They're Still Dangerous While They're Dying-- But They ARE Dying

[TygrBright]

I think that we are going to get health care reform within the next eighteen months.

I think it will not please everyone who wants nothing less than a single-payer, government-based, universal coverage health system.

I think it will be a fairly messy, cobbled-together bill with a number of items grafted onto it for no other purpose than to slow the inevitable demise of Big Corporate Healthcare (BCH)--the Health Insurance congloms, Big Pharma, the big for-profit provider networks.

I think it will not look dramatic at first, and many people will be loud and vehement in their disappointment that so much cash and consideration ended up being wasted on BCH.

I think it will get off to a slow start, and many people will be loud and vehement in their disappointment that many people still have problems getting the health care they need, that it still costs more than it should, that there are still cracks, some of them large and gaping, and that people are still falling through them.

And I think this is the plan, and for a very good reason:

Because BCH is already moribund. Because the new law WILL kill it off, but the death throes will be protracted and dangerous, and those planning the transition want to minimize the harm.

Why not go for the mercy stroke NOW, and kill it off with one overt, official blow?

Well, partly because politically the risk of failure remains too great if our reach exceeds our grasp.

But also because BCH represents a large chunk of our economy. A slow death provides the opportunity to minimize the damage of as much as three or four percent of the economy going pawsup all at once. The shedding of jobs from primary (BCH itself) and secondary (the marketing firms, media people, law and finance and others connected to, and dependent on, BCH) needs to be done in stages, slowly, so that productive folk can be re-absorbed back into the health care sector under new auspices, and the con artists and predators can find new hosts.

Because, you see, the bottom line remains:

Any of the major provisions of reform, if passed in any viable form at all, WILL kill off BCH.

Big Corporate Healthcare is a house of cards, built on an unsustainable premise and propped up by a giant con game, viable only so long as they could keep the game rigged six ways from Sunday.

Un-rig the game in any significant respect, and the balloon goes up, and the gravy train derails.

Nations that have figured out how to provide health care to their people understand that the term "insurance" is merely a convention. What they provide, whether via a single-payer, public option, or via an outsourced, tightly-regulated, "privatized" option, is not actually "insurance" in any significant respect. It is, rather, a payment scheme, with cost-and-benefit sharing for all participants.

"Insurance" is based on the concept of risk. And risk, by its nature and definition, is NOT certainty. We do not take out fire insurance because we are certain that, at some point, our home will catch fire. We take out fire insurance because it MIGHT catch fire. As might all of our neighbors.

If two thousand of my neighbors and I all pay modest premiums to a fire insurance provider over the course of a few years, the insurance provider can have a reasonable expectation that the vast majority of those premiums can be invested in interest-bearing instruments, accruing additional cash in the fund against the day that the fire rages out of control and consumes my neighbor's home and damages mine, and they have to pay out a whacking great sum all at once to both of us, and still remain solvent and capable of paying out if the odds are particularly bad that year and another neighbor's house burns.

That's been the basis of insurance ever since the first bunch of merchants clubbed together to share the risk of someone's goods caravan being lost or victimized by bandits. There was never, ever, any certainty that ALL of them would, at some point, lose a caravan.

Schemes where we pay in premiums for the CERTAINTY of needing a payout, not once, but several times over the course of our lives, and the almost 100% chance that by the end of our lives we will need at least one substantial payout, are not insurance. Sickness, injury, and the need for preventive care and maintenance on our bodies is not a "might happen," it is a WILL happen. Not a risk. A certainty.

Big Corporate Healthcare, therefore, is founded on a swindle. The idea that what we have is "insurance," and that what we are paying can reasonably be called "premiums," and that we are somehow "sharing risk," is a lie. And they know it is a lie.

They know it as they try to turf everyone out of their risk pools who conceivably might demand substantial payouts SOON. (Refusing coverage to those with "pre-existing conditions.")

They know it as they attempt to retroactively boot out any currently 'covered' individuals who have the temerity to claim payouts. (Recission.)

By choosing to limit their (for want of a better term) risk pools to those who can be reasonably expected to not need substantial payouts in the next few years, they have shrunk those pools to a point where they are doomed to a vicious cycle: Without adequate pay-ins to maintain the profitability demanded by their executive salary bills, marketing costs, and shareholder expectations, they must cut costs and limit payouts. (Lifetime caps, exclusions from coverage, high deductibles and co-pays, and continually-skyrocketing premiums.)

