An American Way of Death

Healthcare is not really heath care, is it? It is actually sickness maintenance. It’s theoretically about providing resources for sickness: Drugs, medical devices, doctors and nurses. You only need those things when you’re sick. If you actually wanted to ensure people’s health you would make sure they did healthy things, like breathe fresh unpolluted air, drink fresh unpolluted water, eat organic carcinogen free foods. You’d ensure that people got exercise, took yoga classes, or that they maintained a stress free life as in doing meditation every morning and evening. You’d keep them out of stressful polluted traffic every day. You’d have them walk daily. You’d make sure they had respirators or masks in air polluted areas. If insurance did those things, it would be health insurance. It would be sickness prevention.

In America sickness is a profit center. Cancer alone is a multi-trillion dollar industry. Consider all the money required to maintain a person through cancer treatments. It easily averages over a million dollars (about the same amount required to support each troop in Afghanistan for a year). Industries profit on that. The insurance industry, the medical device industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the nursing home industry (and of course the war profiteers), all profit from Americans’ pain, suffering, and death. Call it PSD.

We have a lot of people who complain about the sick industries and the expense of PSD. People pay a lot for insurance. Even if a claim is honored, people have co-payments. They fight daily to get hospital bills paid by their so-called insurance. There is a profit incentive for the insurance industry to deny care. Their business model is to find ways to avoid paying claims and to take in as much in premiums as possible. They know that Americans willingly pay for insurance. Even when they raise their rates by double digit percentages, Americans pay. Even if insurance companies deny claims and people suffer and die for lack of care, they will still pay. Tens of thousands of Americas continue to die annually but they still pay for insurance. It’s an incredibly profitable industry that easily takes in a 30% margin over its costs, and makes huge profits. Very few industries do that.

Americans are conditioned like lab rats to pay hundreds every month, thousands every year, for questionable and often worthless insurance. Obamacare got more people to buy insurance. Authored mainly by Elizabeth Fowler, a prior insurance company executive, either Obamacare is a genius piece of legislation or it’s taking Americans for a ride (depending on if you’re an investor or not). Now millions more Americans pay for questionable sickness insurance. When they get sick, you can bet the first order of business for their insurers is to find ways to deny their claims. And now the government requires by law that all people pay for sickness insurance or they will be fined. So if you have insurance you pay to be denied sickness coverage, and if you don’t have insurance, you pay government fines.

The theory is that if people don’t have insurance, they will be taken care of anyway and everyone else will have to pay for it. That’s only true for legislators, government officials, and the active military who are all 100% covered by government funds at no cost whatsoever. For everyone else this would be true if insurance companies actually paid to help people through sickness. But they don’t. The reality is the opposite, which is to say insurance companies don’t pay. People with insurance suffer and die for lack of care because insurance is not care. It is a business. People without insurance also suffer and die, but at least they don’t pay premiums. They pay government penalties.

And what do we do to insure health? Nothing. Healthy Americans are a liability for the American PSD industries and their stockholders. Those industries depend on pain, suffering and death for their livelihood and profits. In fact PSD enterprises comprise about one sixth of the national economy. Without PSD our country would suffer a great monetary impact. Entire industries could go out of business. Do you work for the insurance industry? Do you willingly work for blood money? Those who have pain, who suffer, or die for lack of sick care, do so for our protected PSD industries to maintain high profits. It’s a uniquely American way of death.

Big Problem with the Universal Healthcare Movement or WTF is Single Payer?

"Single Payer" is some anonymously coined term (as far as I know) that supposedly describes the concept of a single government entity, such as a national government healthcare agency (not unlike the Veterans Administration), which would replace all commercial healthcare insurance companies. More accurately it has been called Medicare for All, which, in fact, is the title of a piece of legislation that has been kicked around for years in Congress, yet never killed. And why? Because the government in its infinite wisdom must appease any growing outcry from all the little people out there so they can continue to receive "campaign contributions" from the sickness industries. It is my considered opinion that the term was coined, probably well thought out in advance, by our paranoid little government in its never ending fear of losing control over all its people, as if it ever owned all its people.

