I really think that leading liberal blogs should start a call-in campaign, maybe in coordination with other groups that are pushing for Universal Health Care (with a public option at the very least, if not outright single payer).
I feel like the blogosphere is dropping the ball on this when we should be hammering Congress, especially the Dems, for attempting to coddle the health care industry.
The US gov't has willingly sacrificed segments of the American economy to achieve policy objects in the past (NAFTA, US Manufacturing, for example). I don't know why the healthcare industry is treated like such a sacred cow.
KarenMrsLloydRichards
· 6 months ago
Haiku for the Obama Administration (#197):
Up to her ankles! Madame is complicit in . . . Keeping us safer?!
LuZenMyMnd
· 6 months ago
I say, she says.....TRICKED DECEIVED....LIED to..... Not the first time!
KarenMrsLloydRichards
· 6 months ago
Haiku for the Obama Administration (#196):
Warhol's contagion: Each victim is world-famous For fifteen minutes.
sittenpretty
· 6 months ago
MAKE EVERY CONGRESSCRITTER,HUNT FOR AND PAY FOR THEIR OWN HEALTHCARE...you too senator johnson from South Dakota lucky to be alive much
Django
· 6 months ago
Have you or John written to Scott Serota personally about your respective situations? I do mean "write" - hand-delivered, or at least FedExed correspondence. What kind of response did you receive? As a consumer, whenever I've been wronged I don't pussy around with subordinates - I go straight to the top. It gets results, believe me.
I think it's important for you guys and others in your situation to keep Scott Serota in the spotlight. He's king of the mountain there; it would seem to me that the best way to address the whole health care greed issue is to put a human face on it - why not his?
rock
· 6 months ago
$5.00 says the Democrats and Obama sells us out again,,any takers....
Money talks and we have NO money
Rob Mule
· 6 months ago
Shockingly, or maybe not so much after the various cover-ups of the new millennium, the undermining is well underway...I don't hear the word "healthcare" as much as I hear "coverage" anymore or the "right" to healthcare as opposed to it being "affordable"...Such mealy-mouthed BS from the tastefully bribed is leading to the establishment's inevitable and very messy death sentence.
erip
· 6 months ago
Hopefully the fact that the insurance companies are lobbying against a public option will be publicized far and wide. This time around the public is so disgusted with insurance companies that again, hopefully they will push their legislators to make something that doesn't once again screw the taxpayers. This time politicians may be forced to show their true colors and the ones who are in bed with big insurance will be outed and hopefully out of a job.. ahhh one can only hope , as my hospital co-pay rises above its current rate of a $3000.00 deductible
MCinNYC
· 6 months ago
Keep an eye on Obama too. He tends to cave far too easily. I have a feeling it's happening again.
KarenMrsLloydRichards
· 6 months ago
He's seeking common ground! Between for-profit insurers, providers, and pharma! Why can't patients just stop caricaturing these helpful interests?! Can't we patients agree to get along with them?!
Deacon_Blues
· 6 months ago
Just keep shining a light and watch the cockroaches scuttle away.
Lolis
· 6 months ago
Call and write Congress and Obama. Keeping an eye out doesn't do much good.
Indigo
· 6 months ago
Funny how Adam Smith's practice of medicine looks suspiciously like his banking system and more like piracy than an economy based on solid priciples. Medical schools are a good starting point for the Truth Commission. If we start with the medical schools and focus on medical ethics, it's possible that we can shake that foundation loose simply by challenging the First Priciple of Reganism's Medical Ethics: justify high fees by claiming that resources are scarce.
tas
· 6 months ago
try 31% increase in premium AND doubling the deductible from $3,000 to $6,000. Thanks Blue Cross.
Gaston
· 6 months ago
Following on from my comment yesterday about BCBS of MO not authorizing IMRT breast treatments (current standard of care)...
The doctors argue their cases to BCBS for IMRT but when they're refused, which they usually are, it's not as though they can just go ahead and use the more advanced technique anyway. They couldn't even if they wanted to because the final treatment decision is ultimately not theirs--it belongs to the hospital administrators and the corporation that owns our hospital. In our department the doctors are really just employees like I am.
IMRT is more expensive--no way around this--and the for-profit hospitals can't lose money on every BCBS patient with breast cancer. Rationing? Bureaucracy? Let's talk. Every day I deal with two layers of bottom-line minded bureaucracy rationing health care--the insurance companies and the hospital corps--both standing between the patient and the doctor. The number of treatment decisions made by MBAs and CPAs (and not MDs) in our little hospital would chill your spine and boil your blood.
Demond
· 6 months ago
In addition to further opposition to President Obama, health care reform is designed to benefit the American people, not necessarily the big companies. We can expect a lot more opposition at time go on.
draftmama
· 6 months ago
Start with Baucus who is unfortunately my senator. His behaviour at that last hearing was disgusting, joking that they needed more police as the doctors for single payer were removed from the hearing room. I write to his office every week, and have never gotten anything more than a boilerplate reply which doesn't address anything I have put forward. He is a disgrace and I am so tired of the folksy "grew up on a ranch" nonsense. Growing up on the Sieben Ranch is hardly scratchin' out a living' as anyone in Montana knows. Heck, none of the members of congress even know what we are talking about - they have the best healthcare plan in the country, why should they worry about us rubes.
All Comments
I feel like the blogosphere is dropping the ball on this when we should be hammering Congress, especially the Dems, for attempting to coddle the health care industry.
The US gov't has willingly sacrificed segments of the American economy to achieve policy objects in the past (NAFTA, US Manufacturing, for example). I don't know why the healthcare industry is treated like such a sacred cow.
Up to her ankles!
Madame is complicit in
. . . Keeping us safer?!
DECEIVED....LIED to.....
Not the first time!
Warhol's contagion:
Each victim is world-famous
For fifteen minutes.
lucky to be alive much
I think it's important for you guys and others in your situation to keep Scott Serota in the spotlight. He's king of the mountain there; it would seem to me that the best way to address the whole health care greed issue is to put a human face on it - why not his?
Money talks and we have NO money
The doctors argue their cases to BCBS for IMRT but when they're refused, which they usually are, it's not as though they can just go ahead and use the more advanced technique anyway. They couldn't even if they wanted to because the final treatment decision is ultimately not theirs--it belongs to the hospital administrators and the corporation that owns our hospital. In our department the doctors are really just employees like I am.
IMRT is more expensive--no way around this--and the for-profit hospitals can't lose money on every BCBS patient with breast cancer. Rationing? Bureaucracy? Let's talk. Every day I deal with two layers of bottom-line minded bureaucracy rationing health care--the insurance companies and the hospital corps--both standing between the patient and the doctor. The number of treatment decisions made by MBAs and CPAs (and not MDs) in our little hospital would chill your spine and boil your blood.