If the health care reform that WILL pass, however unsatisfactory it may look, denies BCH any of those stratagems, they die. Period.

If they can no longer refuse coverage to people who might get sick, they die.

If they can no longer boot off their rolls anyone who starts making big claims, they die.

If they can no longer cap payouts, exclude the most costly coverage, or charge outrageously inflated premiums, THEY. DIE.

Period. If any ONE of those things is part of whatever health care reform is passed, they are done, good-night, dead. They pass on. They cease to be. They expire and head off to meet their Maker. They are stiffs. Bereft of life, they will rest in peace. Their metabolic processes are history. They shuffle off the mortal coil, ring down the curtain, and join the choir invisible. They are EX-CORPORATIONS.

And they know this. Why do you think they are pulling out ALL the stops to prevent it, even to the point of bribing, coercing, and suckering the GOP into squandering every last shred of credibility that might conceivably remain to them as a major political party, dooming themselves to a wilderness among the wackjobs for a generation or more? The GOP is their friend, their best tool, their biggest gun, their last hope. The fact that they are willing to spend its political capital broke, destroy its ability to function at all, demonstrates that they are fighting in the last ditch with their backs against a crumbling wall and they know it.

It might take ten years, it might take longer, but if any of those things are denied to them, they will eventually succumb: They will go bankrupt, or (much less likely) they will re-organize into entities that are effectively non-profits, and poor, shoddy, inefficient ones at that. Eventually their own ineptitude at meeting the demands within the new legal framework will be so egregious that the next stage of reform WILL happen. Finally, we will have something not unlike one of the models that other, saner nations have already piloted.

Given this reality, I see great wisdom in the slowing-down of the process that has occurred over the last few months. Not only is it clever strategically, as many have pointed out, but it limits the potential economic damage they can still do in their hideous, protracted death throes. We allow them to exhaust their energy, spend out their cash, garner an increasingly massive tide of ill-will as they abuse and extort their customers further, and eventually leach them of any real power to do major harm during the transition.

They will still do all the harm they can, no doubt of that. But they are dying, and soon their massive thrashings will begin to lose power and conviction, the mobs of wackos parroting talking points will lose interest and stay home, canny media moguls with fingers to the wind will start abandoning them, and even the Blue Dogs will begin to pass up those tempting bribes and claim they were "pro-reform all along!"

I could still be wrong about all of this.

But I don't think so.

prognosticatorially,
Bright

[aquart]

1. Tonight, I think I love you.

I've been crying all day and you cheered me right up.

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[undergroundpanther]

19. I wish that was an option

Because I fucking hate those swindling pigs,I wish we could hunt them down and make them shuffle their coils...I know we cannot do it,and it is a pity.I wish we could just get them and be done with every last one of these fucking psychopath parasite corporate scamming monsters who are and have been via" health insurance" continue to perpetrate mass murder by scam,lies and greed. I don't know why more people don't bother to connect the facts? Is this tendency to not really reflect on what is happening 'engineered' so the people who don't like to find out things on their own or are to busy to do it will think their hands are clean? That evil shit in plain sight they do to people cannot go on forever.The mask these pigs wear of 'trust' credibility,power, it will fall away. Hopefully faster...
When is enough enough?

Wonderful article too!Spells it all out.We need MORE writing like this article.

[mudplanet]

22. But They ARE Dying

How can I help?

[byronius]

3. Brilliant post.

[Joe Chi Minh]

12. What you said.

[pnwmom]

30. I agree. n/t

[BlooInBloo]

4. Terrible misunderstanding of probability, but correct on the house of cards part.

[sfwriter]

5. great post

Even without the public option, the concessions you list hasten the death of the insurers.

[MrModerate]

6. An interesting scenario. I agree with your basic premise, that BCH is doomed . . .

But its longevity and ability to bankrupt the country might exceed the country's ability to withstand continued bloodsucking. And 10 years is still way too short for an economic segment to disappear if what you're interested in is avoiding dislocation.

Also, keep in mind that a vast amount of the blood they suck goes to an army of clerks of one sort or another -- underpaid, predominantly female and quite likely Dems and independents. Just look in any doctor's office these days. Two-three doctors, plus a practice manager, a rotating staff of part-time medical billers (8-10, never with quite enough hours to qualify for benefits) and maybe a physician's assistant or two. Scale that up by 6-8 doctors and the equivalent support staff and you have a local medical center.

