Obama's Health Care Speech: Senator Baucus and His Prissy Elitist Underclothing

A toast to President Obama. He's pulled the roast out of the fire and stuffed the apple into the mouths of Congress to chew on. Senator Baucus please review Obama's words carefully before you decide to show your prissy elitist underclothing to the public this week when you present a bill without a public option. Ms. Senator Feinstein please phone home ET wants to explain to you how government can serve all the people not just the rich and pretty. And Senator Grassley go back to your no frills pragmatic working people in your state and explain to them again just why health care reform is not in their interest. Pragmatic, sensible, and a chess player. This President is a professional and he has integrity.

And he lies in wait for his prey to come to him. Less work, more fulfilling, albeit a bit nerve wracking to watch.

Cut the politics and get the job done. And don't create a second class citizenry when you do it.

In my last position, management, I boycotted the Board approved health care plan because it was essentially worthless unless you made the kind of money management tends to make. The janitor, the office staff, and others could not afford the plan. All the Board members were quite wealthy individuals and had little relationship to the living struggles of the employees trying to make ends meet on ten dollars an hour. They had little sympathy as well.

Today, self-employed and freelancing, without health care insurance I went to see my new physician in Fort Collins. $120 dollars for the office visit. $145 dollars for a simple routine blood test. Another $75 for a return visit on Friday. That is $340 spent in less than two weeks. Cash.

For me the worst part of the visit was the stigma I felt when I told the office I'd be paying in cash. "Don't you want the clinic down the street where you will have to wait three months for an appointment, sit with a lot of sick people needing immediate care, see a physician overworked, overstressed, and mildly pissed off you are just coming in for a blood pressure check, and can we dust the chair for fleas after you leave? You are poor aren't you? Why else would you be paying cash? Maybe you should just pay us now and then we'll give you service."

Um, no, thank you anyhow. I'd like to see a private care physician, thanks for your concern. Are you Republican? And just how many years of your life have you given to public service? Nice fingernails by the way. Do they match your pedicure? Is your 401k invested in AIG?

If a person is making a wage of $7.75 an hour $340 is around 30% of their monthly income without taxes. And that would be for routine services. While I certainly would be on board for a single payer system, and yes I trust my government to keep me alive longer than any of my Republican friends would ever opt to--at their own expense, I was content for now to hear President Obama reinforce the idea that the bill that passes his pen will need to have a public option alternative for those who don't fit into the other boxed plans.

I will trust, when the time comes, that the Republicans will not take that opportunity to create a second class service for the low-life Americans who would need such an option. Such as many of the self-employed and underemployed and between employment Americans will find as they will still be trying to regain a foothold in the "jobless" recovery. It isn't just the inhuman trolls who live under the bridge after Reagan threw them out of the mental institutions that will be using this option.

Indeed if big insurance T-rexahealthosauruses don't cure their huge appetites for profit even more may be using this option.

Oh my God. Next thing you know the unwashed masses may start demanding an legit education system to! Worse, President Obama is at the helm. He may actually listen to their needs! What now? Maybe the right wing nut jobs are right their America is over--the feudal system, the elites so diligently nurture, is truly going down the toilet.

Please, allow me, in all my cynical ranting... to push the handle for a good flush.

_______________________________

President Obama's Speech on Healthcare from the New York Times
The Gallup Website where you get real poll figures from the morning after rather than Fox Math

Health Care: Greeley Colorado Sings the JBS Swift Blues

JBS Swift is in process of acquiring Pilgrim's Pride. JBS Swift is embroiled in fraud and finance scandals in Brazil. JBS is being sued by more than one family over damage from eating E.Coli infected meat products this summer. JBS Swift has just been found guilty by a government agency of treating their workers like '1940's dog-meat" here in Greeley Colorado by firing people for having specific religious needs outside the boundaries of the local mainstream and having the courage to express those needs.

Reuters: The dispute began last year during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan when the workers walked off the job after managers denied them a prayer break at sunset.

Supervisors had initially agreed to adjust work schedules to accommodate the requests by Muslim workers but later reversed their decisions after non-Muslim workers protested the changes.

