Is Obama a Chicago Gangsta?

GUEST COMMENT:

raydelcamino August 25th, 2009 11:04 am
Obama is carrying on the Chicago tradition of staying close to the organized criminals that own him.

Laugh out loud, Obama is apparently a gangsta in a suit.

Judging from the movies, in the old days, most of the top gangstas wore suits. That's understandable because for one thing, back then, neither hip hop music nor hip hop clothing was yet thought of.

Maybe we need progressive gangstas to capture hearts and minds in the US culture?

For example, we need progressive doctors to set aside 10-20% of their time for providing care for the struggling masses on a sliding scale based on income, down to $10 per hour for the poorest. A doctor would be a bona fide progressive gangsta if he did that, laugh out loud.

Jerry D Rose August 25th, 2009 2:44 pm
tremaine: Well, we do have some medical progressive gangstas of a sort like the Remote Areas Medical group, founded to give free medical care in "remote areas" of the Third World but who set up shop in Inglewood CA in August and were inundated with people from America's own third world of south Los Angeles. This and other spectacular "free clinics" have done yeoman work, in my opinion. While their efforts are of the "drop in the bucket" variety in relation to the overall medical needs of the country, they do dramatize for Americans just how desperate are people for medical care. And they do get publicity: I saw a feature story on the Inglewood clinic two or three times on ABC News. And you are right to suggest that the same could be done on a smaller scale by any medical practitioners in any community who wanted to brave the condemnation of their professional peers and open up free clinics "right here in River City." (And there are still a few local TV stations and newspapers that would report them.)

[The above conversation was based on this article.]

All Americans, not just some of them, are Disadvantaged by the US Health Care System

The writer mentions the most important difference just in passing, and he leaves the false impression that, at least for certain groups of Americans, the US system is similar to this or that country's system. I beg to differ.

By far the most important difference is the fact that in the US, private insurance companies are allowed to extract huge profits (and to pay huge executive salaries) from a captive market's premium payments. Incidentally, in a bizarre and very obnoxious irony, current US proposals call for making the already captive market even more captive, via the so-called “mandate,” which intelligent people and most well educated economists know is actually a tax pig with lipstick on it.

The big profits and obscene executive compensation of private health insurance companies are the head of the snake, if you will. If you, as all reputable countries have done, strictly enforce a non-profit status for private health insurance companies, you can then go on to choose amongst a wide variety of health delivery configurations, which might include, if you insist, private (non-profit) health insurance companies.

If on the other hand you insist on allowing profit for private health insurance companies, you are doomed to have a failed health system and eventually a failed economy regardless of other choices you make. There is no in-between position regarding allowing profits for the “third party” health insurance companies. You either allow them or you don't. And then your system is either an automatic failure or a likely success based on that decision.

So let's be clear: there is not even one group of Americans who have a system quite similar to a reputable system existing elsewhere.

Even Americans who avoid direct exposure to the damage caused by private insurance company greed get hammered indirectly. For example, even veterans (who use the completely government-run veteran's administration health care system) are stuck with care limitations such as excessive waiting and denials of needed care via, for example, mistaken rulings that the problem is not “service-related”. These health care shortcomings and limitations are caused by a too high cost structure for the care itself. Because along with the sky high health insurance cost, the cost of the care itself is also far higher in the US than it is in the other countries.

This is so for several reasons, most notably the fact that there is no government regulation to contain costs as there is everywhere else, and also due to the overall grossly greater inequality of incomes in the US as compared with the inequality levels in the other countries.

Specifically for example, specialty doctors in the US make incomes that can easily be double, triple, maybe even quadruple or quintuple what the very same doctors are payed in all of the reputable countries. Hell, the "star surgeons" at the top of the heap might get 10 times what a similar European doctor would be payed, for all we know. (And we don't exactly know, do we, but we do know that US pay is ridiculously high at the high end, and ridiculously low for the masses.) Doctors should not be payed the way top NBA basketball players are.

In summary, there are two completely required beginning building blocks for a successful health care system. If you don't start with these, you won't be finishing with a successful system:

(1) Profit for all basic, fundamental and standard health insurance is strictly disallowed for any private companies that are allowed to provide that insurance. What basic, standard coverage is has to be carefully and in detail defined by health experts under Government supervision.

