Health Cooperatives Are An Insurance Industry Shell Game: Don't Buy it

This is unacceptable. Health Cooperatives are a shell game being used in the interest of the insurance companies maintaining their profits. It has little to do with real change in American health care. Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota should look himself in the mirror in the morning. Then go out and look the people of his state in the eye. Then come back and look his children straight in the face and tell them that he is helping to undermine the future of 46 millions by pulling the wool over every one's head.

This Senator, and the other Blue Dogs, are willing to sell every American's soul to a private company and make it a law that they have to turn it over--regardless. Passing legislation that every American MUST participate in health care gives the insurance and health care industry a guarantee of 100% forced market penetration.

What a gravy-train for those companies, those profiteers, and their investors. Cooperatives are still pseudo-private companies. The boards are elected. Eventually these boards will become a popularity contest, a special interest fest, and loaded with all the private agendas, system gaming, and biased manipulation that we all know come with oversight from directly-elected or appointed citizen committees.

What does that mean for Americans?

I fear nothing will change in the long run (which is exactly how the insurance companies want it) except now those too poor to afford current private coverage will be forced to dig into their pockets and cough up money for some ill-run-underperforming cooperative where your local cooperative's board will come between you and your doctor. The cooperatives will never be able to compete with the big insurance industry and the big insurance industry will not have to cover anyone more effectively than they do now.

In fact their lobbyists will be able to, and no doubt will behind closed doors once the legislation is passed, argue that private insurance companies be allowed to dump the patients they don't want to cover into the cooperatives. "It is good enough for them." The insurance companies will harvest the high end of the market and costs will soar because the high-end will be frightened of becoming second-class-health citizens and socially stigmatized. Employers will find a way to discriminate against hiring anyone being serviced by certain cooperatives. They won't have to look at your health-records or even ask questions--they can stereotype with big sweeping generalities.

Let's see now. We are making progress. We now have three supposed options on who gets to call the quality of health care can be provided to which person-- 1) the insurance company executives; 2) the government; or, 3) your next door neighbor.

I cannot vote and remove replace the self-serving insurance company executive. I can vote to remove my next door neighbor but only to replace him or her with my other next door neighbor. I can vote to change the people representing me in government and writing flawed policies or legislation.

Hence the only place I can see having any power as an individual citizen over my own health care is option #2--the government.

Have you been to the Dakotas lately? Where in hell did this man get the power to speak for the Democrats? Is this a Republican in Democratic drag? Who gave him prime time coverage? Egad are they, the Democrats going to allow the Republicans to draw this out until fall elections?

I certainly hope this is just the media exploiting rumors out of context again. Because otherwise someone should pull the plug on the Senate because they are obviously sold out and brain dead. Bring on Sarah Palin's ghastly notion of a Death Panel. They can standby for when the Democrats flatline in the next election cycle.

Democratic senator: Public health insurance option dead - CNN.com

Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota said it was futile to continue to "chase that rabbit" due to the lack of 60 Senate votes needed to overcome a filibuster.

"The fact of the matter is there are not the votes in the United States Senate for a public option. There never have been," Conrad said on "Fox News Sunday."

His comment signaled a shift in the health care debate, with Obama and senior advisers softening their support for a public option by saying final form of the legislation is less important than the principle of affordable coverage available to all.

American Health Care Reform: For Whom the Bell Tolls?

In education you learn quickly that most students learn very quickly through visualization and actual experience. You can write forever on a blackboard, overhead, or whiteboard and you simply won't reach everyone. Some people have to feel it. Live it. Know it as it happens in front of them to understand the nuances and be empathetic for the situation or learning given.

Regardless of how words appear on paper the feeling of being powerless to describe the undercurrent of what health care means to this nation escapes me. Seething underneath the floorboards there is a struggle between whether America has become a country run for the sake of business, industry, and profit or if it will be, going into the future, a country of the people, by the people, and for the people.

My mother lies rotting, slowly, in a care home. She has dementia, Alzheimer's, and Sundowners. She spent a life trapped in an alcoholic marriage escaping it only after her children left home. In the country, had there been money for a doctor, there wasn't any doctor around for casual things. My mother came to believe that health care was something for other people. People with money. The lack of health care became a part of her identity. Her routine. By the time she was old enough to retire and her children were old enough and established enough to help her along--it was too late. The high blood pressure had taken its toll. Her brain, trying to flee from the increase in pressure, shrank.

My mother, now surviving on my father's social security and her own, is comfortable. She is being fairly well tended. But when she passes on, within the next couple of years most likely, she will have spent the final twenty years of her life in a care home. Twenty years that she could have spent laughing, loving, and sharing with her grandchildren--my children and my brother's children. This is what she dreamed of doing all those years while doing menial labor and tending my father's needs. It was her planned retirement from a life of labor, service, and strife. For the five years prior to being imprisoned in the Colorado care home my mother had three newspaper routes in our local town. She walked over ten miles each day to keep her income sufficient to pay for housing, groceries, and other small needs. She stopped and chatted with the elderly folk on her route and listened to their troubles. Kids from the local school would walk along with her and talk to her. She called a doctor more than once when she found a shut-in having trouble. While the reality of my mother's checking account may have been poor--she herself was wealthy in the way many people express a desire to possess such wealth. But this community wealth never went onto a spreadsheet anywhere even though it helped many a soul beyond my mother's.

