The Sadism of American Health Care

Let's Review

• Insurance is not healthcare.
• Insurance is premiums and co-pays
• Insurance companies are known to deny claims for expensive catastrophic conditions, such as cancer treatment.
• 61% of bankruptcies are due to medical debt.
• Many people in debt had insurance when they first got sick, but claims were denied.
• There are no regulations to require insurance companies to honor claims, or to regulate premiums.
• Cancer is a multi-trillion dollar annual industry
• Most all processed foods and chain restaurants sell carcinogenic foods.
• Good food, such as organic food, is more expensive than bad food.
• Health care costs are multiple times higher for the insured than the uninsured. 

 

Ask Your Doctor

Just check with your doctor on what the charges are for you when you are insured versus when you are uninsured.  The same goes for your pharmacist.  I have heard reports (and have personally experienced) pharmaceutical costs at three to ten times higher when you are insured than when you are not insured.  Why should I pay $600 per month to get "free" medications (plus a small co-pay) that cost $500 when I'm insured?  But if I am uninsured, I pay for the same medications outright for $100 and I save $500 monthly, because I pay no premiums.  I can use that money to buy high quality foods that prevent health problems.

Insurance is the Catastrophe

If I should face a catastrophic health care claim, I would have no insurance and therefore be billed at the uninsured rates of one-third to one-tenth the rates I would be billed if insured.  Suddenly catastrophic costs are not as high and are somewhat affordable.  If I go to the right hospital, they will provide a social worker to help me work out payments or get alternative insurance.  I don't need to have catastrophic insurance in advance.  I can live without insurance and get it when I actually need it. If unemployed, there are state programs (like Medi-cal in California) that will cover everything. So it becomes very clear that having insurance is more expensive, more risky, and downright life threatening, compared to not having it. With no health insurance I can afford a better healthier life with better foods, and prevent the need for insurance.

Insurance companies may or may not deny coverage. So you are gambling that your exorbitant premiums might cover you and your family when you need it the most.  But there is no guarantee.   Insurance companies do not guarantee they will cover you for anything.  We know that many people die for lack of coverage even when they have insurance. Why buy it? What we really need is insurance for insurance companies that will cover you when they don't.

Is your life and your family's lives worth the risk of insurance that is worse that not having any?  At least without insurance, you qualify for care under numerous social service programs. But with insurance you run the risk of being denied care and left to suffer and die. The cost of care when you are insured is also many times higher, making it more unlikely for you to get care.  Just tell your doctor, hospital ad pharmacist that you have no coverage and your bills will be cut down drastically.

 

Obamacare

The ACA (Obamacare) is supposed to make insurance affordable for people who previously could not afford it. In fact Obamacare insurance is hardly less expensive. Poor people who can't afford even low cost insurance are left out in the cold, having to buy cheap foods that are actually a health risk.  California's Prop 65 lists over 900 carcinogenic chemicals that may be found in our food, air, and environment.  The law merely requires establishments to post a notice that these chemicals exist in their products. Most every food chain, including McDonald's, Burger King, Taco Bell,  Carl's Junior, Starbucks, Wendy's, Chili's, Applebees and many more, sell food with carcinogens.  Some of them post the required notice. Most do not. Any processed and prepackage food is a likely candidate for carcinogenic chemicals or malnutrition.

Even with Obamacare, children over 26 do not qualify to be on their parents plan. In our lousy economy, it is most likely these kids are unemployed, grossly underemployed, or faced with extravagant college loan payments, and cannot afford insurance on their own, no matter how cheap it is.  This is a blessing in disguise as insurance is more of a liability than a protection.

We choose our own fate. We can choose to deny insurance companies our money and support, instead of paying for them to deny us coverage and charge us both exorbitant premiums and exorbitant health care costs.

Insurance is not what we should be discussing. As activist Dr. Margaret Flowers says, we need to change the discussion to be about health care, not insurance.  Care for your health.  Eat nutritious, organic, non-carcinogenic foods.  Your food is your medicine. Your medicine is your food. Insurance is just a sadistic business based on keeping people sick. Don't buy it.

Typical Two-Faced Political Bullshit: Fiscal Cliff (The Rich Man's Crisis)

$400 Billion in Cuts over the next decade, to be taken from the rest of the pie (mostly Medicare)

President Obama has proposed a $3.8 trillion 2013 budget.  He is currently negotiating with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to make needed cuts in the budget.  First on the chopping block is Medicare and other entitlement programs at a minimum of $400 billion to be cut.

Typical two-faced political bullshit

He has offered this as a bone to conservatives who will have to also deal with increased taxes, which serves as a bone to liberals who now have to deal with deep cuts into Medicare.  

Yet no effective Congressional authority will ever venture to even suggest cutting our health care overhead with a single payer system, a system that works to keep health care costs under control in every other industrialized country.  Medicare, without the corporate insurance industry overhead, would cost the government just 4% as opposed to the current 13% to 20% of health care costs, when the insurance industry takes its cut. Instead of having to pay exorbitant health insurance premiums, people would pay a 4% income tax to cover 100% all their health care needs, medical, dental, vision, and medications.  When they are out of work, they would still be covered.

All employer health care costs are eliminated by a single payer system.  Gone.  

Privatized corporate insurance has an overall 30% overhead for administrative costs (claims denials, advertising, and Wall Street profits).

