Health Care in the U.S. – Dr. Rube Goldberg With Scalpel And Prescription Blank

One should realize that health care in this country has reached a bizarre, what planet-are-we-on stage when former Republican speaker and new Catholic Nuke Grinch states before God and everybody, including his new buddy Pope Benedict, that health care ”is a human right that cannot be rationed by Washington.” Now we know Nuke is running for president! Health care a human right? Why, Nuke, that is in direct violation of the Republican LETMDIE philosophy of at least a century.

C’mon, Nuke, whatever happened to that famous philosophy that free markets solve all of society’s problems? Here’s an example of how the free market medical system operates in this country: A Pap test screens for cervical cancer. A total hysterectomy removes the uterus and cervix. Is it possible to have cervical cancer when there is no cervix? Perhaps a hospital or health insurance CEO can tell us why ten million American women who lack a cervix are still getting Pap tests for cervical cancer! These guys would sell eyeglasses to Helen Keller!

Over the last decade hospital administrators really pushed new “heart” wings for their hospitals because that’s where Willie Sutton’s money is. Lots of carving, opening of chests, expensive operating rooms, $10,000 a day intensive care rooms, new blood machines and lengthy rehabs. A much better money-maker than pneumonia and staph infections. Is that why patients in McAllen, Texas have five times the coronary-bypass operations as patients in Pueblo, Colorado? Is it attitude or altitude? Why are back surgery rates in Casper, Wyoming six times what they are in Honolulu and New York City? Dick Cheney, their brother, can’t be that heavy.

Time magazine columnist Sharon Begley reported on a revolt of greedy spinal fusion surgeons. In the 1990s the Institutes of Health determined that spinal fusion operations didn’t help back pain much. Some insurance companies got the word and said they would not cover the expensive operation. Surgeons, with loads of money from these complicated surgeries, bribed their Congress to take away funding from the agency. So much for the Hippocratic Oath about “doing no harm!” They really harmed the billfolds of patients while filling their own. The agency, by the way, made no more recommendations about treatments.

What “Socialized” Medicine Will Do for Americans

 

Canadians live two more years than Americans do. Wouldn’t you like to have a couple more years of life, particularly with good health? Of course, the poor and middle class who can’t afford health insurance die at a young age, lowering our statistical life span. Well, according to the evangelicals, they’ll enjoy Heaven more anyway. It also helps the cost-benefit ratio to let them go early.

As of 2009, American children are twice as likely to die before the age of five as those medical miracles of Portugal, Spain and Slovenia. As a matter of fact, World Health Organization surveys place us 29th in infant mortality among industrialized nations. How many times have we heard Republicans say “WE HAVE THE BEST MEDICAL CARE IN THE WORLD!” Yes, we do – if you make $300,000 or more. Why should an American woman’s chances of dying in childbirth be three times what it is in those bastions of socialized medicine, Germany, Spain and Greece? Even the citizens of Cyprus have a longer life span than we do.

If we had socialized medicine in the United States, stroke patients would probably be taking aspirin at a cost of less than $10 per month instead of the drug ticlopidine at $100 per month. Even with all the research proving aspirin is better, we still have 100,000 Americans taking a drug that costs ten times as much.

 

Free markets are particularly good for drug manufacturers because the health care system is not like other markets. The demand for not dying is almost universal and unlimited among human beings. Such an attitude can be a great money maker for greedy free marketeers. Celgene makes specialty pharmaceuticals. Remember thalidomide, that drug that transformed normal babies into ones without the necessary number of legs and arms? Now it is used as a cancer treatment in some cases. It’s so cheap Brazil sells it to pharmacies for as little as a few pennies a pill.

When Celgene found it was being used in cancer treatment, it changed the size and shape a little and priced it at $6 a pill in 1998. It became the little pill that could. So Celgene raised the price to about $180 a pill, so suddenly a year’s treatment with thalidomide pills cost $66,000. Oh, but they were not done yet. In 2005 Celgene dramatically introduced Revlimid as a new wonder drug. It happens to be a derivative of thalidomide that is supposed to be less toxic. There is no proof it is as effective. But a little pill that cost a few pennies to make in the early 1990s has now grown up and has been priced at $260 a pill, or an annual supply at $94,000.

But the folks at Celgene are pikers compared to the thieves at Genzyme, a biotechnology company. Although the government did most of the research on Gaucher disease, a rare inherited disorder that can cause enlarged livers and such, the company marketed Cerezyme and charges patients more than $300,000 a year for it. Some experts believe that lower doses of the drug would be just as effective – but the company tries to refute that evidence. Let’s all hail and worship the free marketeers for doing such a number on people who want to live.

 

From Freedom Fries, Good Red Wine, and the Best Health Care System in the World

 

Remember when France refused to help us in the invasion-quagmire of Iraq and the Congressional Republicans changed the menu in the House dining room from “French Fries” to “Freedom Fries?” My ancestors were too smart to come up with potato fries anyway because they act as Improvised Explosive Devices in arteries.

