You have to wonder about the average person in in the average town with the average job earning average income. What do they think of McCain's, Obama's or Clinton's health care proposal? Do they have time to think about health care?

Between the job, the kids, the spouse, the house, bills and the cost of gasoline; who has time to think about health care? It only comes up when you or someone in the house is sick. You think about it when your employer changes insurers. You worry about it when you try to take your benefits on COBRA. It's a disaster when you find your individual health insurance policy is retroactively canceled because you actually expected to use it.

Life experience tells us what we don't like about the U.S. health care system. We don't like the expense, medical mistakes, the lack of dignity, the rush and hush and lack of trust we have with our current system. It should come as no surprise that politicians are offering no real solutuions to this mess. They are too busy trying to get elected to do anything really helpful.

Interestingly, a couple weeks ago the NYT is talking about the widening Life Expectancy Gap in America. It was noticed in 1982. Well, actually, if you look at Table #27 of this book, you'll see there was something going on in 1900.

We don't have 2 Americas as John Edwards said 4 years ago. It's more like 8.

The life expectancy gap has been increasing since 1984. According to the study, disparities in life expectancy are caused not by commonly-blamed factors such as poverty, infant mortality, violence, HIV/AIDS, and lack of health insurance, but rather by chronic noncommunicable diseases. Five factors are most deadly: tobacco, alcohol, obesity, high blood pressure, and elevated cholesterol.

Where you live and how much you make is a major indicator of how long you will live, but most people already know that. I think it's interesting that academia and policy makers promote the idea that you can't know something for sure until you prove it.

We think that insurance companies and their Murder by Spreadsheet ways as the primary cause of the healthcare crisis in America. True, for profit insurance causes a great deal of suffering and death.

That isn't our only problem. Unfair Pricing is a serious issue made worse with cost shifting; which is defined as:

A dynamic relationship between reductions in payment rates to a hospital by a public payer (i.e. Medicare & Medicaid), and increases in rates to patients with private insurance and those who are uninsured.

Cost shifting attempts to recapture the profits denied by public insurers's limiting charges. The results are artificially high "retail" fees. Insurance company's combat these tactics by capping the maximum they will pay for any service by saying the provider's fee exceeds their Usual and Customary Rate or UCR. Anyone without the protection of an insurer capping fees by using limiting charges has to pay the sticker price or suffer, or suffer and die.

to make a point. A point that could be made in a less objectionalbe manner.

There's a disconnect when we can't step back and look at what people say without overanalyzing it. I've heard lots and lots of bull crap this primary season and the fuss over Geraldine Ferraro's unfiltered coments is no exception.

Should she have said what she said? No.
Is it going to help the Democratic ticket come November? No.
Do I know where she's coming from? Yes.
Do I entirely agree with her? Not really, I'd rather look to the future instead of reliving the past.

...and so should you.

Traces of pharmaceuticals in our tap water is old news. German scientists and other European chemists noticed it in the early 1990's. The problem was discussed and dismissed by the EPA in 2005. Despite the New York Times running the AP article, the problem isn't that the traces are there so much as  there is no safety standard and too little is known about the effects trace amounts of drugs have on our health.

The Water Research Center (University of Arizona) has studied the subject and have found the problem to be wide spread.

So what's BushCo doing about it?

Will you be paying by Check or Credit Card?

I wrote about these friends of mine a couple weeks ago when I wrote about The Death of Primary Care. They are the example of people who have "good insurance".

It seems we all have Junk Insurance these days.

The USOC sent an advance team to China to scope out the food situation and they found a half chicken breast that was 14" long (yep, that's fourteen inches long). Yeah, that bird was on steroids.

So, what's the USOC going to do?

Have Tyson foods import chicken to China ahead of time for the Olympic Games. Why?...because that 14" long chicken breast is normal(?) fare in China. WADA regulations put the responsibility for compliance entirely upon the athlete. The USOC can't trust that Chinese foods aren't tainted with banned substances. The athletes dare not risk violating the WADA banned substance list, because inadvertent ingestion of a banned substance is treated with the same severity as intentional doping and most athletes see the doping appeal process as a waste of time.

Welcome to the Up Scale Hospital Emergency Department. It's the latest thing in New York City health care. Renovating Emergency Departments so they are more comfortable and can accomodate patients who are:

1. Uninsured,

2. Don't have a regular physician,

3. Have an acute condition that really shouldn't wait the 2-3 weeks to get a new patient appointment at a doctor's office.

4. Have a regular physician, but their acute condition really shouldn't wait the 6 days to 2 weeks to get an established patient appointment at their doctor's office.

5. Need care, but can't wait for the doctor's office to open.

It's a good thing. These people are more comfortable while they wait for care, but from another perspective it's just another band aid on the gaping wound created by our broken health care system.

The U.S. nailed Merck down with Medicare fraud last week. The news hit the wires and the media is touting this settlement as a success. I'm glad Merck was made to pay for giving selective discounts, but Merck admitted no liability and this settlement would not have happened without a former District Sales manager blowing the whistle. It took 12 years from the start of wrong doing in the mid 1990's to last week before this "successful" settlement came to be.

Some say whistle blowers do it for the reward instead of easing their conscience. True, whistle blowers can receive up to 30% of what the  government receives in restitution. This one received about 10% of the $650-$671 million for about $6.8  million. A tidy sum, but before you want to become a whistle blower you need to know more about what can happen when you are David calling out Goliath.

