A Closer Look at Obama Care

Just a week ago the Health Reform Legislation passed Congress and was signed into law by the President. Most of us do not understand the implications of this bill. On the surface it sounds good. Who could be against 'Health Reform' that ensures the uninsured? But as often is the case, "The devil is in the details". The following article is written by one of the students in the Power Study Group at Howard University who has taken a closer look at what the bill actually says. It may be far different from what you think it says.

On Sat, Mar 27, 2010 at 1:55 AM, Jalil Muhammad wrote:

ASA Doc,

Below is an article, inspired by our most recent Study Group regarding health care, written by Brother Jericho X.

"The following statements are taken from Sec. 1501. Requirement To Maintain Minimum Essential Coverage which is part of H.R. 3590 more commonly known as the “Health Care Reform Bill”. Let me first explain what this section is referring to. Requirement to maintain essential coverage is a government mandate that requires all U.S. citizens to have health insurance, that is, citizens are required by law to purchase health insurance from a private company. The exceptions being if you have employee-based health coverage or if you can’t afford minimum coverage. However, to viably say you cannot afford minimum coverage means at the very least that you are living 100% below the poverty level. Currently the poverty level for a family of 4 is set at $22,050 a year. So let’s be very clear, the United States government and the Obama administration is not providing health care for anyone, they are simply ordering everyone to buy health care. Let’s also remember that Medicaid and Medicare have been around since the 1960’s so don’t try and use the argument that “oh, if you can’t afford it you can just get on Medicaid”, that was true before the passage of this bill. And so to counter any arguments that this is just conspiracy theory or crazy talk let’s look at what the bill says about itself:

Sec. 1501. (a) The individual responsibility requirement provided for in this section is commercial and economic in nature. The requirement regulates activity that is commercial and economic in nature: economic and financial decisions about how and when health care is paid for, and when health insurance is purchased. Health insurance and health care services are a significant part of the national economy. The requirement, together with other provisions of this Act, will add millions of new consumers to the health insurance market, increasing supply of, and demand for , health care services.

Now please tell me where in this passage does it actually mention the health of the people? As a matter of fact show me where it actually refers to people and not to consumers. What is it that these health care companies are selling to these consumers? Drugs, drugs, and more drugs. The United States, unlike every other civilization in history, practices Allopathic medicine. Allopathic medicine is a system of medical practice which treats disease by the use of drugs which produce effects different from those produced by the disease (we call them side-effects). However, if given to healthy people these drugs are capable of producing the same effects as the disease itself. Now let’s look at this situation another way using the example of the police, the drug-dealer, and the junkies. The drug-dealers use to discriminate against some of the junkies and wouldn’t get them high so the junkies had to resort to robbing and stealing or they would die in the street. When the police had to deal with the junkies it consumed valuable time and money so they got an idea. The police decided to force the drug-dealers not to discriminate anymore and make them sell their drugs to everyone, but there was a problem some of the junkies were trying to get clean. So not only did the police have to force the drug-dealers to stop discriminating but they had to force the junkies to continue to buy the drugs. So now the junkies are oppressed by the police and in debt to the drug-dealers but they don’t care cause they’re high as the skyyyy and we all applaud a so-called victory for the people.

You see the problem isn’t people being uninsured, the problem is that the medical system in this country is not designed to cure disease only to treat the symptoms. The system itself is flawed and so forcing people to buy into a broken system is not a solution, especially when considering the shortage in the amount of doctors and nurses who are charged with treating the supposedly 38 million newly insured people. However, this goes far beyond health care, because congress has just set a precedent. They have passed a law mandating the public to buy a service from a private corporation, this is a power they do not have and according to the constitution any power not given to congress is delegated to the states. So across the nation are scores of people cheering and applauding as America takes it’s first steps into fascist communism by blatantly infringing on state’s rights and defecating on its own constitution."

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True Health Care Reform Would Include a Public Option (video)

There probably is no hope that true and effective health care reform will ever take place in America.

The controlling big insurance companies and their pals Big Pharma won't have it. They like their extremely profitable monopoly.

And make no mistake about it: FOR THE LIFE OF YOU, THEY WILL NOT GIVE IT UP!

They will have their pound of flesh.

The whore house in Washington called Congress is full of 'ladies of ill-repute' who have been bought and paid for and as 'honest businesses persons' are giving the John what the John paid for.

And the John did not pay for true health care reform.

