Attention both libertarians and progressives: Obamacare is NOT single-payer!

[Geolibertarian]

If this is news to anyone, please see the following:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wsPZsEYuok
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/3/6/as_obama_hosts_summit_on_health

------------------------------------------

http://www.pnhp.org/facts/singlepayer_faq.php#socialized

Is national health insurance ‘socialized medicine’?

No. Socialized medicine is a system in which doctors and hospitals work for and draw salaries from the government. Doctors in the Veterans Administration and the Armed Services are paid this way. The health systems in Great Britain and Spain are other examples. But in most European countries, Canada, Australia and Japan they have socialized health insurance, not socialized medicine. The government pays for care that is delivered in the private (mostly not-for-profit) sector. This is similar to how Medicare works in this country. Doctors are in private practice and are paid on a fee-for-service basis from government funds. The government does not own or manage medical practices or hospitals.

[Continued...]


http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/march/obama_to_single_paye.php

Obama to Single Payer Advocates: Drop Dead

Corporate Crime Reporter
March 3, 2009

President Obama’s White House made crystal clear this week: a Canadian-style, Medicare-for-all, single payer health insurance system is off the table.

Obama doesn’t even want to discuss it.

Take the case of Congressman John Conyers (D-Michigan).

Conyers is the leading advocate for single payer health insurance in Congress.

Last week, Conyers attended a Congressional Black Caucus meeting with President Obama at the White House.

During the meeting, Congressman Conyers, sponsor of the single payer bill in the House (HR 676), asked President Obama for an invite to the President’s Marchy 5 health care summit at the White House.

Conyers said he would bring along with him two doctors — Dr. Marcia Angell and Dr. Quentin Young — to represent the majority of physicians in the United States who favor single payer.

Obama would have none of it.

This week, by e-mail, Conyers heard back from the White House — no invite.

Why not?

Well, believe it or not, the Obama White House is under the thumb of the health insurance industry.

Obama has become the industry’s chief enforcer of its key demand: single payer health insurance is off the table.

[Continued...]


http://www.globalresearch.ca/obamacare-a-health-care-rationing-scheme-to-enrich-insurers-drug-companies-and-large-hospital-chains/14444

Obamacare: A Health Care Rationing Scheme to Enrich Insurers, Drug Companies and Large Hospital Chains

by Stephen Lendman



Global Research
July 20, 2009

On February 24, Barack Obama told a joint session of Congress that "we must....address the crushing cost of health care....caus(ing) a bankruptcy in America every thirty seconds. By the end of the year, it could cause 1.5 million Americans to lose their homes. In (each of) the last eight years....one million....Americans have lost their health insurance....Given these facts, we can no longer afford to put health care reform on hold....health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year."

Behind the facade of reform, Obama and leading Democrats ruled universal, single-payer coverage off the table before debate even began. Instead they've focused on taxing more, rationing care, placing profits above human need, disdaining vital change, shifting the cost burden to individuals and requiring everyone to be insured; imposing fines up to $1000 for non-compliance, and making a broken system even worse.

On June 10, Physicians for a National Health Program advisor Walter Tsou told the House Education and Labor Committee:

"Attempting to reconcile the dual imperatives of universal coverage and cost control through alternative methods besides single payer is an exercise in futility. When some congressional leaders declare that single payer is off the table, they are in effect saying that insurers will be protected, leaving the pain to patients, taxpayers and health care providers."

At the same hearing, the California Nurses Association and National Nurses Organizing Committee co-president Geri Jenkins said:

"The current system rations care based on an ability to pay. Right now we are the only nation on earth that barters human life for money."

The administration and lawmakers have been unresponsive in moving ahead with House and Senate legislation to enrich health insurers, Big Pharma, and large hospital chains. It will ration care, curb expensive treatments and surgeries for those who can't afford them, leave millions in the country uncovered, deny it altogether to undocumented immigrants even though they pay income, payroll and other taxes, and claim it's real reform like they always do.

[Continued...]

------------------------------------------

[Geolibertarian]

http://www.infowars.com/whats-really-in-obamas-health-care-reform-bill-a-plain-english-translation/

What’s Really in Obama’s Health Care Reform Bill – A Plain English Translation

Mike Adams
Natural News
July 31, 2009

Mrs. Bouchard seemed upset.
“I can’t afford health care as yet.”
The new health reform bill
Made her sickly and ill
“But I’d rather have cancer than debt!”

What’s really in Obama’s health care reform bill? Almost no one knows, and here’s why: It’s 1,017 pages long and written in an alien form of bureaucratic English that can barely be decoded by earthlings.

And yet, astonishingly, a U.S. Army translator has been found who speaks “Washington Doublespeak” and he was kind enough to decode the bill and post his plain-language findings over at FreeRepublic.com (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2300451/posts).

Below, we reprint what he found in the health care reform bill. As you read this, keep in mind that some of these translations are a bit loose with the interpretations, but I’ve personally spot-checked these points, and they are indeed all contained in the bill in one form or another (shrouded in Doublespeak language, of course).

Editor’s note: I don’t personally agree with every interpretation listed here, and some of the bill’s provisions are actually good ideas (like banning doctors from owning stock in health care companies). But overall, this interpretation points out many alarming provisions in the proposed health care reform bill…

From CMS at FreeRepublic.com:

• Page 16: States that if you have insurance at the time of the bill becoming law and change, you will be required to take a similar plan. If that is not available, you will be required to take the government option!

• Page 22: Mandates audits of all employers that self-insure!

• Page 29: Admission: your health care will be rationed!

• Page 30: A government committee will decide what treatments and benefits you get (and, unlike an insurer, there will be no appeals process)

• Page 42: The “Health Choices Commissioner” will decide health benefits for you. You will have no choice. None.

• Page 50: All non-US citizens, illegal or not, will be provided with free healthcare services.

• Page 58: Every person will be issued a National ID Healthcard.

• Page 59: The federal government will have direct, real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer.

• Page 65: Taxpayers will subsidize all union retiree and community organizer health plans (example: SEIU, UAW and ACORN)

• Page 72: All private healthcare plans must conform to government rules to participate in a Healthcare Exchange.

• Page 84: All private healthcare plans must participate in the Healthcare Exchange (i.e., total government control of private plans)

• Page 91: Government mandates linguistic infrastructure for services; translation: illegal aliens

• Page 95: The Government will pay ACORN and Americorps to sign up individuals for Government-run Health Care plan.

• Page 102: Those eligible for Medicaid will be automatically enrolled: you have no choice in the matter.

• Page 124: No company can sue the government for price-fixing. No “judicial review” is permitted against the government monopoly. Put simply, private insurers will be crushed.

• Page 127: The AMA sold doctors out: the government will set wages.

[JBS]

Who wrote up this "Obamacare" legislation anyway? Cetainly not the joker.
I bet it was written years ago and released right on schedule. Find out who wrote this travesty and you will find the culprits behind this govt power grab.

[Monkeypox]

Who wrote up this "Obamacare" legislation anyway? Cetainly not the joker.
I bet it was written years ago and released right on schedule. Find out who wrote this travesty and you will find the culprits behind this govt power grab.

I've heard that it's basically the same shit Hitlary was trying to peddle when BJ Billy was President.

If it WAS single-payer, they could probably pass it tomorrow.

[vladimir]

Can someone please remove the duplicate above?
EXCERPT, EMPHASIS ADDED THROUGHOUT
Why Aren't Progressives Disrupting ObamaCare Town Halls?
by Dave Lindorff
Global Research, August 14, 2009
Counterpunch.org

Many progressives are getting all bent out of shape over the "brown shirt" rabble organized by health industry PR firms [doubtful and contradicts something he says below, but the spirit is right] to disrupt the so-called "town meetings" being organized all over the country by Democratic members of Congress.

What they are conveniently forgetting is that these are not really "town meetings" at all, at least in the sense of the town meetings I grew up with, and started out covering as a young journalist in Connecticut--that is, meetings called and run democratically, with leaders elected from the floor, open to all residents of a community.