The New York Times ran an opinion piece on how the "poor" FDA can't do its job because Congress has mandated more and more tasks, but hasn't appropriated any more funding. The former chief of the FDA, Peter Barton Hutt says that the F.D.A. was barely hanging on by its fingertips when he was in charge. The situation is worse today. They're free falling, spinning out of control.

The idea that the FDA deals with the same market pressures the rest of us do seems to be beyond the government's problem solving capabilities. I'm sure you or I could think of about a dozen or so new job tasks that were added to our plate without an increase to our department's budget. I bet you can think of a thing or two you've had to do without the resources needed to do the job properly and got it done anyway.

It's hard to be sympathetic. This is work in America in 2008. We all have to do more with less. The problem is that when you tell the FDA to do more with less, people and pets start dying.

The problem pervades the entire FDA agency.

We voted our concience or will vote our concience in the primary.

The primary season, particularly at dkos has been filled with a lot of passionate diaries supporting one candidate or another. The comment threads are full of emotional outbursts. The troll button now says hide, which is a better description of it's function.

The nomination is coming down to 2 people from an original field of 8 (I don't include Tom Vilsack). Everyone who originally supported any of the other 6 is bound to be disappointed in who is left.

We have several months to go before primary season is over. Only 7 or so states have had their say. I think it's going to be a long primary season.

We think about health care only when we are sick. If we're Lucky that isn't often. We get frustrated waiting for care. We are told to go to the emergency room if we can't wait. We have higher deductibles, copays and premiums too.  The norm is for everyone to pay more and receive less care.

Health Care Rationing in the US is: Call ahead. Wait 2-21 days for an appointment. Come early. Wait your turn. Pay in advance. Don't complain; but tell the doctor everything pertinent about your situation. Do what you're told. Speak up - Ask relevant questions, but don't waste the doctor's  time. Move along. Smile, be gracious. Come back soon for a prescription renewal. Oh, and, have a nice day. Please, don't get mad at the doctor, insurance companies are cutting reimbursements at the same time they are raising premiums.

No one is happy with US health care. We're broke, weary and frustrated with a deaf political machine (to our health care woes). Providers are  upset. Pharmaceutical companies are uneasy. Insurance companies are sitting pretty. They contributed to the "right" candidates. No one is going to stop the shake downs. The one guy who might have put together a worthy health care reform plan bowed out of the race yesterday.

We need Universal Protection.

After sharing the fund raiser letter from the RNC this past week, I've been thinking about how the RNC phrased their arguments and how they appealed  to their base.

I looked over the mailer again, analyzing the word choices and how they framed their positions. Maybe I should do a poll of my own? Modifiy what I received into support and activism for Single Payer Insurance or Universal Health Care.

Once I got started, it snowballed. Then I paused. Isn't this lowering myself to their standards? Not really, if I share this with only a "few" friends. I don't have to mail it out, just let a select few see it and tell me what they think?

The letter started out:

Dear Fellow Republican,

HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa titter, titter ohhh, heh

My husband said, "I thought you'd be tickled by that. I double checked to make sure it really was addressed to you before I put it on your desk chair."  

I have no idea how the GOP decided I was someone to send this brazen request for funds and a push poll too, but it is entertaining, provacative and infuriating - all at the same time. I'm half tempted to send them $10 just to stay on their mailing list - well, maybe not.

heh, heh

I used to think that health insurers weren't all bad and profit was a reasonable pursuit in health care. My last diary had a commenter that echoed how I viewed single payer in 2006.

Since then, I've changed my mind. I didn't take anyone's word for it. I spent a great deal of time researching health care in the US and comparing it to other countries with Universal Health Care and Single Payer Systems.

The surprise was that I had come so far to single-payer from where I was a year ago; that I couldn't respond to martygrn without sounding angry, incredulous or condescending - and that isn't fair to martygrn.

That and Grady is losing money on unisured patients are probably the main reasons for why Grady in Atlanta could close their doors, however, it's possible that some group will keep Grady open. Losing Grady would be bad for Atlanta's poor, the latest example of a greater problem. We saw in LA last year a hospital struggle to stay open. This isn't a new problem. Hospitals like Grady faced this problem before and will again. In fact, Miami's Jackson Memorial Hospital has repeatedly bumped into financial problems it's entire 85 year history.  

These hospitals and more like them were created to fill the care needs of the poor. They were built to alleviate suffering. They were never meant to make anybody rich, but now, these public hospitals are fighting for their very existance.

That's the news from financial analysts. Invest in health care for a safe and lucrative investment. Do that and your portfolio will do well and your retirement is set.

Yeah, lets think about that. That means that Grandma is getting it at both ends. On one hand she wants her annuity to do well since it's heavily invested in pharma, murder by spreadsheet health insurers and medical device manufacturers, but then she gets sick and now she can't afford to buy the wares she's invested in.

It's a conumdrum.

It's been nothing consistent, but there's some indication that some wire tapping was unplugged, so to speak, allowing evidence to go uncollected. Not unplugged because anybody regained their conscience and not because of a judge finding their back bone; but because of the simplest reasons of all - the US forgot to pay their phone bill.

Snicker, snark, snark

This would be really funny, except there might actually be a criminal case where wire tapping would be a great way to catch a really bad criminal.

The finger pointing between the Department of Justice and the FBI is par for the Bushco course of events.