The following video shows what could be done quite easily and quite simply even under these circumstances. IF there were just a little decency on Capital Hill - and there's not- we could get something like Congressman Grayson of Florida is proposing. Will we get it? Not if the whores have to get it done. They are just not up to the task.

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What's In That Health Care Bill?

I must here and now confess that I am less than well informed about the pending Health Reform legislation currently before Congress. The whole 'debate' has been confusing and mostly behind closed doors with deals being cut with who know who and for what reasons. Murky reports do come on a consistent basis in the media, but no clarity as to what is what and how much the whole thing will cost. It has been clear that the government mandated insurance will go in everybody's pocket whether you want what they are selling or not. That sounds like fascism to me. We wonder who has actually read the bill which stretches into the thousands of pages. Maybe the victory by the Republican candidate in Mass. will throw and monkey wrench into the Health Reform Bill juggernaut underway in the Congress. Below is the best short summary of some of the provision of the bill that I have seen. I can not verify the interpretations given, but at least the video is raising the right questions. We should and must demand answers.

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Is Obama Care Fascist?

What is your opinion about government mandated health insurance as found in the health reform legislation before Congress on its way to becoming law with the expected signature of President Obama? How does it work? The government will fine you and have the IRS come after you if you don't purchase from a private insurance company health insurance. As it stands now, you will not have an option to buy a plan from the government, or more importantly, the option not to buy! Free choice is out the window. Government power will be used to coerce citizens to buy form a private company something that they may not want, or that they may not be able to afford. This is a sign that corporate power has taken the reins of government and is using government power to ensure private profits. And their doing it in the name of Health Care Reform! What do you call this kind of partnership between government and business? It is called fascism! Is that why some people are putting a Hitler mustache on Obama?

Read the details below.