These "town meetings" are really nothing but propaganda sessions run by members of Congress who are trying to burnish their fraudulent credentials as public servants, and trying to perpetrate a huge fraud of a health care bill that purports to be a progressive "reform" of the US health care system, but that actually further entrenches the control of that system by the insurance industry, and to a lesser extent, the hospital and drug industry.
  
ObamaCare is to health reform what bank bailouts are to financial system reform, which is to say it is the opposite of what its name implies.
[...]

[...] Every effort has been made to bury an excellent bill, HR 676, offered up by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), which would cover every American by simply expanding Medicare to cover everyone.

The only proper response at this point is obstruction, and the more militant and boisterous that obstruction, the better.

Instead of opposing the right-wing hecklers at these events, progressives should be making common cause with them. Instead of calling them fascists, we should be working to turn them, by showing them that the enemy is not the left; it is the corporations that own both Democrats and Republicans alike.

The only proper approach to the wretched health care legislation currently working its way through Congress at this point is to kill it and start over. At these "town meeting" staged events, Obama and the Democrats need to hear, in no uncertain terms, that we don't want no stinkin' ObamaCare. We want Medicare for all.
  
Full Article
 

[Monkeypox]

Everyone needs to make it clear that yes, we do want a change in health care, but not this shit!

[nustada]

In a way I single payer is better than "government option", because for small businesses and individuals won't be able to "afford" anything more, but it gives the oligarchs to not have to take their own medicine.

Again the whole thing is a big stinking red herring. The problem is not the payment schemes. Its the high prices due several issues. Health care needs to be made affordable to most people, before one can bother making available to everyone.

[Geolibertarian]

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE5530Y020090604

Medical bills underlie 60 percent of U.S. bankruptcies: study

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
June 4, 2009

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Medical bills are behind more than 60 percent of U.S. personal bankruptcies, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday in a report they said demonstrates that healthcare reform is on the wrong track.

More than 75 percent of these bankrupt families had health insurance but still were overwhelmed by their medical debts, the team at Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School and Ohio University reported in the American Journal of Medicine.

"Unless you're Warren Buffett, your family is just one serious illness away from bankruptcy," Harvard's Dr. David Himmelstein, an advocate for a single-payer health insurance program for the United States, said in a statement.

"For middle-class Americans, health insurance offers little protection," he added.

[Continued...]


http://www.pnhp.org/news/2010/january/denial-of-care-profits-73-million-for-cigna%E2%80%99s-retiring-ceo

Denial of Care Profits: $73 million for CIGNA’s retiring CEO

By Donna Smith, National Nurses Movement
January 7, 2010

It’s hard for most of us to imagine a lifestyle supported by a $73 million retirement bonus. It’s even harder to imagine a whole nation’s healthcare controlled by those who have benefited so wildly from denying healthcare to those who need it.

But Cigna’s Edward Hanway knows well what it feels like to rest in the lap of luxury thanks to all those profits he helped secure as he led one of the nation’s for-profit insurance giants through some very successful times. And as we lumber toward a new piece of healthcare legislation with new promises of expanded health insurance coverage and mandate for both individuals and employers to purchase private health insurance plans, insurance companies will have even more control over our healthcare – and the denials of care that make companies like Cigna pay out such obscene bonuses.

According to CIGNA’s press releases, Hanway had served in leadership capacities with America’s Health Insurance Plans, and the Alliance for Health Reform. “He is an outspoken advocate at the national level for greater transparency regarding health care quality and cost information available to consumers and a strong proponent of national quality standards for health care providers. He is recognized as a leader in the effort to improve the quality, accessibility and affordability of health care in the United States. Through the years, Hanway has been active in a wide range of issues and initiatives associated with health, education and international business.”

BEFORE you read further…National Nurses United, the new national union for RNs, is asking nurses and patients to demand Congress remove the mandates that would force Americans to purchase products from the CIGNA’s of the world. Call Rep. Pelosi (415-556-4862) and Sen. Reid (702-388-5020) and tell them to strip this bill of the CIGNA-mandates immediately!

Under Hanway’s leadership, Cigna also did what for-profit insurance companies do so very well to enhance the profits that become multi-million dollar bonuses. They denied care to thousands upon thousands of policyholders, and the company profits were protected.

[Continued...]

[Geolibertarian]

http://pnhp.org/news/2010/march/pro-single-payer-doctors-health-bill-leaves-23-million-uninsured

Pro-single-payer doctors: Health bill leaves 23 million uninsured

A false promise of reform

For Immediate Release      
March 22, 2010

Contact:
Oliver Fein, M.D.
Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., M.P.H.
David Himmelstein, M.D.
Margaret Flowers, M.D.
Mark Almberg, PNHP, (312) 782-6006, mark@pnhp.org

The following statement was released today by leaders of Physicians for a National Health Program, www.pnhp.org. Their signatures appear below.

As much as we would like to join the celebration of the House's passage of the health bill last night, in good conscience we cannot. We take no comfort in seeing aspirin dispensed for the treatment of cancer.

Instead of eliminating the root of the problem - the profit-driven, private health insurance industry - this costly new legislation will enrich and further entrench these firms. The bill would require millions of Americans to buy private insurers' defective products, and turn over to them vast amounts of public money.

The hype surrounding the new health bill is belied by the facts:

*  About 23 million people will remain uninsured nine years out. That figure translates into an estimated 23,000 unnecessary deaths annually and an incalculable toll of suffering.

*  Millions of middle-income people will be pressured to buy commercial health insurance policies costing up to 9.5 percent of their income but covering an average of only 70 percent of their medical expenses, potentially leaving them vulnerable to financial ruin if they become seriously ill. Many will find such policies too expensive to afford or, if they do buy them, too expensive to use because of the high co-pays and deductibles.

*  Insurance firms will be handed at least $447 billion in taxpayer money to subsidize the purchase of their shoddy products. This money will enhance their financial and political power, and with it their ability to block future reform.

*  The bill will drain about $40 billion from Medicare payments to safety-net hospitals, threatening the care of the tens of millions who will remain uninsured.

*  People with employer-based coverage will be locked into their plan's limited network of providers, face ever-rising costs and erosion of their health benefits. Many, even most, will eventually face steep taxes on their benefits as the cost of insurance grows.

*  Health care costs will continue to skyrocket, as the experience with the Massachusetts plan (after which this bill is patterned) amply demonstrates.

*  The much-vaunted insurance regulations - e.g. ending denials on the basis of pre-existing conditions - are riddled with loopholes, thanks to the central role that insurers played in crafting the legislation. Older people can be charged up to three times more than their younger counterparts, and large companies with a predominantly female workforce can be charged higher gender-based rates at least until 2017....

It didn't have to be like this. Whatever salutary measures are contained in this bill, e.g. additional funding for community health centers, could have been enacted on a stand-alone basis.

Similarly, the expansion of Medicaid - a woefully underfunded program that provides substandard care for the poor - could have been done separately, along with an increase in federal appropriations to upgrade its quality.

But instead the Congress and the Obama administration have saddled Americans with an expensive package of onerous individual mandates, new taxes on workers' health plans, countless sweetheart deals with the insurers and Big Pharma, and a perpetuation of the fragmented, dysfunctional, and unsustainable system that is taking such a heavy toll on our health and economy today.

This bill's passage reflects political considerations, not sound health policy. As physicians, we cannot accept this inversion of priorities. We seek evidence-based remedies that will truly help our patients, not placebos.

A genuine remedy is in plain sight. Sooner rather than later, our nation will have to adopt a single-payer national health insurance program, an improved Medicare for all. Only a single-payer plan can assure truly universal, comprehensive and affordable care to all.

By replacing the private insurers with a streamlined system of public financing, our nation could save $400 billion annually in unnecessary, wasteful administrative costs. That's enough to cover all the uninsured and to upgrade everyone else's coverage without having to increase overall U.S. health spending by one penny.

Moreover, only a single-payer system offers effective tools for cost control like bulk purchasing, negotiated fees, global hospital budgeting and capital planning.