(2)The Government MUST provide a workable set of regulations that prevent the cost of the health care itself from rising at rates substantially above the overall rate of inflation.

[The above is in response to this article.]

Rahm Emanuel and Apparently Obama Want Romney's Health System, but they don't want to give Romney the Presidency in 2012

A GUEST COMMENT:

OleManRiver August 24th, 2009 12:01 am
The more I think about and read about all this health insurance stuff going on in Washington, the more I think it is a distraction and a diversion of our attention from the more immediate rape and pillage going on.

A few years ago, seemingly anticipating the collapse of the Housing Bubble, our esteemed Congress, including then Sen. Joe Biden, rewrote the bankruptcy laws, making it easier for the wealthy to collect from the devastated, including those devastated by health-care costs.

Then, recognizing that interest and other charges on credit cards had become utterly usurious due to deregulation of the banking sector, our esteemed Congress imposed some limits, but with the caveat that the law would not go into effect until 2010 or later, leaving the banksters able to jack up rates and penalties in the interval.

Now, we learn that whatever is being carved out regarding health insurance (care) reform will not go into effect until 2013---after the next Presidential election. Howard Dean was interviewed over the weekend and said he thought this was a Big Mistake---that if people had nothing to show from the "reform," it would hurt the Democrats in 2012.

If what is contemplated were real reform, Dr. Dean might be correct. OTOH, if this "reform" is based on the Mitt Romney/Massachusetts model, which is a disaster, it were better that people not discover how they will be harmed before 2012.

Meanwhile, we are still occupying Iraq and Afghanistan and killing innocents, trillions of our future dollars are still flooding the banking and insurance and real estate markets to prevent an immediate collapse of the economy with almost ZERO help to those facing foreclosure, unemployment is still creeping up despite the false statistics, and there is NO END IN SIGHT to these depredations.

Cash for Clunkers? Really, a metaphor. No wonder it is being shut down. It worked.

Any real "reform" of the health-care system in this country is impossible in the existing political context. Meanwhile, your attention has been diverted away from the criminal conduct of your government on a daily basis, right now.

Personal solution. Eat healthy if you can afford it, exercise, and Don't Get Sick.

"Jack Nicholson: "You want Health Care? I'll give you Health Care. You can't stand REAL Health Care.""

Suckered again.
Your body is the Holy Vessel for Your Mind. Be one unto yourself and respect the Many. They may not know what they are doing.

Come to think on it, here's a thought: Anyone left of Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa ought to just step back and say, Okay, Senator, YOU write the health (insurance) reform bill, and give us three more years to decide whether we agree with it. See ya.

***
I could come at this from an entirely different angle, while the fact remains that, statistically, most of us do not need "health care," thank you, until we start to grow really old, with a few exceptions like the usual childhood diseases that prime our immune system. I have read that end-of-life Care uses the great bulk of Medicare funding. (Big Pharma, meanwhile, would appreciate it if you become diabetic...!)

Maybe it really is time to reconsider the nature of End-of-Life Care in this country, and to do a comparative study at this level with other Western and Eastern commodified economies. "Death Panels"? They exist now, via all health-care systems. Suck it up, Folks, you're gonna die! Do you wanna spend your last 6 months plugged into DRIPS or will you choose to walk into the Wilderness and collapse back into the Earth who provided your sustenance?

The choice is yours.

Thanks for the reminder of the peculiar and revealing proposed implementation delay until 2013.

It seems that the insurance executives who indirectly wrote the proposed laws agreed with (I'm thinking Rahm Emanuel's) proposal that this Mitt Romney thing not go into effect until 2013. Emanuel (or someone similar) is apparently concerned about the amount of confusion, misery and anger that will come forth from numerous segments of the population when the rubber hits the road for this dead on arrival legislation.

From Emanuel's and Obama's perspective, it's best to make sure that the outcries of anguish and anger don't happen until after the 2012 election. Because ironically, Emanuel and Obama don't want Romney to win in 2012, even though they are putting his health care system into effect, laugh out loud.

[The above conversation is in response to this article.]