Who came up with the ridiculous phrase? Some secret think tank or New England university choir boys group who decided that mommy and daddy's never ending money supply might be in danger of deflating by a few percent due to a few undesirables who have a problem with being considered dispensable for the sake of the multi-trillion dollar sickness industries in America, that's who. Tens of thousands die annually in America due to the lack of real heath care. They suffer and die for corporate profits. And insurance proves time and again that it is not health care. It is the denial of care. It is a profit center. 

Cancer alone is a multi-trillion dollar annual industry. But you won't hear "Single Payer" advocates or activists (as they think of themselves); you will rarely ever hear them refer to an American sickness conglomerate of industries or the fact than even just one arm of it profits in the trillions on the sickness, suffering, and deaths of their so precious free American co-citizens. No, you will never hear that. Why? Because the US government ultimately controls activist groups and has notoriously infiltrated each and every activist group in this country. This is a known fact regardless of whether you call it conspiracy theory or not. American agencies place infiltrators at the highest levels of activists groups. That is why there are ridiculously misunderstood terms like "single payer" used to describe the crux of activists' concern. No. That is not their concern. Their concern is human life, the forsaking of human life for profit. Greed rules America. People die. Insurance is not healthcare. Those are the concerns.

Now if so called activists really wanted to end this criminality, this forsaking of life, this outrage that flies in the face of American freedom, this dispensing of people for profit; if indeed they wanted to be true activists, they would drop all their insurance polices. They wine and moan about how the insurance industry denies care, costs so much overhead, allows people to die and what do they do? They willing buy insurance from the criminals they fight.  Ludicrous. And then when they need insurance they get denied. They too suffer. Wake up! You are educated people. Think for yourself. Your money is your control.

If you want to go up against big insurance, you drop your insurance. You don't pay. You don't pay outrageous bills. You vote with your feet and your wallet. You allow yourself to get bad credit ratings because that's what true activists do. Going to a sit-in at the local insurance tower and getting arrested is not a sacrifice. That's a show with minimal effect. Forsake your credit ratings. Show your true power and commitment. Until you do that you will never have respect. Because money is all they understand. Nothing else matters. Not life. Not politics. Not freedom. Not this country or its ideals. No way in hell does any of that matter to American industry. All that matters is money. And the people have the power to cut off the money. You have that power. It's your money! You are funding your own doom. Are you freaking nuts? Or are you an investor in suffering and death? My mistake then.

How many activists out there still have insurance policies. Raise your hands. Yes. 99% of you. You aren't really activists are you.? You're spineless! Yes you work hard and I respect that, but your energy is misplaced and misspent. Work smart. Do something that matters. If a real movement were afoot to drop insurance you can bet it would change things in an instant.

News flash! Change does not happen in government. You will not find a champion to elect in government that gives enough of a flying fart about your life over their own. Would they risk embarrassment? Would they risk making waves? Would they risk their own credit ratings? Their reelection? Their job? Being ostracized? No! You think peoples' lives matter to anyone in government compared to the millions of dollars in donations they can get from industry? You are whacked out of your mind if you do.

Change happens when Martin Luther King marches, or when Rosa Parks gets on a bus, or when Bruce Springsteen drops a concert. It never happens when government signs a bill, because government will never sign a bill until someone forces their hand. Force their hand! Do not pay for insurance. Do not pay ludicrous health costs. Don't do it! It's criminal. 

Two Cents.

Chase: The Evil that Banks Do

at

The following is an email from ShowDown in America.

Meet Virginia Holwell. Virginia paid her taxes this year. She worked for the state of Illinois for 30 years but was laid off last summer. Like many of us, she fell victim to the economic downturn caused by Wall Street and Big Banks. She’s getting on a bus from Peoria Illinois to JP Morgan Chase’s shareholder meeting in Columbus OH on May 16th.

She thought she would have another 10 years of work to pay off her mortgage.  Instead, she is out of work, hasn't been able to find another job and is struggling to make payments on her modest Peoria home with a pension that is one-third her former income.    

Virginia, like many of us, is an ideal candidate for a mortgage modification. But Virginia's bank, JP Morgan Chase, denies the modification.  Virginia is getting on the bus with other members of  Illinois People’s Action to go to the Showdown in Ohio and JP Morgan Chase’s annual shareholder meeting because, like many of us, she wants to save her home.