Had my mother decent access to routine health care, blood pressure checks, she would still be contributing to her community today most likely. She would still be paying her taxes. She would still be working as a volunteer at the voting polls. And she would still know my name and her grandchildren's names.

I know this is one story out of many. But that is the point. It is only one story that belongs to too many people. It is my story. It is my brother's story. It is my mother's story. It is each of my children's story. And there are many versions with different names attached. These are the stories that aren't being heard and seen above the raving blue dog howls of the manufactured Town Halls in America.

My regret? My pen simply doesn't have enough ink or enough power to paint the picture for those who are blinded to the plight of their fellow citizen. How do you touch someone who has closed the gates of their own yard to the community around them?

I've tried ringing the bell at the gate. The same gates I've stood at an argued before. My neighbors. Some of the same people who cry for babies lost to abortion cling to the idea that America should value one human life over another as long as the distinguishing characteristic is poverty or health care or education. All of which can be almost as deadly.

Sometimes I just don't understand the world around me enough to paint it for someone else to see. So I look for others who can do the situation must more justice.

The brutal truth about America’s healthcare - Americas, World - The Independent

In the week that Britain's National Health Service was held aloft by Republicans as an "evil and Orwellian" example of everything that is wrong with free healthcare, these extraordinary scenes in Inglewood, California yesterday provided a sobering reminder of exactly why President Barack Obama is trying to reform the US system.

The LA Forum, the arena that once hosted sell-out Madonna concerts, has been transformed – for eight days only – into a vast field hospital. In America, the offer of free healthcare is so rare, that news of the magical medical kingdom spread rapidly and long lines of prospective patients snaked around the venue for the chance of getting everyday treatments that many British people take for granted.
Related articles

* Leading article: The healthcare debate comes back across the Atlantic
* Christina Patterson: The big problem with the NHS isn't funding
* Rupert Cornwell: America needs to cool down
* Second MEP defies Cameron with NHS attack
* Stephen Foley: ObamaCare is bad news for Big Pharma

In the first two days, more than 1,500 men, women and children received free treatments worth $503,000 (£304,000). Thirty dentists pulled 471 teeth; 320 people were given standard issue spectacles; 80 had mammograms; dozens more had acupuncture, or saw kidney specialists. By the time the makeshift medical centre leaves town on Tuesday, staff expect to have dispensed $2m worth of treatments to 10,000 patients.

The gritty district of Inglewood lies just a few miles from the palm-lined streets of Beverly Hills and the bright lights of Hollywood, but is a world away. And the residents who had flocked for the free medical care, courtesy of mobile charity Remote Area Medical, bore testament to the human cost of the healthcare mess that President Obama is attempting to fix.

All the Kings Men are Insurance Company Executives and Hicks

Write. Don't call. Don't email. Write. Write every senator, representative, and any one of any useful power in the intimate health care circle in the White House. Write them today.

I have never felt so disappointed in my government in my life. When the time has come for Congress to stand up and fight for all Americans they have caved to the pressures of the elite. Without oil to win, provincial countries to plunder, or votes to be purchased they are turning their backs and covering their eyes on the common need. I feel I should sew a label onto my lapel that reads Second Class Citizen so I can appropriately be shamed when I go into public for being a person without the means for private health care.

To all those who have decried that the poor are poor by choice and should be entitled to suffer I have this to write to you

Just tell 'em you're gonna soak the fat boys and forget the rest of the tax stuff...Willie, make 'em cry, make 'em laugh, make 'em mad, even mad at you. Stir them up and they'll love it and come back for more, but, for heaven's sakes, don't try to improve their minds. ~Jack Burden from All the King's Men

And to all those who have spread the malicious fear, half-truths, and outright lies of government run health care while truly knowing the hurt and harm it heaps upon your neighbors

Now listen to me, you hicks! Listen to me, and lift up your eyes and look at God's blessed and unfly-blown truth. And this is the truth. You're a hick, and nobody ever helped a hick but a hick himself! ~Willie Stark from All the King's Men

Democrats Signal Embrace of Co-op Plans | 44 | washingtonpost.com

Health Care
Democrats Signal Embrace of Co-op Plans

By John Amick

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius signaled on Sunday a willingness from the White House to embrace insurance cooperatives as the main plank of health-care reform rather than pushing for a public option in the final version of legislation being debated in Washington and throughout town halls across America.

Quotes from Movie All the Kings Men :: Finest Quotes

Now listen to me, you hicks! Listen to me, and lift up your eyes and look at God's blessed and unfly-blown truth. And this is the truth. You're a hick, and nobody ever helped a hick but a hick himself!