So now we understand what gets Greeley citizens moving their feet--the idea that other people who are different might want to be treated humanely too. Is the rest of Greeley just watching from their patios while they grill their steaks and vote the religious conservatives into public office? I like my meat rare and my religion in the church--not in my politics please. Can you imagine the heat JBS Swift would take locally if it refused to allow community Baptists to adjust their schedules so they could attend Sunday Easter Service? Yikes! Now that would outrage the locals. But not much else seems to stir the pot.

And, it looks like, JBS Swift just raised the $2 billion IPO they needed to acquire Pilgrim's Pride. Tasty chicken legs on your grocer's table. Yum. I'll pay the price for organic chicken first, thank you very much.

JBS is currently the world's largest beef producer and exporter with a daily harvesting capacity of 73.9 thousand heads of cattle and the largest global exporter of processed beef. The company's operations include 25 plants located in nine Brazilian states and six plants located in four Argentine provinces, in addition to 16 plants in the USA, 10 in Australia and eight in Italy.

JBS lept to the forefront of world beef production when it bought Swift & Co. of Greeley, Colo., for around $225 million in 2007. Additionally, JBS S.A. is the third largest pork producer in the USA, with a harvesting capacity of 48.5 thousand heads per day.

Does anyone besides me wonder how companies with infamous track records, like JBS Swift above, stay in business?

One thought is, as I have stated early on, the consumers do not know they are buying JBS products when they go to the store. As long as JBS Swift doesn't have to clearly label and brand their products their retailers will take the hit and the FDA, apparently, will protect JBS from having to disclose who they sell their products to.

I'm going to start asking at my local meat departments, "Could you point out the JBS products please so I can avoid giving a dollar to this company?" At least until there is a federal law made that makes it illegal for the meat department worker to disclose any information that might harm JBS Swift's sales by leaning over the counter and whispering into a customer's ear. Now that would be a Dickensonian novel in the making. I keep returning to the Bush era nightmare of protectionism. It has been a traumatic journey for individual consumers and the "little-guy".

And, truthfully, some consumers don't care--as long as they don't get sick or their family member doesn't have to work in a modern pseudo rendition of a Dickens slave ship. I always get that weird-feeling cynical sneer when I think about these "It's not in my backyard so it's not a problem" people. I've met more than a few folks that go to church on Sunday and talk about the importance of community and shared ideas along with their particular philosophy of life yet when it comes down to it--as long as they don't have to pick up that extended price tag for harming people with less political and monetary power, the problem belongs to someone else. As long as the apple trees in their own backyard look ripe and healthy--why bother looking over the fence.

To be fair, I've also seen people in the same situation above who just feel they have no power or know what to do in order to bring about change.

My answer to the situation is "stop putting your dollars on the counter". You'd be amazed at the protection each consumer vote buys for a company like JBS Swift. They don't have to listen to any one, even if they are inclined to do so, as long as their investors still think JBS Swift is a good bet to line their pockets with. Forget the neighbors... what's a little E.Coli in exchange for a 10% growth in my 401k?

Consumers have a lot of power. They are the market after all. But investors, like those still willing to put their bucks into JBS's Swift machine, count on consumers not being able to organize well enough to put a stop to poor corporate practices. How many people in America today have the time to research the background of any company--unless they are paid to do so? Do we just shop on blind trust that the government will protect us? Well as a matter of fact that is mostly just what we do. And the people who make money on blind faith will continue to do so. Investors count on their stock brokers and investment bankers not to hold up a mirror of consequences to their faces when that monthly investment statement comes in the mail.

By the way, do you know whose pockets your 401k is lining? Or was lining? My guess is probably not. You just know how much it lost or gained last year.

In reality consumers, as well as investors, are also lazy. That plays into the hands of those manipulating for profit just like ignorance plays into political accomplishments. But the game isn't so transparent any more. The game has become very good at disguising the winning pot the gamers take home. It is getting harder and harder to keep a check and balance on companies with seemingly poor ethical human management. When layers of protectionism are nurtured in government watch-dog agencies and when local politicians can't do the real math and instead just jump up on that platform of "jobs-at any cost-for any wage" you just have to wonder if we haven't already slid over that slippery slope of having our systems and mechanisms manage us rather than us, the voters, managing the system.

In the meantime we have tea-baggers and blue-doggers running about screaming about how the government is evil and private enterprise is the victim. Give me a break. Take the sheep's wool off that delusion please and let's see how big the wolves teeth truly have become over the past two decades.