Who's redundant in a rational health care system? The platinum-plated CEOs of course, and a couple of layers of toadies (say 5,000 people nationwide) . . . and the medical billers, both in the practices and their counterparts in the insurance companies (plus the job categories you referenced). Rational health care will need a tenth the number of medical billers, and that's hundreds of thousands of people needing somewhere to work and the retraining to do it.

No matter what, systemic change is going to hurt. The only thing more disastrous would be to try to continue as things are now. Because the platinum-plated CEOs are -- despite their business acumen -- too stupid not to shit where they live, or so arrogant that they think they can take the money and run when the whole country is full of sewage. The system will collapse. Our current economic woes owe a substantial amount to the fact that expensive, ineffective healthcare is the norm.

This is emergency medicine. Do it now, do it expeditiously, and do it cleanly. Get as far down the road as humanly possible. Spend political capital that may or may not be there after 2010. Knock some Blue Dog heads until they either get it or get out.

Yes, I realize it took 15-20 years before they got Social Security to more-or-less work, and it required a lot of fine-tuning, but 1) I don't think we have the luxury of that much time, 2) the tried-and-tested models are out there for the choosing, and 3) the shakiness of this reform initiative has little to do with trying to find our way through to a new way of providing care and everything to do with cowardice and money.

[bertman]

7. I applaud you for your positive prognostication, Bright. However, I'd like to point out that

these folks always seem to be able to come up with another angle that allows them to reap their riches just as readily, only in another aspect of commerce.

They have very intelligent and well-compensated strategic planners whose job it is to make sugar out of shit.

[pansypoo53219]

8. i call it the healthcare industrial complex, because it's closest relative is

what eisenhower warned us about.

[True_Blue_KY_Dem]

9. Here's the deal.................

I am a government employee, the U.S. Postal Service, they claim to be a government agency when the heat gets on them, of which, I am getting ready to sue the hell out of them. Have I ever been injured on the job, yep, twice already. I have had 2 surgeries on my left shoulder, of which, I know have 11 pins/anchors in it to keep it stabilized. I recently reinjured my back from when I was in the U.S. Navy. Basically, it was a severe muscle spasm, but, Cat-Scans showed where it had been injured on L-1 previously. The ER doctor told me that. The injuries I have suffered in the line of duty have left me with permanent restrictions. I have very limited use of my left arm. Most of you don't know of the asinine plans they have with Rehab Employee's, such as me. They are trying to alter my hours of work that I have been normally doing - I work from 2:30 PM to 11:00 PM, they are trying to change it where I will come in at 5:00 PM and work til 1:30 PM. Basically, there is no work for me to do after 11:00 PM. This subjective alteration to my schedule is only happening to me, of which, I have filed a EEO complaint on. It is discrimination at it's worst!

Now, the Republicans are trying their damnest to kill off Medicare, that's their plan. It only has enough money to last it for another 8 years I think.

I've read this somewhere and I posted this on the Government & Politics board on AT&T. Here is the context of it:

During a webcast meeting with Organizing for America on Thursday, President Barack Obama outed the covert Republican plot to strangle Medicare to financial death.

He explained to the group that if Congress does nothing, if health care reform fails, "Medicare will run out of money in eight years."

Obama and the Democrats are pressing for health care reform to provide people under 65 with some semblance of what those over 65 have - government-assured affordable medical insurance. At the same time, for Medicare, Obama said, "Part of what we want to do is strengthen it, so it is there over the long haul."

"It is not as if," he said, "if we just stand still, everything is going to be okay."

Immobility is exactly what Republicans want, however. "No change" is their slogan. They've offered zero substantive reform for health care. In the years when they controlled Congress and the White House under former President George W. Bush, they did nothing to repair financial problems with Medicare. In fact, they falsely minimized the price tag of the new prescription drug program, Medicare Part D, and drove up the cost by forbidding government negotiation for lower medicine prices. In addition, although they failed to accomplish it, they pressed to privatize that socialist program called Social Security -- just months before the stock market tanked.

This is philosophical warfare, and for the Republicans, Medicare is an appropriate casualty. The GOP has made it clear they believe the public option being proposed in health care reform is socialism - an evil that must be eradicated at all costs. Of course, Medicare, a government-sponsored health care program for all people over 65 actually is socialist.