Polls show nearly two-thirds of the public supports such an approach, and a recent survey shows 59 percent of U.S. physicians support government action to establish national health insurance. All that is required to achieve it is the political will.

The major provisions of the present bill do not go into effect until 2014. Although we will be counseled to "wait and see" how this reform plays out, we cannot wait, nor can our patients. The stakes are too high.

We pledge to continue our work for the only equitable, financially responsible and humane remedy for our health care mess: single-payer national health insurance, an expanded and improved Medicare for All.

Oliver Fein, M.D.
President

Garrett Adams, M.D.
President-elect

Claudia Fegan, M.D.
Past President

Margaret Flowers, M.D.
Congressional Fellow

David Himmelstein, M.D.
Co-founder

Steffie Woolhandler, M.D.
Co-founder

Quentin Young, M.D.
National Coordinator

Don McCanne, M.D.
Senior Health Policy Fellow

******

Physicians for a National Health Program (www.pnhp.org) is an organization of 17,000 doctors who support single-payer national health insurance. To speak with a physician/spokesperson in your area, visit www.pnhp.org/stateactions or call (312) 782-6006.

[Geolibertarian]

http://www.prisonplanet.com/kicked-in-the-groin-health-insurance-companies-are-dramatically-%20increasing-premiums-due-to-the-new-health-care-law-and-there-is-not-much-we-can-do-about-it.%20html

Kicked In The Groin: Health Insurance Companies Are Dramatically Increasing Premiums Due To The New Health Care Law And There Is Not Much We Can Do About It

The Economic Collapse
Aug 18, 2010

Wasn’t the new health care reform law supposed to make health care more affordable for everyone?  Well, imagine my surprise when I opened up a letter from my health insurance company recently and found out that my health insurance premiums were going up by nearly 50 percent.  I am in perfect health and I have never had a single health insurance claim with this company.  Unfortunately, after doing a little research, I discovered that I am far from alone.  All over the United States, people are being hit with double-digit percentage increases in their health insurance premiums even as the health insurance predators continue to rake in record profits.  At a time when millions of American families are barely making it from month to month, the last thing they need is to be figuratively kicked in the groin by the health insurance companies.  But that is exactly what is happening.

Not that health insurance companies ever needed an excuse to raise rates, but in 2010 many of them are blaming changes in health care law for the dramatic rise in premiums.

Of course it is true that there are over a dozen new taxes on the health care industry in the “health care reform” law that Barack Obama and the Democrats rammed down the throats of the American people, and everyone should have realized that those taxes would ultimately be passed on to the consumer.

But what is also true is that the health insurance companies basically wrote large sections of the health care reform law and health insurance company stocks rose when this new law was passed.

So why is this new law so good for health insurance companies?

Well, the new health care law requires all of us to purchase health insurance from them.

We are no longer going to have the choice of opting out of their system.

We are going to be forced to buy health insurance.

And since they are all raising rates, there is no escape from the pillaging.

As the new health care bill was being debated, Obama promised that the average American family would save $2,500 in yearly premiums under the new law.

If any of you still believe that claim I have got a bridge to sell you.

The Congressional Budget office says that yearly health insurance premiums are actually going to increase by about $2,300 each year as a result of the new law, but that estimate is probably far, far too low.

The truth is that rates are already shooting through the roof. Just consider the following excerpt from a recent article on Fox News….

Here is the terse reason CareFirst/Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Washington gave its subscribers for raising a monthly premium from $333 to $512 on a middle aged man who is healthy, is not a smoker and is not obese: “Your new rate reflects the overall rise in health care costs and we regret having to pass these additional costs on to you.”

Could you afford to pay $512 a month for health insurance just for yourself?

Unfortunately, the truth is that this is nothing new. Many health insurance companies have been increasing health insurance premiums by double-digit percentages year after year after year even as they continue to reel in record profits.

In particular, health insurance companies seem to love to stick it to small businesses and the self-employed.

According to an article on the Mother Jones website, health insurance premiums for small employers increased 180% between 1999 and 2009.

The greed of the health insurance companies seems to know no bounds. For example, the 39% hike that Anthem Blue Cross sent some California customers last year made headlines across the nation. But executives defended the dramatic premium hikes as perfectly justifiable.

The reality is that health insurance is becoming so insanely expensive that millions of Americans can’t even afford it anymore.

But thanks to the new health care law they are being forced to keep shelling out their hard-earned money for it.

It is getting really hard for anyone to deny that the health care system in the United States is deeply, deeply broken. The new health care law is not going to reduce costs. It is only going to help the health insurance companies continue to rake in obscene profits.

But wasn’t the new health care law supposed to prevent the health insurance companies from abusing all of us?

Well, as it turns out, the new health care law does not give the federal government much regulatory power at all to prevent premium increases.

But what about the states?

Can’t they do something?

Well, yes they can, but unfortunately most state legislatures have been bought off by the health insurance industry.

Since 2003, health insurance companies have shelled out more than $42 million in state-level campaign contributions.

That is a lot of money, and they wouldn’t be spending that kind of money if they did not expect a return for it.

“The pressure that the industry can bring to bear in state legislatures is unbelievable,” J. Robert Hunter, a former insurance commissioner in the state of Texas recently told the Los Angeles Times. “They pretty much get what they want.”

The cold, hard reality is that health insurance companies are not in business to help people and provide affordable health care. They are in business to make money and they are very good at it.

But there are a few states that have stood up to the health insurance companies. States that have “prior approval” laws have been able to successfully fend off some of the over-the-top rate increases that health insurance companies have been trying to ram down the throats of consumers. For example, the Los Angeles Times recently reported on what has been happening in the state of Oregon….

Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Oregon was forced to cut back a proposed 26.4% increase in one of its individual plans to 17.3%. Other carriers were ordered to scrap altogether hikes as high as 20%.

Unfortunately, a number of these states that have these “prior approval” laws are now being sued by insurance companies.

That is how these folks work – they will either try to buy off politicians or they will keep filing lawsuits until they get what they want.

Meanwhile, the top executives at the five largest for-profit health insurance companies in the United States received nearly $200 million in total compensation in 2009.

Are you upset yet?

You should be.

And you know what?

When it finally comes time to actually use your health insurance, these predators will do anything they can to get out of paying up.

In fact, it has been documented that some of the largest health insurance companies actually pay their employees large bonuses for denying claims. The employees who deny the most claims are the ones that get the largest bonuses.

The health care system in the United States is messed up beyond all recognition, and the new health care law has made things worse than ever. Americans pay more than anyone else in the world for health care, and all that we get in return is a system that is deeply, deeply broken.

If you have a health insurance horror story of your own, please feel free to share it in the comments section below….

[larsonstdoc]

  I have heard Tarpley speak of their long-term scheme.  The health insurance companies are going to profit big time for 3 or 4 years so that they can be paid back for their political donations AND THEY CAN CUT SOME OF THEIR LOSSES ON THEIR DERIVATIVE BETS.  Then when the health care system collapses, IT WILL BE SINGLE PAYER AND GOVERNMENT RUN.  Tarpley makes a lot of sense on this issue.

[Geolibertarian]

Although written a decade ago, the following is as relevant and insightful now as it was then:

-----------------------------------

http://www.progress.org/archive/fold129.htm

The Paradox of Government-Monopoly Medicine

by Fred E. Foldvary
The Progress Report
2000

Why in the USA is health care a federal case? The nature of health care is that it is something you need at random, and when you need it, you've got to have it even at a high price. We also need food, but that we get on a regular basis, with no big surprises.

But while a health emergency can strike you at any time, like a tiger pouncing out of the dark, what appears random to the sufferers is a regularity for the population. We know that some regular percentage of folks will have injuries and illnesses during a year. That's why we can insure for it, just like we have life, home, and car insurance. So why don't folks just buy insurance privately?

In the USA, many do, only it's often done through the employer, since the boss gets a tax deduction and the worker does not. But many people are considered too poor to get insurance, so the federal government insures the poor with Medicaid and the old folks with Medicare. Now they want to expand the benefits to drugs. It is the nature of medicine that we can never have enough if it's user-free, so the push is to ever expand government coverage.