A single payer system would be a major stimulus for the economy with $2.6 million in new jobs, $317 billion in business revenue, and $100 billion in wages (Single-Payer/Medicare for All. An Economic Stimulus Plan for the Nation; Robert Fountain, IHSP, NNOC/CNA).

Neither does anyone in Congress venture to ever discuss the $600 to $900 billion of future veterans' health care costs.  Over 50% of returning troops are eligible for disability.  600,000 have been treated since 9/11 so far (The True Cost of 9/11; Joseph Stiglitz).  Is this part of the entitlement programs to be cut? 

Doctor's, nurses, and other activists, have been calling for a single payer system for years (got healthcare?; documentary film).  Yet Congressional committees refuse to consider this option or send it to the budget office for fiscal comparison studies.  Nearly 60% of doctors and over half the public are for a single payer system (PNHP).

The aversion to single payer is the dreaded S word: socialism.  But there are many democratic countries that have single payer systems.  A government health care insurance program would cover all people for all medical expenses just like police, fire, highways, libraries, schools and many other government services that serve to guarantee a minimum standard of life.

A recent 2012 Harvard study found that 48,000 Americans die annually for lack of health care, and nearly 50 million Americans have no health insurance. The ACA (Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare) is suppose to give health care insurance to an additional 30 million. But some of this will be offset with these budget cuts, plus the unregulated health insurance industry gouging us with exorbitant premiums, deductibles, and denials.

The privatized corporate health care insurance industry is more accurately an American sick care profit center.  The sick care pharmaceutical, health insurance, medical device, and cancer industries serve their investors well by keeping people sick, on medications, chronically ill, and in need of expensive treatments.

People in America, unlike any other country, are forced into medical debt to stay alive.  Many have to sign over their houses.  Medical debt is responsible for over half, and up to 88% of bankruptcies and foreclosures (PNHP on medical debt).

So now Obama proposes to cut Medicare.  How many more will have to die for lack of health care?  What will the impact of Medicare cuts be on health care in America?  Why do we not cut deeply into war, which has cost us trillions and will cost hundreds of billions more in veterans' care?

Without You, They don't Exist

Hey all you kids out there in TV land. It's not that I think you're necessarily ignorant, or uneducated, or unread, or misinformed. It's not that it matters what I think. What matters is what you think about what you do, and how you are. Do you feel good about living in America? Be honest. Did you ever wonder what it might be like on the Riviera or the French countryside or maybe Tokyo, or one of those European countries where the most used form of transportation is the bicycle? How about the cool high speed trains? Do you even know about real life in other countries? Not just to visit, but to live there now, in the 21st century. Or are the clashes between protesters and police reported in American media all you really "know"?

Are you actually voting for Romney or Obama because you really believe that between these two characters we have the best possible candidates there are? Or are you voting for one because you feel there is no other choice, and the system is rigged, and so you must pitifully stick your tail between your legs and vote for these guys. Do you have any integrity? Does this make you feel good about yourself? Has our government's leadership done anything to actually make things better in the last half century? What would that be? The build up of the greatest war machine ever known, ten times the greatest force of any other country, so unapproachable that it's a joke to say we actually have military enemies? And all this at the expense of our infrastructure, education, health care, economy, food quality, and housing; and more so under Obama than under "bring it on" Bush?

It doesn't matter if I think you have no integrity. It only matters that you think that of yourself. You can't help it if you've been brain drained by the Wall Street owned and operated media. And I know that, if you do believe that you only have two choices, then you do watch way too much TV.

TV watching, especially the news, is known to cause ill effects on society, as found in many scholastic studies. You probably think you have a lot of integrity because you do what you feel is right given the circumstances. What if you aren't aware of all the circumstances?

It's a running joke that people who watch the news everyday are less informed than people who watch none. Thomas Jefferson said this about newspapers. Do you believe everything you read and see in the news? What about what you don't see? What about the stuff that is blacked out in the name of nationalism? What about the stuff that is important to people but doesn't sell airtime? What about the agenda that the media has you on. The war is not on the agenda. Fluoride, GMOs, the cancer industry, foreclosures, the actual state of the American economy are all not on your agenda, because you watch the news.

There is research out there that strongly indicates that fluoride is a cause of cancer in this country, and even responsible for lowered IQ scores in children. Don't let you kids drink public water. Fluoride is placed into nearly every municipal water supply. GMOs are also known to be a huge cancer risk and found in nearly every non-organic American food. Food manufacturers spend tens of millions in campaigns to kill or degrade this information (as in your TV news). Why isn't it questioned? Because you don't care, or don't know about it, or didn't see it in the news.

The US cancer industry appreciates your valued support in keeping as many Americans as sick as possible, and as expensively as possible for as long as possible. And cancer is probably the most expensive, chronic sickness that humans can suffer from. The medical device, pharmaceutical, and "health care" insurance industries all join in thanking you for your continued support to their quest for sadistic greed. This is their American dream. Big money. May tens of thousands of Americans continue to suffer and die prolonged painful deaths so that the few of those who matter may live laughing in sadistic luxury.

So maybe if you like Obama, you're thinking that this kind of philosophy will give Romney more votes. So what? Did things really improve since Bush left office? You can't win by voting for these guys. You lose. You feed their expense accounts. Without you, they don't exist.