Emma Berry

Archive for the ‘Health Care’ Category

If you are, you will want to thank Bernie Sanders.  Without his “liberal” persistence Americans would not have these Community Health Centers.  They are an amendment that he put into the Health Care Bill and demanded that it be there in order for the Health care  bill to pass.

If you have a little extra money, send it to Bernie.

About one month from today will mark the one year anniversary of the posting of my health care poll.  I’ve had it posted several places on the Internet including here.  I created this poll because I was so disgusted when  the Senate Committee, consisting of leaders from the Wall Street health insurance industry had security guards remove citizens who appeared in the first days of the round table planning discussions to support a single payer option.  They were told that single payer was off the table and was not even up for discussion.  That was wrong.  In the beginning ALL options should have been on the table.  This was an effort by the Obama administration to ensure that even public option would not be a solution because that is the point of negotiations.  Without single payer as an option, public option becomes the most “radical” solution and this is also effectively off the table.

Then combined with all the hysteria generated by Fox News and the Republicans in the Senate who like Chuck Grassley, even deliberately lied to their constituents about death panels, it was unlikely that we would ever know what the American people really wanted because they were only given the choices that Wall Street wanted them to have.

And I was curious to know the truth so I created this simple survey to measure what Americans would choose if someone actually presented them with all three choices for health insurance.  From day one the profile has looked like this screen capture that I took today.  #1 single payer  #2 public option  #3 status quo.    They choose single payer (the European, not English model) 20% over even a public option and they choose single payer 30% over status quo (doing nothing).  Clearly the majority of Americans want a far more radical change in their health insurance system than what they got.  81% of the American people want a health insurance system that is drastically improved over the status quo.  But what they got was status quo that preserved the stock portfolios of the Senators.

We have been fed a pack of lies by the Wall Street media and by our Wall Street sponsored Congress.

A year ago we had the month of health care/chicken little-sky-is-falling hysteria sponsored by the Koch Brothers through their wholly owned “non-profit” Americans for Prosperity–a group that is so NOT for the prosperity of ordinary Americans that they actually cheered when the USA lost the bid for hosting the Olympics in Chicago. Winning the bid would have literally brought several billion dollars and thousands of jobs–almost immediately to the jobless workers in our nation. These people and their sponsored Tea Party anarchist are not about healing this country. They are about destroying the President any way they can and that means literally.

Anarchy is a wet dream for right-wing neo-cons like the Koch brothers. Anarchy means that they can put their privatized police goons in place to keep order while they continue to rob the nations of the world and those who work for a living– including the USA. They claim to “love” the USA when in fact the only thing the love are their bank accounts and power.

Barack Obama, by not providing a strong leadership and representing the base who elected him has in great part helped to bring this about. Last summer Obama did not stand up for the public option that he said that he stood for when he campaigned. Instead he sat back in the White House and said nothing. Behind the backs of Americans he and this Clinton Administration cut deals with pharmacy companies and health care lobbyists. In fact a health care lobbyist, an ex vice president of one of the largest health care corporations in the USA wrote the health care package that Congress eventually bought.

Public option is NOT “socialized” medicine, although it served Wall Street so they had their Fox News Side Show Bobs and Tea Party Puppets to push this lie onto the American public.  A public option is no more than than just that:  a PUBLIC option for health care INSURANCE!  It is not “socialized medicine.”  It is not “medicine” or “health care” at all, any more than Wall Street organizations like Blue Cross are “medicine” or “health care”.  A public option would be a financial institution that offers health INSURANCE just like Blue Cross.  The only difference is that it would be owned by the PUBLIC (that’s you and me).  It would be founded on the same principles as an employee owned corporation.

THAT IS NOT SOCIALISM.  AND CERTAINLY NOT SOCIALIZED MEDICINE.  Even countries like France and Germany do not have “socialized” medicine.  They have single-payer.  The only country with a true form of socialized medicine is England where the doctors are actually paid by the government.  That is truly a horrible system in my opinion, but even so, the majority of the British would not trade it for the American insurance system.  The British have neither a public option insurance nor a single payer as do the rest of Europe.  Their system is the closest thing to a socialized medical system that exists in the world.