It's a slippery slope. First Republicans kill the opportunity for all Americans under the age of 65 to choose their own private insurance or get government-sponsored health care under the public option. Then, by doing nothing, Republicans destroy the ability of those over 65 to retain their government-sponsored health care.

Senior citizens are more frightened about health care reform than anyone else. That may be, President Obama said, because they routinely need health care more than any other group. So lying to them about it, especially for political gain, is cruel and despicable.

It's true, Democrats want change. They seek to reform and improve the health care system so that Medicare is strengthened and funded for the future. For example, Obama noted, under the Democrats' plan, the "donut hole" in Medicare Part D, during which senior citizens must pay for their prescription medications, would be eliminated. President Obama got the pharmaceutical companies to step up and pay more - if Congress manages to pass reform.

A huge portion of the cost of health care reform would come from changes in the way the federal government pays for Medicaid and Medicare. What the Democrats want to change are payment methods that are just wrong. No bid contracts, for example. Introducing real capitalist competition in the system would reduce costs without affecting benefits. "No one is talking about messing with your Medicare benefits," Obama said, attempting in a mere statement to counter screaming "tea baggers" featured continuously on Fox News. Of the Democrats he said, "We think Medicare is a sacred trust."

On health care reform, the Republican plan to do nothing means death. Death for the public option. But also death for Medicare.

President Obama explained: "The status quo is unsustainable. If you like what you have now, unless we make some changes, you are not going to have what you like because health care costs are rising three times faster than wages. . . If you have a private plan, you have something to worry about. If you are on Medicare, you have something to worry about because we are going to run out of money."

Democrats are trying to resuscitate Medicare and deliver health care reform. Republicans are forming death panels to kill all of it.

Man, they are really do a great job, aren't they?! Asshole supremes!

[maglatinavi]

10. ... the deal ...

Health insurance is indeed not health insurance; they (the insurance corps) bet that you will not need care... that is an oxymoron but well promoted by the corporote health insurance giants and supported by the many congressional "giants" who are receiving $$$ from these corporations. The concept and name should be changed to a more realistic name. Maybe something like "advanced health care account". The corporations still will be able to invest the monies... It should work like banking savings accounts...Well, I can dream, can i not?:applause:

[aquart]

13. WHY do we let those greedy, mammon-worshipping gits define socialism as a BAD THING?

Because people who will never share anything with them anyway might not be rich beyond the dreams of avarice that way? That's an ethical structure?

STOP RUNNING FROM SOCIALISM.

We've let non-Christian Christians frame the argument way too long. STOP APOLOGIZING.

And stop using the wishy-washy gutless word "progressive"

I love my country. I love to see the people of my country working and healthy and happy. Obviously, I'm a liberal. Nothing to be ashamed of there, is there?

[bluerum]

20. Excellent point. It is the republicans and BCH that have formed death panels.

[Hekate]

11. There's some wonderful thoughts here. Keeping my fingers crossed...

Thanks Bright!

Hekate

[eridani]

14. You are forgetting that NONE of the provisions take effect until 2013

Because of BCH, the proposed limitations on its ability to deny care will not come into effect without the huge subsidies proposed for the private insurance exchange. The public option will not be aailable either.

We have two election cycles to get through before anyone at all notices any improvement in health care delivery. BCH will continue to jack premiums, people will still lose jobs and coverage, employers will still reduce benefits and constantly change their preferred providet lists, etc. The majority who don't pay a lot of attention to policy wonkery will be highly susceptible to Repuke and MSM arguments that Dems passed a big, messy expensive bill that hasn't changed anything--and it won't have until 2013.

UNLESS-- the Kucinich ERISA waiver remains, giving states the option of implenting single payer. (The Weiner amendment allowing a floor vote on single payer is going to fail, but it will help us to see who our real frienda are.)

OR-- we can get an amendment allowing anyone to buy into Medicare, or at least allowing some people to buy into Medicare. The obvious advantage is that Medicare is already a going concern, and will not have to be invented from scratch like the exchange and the public option. The original Medicare was implemented within a year, and this proposed amendment would just expand it. It could be implemented fast enough to provide visible benefits to a critical mass of people.

I urge you and everyone to write to Kucinich and Weiner and ask them to propose such an amendment, as they are the single payer advocates who have demonstrated a willingess to amend the current bill.

