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.

SUPPORT SB 810 California Universal Healthcare Act of 2011

The following is an email from Maureen Cruise RN (retired) 


SB 810  "The California Universal Healthcare Act of 2011 has been reintroduced in the California legislature.  Healthcare is a human rights issue.  People are really suffering with premium hikes, increased copays, and denials of payment.  These problems will not change with the recently enacted ACA federal reform.  SB810 is advancing to the next logical step.

The State Senate Health Committee  will consider SB810  on April 27th, 2011

Important and crucial measures to support SB 810 RIGHT NOW:

#1.  Send letters from yourself,  a business, any group/organization     http://www.healthcareforall.org/action-center/organizing  has sample letters for individuals , businesses organizations and lots of information to educate oneself.
     1. Sign on as an individual supporter of SB810 and send letter to your legislators.
     2. Any group can send a letter from the organization or  any business.
     3. Encouraging your legislators to co-endorse.

Identify your own State Senator and Assemblymember online by visiting http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/yourleg.html

Also send any copies of support /endorsement letters to:

Senator Mark Leno
c/o Sara Rogers
State Capitol, Room 5100
Sacramento, CA  95814
(916) 445-4722 FAX

And to the State Senate Health Committee before April 27th
The Honorable Ed Hernandez
Chair, Senate Health Committee
State Capitol, Room 2191
Sacramento, CA 95814
Fax: (916) 319-2197

#2 SIGN the online PETITION http://CaliforniaOneCare.org

#3 Download information/ fliers and educate the public.  Set up a table at any public site. In front of a bank or post office or any public corner or sidewalk .  Educate people.  http://www.singlepayernow.net
http://www.healthcareforall.org/
http://CaliforniaOneCare.org

Additional info on federal and state universal healthcare:
www.pnhp.org  Physicians for National Health Program
http://www.nationalnursesunited.org
http://www.laborforsinglepayer.org
www.PDAmerica.org

Be well,
Maureen    
Despair is a greater deceiver than hope.

Sample Letter of Support for SB 810
The California Universal Healthcare Act

Please send letters of support by fax or mail to your State Senator and State Assemblymember and cc Senator Leno’s capitol office.

Identify your own State Senator and Assemblymember online by visiting http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/yourleg.html

Please cc:
Senator Mark Leno
c/o Sara Rogers
State Capitol, Room 5100
Sacramento, CA  95814
(916) 445-4722 FAX


(Date), 2011

The Honorable ___________
State Capitol, Room ____
Sacramento, CA  95814

Re: Support for SB 810 (Leno)

Dear Senator/Assemblymember _____________:

I am a voter in your district and I am writing in support of SB 810 (Leno) the California Universal Healthcare Act.  It’s time for universal healthcare in California!
The single greatest problem facing California’s healthcare system and California’s economy is the growing cost of health insurance.  The number of uninsured Californians has now reached 20%, and most of the newly uninsured are from middle-class families.  It’s easy to see why.
Health insurance premiums have increased over 90% since 2000, with the average employee contributing 143% more to their company-sponsored health insurance. Meanwhile wages have only increased 20% over this time period.  Health care costs have outpaced increases in wages by a ratio of 4:1 since 2000.
Under the single payer finance system in SB 810, the money spent now on health care is enough to provide every resident of the state with excellent healthcare, ensure fair and reliable reimbursements to doctors, nurses and other providers, and guarantee a high quality of care for all.
SB 810 (Leno), the California Universal Healthcare Act would provide fiscally sound, affordable healthcare to all Californians, provide every Californian the right to choose his or her own physician and control health cost inflation.
This plan does five things:

1. It covers everyone.
2. It’s affordable.
3. It guarantees our money goes to care not administration.
4. It provides real choice.
5. It improves quality.

Californians want access to this kind of high-quality, affordable health care.  Please take a stand in support of truly universal health care.

I strongly support SB 810.

(your legal name)
(any organizational affiliations you wish to include)
(your address)

The RAM: Helping Third World Countries like the USA

Medical Students to Senate Republicans: Repeal Is Not the Solution to Our Health Care Crisis

While I agree with the students here, I question what part of the PPACA (Affordabl­e Care Act) will actually survive to do any good. We've already seen the provision that blocks rates to increase repealed. With rate increases already in effect (or taking effect 1/1/2011) insurance companies now have raised rates by as much as 39% to make up for having to put 26 year olds back on their parents plans (among other things).

Plus they have now made new restrictio­ns on what meds and services are covered. It's business as usual in the suck Americans' health dry for profit game.