Yes, Obama sold out the American people and settled for crumbs instead of a real health care program for all Americans. He made a deal with the health care crooks that will make them and the Wall Street investors in Congress richer by mandating 50 million Americans to purchase health care insurance that they cannot afford from the very crooks who are now robbing Americans blind every chance they get.

In September of last year, the media was flooded with so much misinformation about health care (death panels, etc.) that it was really impossible to tell what the American people really wanted.  Further more, it was even more difficult to tell because the Obama administration, in a bending over and touching their toes for Wall Street, had refused to allow single payer to even be an option on the table for discussion.

I created my own poll last summer because I was curious to know that given three real choices, which one would the majority of Americans choose.  So I created a survey that offered all three choices:  public option, single payer and status quo (the do nothing stance of the Republicans and Tea Party anarchists).

I have done nothing to alter this survey and if you participate, you will see that it has a safeguard to prevent anyone from making multiple entries.  By the way, I have no control over the ads that might appear on the survey, nor to I receive any payment for them.

Here is a snapshot of that poll today.  I have maintained this poll for over a year and have it available in several places on the Internet.  The profile you see is the same profile from almost  a year ago.  Single payer is overwhelmingly the first choice of Americans and status quo do nothing Republican choice is the last.  This is the true American opinion of health care–not the hysterical BS that the media feed us.

POLL SNAPSHOT AUGUST 11, 2010

POLL SNAPSHOT NOVEMBER 2009  :

As you can see, the profile remains the same.  Never once has status quo been more than 20% during the entire year.  It has hovered consistently between 17 and 20% for an entire year.  Never has single payer been under 50%.  At one point it was as high as 58%. That was in late September of 2009 when Tea Party anarchists were shouting socialism and parading around with photos of Obama as Hitler.

I know, I’m an ingrate.  There are those who think I should be saying thank you thank you  thank you to the Obama Administration who have majorities in both houses for putting into effect these few crumbs for improved health care for Americans.  However, as I”ve said more than once before:  The difference between the Republicans and the Democrats is that the Republicans would take the entire cake if they had their way but the Democrats leave us with a few crumbs.  The truth is that the leadership of BOTH parties want to preserve their own personal Wall Street portfolios.  The Democrats undo the good that their health care legislation might have done  by mandating that 50 million Americans purchase health care insurance from the very Wall Street health insurance crooks who are currently robbing Americans blind.  A health care reform bill with no public option to provide real competition for these crooks is not reform.  It is more of the same with a sugar coat.  As you can see from my health care survey, the overwhelming majority prefer a single payer optiont over either the status quo or a public option.

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SO HERE ARE THE HEALTH CARE CRUMBS THAT BEGIN SEPTEMBER 23–SORTA

I hope that when November rolls around that the American people remember that the greedy Republicans did not even want to give you these small crumbs.

For most people, the changes won’t affect their plans until coverage renews in the weeks or months that follow. Here are the highlights:

_ Adult children up to age 26 will be able to receive dependent coverage with all individual and group policies.

_ Lifetime limits on the dollar value of insurance coverage will be prohibited. This refers to how much your insurance coverage pays out to cover claims.

_ Restrictions will be placed on annual limits for coverage, a practice that will prohibited in 2014.

_ Insurers will be prohibited from rescinding or canceling coverage except in cases where the customer commits fraud.

_ Insurers will not be able to exclude children from coverage because of a pre-existing condition, but they can require parents to sign up kids only during a fixed annual enrollment period to ensure they don’t wait until a child gets sick to buy coverage.

_ Insurers will be required to provide preventive care like immunizations or mammograms without charging co-pays or other forms of cost sharing. Some may not have to comply with this element if their coverage existed March 23 and has not changed substantially.

Individual plans that have so-called “grandfathered status” like this also will not have to immediately follow the new restrictions on annual coverage limits or eliminate their lifetime caps. Over time, most plans will lose their grandfathered status as they make changes in benefit designs.

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FINAL NOTE: Those who think this is socialism need to get an education and let multi-billionaires like the Koch Brothers and their propaganda machine, “Americans for Prosperity” stop stuffing their heads with hate and misinformation about legislation that the Democrats are trying to pass which amount to little more than capitalist crumbs from an almost Wall Street Business as Usual Administration.