Dennis Kucinich [phone]; [phone]
Anthony Weiner [phone]; (202) 225-661

(BTW, I think you are right to point out that what is in the long run unsustainable won't be sustained. We just have quite a few short term difficulties to get through.)

[Laelth]

27. Good suggestions, eridani. Hear, hear! n/t

:dem:

-Laelth

[truedelphi]

40. I'll be making my phone calls by noon tomorrow.

Thanks for the reminder and also the numbers.

[Hugin]

15. The one chink in the argument here...

You propose to starve-the-beast.

How, exactly, is forcing 50 Million people (largely subsidized by the Government, who always guarantees a 20% profit) to join the rolls of private insurance going to starve-the-beast?


Overeating?

[TygrBright]

17. That will hasten its death-- IF any (or, hopefully, ALL) of the main provisions are enacted.

If we force BCH to serve another 50 million people whom they CAN'T refuse, can NOT boot out of the system, can NOT put a "lifetime cap" on payouts for, can NOT "exclude" pre-existing conditions, and/or can NOT charge outrageous and constantly escalating premiums to,

They will die FASTER.

Because their profit margins will plummet. They will have to actually pay for people's health care costs, rather than dance around pretending that's what they are doing while actually they are raking in the cash and paying seven-figure salaries to executives and fat dividends to shareholders. They will not be able to sustain their expensive marketing campaigns, and they will not have the margins to pay the huge corps of no-sayers and pecksniffs currently employed to deny coverage and make the lives of health care providers a bureaucratic misery to them.

And they will DIE.

The more people they have to actually provide real service for/pay out claims for, especially if they cannot charge them wildly unaffordable and constantly-increasing premiums, the faster they will die.

certainly,
Bright

[ej2004moore]

41. Yowza

Your theory gives me hope, and I know it's more than a theory. Thank you.

[MadMaddie]

33. Medicare is running at 3% overhead versus the insurance companies

running 30-40% overhead.

By giving American a true choice, the Insurance companies will be forced to make a critical decision

1. To actually compete they have to cut the CEO's pay and bonuses
2. They actually have to compete price wise or customers will have the choice to move to the government provided option.

If they don't that's their own damn problem, many a company has died because they were unwilling to make the necessary corrections to stay alive.

I hope they choose not to change their ways....I hope they crash and burn and go into the pile of failed businesses.

[Hugin]

36. That's the point I was trying to make...

If... Private insurance is to fail. The public option must happen or there should be no private insurance purchase mandate in the current legislation.

Otherwise, once the insurance companies begin to feel the pinch they'll go back to Congress for a raise. Saying... Oh, jobs will be lost. JUST.LIKE.NOW... Only worse, because, we will no longer have the momentum for a public option.

[elocs]

16. They may be dying but they aren't dead until they are dead and they ain't dead yet,

and it ain't over til it's over.

[barbtries]

18. Great writing,

great points. agreed, kicked, recommended.

[Demeter]

21. Kill It Off, Already! Every Other Industry Is Dying--Make It Unanimous!

Then maybe we can build a real, sustainable and functional economy that serves the needs of people, not greedheads.

[Leftist Agitator]

23. This is one of the best posts I've seen on DU in months, if not years.

+1.

[bvar22]

24. I wish I shared your optimism.

I don't trust this Congress to write binding legislation containing effective oversight and penalties that will prevent the HC Industry from finding loopholes (or inserting the loopholes in the actual legislation) that will allow them to escape anything more than token compliance.

There is a reason HR3200 is a complex nightmare over 1000 pages long.
Our "Industries" have become masters at side-stepping regulation, especially when they have the opportunity to actually write the regulatory legislation.


I fear that Mandatory Health Insurance + a weak, limited, and unattractive (stigmatized) Public Option that is optional for Providers + Billions in "subsidies" flowing to the For Profits will only make them more powerful, and postpone any REAL reform for another generation.

[morillon]

25. I hadn't thought of it in quite this way...

...that it would be a good thing to drag out their death throes for a bit due to the economic chaos a sudden death would cause. I think you're right.

[Laelth]

26. I beg to disagree.

The individual mandate will strengthen BHC and make it harder to get real reform in the future. The health insurance cabal will get 50 million new customers all of whom will face criminal penalties if they don't buy BHC's criminal products. If people can not afford BHC' products, then the government will provide subsidies. And I am supposed to believe this will lead to BHC's demise?