The cumulative effect is that PPACA has decreased health care and made things much worse. By 2014 it will require all Americans to buy insurance and submit to this mandated corporate oligarchy, giving Americans less coverage, with continued denial of care and pre-existi­ng condition exclusions at higher costs, guaranteei­ng the corporate oligarchy a steady stream of government mandated corporate welfare to the insurance industry.

Repealed or not, that is exactly what will happen. The difference is that with repeal, people just might get pissed off enough to take to the streets and refuse to pay for health care insurance (and you can bet repeal will not reduce any rates), which amounts to corporate graft. It is naive to think that PPACA will have any positive effect. It is a 2000+ page monster health care legislatio­n written by and for the corporate health insurance oligarchy that runs America.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Along the Road with the Mad as Hell Doctors for Medicare for All—the lost part: the Third travelogue

By Marc Sapir

Marc Sapir is a primary care physician in Alameda County, CA and graduate of the Stanford University School of Medicine, M.D. 1970. He has been traveling with the Mad as Hell Doctors on their 2010 California tour. He sent out the following account of his trip.

Dr. Sapir also appears eloquently in the upcoming release of my documentary film, "got healthcare yet?"

Berkeley, Nov 2, 2010 ~ The Mad as Hell Docs tour ended 3 weeks ago today and part IV of my 2010 CA travelogue is long gone. But I promised to find a little part III and here it comes bubbling up:

The MAHD 2010 California tour covered about 2,500 driving miles (though those intrepid Oregon guys—Paul, Mike, Phillip--drove well beyond 3,500 miles in the 18 days). In 2009 the first MAHD tour drove 6,000 miles through the “heartlands” on the way to D.C. Complementing this year’s 2,500 miles, MAHD played to a combined California audience of 2,500 folks, beginning and ending with large audiences (in Arcata—250-- and Chico--300). With the larger audiences the enthusiasm and Mad doc mirth became infectious. In the 18 days running there were, I believe, 28 events. Three or four of these were small group interactions and a slide show that Mike Huntington put together for med students. A few outdoor events—such as at Pasadena and San Diego--precluded showing of any video clips (no socialist plot to protect our homes from fires could be screened). About 22 events were the full bore program. No, not boring, I said “full bore,” at least according to this reporter’s perspective.

The MAHD moderator always asks himself out loud: “self, why are we preaching to the choir?” and gives the answer that “we’re trying to be sure the choir is well armed to make the case for Medicare for All/Single Payer, fully understands how weak the PPACA reform is and how badly the public option would have fared; to help people gain confidence to talk with neighbors, friends, and Uncle Joe (who is a Tea Bagger) at Thanksgiving”. And we’re there to motivate and excite people. That sounds right over here at my desk, but what a number of organizers of events have also reported is that they have actually recruited good numbers of new members to the local organizations from these events, including the smaller ones. Let’s hope the new members’ enthusiasm translates into a lot of activity for those organizations.

Pretty much at every MAHD event there were 2 local docs or a doc and a nurse on the stage as part of the panel (in a few cases there were 3 local health professionals on stage). Audiences particularly appreciated hearing from their own community people. That changes the typical U.S. medical equation of “docs at a distance”. Some of these local docs were true heroes which we learned about only as we heard of their life’s work. In some cases they had set up clinics for people without resources, or successfully gotten smoking removed from prisons and been able to promote health education, or done battle with local institutions to pressure them to provide more services for people who needed them most, and so forth. And in some places, like Chico, by the time we left the locals were already talking about launching their own local mini tours to various outlying communities, towns, cities. Do it, guys.

At USC the audience at the School of Social Work forgot to show up. Maybe that was because MAHD event was set up with only a few days notice and came during exam week (duh!). But we corralled several students coming to and from classes and study groups and held extended one on one or one on 3 discussions in front of the school with our banners splayed all over the place. The response was very positive (I guess that with the word “social” in their line of study they must be just another bunch of damned socialists like Barack Obama); MAHD promised the Rev. Dr. Peter Sabey (the host) not to worry but MAHD will be back, with better notice and collaboration next time.