In Great Britain they decided that since everyone needs insurance, the national government may as well provide it to all. According to a poll by the Times of London, 46 percent of Britons regard their National Health Service as the greatest achievement of the British government in the 20th century (NCPA Policy Digest 2-10-00).

Is it not wonderful to get free health care? But it is not free - the British pay for it from taxes. As for the poor, government could instead give them health vouchers for private medical care. So the great benefit of government-provided medicine must be its monopolization, since if it is just a problem of money, then transfers or the redistribution of income would solve it.

The facts indicate that British health care is a wee bit short of utopian. The British NHS has 1.1 million patients on its hospital waiting lists, and half as many doctors per capita as the U.S.(1).

In cancer treatment, problems in the NHS include a chronic lack of funds, specialists, and treatment centers; unequal treatment throughout the country; and in some cases the postponement of aggressive treatment until it is too late. According to the World Health Organization, 25,000 Britons die of cancer unnecessarily each year. Britons are not provided with drugs that are routinely administered in the U.S. for colon cancer, leaving British subjects with a survival rate of 41% versus 64% for Americans. For women with breast cancer, the five-year survival rate is 67% in Britain compared to 84% in the U.S.A.

As for the totality of health care, the United Kingdom spends about 6.8% of its gross domestic product on health care, versus 14% in the USA. In the UK, some 500 people a year die while on the national waiting list for heart operations (2).

Evidently just making medicine a government monopoly does not improve service. Why then do so many Britons regard nationalized medicine as their country's crowning achievement? Partly it may be ignorance of how their system compares with that of the US, where the government provides subsidies rather than direct service. But mainly it may be that subsidies, vouchers, and income transfers are politically more volatile and subject to cuts than the outright entrenched provision of the service by government.

So it seems the British want security in medical provision, even at poorer service, and at the root of their insecurity is poverty. It is not the abject poverty of being hungry and homeless, but the middle-class privation of insufficient purchasing power and the fear of losing employment.

Nationalized medicine treats the symptoms of middle-class privation, but at a cost of substandard care. The cause of middle-class privation is the poison of taxation and economic restriction. The effective remedy is true free trade and the removal of the poison by totally untaxing wages and shifting public revenue to the rent of land. Wages would gush up by eliminating the hemorrhage of taxation, removing blocks from circulation, and making the economy ever so much more productive by the better use of space.

With high wages and the security that comes from a high demand for labor, Britons would be able to scrap their nationalized health monopoly and would well afford a full choice of insurance, mutual aid, and fee-paid plans. Ultimately nationalized medicine is kept in power by the greed of those who profit from land and the ignorance of the public that does not see the economic reality behind the superficial money transactions of daily life.



References

1. Paul R. McGinn, "Brits Rate NHS as Top Achievement," American Medical News, January 31, 2000.

2. Sarah Lyall, "In Britain's Health Service, Sick Itself, Cancer Care is Dismal," New York Times, February 10, 2000.

-----------------------------------

I think the key point made by economist Fred Foldvary in the above article is that the health care issue is, at bottom, really about the unjust concentration of wealth and income in the hands of a relative few, since the varying degrees of poverty and privation that this concentration imposes on everyone else is what makes government assistance programs in general seem necessary in the first place.

To paraphrase Harry Browne, what ruling-class oligarchs and the corporate-whore politicians who lovingly serve them essentially do is cripple people economically, hand them a crutch, and then say: "See? You couldn't walk if it weren't for us!"

That's why the health care reform measures called for here must go hand-in-hand with the economic reforms called for here.

[Geolibertarian]

http://www.prisonplanet.com/20-signs-that-the-health-care-industry-has-become-all-about-making-as-much-money-as-possible.html

20 Signs That The Health Care Industry Has Become All About Making As Much Money As Possible

Economic Collapse Blog
Thursday, September 9, 2010

Once upon a time in America, people became doctors and nurses because they wanted to help people, building hospitals was a labor of love, lawyers didn’t chase ambulances, health insurance companies did not openly abuse their customers and greedy pharmaceutical companies did not dominate the entire health care industry. But today all of that has changed. Why do most people choose a career in the health care industry today? It is because they want to make a lot of money and live a comfortable lifestyle. Why do most health facilities get built today? They get built because someone is hoping to make a huge profit. Why do so many lawyers specialize in medical malpractice? Here’s a hint – it is not because they want to make life better for people. Why do health insurance companies keep raising premiums even while they are making record profits? It is because they can and because they are greedy. Why are pharmaceutical corporations some of the most profitable companies on the face of the earth even though their products are harming tens of millions of people? It is because our health care system has become wildly corrupt and is now about making as much money as possible.

Not that everyone in the health care industry is motivated by greed. Some doctors and nurses volunteer a ton of their time to assist the poor and the needy. Others use their vacation time to go overseas and provide free medical care in third world nations. Many religious groups and non-profit organizations build hospitals and clinics because they are truly trying to help people. And there are a few health insurance companies that are trying to play the game honestly.

But unfortunately, those with noble intentions in the health care industry are the exception rather than the rule. Overall, the health care industry in America is all about the money, and it is about time that we quit pretending otherwise.

The following are 20 signs that the health care industry in the United States has become all about making as much money as possible….

1 – Even as the rest of the U.S. economy deeply struggles, America’s health insurance companies increased their profits by 56 percent in 2009.

2 – According to a report by Health Care for America Now, America’s five biggest for-profit health insurers ended 2009 with a combined profit of $12.2 billion.

3 – The top executives at the five largest for-profit health insurance companies in the United States received nearly $200 million in total compensation in 2009.

4 – According to an article on the Mother Jones website, health insurance premiums for small employers in the United States increased 180% between 1999 and 2009.

5 – Health insurance premium increases are getting totally out of control. For example, the 39% increase in health insurance premiums that Anthem Blue Cross imposed on some California customers last year was so obscene that it made national headlines.

6 – Since 2003, health insurance companies have shelled out more than $42 million in state-level campaign contributions.

7 – There were more than two dozen pharmaceutical companies that made over a billion dollars in profits in 2008.

8 – Each year, tens of billions of dollars is spent on pharmaceutical marketing in the United States alone.

9 – Nearly half of all Americans now use prescription drugs on a regular basis according to a CDC report that was just released. According to the report, approximately one-third of all Americans use two or more pharmaceutical drugs, and more than ten percent of all Americans use five or more prescription drugs on a regular basis.

10 – According to the CDC, approximately three quarters of a million people a year are rushed to emergency rooms in the United States because of adverse reactions to pharmaceutical drugs.

11 – According to a very surprising new study, 85 percent of new pharmaceutical drugs are “lemons” and pose serious health risks to their users.

12 – The Food and Drug Administration reported 1,742 prescription drug recalls in 2009, which was a gigantic increase from 426 drug recalls in 2008.

13 – Shocking new research has found that expectant mothers taking antidepressants have an astounding 68 percent increase in the overall risk of miscarriage. Yet the pharmaceutical companies are essentially doing nothing to stop this.

14 – The use of psychiatric medications among 18 to 34 year old members of the U.S. military and their wives increased by 42 percent between 2005 and 2009.

15 – There are some disturbing new medical studies that suggest that many of the most popular anti-depressant drugs are no more effective than a placebo.

16 – Pharmaceutical companies continue to rake in billions of dollars from selling vaccines and are encouraging even pregnant women to take them, even though there is mounting evidence that taking vaccines while pregnant dramatically increases the rate of miscarriage.

17 – One woman in New Hampshire is seeking more than $24 million in damages from the manufacturer of a prescription drug that she took for shoulder pain. It turns out that as a result of taking the drug, she is now blind and has been left scarred by internal and external burns.

18 – According to one stunning new study, the medical liability system in the United States added approximately $55.6 billion to the cost of health care in 2008.