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Right and Left Agree: Mandates are the Road to Neo-Feudalism
By: Jane Hamsher
December 30, 2009
There is tremendous fear rising on both the right and the left that the announced intention of Congress — to force every American to pay tribute to private corporations, with no government alternative — sets a dangerous and frightening precedent with implications far outside the scope of health care.
If the health care bill written by the Senate is passed, middle class Americans will be mandated to pay almost as much to private insurance companies as they do to the federal government in taxes, with the IRS acting as a collection agency for penalties of 2% of your annual income for refusing to comply.
This is just one of many recent measures that have brought liberal progressives and conservative libertarians together to join forces in opposition:
Democrat Alan Grayson worked successfully this year with Republican Ron Paul to pass legislation to audit the Federal Reserve, with 317 cosponsors as diverse as Dennis Kucinich and Michelle Bachmann.
On December 3, the liberal Campaign for America’s Future wrote a letter to the Senate opposing the reconfirmation of Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke until such an audit has been conducted. The letter was signed by James Galbraith, Robert Weisman, Chris Bowers and myself on the left, and Grover Norquist, Phillis Schlafly, and Larry Greenley on the right. Financial blogger Tyler Durden and young organizer Tiffiniy Cheng joined them.
Also on December 3, conservative Jim Bunning joined liberal Bernie Sanders in placing a hold on the Bernanke nomination until the Fed had been audited.
On December 15, CAF again sent a letter to the Senate Banking Committee, asking them to delay the vote on the Bernanke confirmation until Audit the Fed received a stand alone vote in the Senate. It was signed by Matt KIbbe of Freedomworks, John Tate of the Campaign for Liberty, and Grover Norquist on the right, and David Swanson of AfterDowiningStreet, Dean Baker and Robert Borosage on the left.
On December 21, a letter was written opposing the mandate in the health care bill. It was signed by Bob Fertik of Democrats.com, Howie Klein of DownWithTyranny, Brad Friedman of Velvet Revolution, Tim Carpenter of Progressive Democrats of America on the left and Grover Norquist, Jim Martin of 60 Plus Association, Duane Parde of the National Taxpayers Union on the right.
On December 23, Grover Norquist and I sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder calling for an investigation into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s conflicts of interest before the White House could lift the cap on the commitment to them from $400 billion to $800 billion with no Inspector General in place.
The individuals on both sides of the political spectrum who signed these letters agree on very little, but they do share both a tremendous concern for the corporatist control of government that politicians in both parties seem hell-bent on achieving.
In 2003, the Democrats railed in opposition when the Republicans passed Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage that didn’t allow for negotiated drug prices. And in 2006 when Democrats took over Congress, one of the hallmarks of their first hundred days was passing legislation allowing Medicare to do so, supported by both Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama. Of course, it had no chance of passing with George Bush in the White House.
Candidate Barack Obama said the ability to negotiate for drug prices would save $30 billion a year in medical costs. Yet when President Obama got to the White House, one of the first things he did was negotiate a secret deal with PhRMA that prevented drug price negotiations in exchange for $150 million in political advertising to help vulnerable Democrats in the House and in support of the health care bill.
In the Senate, Tom Carper said that because PhRMA had paid for the deal with political advertising, they were obligated to abide by it.
Jeff Sessions railed against the corrupt PhRMA deal that didn’t allow for prescription drug price negotiation. He didn’t mention that he voted for the 2000 bill without it, and when he had the chance to vote for it in the Senate in 2006, he voted “no” himself. Both parties are equally blameworthy — the only difference is who is in power and taking PhRMA’s money.
The PhRMA deal is one of many negotiated by the White House this last summer which formed the underpinnings of the health care bill. From then on, it just became a matter of which member was going to extract what deals for their votes, and who was going to take the blame for cutting popular elements from the legislation that the corporate “stakeholders” didn’t want.
As FDL’s Jon Walker wrote recently, if the ability to cut health care costs hadn’t been auctioned off to private corporations in exchange for political patronage, there would have been no government subsidy necessary to make insurance coverage affordable.
We are ceding control of the government to private corporations, not figuratively but literally. When the Senate Finance Committee bill was released earlier this year, the “author” was a former VP of Wellpoint. Liberals, conservatives and independents alike are all justifiably alarmed at what this represents.
It is tragic that health care for the poor is being held hostage to the corporatist agenda, a fig leaf to buy public support and disguise this bill for what it is. As blogger Marcy Wheeler noted in a piece called Health Care and the Road to Neo-Feudalism:
I understand the temptation to offer 30 million people health care. What I don’t understand is the nonchalance with which we’re about to fundamentally shift the relationships of governance in doing so.
Just as those on the libertarian right were demonized by the Republican establishment for opposing the Iraq war during the Bush years, so progressives on the left are being pilloried for “damaging the cause” by joining with Republicans to oppose these extreme measures. It’s ironic that the most virulent supporters of a President who ran on “bipartisanship” should reject it so vehemently when it becomes critical of the policies pursued by his White House.
This “right-left wraparound” is happening because politicians in both parties have become so unresponsive to popular sentiment: public support for stifling investigation of the bank bailouts just to protect the President are infinitesimally small, and fortunately Dennis Kucinich announced today that he would commence an investigation into the Fannie/Freddie bailout. But it’s a testament to the extreme nature of what is happening to our government that such traditional political foes could find common cause in opposing it.
It’s foolish to say that only those who agree with you on every issue are allowed to share your opinion when it comes to opposing something like the mandated bailout of Aetna — it isn’t necessary to achieve health care reform. As Jon Walker notes, removing the mandate would reduce the CBO score and its inclusion in the health care bill with no government alternative is unacceptable for moral, political and policy reasons.
Candidate Obama himself opposed the mandate. Keith Olberman and Howard Dean concur.
As Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos said, “remove the mandate or kill this bill.” We’ve opened a “war room” at Firedoglake with information about calling your member of Congress to demand that this provision to bail out the insurance industry be removed from the health care bill before they agree to cast their vote in favor of it.
And nobody needs to pass an ideological purity test before they can use it.Join us to oppose the mandate. Enter the war room.

Human Sacrifice In America

By now everybody is aware of how Tiger Woods has ruined his family life and maybe even his career due to his allegedly cavorting with call-girls. It is so tragic simply because it is entirely unnecessary and could have easily been prevented - but it was not. Here is an even larger tragedy that literally is life and death for millions. This is the tragic story of the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry cavorting with the whores and prostitutes in the biggest brothel on the planet, the US Congress, where for virtually no money at all compared to their profits, these rich greedy 'Johns' can enjoy every indecent perversion that their little depraved hearts can desire. Learn just how many Americans must die so that health related corporate greed can live! Are you in this number?

