Rabblerouser Awards

From the land of Disneyworld, sunny Florida--a part of the country better known for voter disenfranchisement and Anita Bryant's anti gay crusades than for progressive viewpoints--comes Congressman Alan Grayson. The congressman is a breath of fresh air in a long, oppressively hot summer, (still--it's better than snow) because in a world dominated by political double talk and back room deals, Mr. Grayson dared to tell the truth, and makes no apologies for it. All I can say is: it's about time. Here's what he said:

The Republican Health plan is--Don't get sick, and if you do, die quickly."

Some republicans didn't like that and they demanded an apology. Grayson refused to apologize to them, instead apologized to the dead--victims of private HMO's, aka Health Murdering Organizations.

Honorable Mention to Anthony Weiner, D-NY who said, "Leaving private insurance companies the job of controlling the costs of health care is like making a pyromaniac the fire chief."

Weiner continues to fight for a single payer health plan, covering everyone, leaving nobody out.

Kudos to both representatives. Truer words have not been spoken in a long time.

Baucus Sells Us OUT--No Surprise Here!

So Senator Max Baucus' solution for the 45 million people who have no health insurance coverage is this:

Force Americans to buy health insurance from one of the greed-driven wealth insurance vultures, thereby adding 45 million new customers to the wealth insurance companies' death lists. And if you refuse to purchase wealth insurance, you'll get fined. And if you can't pay your fine, maybe they'll bring back debtor's prisons.

That would sure take care of a bunch of the unemployed.

In the immortal words of W, it's a "uniquely American" solution.

In addition, Baucus would expand Medicaid, the insurance for poor people. Medicaid, partially--if not mostly funded by the states, is sketchy at best. It doesn't cover dental, doesn't cover eyeglasses, doesn't cover chiropractors. And, as I found out when I was on NYS Medicaid, a lot of doctors won't accept Medicaid because the reimbursement from the states is inadequate, because states are broke--thanks a lot Wall Street!

If you need to see a specialist and your insurance is Medicaid, you won't be denied coverage because of a pre existing condition--in theory, but you will wait a long time to see a specialist or be treated for the pre existing condition--a year in my case. Medicaid is an insurance for poor people, and like many far too many services designated for poor people, it is inferior. Further, in order to qualify for Medicaid, you will jump through more hoops than a poodle in the circus. In many places, Medicaid recipients are forced to choose a private medicaid HMO (Health Murdering Organization), which--like all HMO's-- decides what health care you'll get, regardless of your doctor's opinion.

So Max (no single payer reps at the table) Baucus has sold out the American people to the wealth insurance industry. I'm no psychic, but I predicted this one. And--did I read this right--he's a democrat! Or so he says.

Single payer Health care, not wealth care. An even playing field. Equal access to health care for All. HR 676. MEDICARE FOR ALL.

A uniquely democratic solution to greed.

If you ain't outraged...you ain't paying attention!

Yet another wealth care horror story. Ya know, I think we should draft Wendell Potter for Congress.

The Politics of Scared

Ruling by fear is nothing new. It's been the rule for a long time. Fear of change. Fear of "others." Fear of unemployment.

You can be afraid of something--everyone is--but you don't have to let it rule your life. You don't have to let it turn you away from what you know is right.

The fear of a death panel, recycled again by Sarah Palin in WSJ op-ed, is all the more real because we do in fact have death panels--also known as insurance companies, or HMOs--and they routinely deny health insurance coverage and/or treatment to patients. Those denials result in patients' deaths.

We now (finally) have a president who takes this seriously. He was elected because he promised to fundamentally change this unjust system of wealth care. The wealth insurance bigshots know this. Their highly compensated lobbyists and the pharmaceutical industry muckety mucks know this. They gaze into their (Waterford) crystal balls and they foresee their obscene profits evaporating in a future where the playing field is leveled, and this makes them afraid.

A friend said once, "Underneath anger is fear." All the recent rabid, growling, biting, gun brandishing, lunging, shoving, posturing and screaming public displays of anger barely disguise the underlying emotion: fear. The gangsters running the American wealth care industry and profiting most from it fear they'll lose their profits. They fear they might have to live as the rest of us do; from paycheck to paycheck. They fear they'll have to fly coach instead of private jet. They fear informed and educated voters, and they fear true democracy.