19 – Pharmaceutical companies have become so greedy that now they are even attempting to patent our genes. It is being reported that over three million gene patent applications have been filed with the U.S. government so far. Tens of thousands of gene patents have already been granted at this point. It is estimated that companies hold approximately 40,000 patents on sections of the human genome right now. Those patents cover approximately 20% of our genes.

20 – According to a recent report, Americans spend about twice as much as residents of other developed countries on health care, but get much lower quality and far less efficiency in return.

[Geolibertarian]

http://www.infowars.com/secretive-executive-order-establishes-big-brother-health-bureaucracy/

Secretive Executive Order Establishes ‘Big Brother’ Health Bureaucracy

Eric Blair
Activist Post
September 15, 2020

On June 10th, 2010, amidst the chaotic 24-hour oil spill coverage, Barack Obama quietly signed an Executive Order that some claim lays the foundation for implementing Codex Alimentarius, which is a collection of internationally recognized standards, codes of practice, guidelines, and other recommendations relating to foods, food production and food safety (Wiki). Codex is widely viewed in the natural health world as a draconian measure to centralize control of all food and other ingestibles. While this Executive Order may not go that far, it does seem to lay the groundwork for much more control over our personal life choices.


Obama quietly signed an Executive Order that some claim
lays the foundation for implementing Codex Alimentarius.

Executive Order 13544, Establishing the National Prevention, Health Promotion, and Public Health Council is a short document outlining the goals and scope of the order. The title gives the appearance that it only creates a Council, but buried within are detailed plans to carry out the “goals” of the Executive Order. Let’s take a closer look at the order. To begin with, the document appears to create the foundation for a massive new multifaceted bureaucracy with 12 departments consolidated in the “membership” of the new Health Council:

       Sec. 2. Membership.

       (a) The Surgeon General shall serve as the Chair of the Council, which shall be composed of:

       (1) the Secretary of Agriculture;

       (2) the Secretary of Labor;

       (3) the Secretary of Health and Human Services;

       (4) the Secretary of Transportation;

       (5) the Secretary of Education;

       (6) the Secretary of Homeland Security;

       (7) the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency;

       (8} the Chair of the Federal Trade Commission;

       (9) the Director of National Drug Control Policy;

       (10) the Assistant to the President and Director of the Domestic Policy Council;

       (11) the Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs;

       (12) the Chairman of the Corporation for National and Community Service; and

       (13) the head of any other executive department or agency that the Chair may, from time to time, determine is appropriate.

       (b) The Council shall meet at the call of the Chair.

This group, under Obama’s orders, is tasked with developing an “integrated health-care strategy” for prevention, wellness, and health promotion practices to make recommendations to the President and the Congress, presumably to create more laws to govern people’s life choices. And, of course, like all other Executive Orders, the Council will also be authorized to “carry out such other activities as are determined appropriate by the President.” — Sec. 3 (g)

Section 4 of the order allows the council to choose a 25-member civilian “advisory group” which is promoted as a “diverse group of licensed health professionals” which “shall develop policy and program recommendations and advise the Council” on preventative medicines and lifestyle changes. The notion that this group will be developing policy to manage preventative medicines and “healthy” lifestyles of Americans smells of Big Brother. It also seems to be another example of where a civilian advisory group (no doubt infested with corporate interests) will further control the herd of wild humans.

One of the goals is to compile the recommendations into a report for the President, within one year, to contain the following:

[Continued...]

[Geolibertarian]

http://www.prisonplanet.com/54-favor-repeal-of-health-care-bill.html

54% Favor Repeal of Health Care Bill

Rasmussen
March 8, 2011

While a majority of voters nationwide continue to favor repeal of the national health care law, those who have health insurance don’t think it’s very likely they will have to change their coverage.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Voters shows that 54% favor repeal of the law, including 44% who Strongly Favor repeal. Thirty-nine percent (39%) oppose repeal of the law, including 31% who are Strongly Opposed. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Last week, 53% favored repeal of the health care law. Support for repeal has ranged from a low of 50% to a high of 63% since Democrats in Congress passed it a year ago.

But among voters who have health insurance, just 35% think passage of the law is at least somewhat likely to force them to change their coverage. That’s just one point above the lowest level measured since tracking began. Fifty-one percent (51%) don’t think that will be the case, while 13% more are not sure. The new findings include 20% who think it’s Very Likely they will be forced to change coverage and 23% who say it’s Not At All Likely.

Full article here

-------------------------

Does this mean the Obama whores at MSNBC will be accusing 54% of likely voters of being "racists"? 

[Valerius]

Why Aren't Progressives Disrupting ObamaCare Town Halls?
by Dave Lindorff
Global Research, August 14, 2009
Counterpunch.org

  
Full Article
 

Coming together like that on anything is what has the ptb quaking in their jackboots.

[Geolibertarian]

http://www.prisonplanet.com/25-shocking-facts-that-prove-that-the-entire-u-s-health-care-industry-has-become-one-giant-money-making-scam.html

25 Shocking Facts That Prove That The Entire U.S. Health Care Industry Has Become One Giant Money Making Scam

The American Dream
April 12, 2011

What is the appropriate word to use when you find out that the top executive at the third largest health insurance company in America raked in 68.7 million dollars in 2010?  How is one supposed to respond when one learns that more than two dozen pharmaceutical companies make over a billion dollars in profits each year?  Is it okay to get angry when you discover that over 90 percent of all hospital bills contain “gross overcharges”?  Once upon a time, going into the medical profession was seen as a “noble” thing to do.  But now the health care industry in the United States has become one giant money making scam and it is completely dominated by health insurance companies, pharmaceutical corporations, lawyers and corporate fatcats.  In America today, just one trip to the hospital can cost you tens of thousands of dollars even if you do not stay for a single night.  The sad thing is that the vast majority of the money that you pay out for medical care does not even go to your doctor.  In fact, large numbers of doctors across the United States are going broke.  Rather, it is the “system” that is soaking up almost all of the profits.  We have a health care industry in the United States that is fundamentally broken and it needs to be rebuilt from the ground up.

But wasn’t that what Obamacare was supposed to do?  No, in fact Obamacare was largely written by representatives from the health insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry.  Once it was signed into law the stocks of most health insurance companies went way up.

The truth is that Obamacare was one of the worst pieces of legislation in modern American history.  It did nothing to fix our health care problems.  Rather, it just made all of our health care problems much worse.

In case you haven’t noticed, health insurance companies all over the United States have announced that they are going to raise premiums significantly due to the new law.  Of course they are just using it as an excuse.  They have been sticking it to us good for the last several decades and they just grab hold of whatever excuse they can find to justify the latest rate hike.

If you are looking for a legal way to drain massive amounts of money out of average Americans just become a health care company executive.  Health care has become perhaps the greatest money making scam in the United States.  When Americans are sick and have to go to the hospital most of them aren’t really thinking about how much it will cost.  At that point they are super vulnerable and ready to be exploited.

It is almost unbelievable how much money some of these companies make.  Health insurance companies are more profitable when they provide less health care.  Pharmaceutical companies aren’t in the business of saving lives.  Rather, they are in the business of inflating the profit margins on their drugs as much as possible.  Many hospitals have adopted a policy of charging “whatever they can get away with”, knowing that the vast majority of the public will never challenge the medical bills.

The system is broken.

Everyone knows it.

But it never gets fixed.

The following are 25 shocking facts that prove that the entire U.S. health care industry is one giant money making scam….

[Continued...]

[chris jones]

 The  MONEY.. Its allways about the money..
 Rest assured the elderly,or any commoner affilcted with a long term illness, those who require life sustaining treatments, cancer victims, high cost surgery, etc etc, may as well accept the fact their out of luck.

[decemberfellow]

The  MONEY.. Its allways about the money..
 Rest assured the elderly,or any commoner affilcted with a long term illness, those who require life sustaining treatments, cancer victims, high cost surgery, etc etc, may as well accept the fact their out of luck.

I agree with that, however even the young, healthy ,strong, all others , by getting into the system are screwed to.  Vaccinations vaccinations, Kind of makes me wonder. maybe we the awake will be the only "lucky" ones.