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135,000 uninsured Americans will die

before health reform takes effect, analysis finds
By Brad Jacobson
135,000 uninsured Americans will die before health reform takes effect, analysis finds";
Over 6,600 uninsured veterans will die by 2013
If Democrats manage to pull off efforts to reform the US healthcare system and ensure coverage for millions who are currently without insurance, the new system -- by design -- will likely still leave tens of thousands to die without insurance before reforms kick in.
A Raw Story analysis, based on a recent Harvard Medical School study, estimates that 135,000 American citizens and over 6,600 US veterans will die due to a lack of health insurance before current proposed healthcare reform measures would take effect.
One hundred and thirty-five thousand US lives far exceeds the total number of Americans who died in the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the attacks of 9/11 combined. The lives of over 6,600 US veterans is more -- by over 1,300 -- than the total number of US soldiers who have thus far died in both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a professor of medicine at Harvard University and co-author of the Harvard Medical School study, called Raw Story’s estimates “quite reasonable.”
Even more shocking is that these are conservative estimates.
Health reform policy experts who spoke with Raw Story confirmed that the House and Senate bills would do virtually nothing for currently uninsured Americans until 2013 and 2014, respectively. Raw Story’s calculations are based on the House health reform bill’s projections. The Senate bill, however, would add another year of lethal lag time, driving up the estimated death rate by tens of thousands more US citizens and veterans.
In part, the proposed Senate and House healthcare reform bills don't begin providing comprehensive coverage for several years because they are designed to meet President Obama's promised goal of creating a "deficit-neutral" healthcare package.
Raw Story’s analysis is based on a recent Harvard Medical School study published in the American Journal of Public Health and a subsequent report by a team of Harvard Medical School researchers who took part in the initial study.
The first study revealed that approximately 45,000 Americans die each year from lack of health insurance. The second study, released on the eve of this past Veterans Day, estimated that more than 2,200 US veterans died in 2008 due to a lack of health insurance.
In an interview with Raw Story, Dr. David Himmelstein, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-author of the two studies, also pointed out a rarely discussed fact: The proposed reforms in both the House and Senate bills, even in the long run, would still leave “vast numbers" of Americans uninsured and those who are partially insured with inadequate coverage.
In the House bill, for instance, even after uninsured Americans would begin receiving health insurance, a projected 18 million would still not be covered; roughly 23 million would remain uninsured in the Senate bill.
“So basically they’ve taken the bad approach and the slow approach both,” said Himmelstein, a proponent of a national single-payer healthcare system. “And there’s no particular reason other than political expediency why either of those things should exist.”
Veterans' advocate says analysis 'very disturbing'
Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, called Raw Story’s analysis “very disturbing” and said the “tragic” numbers demand “immediate action by the President of the United States.”
“Veterans for Common Sense is outraged that, in 2009, veterans are dying because of a lack of healthcare,” Sullivan said. “We believe healthcare is a human right.”
He did, however, credit President Obama for taking steps to reverse what he described as former President Bush’s “deplorable” legacy of neglecting veterans’ health.
Sullivan also believes this is a national security issue and cited, for example, the correlation between the shortage of physicians in the military and the suicide epidemic.
Just last month, the Christian Science Monitor reported that the US Army is understaffed by as many as 800 mental health professionals and 300 substance abuse counselors. On Monday, Time magazine reported that the Army has so far lost 147 soldiers this year to suicide, which is the highest number of suicides since the Army began keeping track of them in 1980.
“You can’t deploy someone to war two or three times and never give them a mental health exam,” Sullivan said.
“And when a veteran says he’s having nightmares, he can’t sleep and has to see a doctor,” he continued, “but he has to wait several months before someone tells him he’s not going to see a doctor at all and then goes and blows his brains out. That’s essentially what’s happening right here. And that’s a legacy of President Bush’s failure.”
Woolhandler, who testified before Congress in 2007 about uninsured veterans, also sees these numbers, both for US veterans and everyday citizens as a national security issue.
“Other developed countries have dealt with it that way,” said Woolhandler, who supports a single-payer healthcare system. “They’ve said as a matter of national policy, we need to make our people healthy and secure financial health with health insurance and have felt that was a national obligation. I think that the other nations are correct in that regard.”
Himmelstein said that the health of our citizens and veterans is not considered a national security issue “because the powerful forces in our country don’t care about the people who die.”
“The insurance companies and the corporate interests who largely fund our government don’t actually care if 45,000 people or 2,200 veterans die,” he said. “They do care to maintain the US control of, or at least contention for, oil-rich parts of the world and strategic assets and those sorts of things. So I think it’s a matter of what’s in the interest of the corporations that by and large make policy in this country.”