She also wants to take a stand and turn this country around. And some one has to because Big Banks and Wall Street are trying to run us into the ground. JP Morgan Chase must pay its fair share of taxes just like Virginia and just like the rest of us. Chase must stop foreclosing on families and get small business lending moving again so we can get working and get on our feet.

Join us in Columbus. 

Can’t come? Mark your calendars. On May 17, while we’re at the shareholder’s meeting, join us in the action by calling JP Morgan Chase Senior VP, James Gilliam. Tell him to modify Virginia Holwell’s loan, and keep families in their homes: 312-325-5057.

Rather send him an email? Here you go: James.V.Gilliam@jpmchase.com

Why have a bank? Vote with your feet. Walk out.

If you're like me you don't hold onto money long enough to warrant keeping a bank account with the liability of bouncing checks when it nears bottom. So don't have one. Use money orders. Why direct deposit all your cash into some crooks' bank? It's your money. Put in in your wallet, or your safe. By the time I pay my bills all I have left is spending cash for food anyway.

If you must have a bank account, just put enough in to cover the bills you must pay by check or your bank card. Why bother going to a money machine every time you need your own cash? Why pay all the associated fees? Banks have a great racket. They hold all your money, fee you when ever they feel like it, post your checks when ever they feel like, and share all your transactions with any government agency or lawyer who comes down the pike.

We have the power to stop banks in their tracks. Vote with your feet. Walk out of your bank.

It's been suggested that credit unions are a great alternative to banks. I don't think people should blindly follow any one strategy or part of the industry. One credit union may be good. Another may be bad. Generally they sound good, but they all still charge the same interest and fees as banks.

Why should people be responsible for propping up an economy based on credit, which profits the bankers, including credit unions? People should learn to live within their means, not on credit. This is the root of the problem. This is what the Japanese discovered when they went through this. They now live more within their means.

The further contraction of the economy without banks that some fear is merely a contraction of credit. People still have the ability to make a living and profit. In fact, without the incredible interest they now pay, up to around 30% on a typical credit card for example, they will have more money and the 'no bank, no credit' strategy will improve their cash position.

The only thing banks are good for is credit, and right now that is even questionable. The root of our problem is credit. It's time to think outside of the vicious credit cycle box. If banks want to attract customers they should compete for the business, reduce their interest rates, cut out all the fees and overdraft penalties that multiply when they hit. That's how a free market will work. Credit unions have those fees and interest charges too. Until they come up with a better alternative, I say walk out on them. Make them earn our trust and our business.

Enough! - Protesters at AIG in LA

Enough! - Protesters at AIG in LA from Jon Raymond on Vimeo.

Los Angeles, March 19, 2009, 5:PM - As part of a nationwide SEIU sponsored protest, LA protesters outside of AIG were just as concerned about the billions of bailout dollars to all Wall Street firms as they were about the $165 million in AIG bonuses. They listed three demands from Congress:

1) Pass the Employee Free Choice Act
2) Affordable Health Care for All (citing that 55 million Americans are uninsured)
3) Strong Banking Reform.

They then proceeded to the front doors to ask that the top AIG executives come down to accept their reality check, where they were held back by numerous AIG security personnel. They chanted: Bring them down, AIG you cant hide. We can see you greedy side, and AIG has got to go. They were then informed that the people in the building left early after hearing of the nationwide protests, and that no one was there to see them. They responded with a chant of Dock their pay, followed again with AIG you cant hide.

This film was made from concept to completion in 16 hours by me alone. I wired two lavs through my long sleeved t-shirt, with the mikes clipped to the wrist ends. This gave great stereo separation for the sound, and control over the wires. The camera was a one chip Cannon Optura Xi. Everything was hand held. The shoot was about an hour of almost non-stop recording, and the editing about 10 hours.

Jon Raymond - Filmmaker
Music - Improvisation by Tony Milosevic / Absynth & Orange

Rally Participants:
SEIU - Los Angeles
CodePinkAlert.com

From Out in the Street Films