Back home now, I’ve been wondering where this all leads to. If you heard my own 4 minute talk you may remember words to the effect of turning the Single Payer movement outward and re-creating a good old fashion civil rights movement, like in the 60s, to rejuvenate Martin King’s call to arms on health care. Mike mentions civil disobedience tactics. That is part of the broadening of vision, I think, but a social movement isn’t just about tactics. It’s about culture and strategy--seeing the Single Payer connection between politics and culture, between politics and class, between our goals and racism. I’m ready to get arrested more than once if would help achieve Medicare for all in the U.S. But I know there’s a big difference between symbolic civil disobedience and planning a movement that can use it to great effect. At the present moment I don’t believe that tactics are as important as figuring out how to merge our efforts with the rights struggles of undocumented immigrants, the unemployed workers, youths who are frequently gunned down unarmed by cops in Black urban communities and who gravitate toward gangs for self-preservation, people who are still being evicted and have no place to live, no way to survive, workers who would choose a union but have been denied the Employee right to choose act, and so on. That means first off figuring out how to join the struggles of people of a different class, by and large, and prove to them that their wellbeing is what our cause is about, not just when it comes to access to health care as a right. On the tour I talked with a few HCA/Single Payer chapter leaders who believe as I do and have already tried that kind of outreach, with somewhat mixed and marginal results. It ain’t easy. But what I think I detected from them is that we are usually working from the perspective of trying to get those reached out to “to join us” when it may be that the question is how do we learn how to join them, so that they can then join with us or how to create a broader context.

Since 1994 I have not forgotten that Proposition 186, the California Single Payer initiative campaign which failed dismally at the polls, was not led by people most effected by the lack of access to care. There were docs and union leaders and other mostly white middle class folks carrying out the campaign. And in the final analysis 186 was led by people who could not see the importance of standing firm on inclusion of all—including the undocumented—in their press statements. It was a campaign that did not reach out in any meaningful way to the Black, Latino and Philippino communities, churches, and other organizations. And as I reflect upon how we might move Medicare for All efforts in the right direction and center stage, I never cease believing that now, not later, is the right time to make the turn we could not make in 1994, the turn that King’s echoing words call out to us--to forge a multi-ethnic leadership by using the call to a new civil rights movement that can unite us on multiple rights demands and issues. Sure, doing that practically won’t be easy. But we can do this if we all agree that it’s something that must be done just as much as supporting any particular piece of legislation.

Until we meet again.

The Public Option: Obama's Health Insurance Jobs Program

President Obama recently mentioned at a town hall on health care reform that he didn't support a single payer system because it would be too disruptive. He didn't explain what he meant by disruptive but industry professionals assume he refers to health insurance industry management and employees who would become jobless in short order under a single payer system. It's not clear if management outnumbers other employees.

Obama is keeping these insurance industry jobs on as part of the government public option plan to persist health insurance industry control over people's health care. Even without a public option, insurance companies stand to have an even better stake in the health care market. The future looks bright for health care insurance employees who will be able to continue their never ending thankless job of denying health claims to people in need of medical care.

The 45,000 people who die every year due to lack of health care and from denial of insurance as well as the 14,000 daily who lose their health insurance are apparently forsaken for the few hundred thousand jobs in the health insurance industry. What's a few hundred thousand lives and disrupted families every few years to as many well fed well paid industry office workers' jobs? We need to have at least one or two industries that continue to make record profits while the rest of us face financial ruin.

The move by Obama is in line with America's ongoing shift toward corporate welfare socialism. The U.S. is the only industrialized nation that does not have a single payer type system to ensure all it's citizens have health care and have healthy productive lives. It's not certain if this fact is the symptom or the result of America slipping into the list of third world countries where 5% or less of the population control 95% or more of the country's wealth and power. America is no longer considered a democracy by most people who understand the meaning of the term. We are at best an oligarchy, with our government under corporate control by the wealthy few.

In light of America's failure to deliver health care, despite our advanced technology (only available to the very rich here) we now rank 37th in the world in health care. France is number one.

My suggestion is that Americans stop buying health insurance if they can avoid it. Vote with your wallet. That's the only thing these people understand.
____________________________________________
Follow Jon Raymond on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jonraymond

This video is a clip from a longer film currently in production. The title of this clip is based on Dr. Susie Baldwin's reaction to Obama's statement that a Single Payer system would be too disruptive, as seen in this video. So blame her for it.

Much of this video was shot at the recent Mad as Hell Doctors' rally in Hollywood last week. Special thanks to Dr. Jo Olson, Dr. Susie Baldwin, Dr. Paul Panacek, Dr. Nikki Mihara, and Dr. Horace Williams for their participation.

See more on this project or join us at http://outinthestreetfilms.com
Also on YouTube

No Health Care? Tough. This is America. Die.

Here's a rundown of the right's genius response to heath care reform based on interviews at this recent health care town hall in Alhambra CA.