Also, the French have been smart enough to come up with the best universal health plan in the world, as judged by the World Health Organization. We rank 33rd, just behind Castro’s Cuba. Hardly a good ranking for a country with THE BEST MEDICAL CARE IN THE WORLD. The French are also quite innovative in medicine. They developed the strategy and techniques for the first face transplants.

The French spend half as much as we do on health care, and take care of everybody while our Republicans continue to obstruct care for 48 million uninsured Americans with their LETMDIE “care plan.” The French live longer, eat more delicious gravies, drink more wine for digestion, and have six weeks of vacation guaranteed. Oh, and their industrial productivity rate is better than ours. The best medical care in the world does it for them. We rank behind even uncivilized countries. Now over 50 percent of the bankruptcies in this country are because of monstrous medical bills. But what is amazing is that 75 percent of those who go bankrupt because of medical bills actually have health insurance. Boy, is that terrific coverage!

The Canadians now are ranked third in world health care. Some idiot Republican congressman referred to their system as “the horrors of a Canadian-style single-payer system.” We should live in such horror. Americans in Vermont and New Hampshire are crossing the border for health care because it is even cheaper without insurance as ours is with insurance! Corky and I have traveled extensively in Canada in the last 15 years in every province except Nunavut. I have never talked to a Canadian who bad-mouthed the Canadian system.

An American lawyer who moved to Canada three years ago had a stroke. She spent a week in a Canadian hospital and three months in rehab under their insurance plan. The hospital never talked to her about money and all of her bills were paid. In a 2008 business trip to San Francisco she suffered a dizzy spell. An ambulance rushed her to a hospital emergency room. The first person who talked to her was a clerk with a computer asking how she was going to pay the bill. After five hours of hospital time it was determined nothing was wrong. The bill for her five-hour stay was $8,789.29.

Why Don’t I Dazzle You With a Few Figures?

 

These facts are all based on 2008 figures. The average cost of a family insurance plan now is $12,680. Hell, any family can cover that. It’s only doubled in eight years. We spend $6,714 per capita for health care and still have 48 million uninsured and over 25 million underinsured. Canada spends $3,678 and everybody is covered. Britain spends $2,760 and everybody is insured. France spends slightly more than Great Britain and is acclaimed for having the best system in the world. In the past 12 months 18 percent of American families could not pay for medicine or health care. Premiums have increased 117 percent over the last ten years. How much has your pay gone up? Does it matter?

Recently a Nova Scotia woman spent three months in a hospital because of a serious car accident. After her hospitalization she was forced to move to Los Angeles because her husband was transferred. She had not paid a dime toward her huge bill in Nova Scotia because she was covered by Canadian health insurance. In the U.S. she could not get any health insurance regardless of price because of her pre-existing conditions from her accident in Nova Scotia. This is a classic case of cherry-picking.

Congress is currently bickering over the cost of President Obama’s plan. Last year we spent $2.4 trillion on health care. The Republicans are having a hissy fit over $1.6 trillion additional over ten years to cover everybody. We have now spent $960 billion on the Iraq War – which we will never win. Remember when Bush’s boys said it would only cost $1 billion to defeat Iraq? Actually $1.6 trillion spread over ten years is not a bad deal. Divide it up. We pay 1,300 health insurance companies $400 billion a year just to do paperwork and billings!

 

Let’s Take Health Insurance Away From All Federal Employees, Particularly Congress! What a Wakeup Call That Would Be for Middle-Class Reality!

 

Naturally Republicans are opposed to any programs that help the pissants of this country make a better life for themselves. They have been against civil rights, animal rights, human rights, workers’ rights, women’s rights, children’s rights, minimum wage laws, children’s health plans, bank regulations, the forty-hour week and overtime rules, road and bridge building and repair, Social Security, pension rights, public schools, Pell Grants for college tuition, all regulatory agencies and thousands of other policies that work for the common good and even for some country club members.

The only things they are for are low taxes, Bahama bank accounts, unregulated hedge funds, gated communities and throwing all lawyers in the Marianas Trench. They are also against any form of the military draft so they can have a “volunteer” military composed of pissants who fight their wars for them. They also plead constantly for malpractice “reform.”

Why don’t they ask the American Medical Association to clean house of incompetent doctors like they always ask the National Education Association to clean house of incompetent teachers? National studies indicate that five percent of doctors commit 54 percent of the medical malpractice in this country – and that malpractice awards only add about one-half percent to the total cost of health care. Can you imagine what would happen to patients if there were no malpractice suits?

And don’t you ever believe that Republicans are for health insurance, public or private, for everybody. Senate committees are currently going through 388 amendments attached to the Democratic Senate bill. Of all those amendments, 364 are sponsored by Republicans. That should tell you whether Republicans have any thought of ever voting for a health plan that covers all the pissants. Over their selfish bodies – and not until their kids inherit all their money without paying “death” taxes.