Death Panels are Real ! ! !

James Varone was a laid-off employee of Coca Cola and therefore had no health insurance. He had a very bad health condition. He had to receive medical attention so he made a fake bank robbery of $1. All of this was to be put in prison and get medical coverage. Since he was put in jail he was seen by several nurses and a doctor. Verone was charged with larceny. However, he preferred to see this situation in a positive way since jail time was the only way to get his medical treatment [Democracy Now Jun 23-2011]. Now, during the fierce debates to reform the health system, Sarah Palin made a major contribution to the political discourse or the U.S. when she mentioned the idea of death panels. At that time she was accusing Obama of developing a health care system that would result in death panels. Palin ignores very conveniently that the real death panels have been in full motion in the private health care industry. For anybody who wants to find out about this theme, you can check the film “Sicko” and follow the revelations Wendell Potter, a former CIGNA communications VP.

The health care industry has made the government their main protector and its partner in crime when it comes to maximize their profits – this industry, specially the pharmaceutical companies, has never been interested in proving wellbeing to the public. For example, a Bayer drug was found to be unsafe and unmarketable in the U.S. and Europe. However, Bayer did not want to loose its profits, so they sold the drug to third world countries, specially countries in Africa. Some relate this events to the Tuskegee experiment where African American were used in a guinea pig manner from the 1930‘s until the 1970‘s [New York Times May 22-2003 / Democracy Now Dec 20-2004]. Coming back to health insurance expenses, it is estimated that these companies’ overbilling goes from at least $270B a year or at least ten percent of all health care expenses – and that’s just what count as fraud, health care is not in the U.S. is not expensive for fraudulent billing but for legal administrative costs [Albany Tribune News Aug 31-2014]. In addition, consider pharmaceuticals pay big monetary incentives to sale representatives and doctors to over prescribe their patients to use their drugs. Whenever we see medical seminaries and conferences, the whole purpose of those is to advance these “incentives” on the medical class [New York Times Dec 16-2013].

Note this issue about heal care is treated as matter of healing rather than preventing. The U.S. spends more money per person on health care than in any other nation in the world but we rank 41st in the world for infant mortality, and 49th in life expectancy. Also, the excess of deaths due to lack of health insurance go from 18,000 to 44,800 people each year – depending on how the study is taken. We have to note also that the U.S. has fewer doctors and nurses per person than other nations. Right before the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA or Obamacare) we had 50.7M people uninsured, which represents about 16% of the population. It’s very unlikely the PPACA will change the fact that the U.S. has the third highest public healthcare expenditure per capita. In 2000, the U.S. health care system ranked the highest in cost, first in responsiveness, 37th in overall performance, and 72nd by overall level of health among 191 nations. The Commonwealth Fund ranked the U.S. last in the quality of health care among developed countries, highlighting U.S. care costs the most expensive ones. Talking about the uninsured, in 2003, there were approximately 2.7%, 8.2M U.S. citizens who earned “too much” money to qualify for government insurance but didn’t earn enough to purchase a private health insurance plan. In 2007, 62.1% of filers for bankruptcies claimed high medical expenses.

As we know, private health insurance firms are ultra-rich and ultra-powerful and they control our health care system. The PPACA is an important advancement but still leaves private insurance as the main providers and the health care industrial complex in command. The real solution to this problem is universal health care or Medicare for all. The so called Obamacare is just a reward for corporations since this program was developed by conservative groups with the full purpose of securing profits for the insurance companies.

sources

New York Times
May 22nd 2003 “2 Paths of Bayer Drug in 80’s: Riskier One Steered Overseas” by Walt Bogdanich & Eric Koli

Northern Westchester Health
Winter 2013 “Is Sick Care a Better Namer for U.S. HealthCare System?”

 

Categories: Featured, National Issues

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