And you thought this article is all about JBS Swift.

Folks, in my opinion, putting the balance back in the hands of the consumer is what health care reform is really about, taking back the system from the inhuman processes that want control. Megolithic insurance companies, banks, snail-snot mega-internationals like JBS Swift, get a monetary bonus that comes with "herding" people for profit. The government hasn't changed or altered our lives nearly as much in the last two decades as corporations have through the unchecked market power and purchasing of protectionist legislation.

I'd rather be in the hands of government than a corporation--I can vote government out of office. I can't vote out insurance companies or snail-snot corporations like JBS Swift. These elements are more like ticks--they burrow in and hang on for the sweet taste of life until someone puts a little heat to their arses and makes them let go.

JBS Swift is just a symptom of a much bigger problem. And as long as we keep buying into these problems and as long as wealth is the status symbol of higher achievement in society the boil is going to continue to fester.

And now we have to worry about our chickens.

More on JBS Swift
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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.

Jane Paudaux's Parody on Senator Udall's Health Care Letter

The layout of the previous posting isn't fitting well into everyone's screen (thank you for the phone calls). I've reposted just the parody part of the Udall letter here upon request. In the previous posting it is below the Udall letter.

Jane's Parody of Senator Udall's Post

Dear Jane,

Thank you for contacting me with your concerns regarding health care reform. I have tried diligently to avoid reading the views of the have-nots but obviously did not succeed where your letter is concerned. It has taken me a number of days to get back to you as I have been meeting with insurance and health executives contemplating any potential increases to my political war chest. Although I certainly want you to know how much I appreciate your taking the time from your humble existence to express your specific views on the reformation of the insurance companies and the elitist health care industry which faces our nation today--regardless if I am going to pay any attention to your lower class plea for equality.

As you know, many proposals have been put on the table by our friends, the insurance executives, for promoting the least amount of change to our health care system in order to make it work out most profitably for the elite interests in this country. I recognize there are many, slight variations, on philosophies and ideas for the best way to ensure that the insurance companies will remain in absolute power while killing any nonsense about having to respect the lower classes in this country as other civilized and industrialized nations do across the world. As your Senator, it is my job to pay lip service to listening closely to the various stakeholders involved in this process while seeking out active means to promote my own future well-being and the self-interests of other, wealthier, citizens than yourself. This process has helped significantly affirm my own elitist bias on what is best for wealthy Coloradoans and our friends the insurance and health executives of America. One thing I firmly believe, however, is that the status-quo must be cloaked with some minor changes, like nonprofit cooperatives for the masses, because, well, there was the French Revolution a long time ago, and the natives are getting more savvy and restless. This pathway to equality for masses is simply unacceptable and unsustainable for the elite in America today.

While we move forward in this nondebate, looking for the best way to ensure, my reelection, by the wealthiest and the most powerful in America, there are a number of key requirements which will guide my consideration. Any health reform must: 1) allow the elite and wealthy not to suffer at the expense of those of lesser means; 2) bring costs down so we can tell all the sheep out in La-La-Lollipop land the Senate has succeeded in finally creating a government-sanctioned second class citizenship for the masses--the first time since 1776; and 3) push the notion that well-meaning insurance executives in-lieu of health professionals should remain in the position of deciding which people get care, what level of care they get, and just how much profit they will make off of each patient, doctor, and care facility; 4) call for insurers to provide coverage regardless of pre-existing conditions or medical history as long as the patient or business has enough money to pay the skyrocketing premium--allowing the truly needy to continue expressing their democratic right to die under the nation's bridges; and 5) be prepared to sacrifice the lower classes to the God of Misleading-Fiscal-Projections so my buddies in the Senate can cover their arses when we are caught in bed with the insurance and health executives on the morning after.

I will continue to pretend to listen closely to what you and other Coloradans have to say about matters before Congress, the concerns of our communities, and the issues facing Colorado and the nation. My job is not about merely supporting legislation in the interest of those willing to donate to my election; it is also about ensuring the end to the divide that is threatening to paralyze the accumulation of wealth by the most powerful in our nation's politic. For more information about my positions and to learn how my office can refuse assist you, please visit my website at www.markudall.senate.gov.


Warm Spit,