:shrug:

You don't kill off the health insurance industry by subsidizing it. That makes no sense to me.

:dem:

-Laelth

[DaveT]

28. I like this analysis.

It puts into plausible political terms a simple-simon idea that I have been tossing off as a joke for several years: We should just bribe the health and drug industry to commit institutional suicide over a 25 year span. My little snarkiness was based on the reality that the masters of these corporations have no reason to "compromise" and every reason to spend billions of lobbying/campaign contribution dollars to snuff any meaningful health care reform.

They have found a nice synergy with the Professional Bribe Takers of the GOP who want to beat Obama down so that they can get back into power and go back to shaking down Corporate America. They have the idiotic "base" all jacked up with insane lies about pulling the plug on grandma and Obama's Kenyan birth certificate. This triangle of bullshit is still quite formidible, as the political geography of Congress remains tilted in their favor.

You see method to the appartent madness of the various "compromises" that get media attention this summer. I think you are onto something.

The truth is that these particular corporate scavengers are not just robbing individuals blind -- they continue to scarf up a bigger slice of the American Pie every year. They are also eating into the profits of other corporations, too. Something has to be done or this sector of the economy will eventually bankrupt all the sectors as well.

Blowing up their business model makes sense, and it is probably the only way to get this monster to die. A straightforward expansion of Medicare for all makes too much sense for our sick culture.

We'll see.

[Vinnie From Indy]

29. I would be curious to know if other industrial countries went to single payer over many years

or did they kill it outright.

[wolfgangmo]

31. 2 comments

First,

Your premise that it is better to let BCH die off slowly and carefully is wishful thinking at best. Look how well that plan worked for the auto industry. You assume that they will decide to let their hands off the reigns. Given enough time and money, of which they have plenty, they will again rig the game.

Second, your basic idea that BCH is done ain't necessarily so. And I am speaking as someone who is inside the health care system. I own a medical clinic along with my partner. I run admin and she is the medical director and senior partner. And 2 years ago she looked at how things were going and told me to get our clinic out of the insurance game which we did. It improved our bottom line by dropping our administrative costs drastically (we no longer had to fight the insurance companies full time and hire tons of people to assist us in that fight) which in turn allowed us to drop our prices to patients by as much as 2/3. You read that right: TWO THIRDS. And what has she directed me to do now. She wants to be out of the US within 3 years and to be established in Canada with our entire staff. And so we are moving. What I am saying here is that they are making scads of money right now and we are about to enroll 50,000,000 people onto their rolls and penalize both individuals and small companies in the process. They have the country in a tit-ringer. And they will not stop squeezing until they are forces to. I don't see this plan doing that.


Other thoughts.

My partner does not make bad moves. She and I both see that we don't have a generation or 2 to wait for the US to gets it's head out of it's ass. We can't wait, our employees can't wait, our families can't wait and our company can't wait. In this way, we are typically American.

I don't see us getting a decent bill and in a few years the REpubs or whoever else is in the pay of BCH, will attack what was passed as an overpriced boondoggle. I have fought for this for decades and I am just too tired to continue. And the truly sad thing is that we know over 20 GP clinics that are doing the same thing. The US is mired in insurance practiced medicine which has nothing to do with health care. I suspect that the country will lose it's competative edge soon as health insurance costs continue to hammer our companies into the ground. Foreclosures due to medical bills and bankrupcies will continue to get worse and worse. And people will continue to lose thier lives.

And in the meantime the corporate/democratic/republican ruling class will laugh all the way to their bank and our graves. And the US will sit there, doing nothing, drooling lightly, and changing the channel every now and again.

I hope I am wrong. But unless single payer comes through soon, then we, and many of our colleagues are out of here. And when the primary care physicians leave, god help you all.

[Hugin]

37. As I was in the waiting room of a clinic recently...

I overheard my PT on the phone 'negotiating' with an insurance company trying to get them to pay one of her client's claims. Due to this phone call, MY appointment was 45 minutes late getting started... She was extremely apologetic once we did get started. I replied that I understood that this was part of the game now and that she was only doing what was best for her patient.

But, I asked her... "So, they're going to cover the patient now?" I was shocked at her reply, "Yes, for this week, but, I'll have to do the whole thing again next week."

Unbelievable!

Frankly, I was dumbfounded.