They're greedy, not stupid, and they're not powerless. Unlike most of us, they have lots of money, and easy access to the corporate media. They use that media access to transfer their fears to the people--or "sheeple," as they hope we'll be. They propagandize the most outrageous exaggerations and outright lies to make us afraid, as they are, and whip up funnel clouds of fear of the unknown. Unnatural disasters. Then they order their troops forward --to the streets, to the town halls, to the media, playing people like a chess game. Pawns can only move forward. Or stand still.

It's much the same way corporate union busters use lies and exaggerations to create doubt and fear of the unknown and use it to turn union supporters against the union they chose to represent their own interests.

(The devil you know is better than the devil you don't?)

That evil Socialism arises again. The tired red scare of the 1950's is alive and well in the 21st century.


Never mind that France, Denmark, Japan, Germany, England, Canada, Israel, Sweden... all have socialized health care, and they are free countries.

What's evil is when people die because their insurance companies deny or delay approval of a medically necessary, doctor recommended medical treatment.

Fire Insurance

Health care: affordable, universal, quality over quantity--We all need it, sooner or later. Don't sell us out.

Blacklisted Movie: Salt of the Earth

The issues in this 1954 film could be taken from the pages of today's newspapers...unsafe working conditions, mining accidents, substandard housing, buying on credit, equality for women, discrimination against Mexican workers, corporate dirty tricks, eviction. According to wikipedia, the movie's writer, director, and producer had all been blacklisted by the Hollywood establishment because of their involvement with socialist politics.The movie got made anyway, using real mineworkers and their families as actors. Thanks to: www.archive.org/details/salt_of_the_earth

It's Labor Day Again

In celebration of the official American workers holiday, I'm hauling out a bit of nostalgia. This TV commercial dates back to 1976. There are older versions, but the video is really grainy. The union song is the same as in the old 60's version.

The words sung by the union workers are something to think about today, when just about everything we wear from head to feet was made in another country, and where the workers labor under far worse conditions than the proud women and men in these commercials.


AND the 1981 version


Isn't it time we produced a 2009 Union Label/made in the USA commercial. (We must be making something here--aren't we?)

Whole Foods CEO in the news--again

Whole Foods CEO John Mackey appears to have caught the foot in mouth disease lately. First he made some dumb statement in an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal about health care. He said, "There is no intrinsic right to health care."
(Where were the pull-the-plug-on-grandma folks when Mackey shared these golden words with the world?)

And now he's got unions PO'd at him and calling for a boycott of Whole Foods.

It started with his strange remarks about employees wanting to organize themselves into unions. Mackey said
Whole Foods workers should forget about forming unions and instead "expand into love." What?

Putting aside the new-agey fuzzy wuzzy double speak turn of that phrase, which means either nothing or anything you want it to mean, depending on where you are... love, he says?

There's no better way to show love for one's fellow workers than to stick together, fight for better wages, decent benefits, job security, and safe working conditions for all. People who love one another stand up for one another. If union organizers are motivated by anything, it's love. It certainly ain't money. (That would be CEO territory.)

That's why unions are so threatening to CEOs. When it's every man and woman (worker) for him/herself, it's easier to divide the ranks and conquer. When it's worker vs. worker, it's easier to buy a few of them off, and blow off the rest.

I do think health care is a basic human right. I believe that quality, affordable health care is intrinsic to the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness--and those rights are not accessible to folks whose health is in the trash can and whose finances are flat lined because of the costs associated with our private for profit Wealth Care system.

Freedom of association-- including with unions-- is a First Amendment right, and until Mackey gets it right, I'm boycotting Whole Foods.

Boycott Whole Foods | Facebook

Via a WSJ editorial, yet another CEO ( Mackey of Whole Foods) informs us, the rabble, that wealth care is for the rich and well connected.

No more of my dollars will you get, Whole Foods. Preach to me, will you?

At 6 AM one April morning in 2007 I dragged myself out in the freezing cold (or maybe it was just that I had chills) to New York Hospital emergency dept in Queens due to an extremely nasty bout of gastroenteritis that had kept me up and running to the bathroom all night long. They gave me potassium and intravenous fluids to replace all that I'd lost. Thank goodness I had NYC Medicaid at the time. I never saw a bill.