[Geolibertarian]

http://www.prisonplanet.com/50-u-s-health-care-statistics-that-will-absolutely-astonish-you.html

50 U.S. Health Care Statistics That Will Absolutely Astonish You

The Economic Collapse
June 29, 2011

The U.S. health care system has become one gigantic money making scam, and you are about to see the statistics that prove it.  Today, the United States spends more on health care per person than any other country in the world by far.  The health insurance companies and the big pharmaceutical corporations are raking in gigantic mountains of cash and yet the quality of the health care that we receive in return is rather quite poor.  People living in Puerto Rico have a greater life expectancy than we do.  Residents of Cuba have a lower infant mortality rate than we do.  We are the most medicated population on the planet and yet we are also one of the sickest.  If the U.S. health care system was a country, it would have the 6th largest economy on the globe and yet rates of cancer, heart disease and diabetes continue to increase.  The U.S. health care statistics that you are about to read below are absolutely stunning.  For as much money as we shell out for health care, we should have the greatest system in the entire world.  But we don’t.  Something has gone horribly wrong.

As you read this, there are hordes of health bureaucrats and greedy corporate fatcats that are becoming incredibly wealthy while the rest of us go broke trying to pay for our health care.  In the United States today, health care bills cause more bankruptcies than anything else does.  Millions of Americans are afraid to go to the hospital because they know that even a short visit would be a huge financial burden.

Sadly, our politicians in Washington D.C. continue to make the problem worse.  Obamacare was one of the worst pieces of legislation that anyone has ever come up with in the history of the United States.  You could put a thousand monkeys in a room with a thousand typewriters for a thousand years and they wouldn’t come up with anything as bad as Obamacare.  Rather than doing something to address the abuses of the health insurance companies and the pharmaceutical corporations, Obamacare actually gives them more power.  In fact, huge portions of Obamacare are virtually identical to a bill that was written by the health insurance trade association in 2009.  Under Obamacare our health care costs will go up even faster and the quality of our health care will continue to go down.  So please don’t try to tell me that Obamacare is the solution to anything.

The health care system in the United States is so broken that it probably cannot be repaired.  The entire thing needs to be dismantled and completely reinvented.

If you doubt this, just check out the stats that I have compiled below.

[Continued...]

[Valerius]

I guess you guys heard about the appeals court ruling out of Cincinnati today?

[Geolibertarian]

[Geolibertarian]

http://www.prisonplanet.com/what-is-obamacare.html

What Is ObamaCare?

Paul Craig Roberts
Prison Planet.com
Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Growing up in the post-war era (after the Second World War), I never expected to live in the strange Kafkaesque world that exists today. The US government can assassinate any US citizen that the executive branch thinks could possibly be a “threat” to the US government, or throw the hapless citizen into a dungeon for the rest of his or her life without presenting any evidence to a court or obtaining a conviction of any crime, or send the “threat” to a puppet foreign state to be tortured until the “threat” confesses to a crime that never occurred or dies at the hands of “freedom and democracy” while professing innocence.

It has never been revealed how a single citizen, or any number thereof, could possibly comprise a threat to a government that has a trillion plus dollars to spend each year on security and weapons, the world’s largest navy and air force, 700 plus military bases across the world, large numbers of nuclear weapons, 16 intelligence agencies plus the intelligence agencies of its NATO puppet states and the intelligence service of Israel.

Nevertheless, air travelers are subjected to porno-scanning and sexual groping. Cars traveling on Interstate highways can expect to be stopped, with traffic backed up for miles, while Homeland Security and the federalized state or local police conduct searches.

I witnessed one such warrantless search on Easter Sunday. The south bound lanes of I-185 heading into Columbus, Georgia, were at a standstill while black SUV and police car lights flashed. US citizens were treated by “security” forces that they finance as if they were “terrorists” or “domestic extremists,” another undefined class of Americans devoid of constitutional protections.

These events are Kafkaesque in themselves, but they are ever more so when one considers that these extraordinary violations of the US Constitution fail to be overturned in the Supreme Court. Apparently, American citizens lack standing to defend their civil liberties.

Yet, ObamaCare is before the US Supreme Court. The conservative majority might now utilize the “judicial activism” for which conservatives have criticized liberals. Hypocrisy should no longer surprise us. However, the fight over ObamaCare is not worth five cents.

It is extraordinary that “liberals,” “progressives,” “Democrats,” whatever they are, are defending a “health program” that uses public monies to pay private insurance companies and that raises the cost of health care.

Americans have been brainwashed that “a single-payer system is unaffordable” because it is “socialized medicine.” Despite this propaganda, accepted by many Americans, European countries manage to afford single-payer systems. Health care is not a stress, a trauma, an unaffordable expense for European populations. Among the Western Civilized Nations, only the richest, the US, has no universal health care.

The American health care system is the most expensive of all on earth. The reason for the extraordinary expense is the multiple of entities that must make profits. The private doctors must make profits. The private testing centers must make profits.The private specialists who receive the referrals from general practitioners must make profits. The private hospitals must make profits. The private insurance companies must make profits. The profits are a huge cost of health care.

On top of these profits come the costs of preventing and combatting fraud. Because private insurance companies resist paying and Medicare pays a small fraction of the medical charges, private health care providers charge as much as they possibly can, knowing that the payments will be cut to the bone. But a billing mistake of even $300 can bankrupt a health care provider from legal expenses defending him/her self from fraud accusations.

The beauty of a single-payer system is that it takes the profits out of the system. No one has to make profits. Wall Street cannot threaten insurance companies and private health care companies with being taken over because their profits are too low. No health-provider in a single-payer system has to worry about being displaced in a takeover organized by Wall Street because the profits are too low.

Because a single-payer system eliminates the profits that drive up the costs, Wall Street, Insurance companies, and “free market economists” hate a “socialized” medical care system. They prefer a socialized “private” health care system in which public monies flow into private insurance companies.

To make the costs as high as possible, conservatives and the private insurance companies devised ObamaCare. The bill was written by conservative think tanks and the private insurance companies. What the “socialistic” ObamaCare bill does is to take income taxes paid by citizens and use the taxes to subsidize the private medical premiums charges by private health care providers in order to provide “private” health care to US citizens who cannot afford it.

The extremely high costs of ObamaCare is not “socialistic medicine.” ObamaCare is high-cost privatized medicine that guarantees billions of dollars in profits to private insurance companies.

It remains to be seen whether such a ridiculous health care scheme, nowhere extant on earth except in Romney’s Massachusetts, will provide health care or just private profits.

[larsonstdoc]

http://www.prisonplanet.com/what-is-obamacare.html

What Is ObamaCare?

Paul Craig Roberts
Prison Planet.com
Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Growing up in the post-war era (after the Second World War), I never expected to live in the strange Kafkaesque world that exists today. The US government can assassinate any US citizen that the executive branch thinks could possibly be a “threat” to the US government, or throw the hapless citizen into a dungeon for the rest of his or her life without presenting any evidence to a court or obtaining a conviction of any crime, or send the “threat” to a puppet foreign state to be tortured until the “threat” confesses to a crime that never occurred or dies at the hands of “freedom and democracy” while professing innocence.

It has never been revealed how a single citizen, or any number thereof, could possibly comprise a threat to a government that has a trillion plus dollars to spend each year on security and weapons, the world’s largest navy and air force, 700 plus military bases across the world, large numbers of nuclear weapons, 16 intelligence agencies plus the intelligence agencies of its NATO puppet states and the intelligence service of Israel.

Nevertheless, air travelers are subjected to porno-scanning and sexual groping. Cars traveling on Interstate highways can expect to be stopped, with traffic backed up for miles, while Homeland Security and the federalized state or local police conduct searches.

I witnessed one such warrantless search on Easter Sunday. The south bound lanes of I-185 heading into Columbus, Georgia, were at a standstill while black SUV and police car lights flashed. US citizens were treated by “security” forces that they finance as if they were “terrorists” or “domestic extremists,” another undefined class of Americans devoid of constitutional protections.