I realize this case is anecdotal, but, she seemed to indicate that this was currently pretty much standard practice.

Oh, yeah... and I had to WAIT 45 MINUTES FOR MY APPOINTMENT DUE TO FRICKING PRIVATE INSURANCE! <-- for the benefit of any freepers who might read this post.

[lildreamer316]

38. Wish I could rec this post.

Thank your for your insight. Single payer/Medicare for all seems to be the only sensible solution. I hope we can make it.

[ShortnFiery]

32. They are not dying - the right-wing are WELL FUNDED and will morph into more ugliness.

Be forever vigilant because these right-wing GREEDY and EVIL organizations are omnipresent.

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/print/2629

Right Wing Organization Profiles: Index

Right Wing organizations come in all shapes and sizes, from think tanks to legal groups, local and national lobbying organizations, foundations and media forums. At any given moment, the Right is at work in our public school systems, courthouses, in Congress and state assemblies. At the same time, right-wing groups are reaching huge audiences through media outlets they own or influence — promoting regressive policies that seek to drive wedges between and among Americans.

These often single-issue groups have the ability to create multi-issue networks that can respond on a wide range of issues. People For the American Way Foundation’s library has files on over 800 groups and almost 300 individuals documenting their activities and providing information about their efforts to reshape society. This section presents a small portion of that information:

(I marked bold the entities who repeatedly darken our television screens on the M$M.

•Accuracy in Academia <1>
•African-American Life Alliance <2>
•All Children Matter Inc. <3>
•Alliance Defense Fund <4>
•American Center for Law and Justice <5>
•American Civil Rights Institute <6>
•American Conservative Union <7>
•American Enterprise Institute <8>
•American Family Association <9>
•American Legislative Exchange Council <10>
•American Life League <11>
•American Society for Tradition, Family and Property <12>
•Americans for Tax Reform <13>
•Arlington Group <14>
•Black America's Political Action Committee <15>
•Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation <16>
•Campaign for Working Families PAC <17>
•Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights <18>
•Cato Institute <19>
•Center for the Study of Popular Culture <20>
•Christian Coalition of America <21>
•Christian Legal Society <22>
•Club for Growth <23>
•Collegiate Network <24>
•Coalition for a Fair Judiciary <25>
•Committee for Justice <26>
•Concerned Women for America <27>
•Eagle Forum <28>
•Eagle Forum Collegians <29>
•Family Research Council <30>
•Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies <31>
•Focus on the Family <32>
•FRCAction <33>
•Free Congress Research and Education Foundation <34>
•FreedomWorks <35>
•Heritage Foundation <36>
•High Impact Leadership Coalition <37>
•Hispanic Alliance for Progress Institute <38>
•Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace <39>
•Independent Women's Forum <40>
•Institute for Justice <41>
•Intercollegiate Studies Institute <42>
•Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration <43>
•Judicial Confirmation Network <44>
•Landmark Legal Foundation <45>
•Leadership Institute <46>
•Mackinac Center for Public Policy <47>
•Madison Project <48>
•Manhattan Institute for Policy Research <49>
•National Association of Scholars <50>
•National Center for Policy Analysis <51>
•National Right to Life Committee <52>
•National Taxpayers Union <53>
•New Coalition for Economic and Social Change <54>
•Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research <55>
•State Policy Network <56>
•Students for Academic Freedom <57>
•Toward Tradition <58>
•Traditional Values Coalition <59>
•WallBuilders <60>
•Young America's Foundation <61>

[Trillo]

34. Wow. Powerful post. Thank you.

I find a great deal of sadness in the idea of the slow death that will wreak further havoc in covered working folks lives is a needed and necessary step.

It somehow seems 'cruel and inhumane.'

[mirrera]

35. From your mouth to... etc. etc.

[dhpgetsit]

39. I'm sorry but I don't think...

that whatever passes as Health Care Reform this year is going to be worth a damn. It will be full of loopholes and provisions that will protect the profits of the insurance giants.

I believe this because Corporations call the shots in Washington. The only way we will get that we really need is if we have MASSIVE demonstrations and a prolonged general strike.

So what is a plan that might work? How about this?

Fix Medicare so it doesn't look like swiss cheese anymore. Every year, lower the eligibility age by 5 years. By the end of the process we have a system much like Canada's.

But don't sit back and wait for Congress to act. It won't happen without a real social upheaval.