PS
Conservatives who yammer about the mandate are hypocrites.  The only reason they do this is so they can tear down and dismiss the few crumbs.  If the Republicans really opposed that part of the Obama Administration’s mandate, they would be screaming about the fact that our government makes us buy automobile insurance .  We’ve been required to do that for years.  That is no different from mandating Americans to purchase health care insurance.  BOTH are frauds on the American people.  We should have another choice for all kinds of insurance–public options.  And we would too, if Wall Street insurance companies did not have Congress in their hip pockets.

A year now since that awful summer when the Democratic leadership gave away the public option because the Obama Administration were pretending like they did not have the majority of Congress, I read recently that they are “threatening”–as if they threaten anything to the establishment–to bring back the public option, as if it is a pawn or a political club for them to wield. Where were these people last summer?

I’M ABOUT AS TIRED OF THE DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP AND THEIR SELF-SERVING POLITICAL GAMES AS I AM THOSE OF THE REPUBLICANS.

The fact is that the American people have from day one favored a single payer form of health care to that of either status quo (doing nothing) or even public option. Single payer is NOT the British system. The British system is socialized medicine whereby the doctors work for the state. Single payer is a system whereby the state uses taxpayer money to pay the doctors. The doctors are as free to accept or not accept patients as they are under our present system.

The Clinton/Obama Administration controlled the health care “debate” from day one by not allowing public option, much less single payer to even be discussed. In fact they literally kicked out citizens who came to a round-table discussion in the early stages. The Obama administration allowed corporate health care crooks to sit at that table–just not American citizens who represented the MAJORITY  instead of Wall Street Special Interests.

In September of 2009 I created a survey that offered all three choices.  I was curious to see  what the truth was.  Was it really true that most people wanted to keep the system we have in place?  The profile you see below is the same profile that this survey has had for an entire year: the smallest number want status quo; an overwhelming majority want a single payer solution;  and the public option is in the middle as a solution.

Against the backdrop of Republicans and Tea Party puppets screaming and yelling that they want Congress to retrieve even the crumbs, we have the arrogant corporate centrist Democrats telling us that we should be thankful that they sold out the American people.  I say that both groups can go to hell. – Emma

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Look at what is really behind the recent pro-Wall Street Health Care Bill [And while you remember this party, please remember that the Republicans are even worse than the corporate centrist Democrats.  The Republicans would have done nothing.  Still, I don't know about you, but I'm fed even with settling for crumbs from a cake that we paid for in the first place.]

• Incumbent Members of the U.S. House and Senate received an average of $103,250 and $508,852, respectively, in healthcare industry contributions in 2008.
• Congressional incumbents received 82 percent of the total $127 million in healthcare industry contributions in 2008, compared with 18 percent for challengers and open seat candidates combined.
• 39 out of the top 40 recipients of healthcare industry contributions in 2008 were incumbents.

Back in September of 2009, I created a poll to measure what type of health insurance that Americans wanted. Unlike President Obama, his administration and the Republicans, I gave voters the three choice that were out there.  Unlike the fakes, I did not pretend that single payer did not exist as an option.  Single payer is, in fact a very real option that is used by nearly all the countries of Europe.  (Great Britain being the one exception. Their system more closely represents a form of socialized medicine whereby the doctors are actually controlled by the government.)

From time to time I return to the poll and take a snapshot of the percentages.  Since the end of September 2009, about two weeks after I made the poll available, it has consistently shown the following profile:  #1 choice by close to 2 to 1 has consistently been single payer, just as the snapshot from today shows.  In the beginning, Status quo and public option were neck and neck, but over time,  the distance between people who are happy with health care insurance as it is and those who want change is widening with more people being less satisfied with the status quo.

Following is a video of Sam Johnson making one of his brief grandstand speeches on the House floor.  I find it interesting that a man who has also spent so much time blabbering his support for tort reform who would himself support what amounts to a huge and frivolous lawsuit that will no doubt cost taxpayers millions and yield zip other than publicity for Republicans like Johnson and Perry.  But hey, I guess it is a different matter when a conservative is the one who is pressing the lawsuit.  No doubt Rick Perry our hick governor who lives like one of the Beverly Hillbillies in a rented mansion at the taxpayers’ expense in Austin is behind it all.

