More reasons why you don't invite corporate outlaws to the party
Mon Dec 31, 2007 at 08:41:24 AM PDT
Forgive me for closing the year on a pessimistic honest note. But as I often say, don't take my word, let's go to the expert, Paul Krugman.
He's got a great column this morning. I suggest you read it.
The Great Divide
Yesterday The Times published a highly informative chart laying out the positions of the presidential candidates on major issues. It was, I’d argue, a useful reality check for those who believe that the next president can somehow usher in a new era of bipartisan cooperation.
For what the chart made clear was the extent to which Democrats and Republicans live in separate moral and intellectual universes.
. . .In fact, however, it’s not possible, not given the nature of today’s Republican Party, which has turned men like Mr. McCain and Mr. Romney into hard-line ideologues. On economics, and on much else, there is no common ground between the parties.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
He's talking about the partisan political divide. It is an immense gaping wound, I would argue, a wound so severe, that it cannot be healed.
I wholeheartedly agree with Krugman. But I would take the logical next step and say, there's another immense divide, and it revolves around healthcare. There is no sane or rational reason to invite the corporate healthcare outlaws to the negotiating table. This predatory industry has had every opportunity to be an ally of the American people, but instead, as we all know, this is a Murder By Spreadsheet killer industry.
Do we invite companies responsible for this, to the party?
This is from an email a Kossack sent me. "Eve:
If you've seen this already, forgive my repetition. But another story of the inhumanity of the corporation known as Blue Cross."
Is this a company that the next Democratic president will invite the the White House and say, "please be a team player, please stop hurting the American people"?
At 13, David Denney's body functions like that of a baby. Severe brain damage halted his motor development at 4 months.
Unable to walk, sit up, speak or even eat by mouth, David is cared for by a licensed vocational nurse who feeds him formula through a stomach tube, watching closely in case he retches.
Blue Cross of California, the family's health plan, paid for the nurse for most of David's life at a cost of about $1,200 a week.Then about two years ago, the company decided that David didn't need a nurse anymore -- contradicting the opinions of two of David's physicians -- and it stopped paying.
"He's fragile, very fragile," said the boy's mother, Amparo Denney of Torrance. "It's not humanly possible to do this without help."
As a matter of course, insurers scrutinize what physicians order -- watching for unnecessary drugs, questionable treatments, experimental and unproven therapies, unwarranted surgery.
The extent of treatment denials by insurers is unknown. But patients are contesting them more than ever.
http://www.latimes.com/...
And here's another numbing insurance industry atrocity directed against a child. These are the companies we will ask to participate in the most important negotiations since the New Deal?
Yorktown girl can eat only one thing: costly formula that insurance won't cover
YORKTOWN — Three-year-old Hannah Devane is allergic to food. Not the kind that makes kids spit out their broccoli; the kind that can kill.
The Yorktown preschooler has a condition called eosinophilic esophagitis, a severe food allergy that causes a type of white blood cell to congregate in the esophagus, the tube that carries food from the mouth to the stomach, damaging the tissue when she eats.
A doctor-prescribed formula has allowed Hannah to grow to a robust 40 pounds, a normal weight for a child her age. Without it, Hannah could wind up with a feeding tube.
But the insurance program that covers her family through her father's job as a New York City police lieutenant has stopped paying for the formula, which costs $1,200 a month. Food supplements and other over-the-counter items are not covered under the family's insurance, the prescription plan administrator said.
Arriving home hungry from day care, the blond, curly haired Hannah stretches out on the sofa with a bottle of formula.
"Our daughter has a disorder where she needs the formula to live," said Jessie Devane, 37, a registered nurse. "There is tissue damage if it is not treated. The treatment is no food. The insurance company won't even listen to Hannah's doctor."
Dr. Barry Wershil, a pediatric gastroenterologist at The Children's Hospital at Montefiore in the Bronx, doesn't hide his indignation over the insurance hurdle.
http://lohud.com/...
Before the end of the year, I'd like to single out one journalist, Lisa Girion of the Los Angeles Times, for outstanding journalism. Her reporting is consistently head and shoulders above everyone else. She almost always weaves the victims of insurance industry atrocities into what she writes. And yes, the story above, about David Denney, is by Lisa Girion.
Ms. Girion has relentlessly pursued the ongoing Blue Shield retroactive denials, explaining to her readers how ordinary Californians are being gravely harmed by this murderous company. This is called making the political, the outrageous, the indefensible, deeply personal.
So journalist of the year, at least for me, goes to Lisa Girion of the Los Angeles Times.
Back to the gaping divide. Paul Krugman is correct, there is no common ground.
The for-profit insurance industry is fully outlaw. There should be no room for them and their poisonous ideas in the next Democratic administration. And yes, I know many will argue that this is a politically untenable position, but over and over, they have proven themselves fully untrustworthy guardians of the nation's health.
You might want to read this article from the Boston Globe,it's called A nation of outlaws: A century ago, that wasn't China -- it was us.
It still is about us. Our collapsed healthcare system is in the grips of what historians will rightfully call an outlaw industry.
So let's make one resolution as we head into 2008.
Once we have settled on a nominee, let's be sure that person knows, in no uncertain terms, that the health insurance industry must be regulated, controlled, and supervised, until we are able to run them from the face of the earth.
You don't invite the Mafia to the White House.
We Americans deserve what the rest of the civilized world takes for granted--affordable, guaranteed, single-payer healthcare.