1. Solution for the 48 million uninsured: Life is tough. Get over it. Die.
2. Solution for those uninsured who end up walking into hospitals: Well there should be some kind of program for them (duh - like government socialized health care?).
3. Major concern: the health care reform is not about health care (What's it about then? Toilet paper?).
4. Yup. Major problem with socialism: Toilet paper (Wasn't that a 60s U.S. propaganda spin?)

So if we keep the current system and 48 million people remain uninsured, who picks up the bill when they walk into the hospital? The government.

So, it is then the government's prerogative to insure these people ahead of time in order to save money on their hospital bills, is it not? It is also only fair that everyone else has the same option to choose that government insurance as well.

Keep posted on our projects and videos: Sign up at http://outinthestreet.ning.com.

The End is Here

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? How about if our troops kill a million innocent Iraqis and none of it is reported (no pictures, no video). Did it happen? What about if five billion people around the world decide to stop using banks and the present day financial infrastructure has to rely on corporate social welfare to survive, but they eventually fade away anyway. Did they ever really exist? I mean, the money we all have is our money. Even if it's in a bank, it's our money. Take the bank away and it's still our money. Banks are a mere illusion that charge fees for a show.

Suppose they gave a war and no one showed up? Suppose a lot of filmmakers (tired of playing Hollywood games) went out and made their own films, self-distributed them and banded together to help each other in what eventually became an alternate movie industry of and by real filmmakers instead of executive fat cats who do nothing but collect dust, money, and hookers. Suppose said fat cats disappeared from the movie scene altogether. Were they ever really there to begin with? I mean the filmmakers still make their movies with or without them.

What if people stopped using insurance companies altogether and got the government to be there for them in case of medical emergencies and accidents, just like the police and firefighters, and then no one would have to dole out 30% to insurance company administrators? Would those administrators have ever really existed?

If you were one of the million plus Iraqis who was killed, and who saw your family, friends, neighborhood, and country annihilated before your eyes, I think that would qualify as your rapture. By the same token, if you're a conservative authoritarian who lives by the rule of law and order and follows whatever the current law and order of the day has been determined to be by whoever is in charge, but then things suddenly turned on you and suddenly there was no law and order as you once knew it, there was no democracy or free market capitalism, and there was absolutely nothing you could do about it (What can you do? Drop a nuke on Wall Street?) - if all of that were the reality (which it is by the way) would that be your rapture?

The end is here.

The Real America

^{(HD Video - allow at least 5 minutes for this video to load or see the low def version)}

PASADENA CA - On Thursdays since, June 25, 2009, a group of protesters gathered at the intersection of Orange and Hill Avenues to hold a protest vigil, shown in this film, and which continues there weekly. Drive by and honk if you care to.

So why after 60 years of Republican blocked attempts at nationalized health care are we finally seeing some movement? It looks like things are so bad that the insurance companies aren't even making out. If things get bad enough for people and people can’t afford to pay their bills, guess who gets screwed? The insurance companies who charged the outrageous premiums to begin with. Once again we see the authoritarian right digging their own grave. Keep up the good work guys. With any luck your kind will soon be extinct. Bailouts can't go on forever. At some point these greedy corporations will die if we refuse their services, whether out of necessity or not. The people have the power and always have. It's ultimately about cutting off the money. Now if only we could do this to Wall Street and The Pentagram.

“Health care reform is no longer just a moral imperative, it is a fiscal imperative. If we want to create jobs and rebuild our economy, then we must address the crushing cost of health care this year, in this Administration.” - President Barack Obama, White House Forum on Health Reform, 3/5/09

The following excerpts are from HeathReform.gov:

“With All These People Losing Jobs, A Lot Will Lose Their Health Insurance”
The Wall Street Journal, Thursday, April 23, 2009 - President Obama has said that health reform “cannot wait, must not wait, and will not wait another year.” Today the Wall Street Journal cited evidence that illustrates why so many Americans cannot afford to wait another year for health reform. Layoffs are causing thousands of Americans to lose their health care coverage, and as was reported today, insurance companies are seeing their profits shrink as they lose members.

Insured, but Bankrupted by Health Crises
New York Times, 7/1/09 - It is commonly cited that nearly 50 million Americans go each year without health insurance. What is perhaps less apparent is that millions more are severely under-insured. The unfortunate reality is that even those with insurance are too often brought to financial ruin because of medical expenses.

Medical Bankruptcy
South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 6/23/09 - Americans across the country are struggling to keep up with rising costs of medical bills, high deductibles, increasing premiums, and the escalating costs of prescription drugs. For some Americans health care costs result in medical bankruptcy. According to a new Harvard University study, 62% of bankruptcies in 2007 were caused by medical-related debt.