These events are Kafkaesque in themselves, but they are ever more so when one considers that these extraordinary violations of the US Constitution fail to be overturned in the Supreme Court. Apparently, American citizens lack standing to defend their civil liberties.

Yet, ObamaCare is before the US Supreme Court. The conservative majority might now utilize the “judicial activism” for which conservatives have criticized liberals. Hypocrisy should no longer surprise us. However, the fight over ObamaCare is not worth five cents.

It is extraordinary that “liberals,” “progressives,” “Democrats,” whatever they are, are defending a “health program” that uses public monies to pay private insurance companies and that raises the cost of health care.

Americans have been brainwashed that “a single-payer system is unaffordable” because it is “socialized medicine.” Despite this propaganda, accepted by many Americans, European countries manage to afford single-payer systems. Health care is not a stress, a trauma, an unaffordable expense for European populations. Among the Western Civilized Nations, only the richest, the US, has no universal health care.

The American health care system is the most expensive of all on earth. The reason for the extraordinary expense is the multiple of entities that must make profits. The private doctors must make profits. The private testing centers must make profits.The private specialists who receive the referrals from general practitioners must make profits. The private hospitals must make profits. The private insurance companies must make profits. The profits are a huge cost of health care.

On top of these profits come the costs of preventing and combatting fraud. Because private insurance companies resist paying and Medicare pays a small fraction of the medical charges, private health care providers charge as much as they possibly can, knowing that the payments will be cut to the bone. But a billing mistake of even $300 can bankrupt a health care provider from legal expenses defending him/her self from fraud accusations.

The beauty of a single-payer system is that it takes the profits out of the system. No one has to make profits. Wall Street cannot threaten insurance companies and private health care companies with being taken over because their profits are too low. No health-provider in a single-payer system has to worry about being displaced in a takeover organized by Wall Street because the profits are too low.

Because a single-payer system eliminates the profits that drive up the costs, Wall Street, Insurance companies, and “free market economists” hate a “socialized” medical care system. They prefer a socialized “private” health care system in which public monies flow into private insurance companies.

To make the costs as high as possible, conservatives and the private insurance companies devised ObamaCare. The bill was written by conservative think tanks and the private insurance companies. What the “socialistic” ObamaCare bill does is to take income taxes paid by citizens and use the taxes to subsidize the private medical premiums charges by private health care providers in order to provide “private” health care to US citizens who cannot afford it.

The extremely high costs of ObamaCare is not “socialistic medicine.” ObamaCare is high-cost privatized medicine that guarantees billions of dollars in profits to private insurance companies.

It remains to be seen whether such a ridiculous health care scheme, nowhere extant on earth except in Romney’s Massachusetts, will provide health care or just private profits.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/10/us-usa-healthcare-budget-idUSBRE83905Q20120410


Obama healthcare could worsen U.S. debt: Republican study



By John Crawley
WASHINGTON | Tue Apr 10, 2012 9:41am EDT
(Reuters) - Instead of curbing government spending, President Barack Obama's healthcare law could add up to $530 billion to the federal debt over ten years, a Republican expert on U.S. government benefit


 You can be sure it will be WAY MORE THAN $530 BILLION ADDED TO THE FEDERAL DEBT OVER 10 YEARS.

[Geolibertarian]

http://www.prisonplanet.com/the-fraud-roll-out-continues-obamacare-costing-taxpayers-twice-as-much-as-originally-claimed.html

The fraud roll-out continues: Obamacare costing taxpayers twice as much as originally claimed

J. D. Heyes
Natural News
March 20, 2013

When he was selling the Affordable Care Act during his first term, President Obama claimed that the government’s near-complete takeover of the nation’s healthcare industry would be, well, affordable.

Everyone from the president on down in his administration and in the Democratic leadership insisted that the naysayers and critics were wrong, that Obamacare would not tank the nation by becoming another parasitic entitlement drain on the treasury.

Well, that was 2010. In 2013, fewer than three years later and as more and more provisions of this monstrosity of a law take effect, Americans are beginning to feel the full effect of exactly what then-House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., meant when she said of Obamacare, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it…”

Yes, healthcare is about to get a lot more expensive

Take the cost of Obamacare. When he was stumping for it, the president promised Americans that, not only could the nation pay for it, but that it would cost around $900 billion over the next decade.

As congressional and independent studies are now confirming; however, Obama’s cost claims were grossly understated.

“President Obama promised a joint session of Congress in 2009 to spend $900 billion over ten years on his health care law: ‘Now, add it all up, and the plan that I’m proposing will cost around $900 billion over 10 years.’ Adding up all the different spending provisions in the health care law; however, (including closing the Medicare ‘doughnut hole,’ implementation costs, and other spending) total gross spending over the FY 2010-19 period is about $1.4 trillion, based on CBO estimates,” explains the Senate Budget Committee Republican staff.

“And most of the major spending provisions in the law do not even take effect until 2014. Congressional Democrats delayed these provisions in order to show only six years of spending under the plan in the original 10-year budget window (from FY2010-19) used by CBO at the time the law was enacted,” said the staff report. “Therefore, the original estimate concealed the fact that most of the law’s spending only doesn’t even begin until four years into the 10-year window. A Senate Budget Committee analysis (based on CBO estimates and growth rates) finds that that total spending under the law will amount to at least $2.6 trillion over a true 10-year period (from FY2014-23) – not $900 billion, as President Obama originally promised.”

Partisan sour grapes? You may have noted that the figures used by the GOP staff report come from CBO (the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office).

But there’s more.

The Economic Policy Journal notes that the cost of Obamacare won’t simply be limited to higher medical costs:

[Continued...]

[larsonstdoc]

[Monkeypox]

http://www.prisonplanet.com/the-fraud-roll-out-continues-obamacare-costing-taxpayers-twice-as-much-as-originally-claimed.html

The fraud roll-out continues: Obamacare costing taxpayers twice as much as originally claimed

J. D. Heyes
Natural News
March 20, 2013

When he was selling the Affordable Care Act during his first term, President Obama claimed that the government’s near-complete takeover of the nation’s healthcare industry would be, well, affordable.

Everyone from the president on down in his administration and in the Democratic leadership insisted that the naysayers and critics were wrong, that Obamacare would not tank the nation by becoming another parasitic entitlement drain on the treasury.

Well, that was 2010. In 2013, fewer than three years later and as more and more provisions of this monstrosity of a law take effect, Americans are beginning to feel the full effect of exactly what then-House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., meant when she said of Obamacare, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it…”

Yes, healthcare is about to get a lot more expensive

Take the cost of Obamacare. When he was stumping for it, the president promised Americans that, not only could the nation pay for it, but that it would cost around $900 billion over the next decade.

As congressional and independent studies are now confirming; however, Obama’s cost claims were grossly understated.

“President Obama promised a joint session of Congress in 2009 to spend $900 billion over ten years on his health care law: ‘Now, add it all up, and the plan that I’m proposing will cost around $900 billion over 10 years.’ Adding up all the different spending provisions in the health care law; however, (including closing the Medicare ‘doughnut hole,’ implementation costs, and other spending) total gross spending over the FY 2010-19 period is about $1.4 trillion, based on CBO estimates,” explains the Senate Budget Committee Republican staff.

“And most of the major spending provisions in the law do not even take effect until 2014. Congressional Democrats delayed these provisions in order to show only six years of spending under the plan in the original 10-year budget window (from FY2010-19) used by CBO at the time the law was enacted,” said the staff report. “Therefore, the original estimate concealed the fact that most of the law’s spending only doesn’t even begin until four years into the 10-year window. A Senate Budget Committee analysis (based on CBO estimates and growth rates) finds that that total spending under the law will amount to at least $2.6 trillion over a true 10-year period (from FY2014-23) – not $900 billion, as President Obama originally promised.”

Partisan sour grapes? You may have noted that the figures used by the GOP staff report come from CBO (the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office).

But there’s more.

The Economic Policy Journal notes that the cost of Obamacare won’t simply be limited to higher medical costs:

[Continued...]

