did not teach religion, nor gave any indication he came to start a new religion.
And I never said he did. But what he taught got turned into magical thinking, hysterical prophesying, and ultimately authoritarianism. Christianity has been a bastardization of Jesus' teachings since at least the 4th century. The Christian Right in this corrupt nation is the polar opposite of everything he taught. They're the embodiment of evil.
>>They're the embodiment of evil.<<
And stupid as well -- not seeing they are sawing off the limb they are on.
Gary
Jesus gave the prophet John the prophecy of the Book of Revelation. Myself been reading a person writing some our Native prophecies. Most of that I know, but an interesting one here & there. I am quite aware of how Organized Religon as well as man's worldly politics perverted Jesus's teachings as well as the teachings of others through their Organized Religion & Politics.
But Jesus said all his teachings would become corrupted by men. The son of God isn't stupid.
How does this woman Amy do it????
She constantly travels the country/world fund raising...interviewing interesting people...and energizes her fans like a rock star....she does a one hour show DEMOCRACY NOW 5 days a week from where ever she is...has time to write interesting commentary ...and makes it all look easy.
I love you Amy
A touch more wit and Amy is in line for the Molly Ivan's chair.
Isn't what we really should do is go for the core issue? What causes healthcare problems? Corporate personhood!
Repeal or alteration of the 14th Amendment that was misinterpreted in Dartmouth College v. Woodward to afford corporations the rights of natural persons. The language of the Amendment was specifically referring to the personhood of Negroes and mulattoes, but was easily perverted to guarantee corporations the incredible power they exert today.
Corporations have no conscience and they "live" forever. Unless we rise up and destroy the concept of artificial personhood.
Granting corporations the Constitutional right to contribute to political campaigns and lobbying efforts has all but destroyed democracy--and limited the clout of Democracy Now's truth-telling.
Destroying the concept of Corporate person-hood would be a start. But then it would be time to get the bastards who benefit from such a concept, and destroy them utterly. They created a monster, and would do anything to keep their ill gotten gains.
I hope you all realize the process decided upon is to basically discard the house bill and only subject the Senate bill to admendments.
Thus the tax burden is to fall on those who worked all their lives to obtain comprehensive insurance, the union people in that their benefits will be surcharged to pay for this Obamacare.
I suggest we unite with the right to bring Obamacare down.
Perhaps the no new taxes mantra or Government out of my healthcare.
No more nice guys.
As Dean Baker relates Fanny and Freddy were recently given unlimited access to Treasury funds. Baker thinks it might be a backdoor purchase of toxic derivatives.
45000 dead/yr from Denial of Care? Good Beginning. Master wants Die-Back and we can do better. WE can murder 450000 a year that way...think positive...population control.
The MIC needs a boogie man that makes them $$. Health care is the real al-Qaeda, terrorist that kills thousands of Americans, but only big pharma makes $$ from it not the MIC, so it is not important to them, but a false flag terrorist that did not kill anyone is played like a fiddle to the sheeple masses!
The (very likely phony) wildly exaggerated irrational fear is being spread by the MSM/government propaganda machine. Irrational emotion is good for business - it sells products and it sells political repression.
The New Politics of Fear is being continued seamlessly by the new regime.
Meanwhile:
Over 40,000 people will die on the roads this year in the USA
Over 15,000 people will be murdered by fellow Americans this year
Over 40,000 people will die from inadequate medical care this year.
As Amy implies, all of this terrorism BS is very well timed and very convenient given the health insurance theft legislation.
And 33,300 will die from suicide.
Gary