Johnson, being a party shill goes along with whatever they tell him to.  While I agree that Americans should not be forced to pay Wall Street corporate crooks health insurance premiums, I am a little surprised that Mr. Johnson also takes exception to that part of the plan.  I wonder, since Johnson thinks that it is “unAmerican” to make people pay Wall Street insurance crooks for  health insurance , does he also think that it is “unAmerican” to make people pay insurance to drive cars?  After all if we don’t pay our dues to some Wall Street crook, we can have our cars confiscated if we are caught without proof of insurance.  It would be interesting to see where Mr. Johnson and other conservatives fit that into their twisted ideology.  How is is OK to force us to purchase car insurance from a Wall Street crook but not OK for the government to force us to purchase health insurance from a Wall Street crook?

Mr. Johnson like most rich conservatives takes the position of  “let them eat cake.”

Not that I think that the current administration is doing a whole lot better, but at least they are doing a little better than Mr. Johnson’s sorry a**ed team who quite literally have driven our nation not into a ditch but rather over the cliff.  If the conservatives have half a brain they will lay low until 2016 because if they take over and start in with their standard tax breaks for the rich in 2010 and 2012, they are likely to get tarred and feathered by the American people.

Last Wednesday representatives from Health Care for America Now (HCAN) at CIGNA’s annual shareholder meeting in Philadelphia got a confession out of CIGNA CEO Davide Cordani.  The HCAN members were admitted to the meeting in an arrangement with several shareholders so they could question Cordani.  SOURCE

MORE ON THE CRIMINALITY AND GREED OF DON BLANKENSHIP

So?  Is anyone surprised?  If  you want to know about the real character of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, look no further than Don Blankenship, CEO of Masey Energy Company.  Blankenskip is also on the Board of Directors of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Here’s something else about anti-American Mr.  Blankenship:  Blankenship spent over $1 million dollars along with other US Chamber buddies like Verizon to sponsor last year’s Labor Day Tea Party, also known as the “Friends of America Rally.”

Watch Mr. Blankenship/US Chamber of Commerce express his indignation over the nerve of REAL Americans suggesting that his mining should follow safety regulations.

Would YOU just love to have greedy idiots like Blankenship and the US Chamber running our nation?

“Hash reality?” Mr. Blankenship.  Why don’t you ask the miners who die in your mines.  They can tell you the real meaning of “harsh reality.”  It’s people like you who are destroying out nation.

Here in the Third District, on Monday night of this week,  we got to see a sample of the buffoonery that is taking place in states all over the USA that are governed by Republicans as the Collin County Commissioners did their political posturing for Rick Perry, our governor who was elected with less than 40% of the vote of the people in our state.

WHY DON’T WE ASK THESE FAKE GRASSROOTS BUFFOONS WHERE THEIR INDIGNATION IS OVER THE FACT THAT AMERICANS ARE FORCED TO BUY CAR INSURANCE FROM WALL STREET PREDATORS?

How is it  OK for our only choice for car insurance to be forced by “the government” to purchase car insurance from a Wall Street predator?

How is it OK for Rick Perry and his Insurance Commissioner to be so in love with State Farm Insurance that they allowed State Farm in October of 2009 to keep $650 million in over-payments that Texas customers had made to them?

How is all that OK and it is a threat to our rights as citizens to be forced to pay a health insurance predator?  At least the Obama administration put a few protections in for the American people–something that Rick Perry and the Republicans never did.

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My platform? I don’t like any American being forced to purchase ANY product from a Wall Street corporate enterprise.  I believe we should have another choice.  And I darn sure don’t believe that these crooks should be allowed to keep money that they over-charged.  That money should have been returned to the customers with interest!

• Will work to improve the new health care reform and indeed—all types of insurance.  No American should be forced to purchase any product from ANY private company.  That includes not only health insurance, but also car insurance as well. As your representative, I will work to see that all Americans have a choice of public option pools for ALL types of insurance—not just health care.