Anyone with a functioning brain knows that by the time it's all said and done, the costs will be astronomically more than originally predicted.  Only the most ignorant would think otherwise.

[Valerius]

I don't know what working class folks with back taxes or student loan defaults or other long term debt with tax diversion collections methods are going to do.

If the tax rebate is the "assistance" they are going to get for this mandatory purchase, they are going to be hurting because that wont be going to them.

[LoudMcCloud]

http://www.thinredlinenews.com/obamacare-deathpanels-will-target-cigarette-smokers.html

They are gonna use death panels to hoax people into taking anti-depressants.

[Geolibertarian]

http://www.prisonplanet.com/doctors-walk-out-of-national-obamacare-implementation-meeting.html

Doctors walk out of national Obamacare implementation meeting

Lance Devon
Natural News
April 26, 2013

According to live tweets and images sent from ophthalmologist Dr. Kris Held, nearly all doctors had walked out in protest and disgust of Obamacare implementation talks at a prominent national health care meeting. Typically, The American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery Government Relations session is a well attended, formal business conference where brilliant minds in medicine convene. This year was a different story. With talks of Obamacare implementation and compliance underway, doctors left and right had left the auditorium.

Dr. Kris Held tweeted during the meeting, “Doctors are literally walking out of this talk on implementing, complying with Obamacare. We are men and women of the mind not mindless drones.”

“In the past our government relations session was well attended. Government minion is droning on, as virtually all doctors have walked out.”

“I’m staying to the bitter end to make comment and ask how government plans to do all this with no doctors?”

The Obamacare penalty

Starting in 2014, consumers will be forced to purchase health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. Naysayer’s noncompliance will be punished with an IRS tax penalty. The tax penalty in 2014 begins at the rate of $95 per individual or one percent of household income, whichever is greater.

When 2016 rolls around, the penalty grows to $695 per person or 2.5 percent of annual household income, whichever is greater.

Even worse, a new HealthPocket consumer survey is showing that most uninsured people will remain uninsured. Nearly two-thirds of consumers said that the $95 penalty wouldn’t motivate them to obtain health insurance. The reality is that the penalty isn’t going to motivate very many people to buy insurance in October of 2013. That being said, the Obamacare mandate is going to serve as just another tax increase, a large one at that, which will squeeze more life from the economy, driving away innovation.

Some people are completely uninformed or apathetic toward the new penalty. In the HealthPocket survey, nearly 30 percent said they were “not certain” whether the penalty will motivate them to buy health insurance. According to Kev Coleman, head of Research & Data at HealthPocket, “That uncertainty may stem from a lack of awareness that a tax penalty under Obamacare exists, or a lack of understanding of how that penalty amount will compare to the cost of a new Obamacare health plan.”

[Continued...]

[Geolibertarian]

http://www.prisonplanet.com/the-medical-cartel-too-big-to-fail-too-evil-to-expose.html

The medical cartel: too big to fail, too evil to expose

Jon Rappoport
Prison Planet.com
May 6, 2013

There are several reasons why the medical cartel is too big to fail: the enormous amount of money at stake; its aim to control populations.
 
In this article, I want to examine a related reason.
 
Suppose it was discovered that thousands of bridges around the US were in imminent danger of collapsing? Not because maintenance and repair were lacking, not because the materials used to build them were cheap and shoddy. But because the original designs were inadequate and broke basic rules of engineering.
 
Suppose five or six major manufacturers built their automobiles so the vast majority of power derived from the engines was transferred to one wheel?
 
Suppose the US Dept. of Agriculture recommended that all farmers spray their crops with heavy chlorine instead of water?
 
In other words, the science itself is fraudulent.
 
This revelation, above all, is what the medical cartel tries to guard against. Their profession has shoved in all its chips on the propaganda proposition that it does impeccable science.

Science sells. The appearance of it sells. It’s the foundation stone of many industries.
 
Were that stone to crack and shatter, all bets would be off. A titanic fraud would come to light. The kind of fraud that would both freeze people’s minds and blow them away.
 
Science is the most powerful rationalization in the modern world. Consensus reality would fail and disperse without it.

As I’ve covered before, the most conservative mainstream estimate of medically caused death in America is 225,000 people per year. Every credential behind that figure is immaculate.
 
The author of the paper that presented the statistics was the late Dr. Barbara Starfield, a revered public health expert who worked for many years at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.
 
Her review, “Is US health the best in the world?”, was published on July 26th, 2000, in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
 
Starfield’s breakdown was as follows: the medical system kills 119,000 people a year in the US as a result of maltreatment in hospitals. The other 106,000 people are killed by FDA-approved medicines.

[Continued...]

[larsonstdoc]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

  And it's more than that.  The bottom line for me is if you want to stay healthy, you have got to exercise and eat live foods--fruits, vegetables and grains---food from plants.

  If you want to get cancer and other diseases such as diabetes---eat meat and dairy---food from animals.

  The doctors and medical schools know this but they don't want you to know it BECAUSE THERE IS NO MONEY IN HEALTHY PEOPLE.

  Google Dr. John McDougall.  One of his awesome videos is below.
          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iosoXlr3ZVI
          Diet, Drugs and Diabetes - One Hundred Years of Missed Opportunities

[larsonstdoc]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

  And it's more than that.  The bottom line for me is if you want to stay healthy, you have got to exercise and eat live foods--fruits, vegetables and grains---food from plants.

  If you want to get cancer and other diseases such as diabetes---eat meat and dairy---food from animals.

  The doctors and medical schools know this but they don't want you to know it BECAUSE THERE IS NO MONEY IN HEALTHY PEOPLE.

  Google Dr. John McDougall.  One of his awesome videos is below.
          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iosoXlr3ZVI
          Diet, Drugs and Diabetes - One Hundred Years of Missed Opportunities

  I FORGOT TO INCLUDE SUGARS AS STUFF YOU DON'T WANT TO EAT---Anything with high fructose corn syrup and other refined sugars.  Cancer loves sugar.

[Geolibertarian]

And it's more than that.  The bottom line for me is if you want to stay healthy, you have got to exercise and eat live foods--fruits, vegetables and grains---food from plants.

Of course one has to do this. Unfortunately, thanks to such things as the corporatization of the food industry and the genetic assault being waged by Monsanto on the world's food supply, it is becoming increasingly difficult -- and, for those at or near the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, nearly impossible -- to do so.

So it's misleading when people suggest or imply that this problem can be solved merely through personal lifestyle changes. Not that that isn't important; it is. But it's far from enough. Of at least equal import is the implementation of urgently-needed public policy reforms.

[Geolibertarian]

http://www.prisonplanet.com/obamacare-exchanges-already-a-logistical-nightmare-most-states-to-miss-deadlines.html

Obamacare exchanges already a logistical nightmare; most states to miss deadlines

J. D. Heyes
Natural News
June 18, 2013

For months we here at Natural News have been warning readers that the medical “reform” measure known as Obamacare is a regulatory nightmare that will destroy the U.S. healthcare system and raise its costs astronomically – despite the lies the president and his minions have told to “sell” it to the public.
 
One of the most egregious aspects of the law is the “health care exchanges” it creates – you know, the ones that were supposed to, according to President Obama, keep insurance rates down and allow you to keep your own doctor. Now, as the full weight of the law is expected to kick in Jan. 1, 2014, it is becoming painfully obvious that these promises, along with all of the other supposed “benefits” of the law, were never made to be kept in the first place.
 
How do I know that? Because one of the law’s architects, retiring Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., said as much in April when he declared the law to be a “train wreck” as the administration rushes to implement it.
 
The disaster is evolving
 
Even now Obama simply cannot be truthful about his signature accomplishment. In responding to Baucus’ moment of frankness, he said his staff was “pushing very hard to make sure that we’re hitting all the deadlines.” Well, Mr. President, that certainly isn’t the same as actually hitting them, is it? And besides, little of what the law proposed to improve will occur anyway, as a number of independent analyses have projected – both before and after Obamacare passed and was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.
 
Per Forbes magazine:

[Continued...]