It was probably caused by something I ate, said the nurse. The only thing I'd eaten prior to the assault on my digestive system was the lentil soup at Whole Foods in Union Square. Eat healthy, you say?

An isolated incident? Maybe, but at another Whole Foods in Florida two years later, the vegan chocolate chip cookie I bought there (baked on site) trashed my stomach for days. The sign might have said "vegan" but my gut reaction to it told me otherwise. Never again, Whole Foods.

For a behemoth health food chain that swallows smaller health food stores, yours offers a surprisingly limited selection of products, most of which are rather pricey. I won't miss you, Whole Foods. I won't support your elitist view that health care is a commodity that only the well heeled are entitled to.

CEO Mackey quotes Margarte Thatcher: "The trouble with socialism is you run out of other people's money."
The trouble with capitalism is that everything's for sale. Even your kidneys. Everything. And the trouble with capitalism is that far too many are working hard for the enrichment of a few. The trouble with capitalism is that far too many who work hard for the money cannot afford to buy the basic necessities of life, such as quality health care, decent and safe housing, and food.

Boycott Whole Foods Facebook: "Global
Basic Info"

Comparing Apples and Fish

Something smells fishy, in the Great AmericanWealthcare Debate. The stench of something rotten--like day old fish wrapped in newspaper-- permeates the media reports.

From my point of view that's a bad smell. Because I can't smell, most of the time.

Following a head injury, my sense of smell is just about nonexistent.

No more inhaling the rich, sweet aroma of coffee brewing in the morning. No more enjoying the warm spicy perfume of nag champa incense. When the fire alarm went off in my building, it came as a total surprise. I did not smell the smoke.

You don't know how important your sense of smell is until you lose it. If there's a way to get it back, I wouldn't know: I have no health insurance. At the time of the head injury I had some kind of insurance. It's the kind of basic catastrophic insurance that will pay to haul you to an emergency room, mop up the blood, shoot some xrays/catscans, staple you back together, and then ship you back out to the same killing fields that brought you into the hospital in the first place-- whether those killing fields are an unsafe worksite, a crime ridden neighborhood, or icy hazardous sidewalks and roads . This is the kind of insurance most people have. Not preventive health care. Not health maintenance. At its worst, this privateer wealth care system destroys health; at its best, it's damage control. Our wealth care system is like driving a car for 2 years without ever changing the oil; then when your engine seizes up, you have the car towed to a mechanic and pay $3,000 for a new engine.

Is this the health plan that our Senators and Congress persons have?

SHHH....URE it is. (Not)

The signs are everywhere. At bus stops, plastered on walls and roadside signs. Printed on shopper flyers, newspaper inserts; ads hawking "affordable health insurance," listing prices for various types of "care," like the menu board at a fast food restaurant. One movie poster size sign proclaims: $100 for pain management, $60 for internal medicine, and get this: "NO NEW PATIENT FEE!"

WTF???

How do you separate dental and vision care from health care? A man is removed from his workplace because of an absessed tooth that made his face swell to the size of a grapefruit and is brought by ambulance to a hospital where he spends eight days. When he returns to work, he is fired-- presumably for missing too many days of work. All this could have been avoided, if the man had comprehensive dental health coverage. Was his an isolated incident? A supervisor at the same job confided she "lived on" pain killers because she had a bad toothache she couldn't afford to get treated. In another job, at a major retail chain, I remember a co-worker with an eight year old child. The boy had a toothache, and while the father battled with the HR department to get his son included on his health plan so the child could get dental care, the mother came into our store looking for Ambesol to try to relieve the child's pain. Real people here, not Fred and Louise actors.

The only solution to this barbarism is a SINGLE PAYER HEALTH PLAN as outlined in HR 676 that covers everyone, from cradle to grave. Stop subsidizing private insurance companies. Kick the Medicaid/Medicare HMOs out. There's your savings.

Meanwhile...President Obama took to the road to appeal for support for his health care reforms. In a NY Times photo the prez is showm snacking on an apple.

