We're in the end game here my friends.
We're about to begin the long slog to vanquish our national debt on the backs of seniors and the most vulnerable among us. But keep in mind as you see this depravity play out in Washington, that as long as we have a health care system driven by profits, there will be big winners and huge losers.
The American people are always the losers, and we will be until and unless we say, no mas.
If Obama gets his way, and the age for Medicare goes from 65 to 67, this is equivalent to a 12% decrease in benefits for seniors.
These are who are about to be savaged.
Please read Wendell Potter's dire warning published yesterday in the Guardian about how 'American-style' health care would be a catastrophe for the British people.
And from the Columbia Journalism Review, read about Joe Lieberman's plan to destroy Medicare and why the American press is failing to report on this evil little man.
These are the people Lieberman is attacking.
For-profit health care horror fact number one:
Rick Scott and his 'sweatshop' work environment.
Rick Scott the newly elected and very unpopular governor of Florida, used to be in the health care business. Yes, my friends, health care is big business and it's destroying this country. Among other health related businesses, Scott owned a chain of urgent care clinics called Solantic Urgent Care.
There's an extraordinary article based on interviews with Randy Prokes an ex-Solantic doctor, making the rounds about just how Scott ran these money-making operations.
To achieve the urgent care chain's aggressive financial goals, doctors and nurse practitioners were expected to stand through 14-hour shifts, Prokes told state investigators in a Florida Department of Law Enforcement file obtained by The Palm Beach Post.. . .But at least one doctor - Prokes - believed the bottom-line focus too often compromised patient care by creating a sweatshop work environment for doctors and nurses.
Doctors were monitored with cameras in the clinics' common areas, Prokes told investigators. Staff were expected to suggest extras, including vitamins and probiotics, and a colon cancer screening test considered unreliable and outdated by CDC officials.
For-profit health care horror fact number two:
Remember Billy Tauzin? Billy will say and do anything depending on who's paying him.
Today Billy is being paid by the Partnership for Quality Home Healthcare, and he's selling a new product.
Former House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Billy Tauzin has some advice for Republicans who want Medicare beneficiaries to pick up part of the tab for home health services: It won’t work.“[Home health] is not an elective thing. You get assigned to it by your doctor. You have to have it or otherwise you’re in the hospital or a nursing home,” says Tauzin, former head of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America who is now a senior adviser to the Partnership for Quality Home Healthcare, a coalition of home health care providers.
For-profit health care horror fact number three:
The Kaiser Permanente Story
Some people think Kaiser should be the template for health care delivery in the United States. However, lately Kaiser has been on a tear against its workers.
Despite strong profits and robust executive compensation at Kaiser Permanente, workers for the California-based health care giant say they're facing down cuts to their health and retirement benefits in pending contract negotiations.Proposed cuts include freezing employees' defined-benefit pension plan and switching to a less desirable defined-contribution plan, according to a flier circulated by the National Union of Healthcare Workers. Workers are being asked to accept a more costly employee health insurance plan and cuts to their retirement health benefits, the union says.
While those cuts get debated, Kaiser executives have been living well. Pay and perks for high-ranking officials at the nonprofit have been generous in recent years, according to disclosure forms.
Check out these three Kaiser Permanente executives who together make upwards of 12 million a year.