I only wish I could do the same. A tooth, cracked for two years now, makes apples, carrots, and even bagels off limits to me. Even with the private dental insurance I bought, I can't afford to get the crown I need on this tooth. The so called dental "insurance" is more wasted money. Money flushed down the toilet in a wealth care system that flushes many human lives down the toilet.

The stench of some thing fishy rises from the stalling and deception and avoidance and corruption and influence peddling that piles up around the closed door debates on our American Wealth Care System. I don't need to be able to smell it to know it's there.

Get to Work, Slackers!

What do you get when you cross a blue dog democrat with a chicken hearted red state republican? A purple poultry politician running in fear from the wealth care industry lobbyists with its tail feathers tucked between its legs. While 47 million uninsured Americans sit and wait and wait and wait.... the slackers who are supposed to be writing a health care bill for everyone prepare to run off on vacation. Vacation?

Nice if you can afford it.

Minimum wage workers who just got a 4 cent raise in Florida probably won't be going on vacation. At $7.25 an hour, they need all the hours they can get--to pay their wealth insurance premiums, if they even have health insurance.

Vacation? In all my years of working, I never took a vacation, because I couldn't afford to go anywhere. During the Bush years, I couldn't even afford to put gas in my car. VACATION??? I often used my vacation days as SICK DAYS.

Vacation? America's hard working customer service reps--those whose jobs haven't been outsourced to our friends in India yet-- don't get to leave work until the last customer is off the phone, and their issue is resolved.

I'm with Nancy--Pelosi, I mean. You blue slackers are living off the taxpayer's dime and you gotta job to do. Fix the broken health care system. If you weren't up to the job, why'd you run for office? If you're just there to slack and try to make your boss look bad, because you're a repub and he's a dem, get over it. You got jobs, you get paid well, and you got GOOD health care. You work for the American people, not the wealth insurance execs. So get back to work, slackers.

Swiss Cheeze of Health Care Reform

As expected, the anti change folks now come forward with all their reasons why the current broken health care system that rewards the insurance industry at our expense should not be changed...

And, like swiss cheese, their arguments are full of holes.

Argument 1. With a public health plan, the government--not our doctors and ourselves-- would make our health care decisions.


Hmm. Is that like when your doc refers you to a specialist for a chronic health problem, and your HMO (health murdering organization) sez No, we won't pay for specialists? Or when there is a specialist available, but the specialists are not "in network" and you can't afford the cost of going to an out of network specialist so you don't go? Or is it like when your doc orders lab tests but the HMO says: No, that is not one of our "covered services." So either you don't get the labs or other tests your doctor deems necessary, or you do get them and when you can't pay, collection agencies harass you for the rest of your life.


Or is it like when your dentist says you need a crown to repair your rotten tooth that is mostly crumbling amalgam but the dental HMO says they will only pay for another toxic mercury/amalgam filling. Or only covers cleanings?

I once worked with a guy whose absessed tooth resulted in him being taken by ambulance to a hospital where he stayed for eight days. Fortunately, he lived. Nope, our employer did not provide dental insurance.

Argument 2. Health care for all will cost too much. Too much? Every year premiums go UP, co pays go UP, deductibles go UP. We are already paying more for health care than the countries that cover all the people. Could that be because of all the medical staff needed to fight with the insurance companies, and deal with the paperwork?

While our costs go UP every year, the list of covered services shrinks. Coverage in most employer provided dental plans is so crappy, dentists refuse to see any more of their patients. Some employees can't afford both dental and medical, so they opt for medical coverage only, taking a chance they won't crack a tooth or have another expensive dental emergency.

Argument 3. Providing health care to all will bankrupt small businesses and stifle low wage job creation.


In 2008 more than 46 million Americans had no health insurance. In 2008, we lost $$$$$$$$$$ of jobs. ( I forget the exact number.) General Motors went bankrupt in large part, because of THE COST OF HEALTH INSURANCE for its workers and retirees. Exactly how does our piecemeal, inadequate wealth care system save jobs??????

Quality health care for all--and that includes comprehensive dental.

HR 676 is the way.

Argument 4. Public health insurance for all will lead us on a slippery path to socialized medicine. So, what's the problem? Some services should be for the public good, not the private profiteers.