Saturday, June 11, 2011

The Corruption in Ryancare and Romneycare on Steroids (Obamacare)

An Open Letter to Congress: The Corruption in Ryancare and Romneycare on Steroids (Obamacare)
How Medicare Really Works

This letter was faxed to the whole of Congress and copied to 150 “journalists” Yet the lies continue. There is no difference between Ryancare and Obamacare. They both take taxpayer money and Medicare money to give subsidies to health insurance companies; to the highest bidders, the oligarchs that a corrupt Congress serves. The corruption is beyond belief. The United States is no longer a democracy and the media is protecting the overthrow of our government from within. More and more we hear about uniting and rising up. I am beginning to agree and I think all like minded people must find each other and communicate. If you know of such organized group email me to post them all in one place.


June 4, 2011

Dear Representative:

I pray to God that your staff has the wisdom and good sense to get this letter directly to you, because the things being said by everyday people, everywhere, at water coolers and PTA meetings is simply scary and you must act before chaos ensues. 
You know, as our blatantly bipartisan, corrupt Congress embarks on efforts to follow policy being set by oligarch media and the interests they serve, to “reform” Medicare or give it to private insurance companies, I am writing to let you know that, Ryancare or any version of it, is a bridge too far. This Nation is on verge of chaos. Please, below is an article (How Federal Trust Funds Really Work) about how federal trust funds like Medicare and Social Security really work, so you can help stop the misrepresentations. It is false (1) that federal trust fund balances finance these programs; (2) that the public owns these balances; (3) that these balances are claims for future benefit payments.
Medicare is funded the same way all government outlays are: by tax receipts, proprietary receipts, and borrowing from the public (deficit spending) to make up the difference, so two things are simply logical. First, that diminished tax receipts put Medicare in greater jeopardy. A corrupt Congress that insists on tax cuts for the oligarchs it serves, diminishes tax receipts, putting Medicare and all other programs in jeopardy. If more people are working there is more revenue for Medicare. In addition, unemployment is staggering. Jobs are all oversees. Wall Street has cut off credit to businesses keeping the bailout money for their own profits. Wall Street has obliterated millions of jobs. Oligarchs care about globalization and do not care to prop up this country. A corrupt Congress cares about propping up the oligarchs. If millions of people got back to work that in itself would extend Medicare’s and Social Security’s solvency.  Bottom line, Increasing tax revenues would increase Medicare’s and the government’s solvency overall. Period.
Second, it is only logical that corrupt spending priorities, such as funding eternal wars, also put Medicare, like any other government funded program, in jeopardy. Stop funding the freaking wars and bring home all of our troops before thinking to ransack Medicare or there will be mass demonstrations all over this country. You have no idea the can or worms being opened.
Let’s be clear about the corruption in Ryancare and how corruption in general is responsible for trillions in debt. During the healthcare war, Paul Ryan complained that Obama and the Democrats were raiding Medicare for other programs: “Now when you take a look at the Medicare cuts, what this bill essentially does is treats Medicare like a piggy bank. It raids a half a trillion dollars out of Medicare not to shore up Medicare’s solvency but to spend on this new government program”. That “new government program” (Romneycare also known as Obamacare) corruptly subsidizes price gouging health care policies. Those policies have soared due to those anticipated subsidies. Stunningly, Republicans, hypocritically, are running on “repealing” Romneycare, while they take Medicare to the same freaking level. Ryancare is going to take the entire, whole Medicare program, every single penny, to fund another program that proposes to take every single penny, ALL of OUR Medicare money, not just some of it, to subsidize price gouging health insurance policies. This will drive the prices soaring, just like Romneycare (Obamacare) did. The whole of the American people are paying double what they used to for insurance. This is what corrupt subsidies do! They drive up the costs of whatever it subsidizes, in this case health insurance. Paying for price gouging policies, the position the American people are in now, because of Romneycare (Obamacare) is the position Ryancare, is going to put our seniors in!
Ryancare, like Romneycare, (Obamacare) is yet another law to take from us to give to them, the oligarchs that Congress always fucking serves. When does this shit stop and who put this bill in Ryan’s hands, because he did not come up with it! He did write this law. Who did? Like everything else Congress does, someone gave this to him and Congress takes legalized bribes to pass it or some version of it.
There are no capitalist market drivers or competition to bring down the prices of anything anymore because of a freaking corrupt Congress. This is blatantly so in the health care industry. Ryancare would not bring the prices down, just like Romenyecare (Obamacare) didn’t, because the insurance industry has no anti-trust laws! We the people and healthcare providers are told by freaking law, where and from whom, we can buy prescription drugs, creating monopolies and no competition. Even if drugs are cheaper in Canada, by law, we cannot buy them there. You want to bring down healthcare costs? You must repeal the corrupt laws that insure, that guarantee, that freaking legalize price gouging and the higher costs of healthcare!
Does it cost more to make drugs here because of geography? Of course not. Medicare should have a fee schedule for drugs based on prices in places like Canada. We cannot trust the prices that pharma in the United States is charging Medicare and Medicaid. If pharma stopped spending billions on advertising the cost of prescription drugs would be lower. Why doesn’t Congress pass a law that forbids them from marketing freaking prescription drugs? If a patient needs a drug a doctor will prescribe it. Why the hell do you need to advertise it?  You don’t! Every day my entire staff gets free lunch courtesy of pharma reps that peddle their drugs, why do they need to advertise them on TV? Congress dares to attack Medicare before ending this corruption. If Medicare and Medicaid cannot meet their unfunded liabilities its because of a Congress that is allowing it to be pillaged by pharma and private health insurance companies.
As an example, an inhaler for asthma here can cost 235.00 dollars. In Canada it is half that. In Cuba it’s .42 cents! What do you think is the profit margin on one freaking inhaler at 235.00 dollars? Do you have any idea what this is doing to employer based healthcare policies? Do want to know who is responsible for bankrupting State budgets and why they cannot meet the agreements they made before Wall Street destroyed the pensions of government workers and the health care industry doubled their prices?  Corruption in Congress and the oligarchs they serve is intruding in every aspect of our lives and we are paying dearly for it all. On top of which, the price of these inhalers has quadrupled because the EPA, pushed by pharma, daaaaaaa, banned the sale of some inhalers because of the ozone. Really? Pharma now justifies charging this kind of money because the environmentally safe inhalers are more expensive to make? On top of which they are patented, so generic inhalers are not available and Congress is allowing this lack of competition.
In 2010, Abbott Laboratories, Roxane Laboratories and B. Braun Medical Inc. settled with the government for jacking up the prices of the "average wholesale price" upon which the government relied for determining payments. No prison time, mind you. The settlements total a record $9 billion in recoveries for fraud in the two years of the Obama administration. More than half of that has been for health care related fraud. If Congress did not make a law that would subsidize these monopolies there would be no fraud and abuse to begin with. Pharma thanks to Congress is price gouging Medicare and Medicaid and Congress instead of cutting them off, wants to cut the American people that pay into Medicare off.
You want to cut the cost of healthcare? When a person becomes eligible for Medicare, mandate they complete and sign a “Quality of Life Living Will” with specific scenarios in which the beneficiary, not the government, decides if they want extraordinary medical intervention to keep them alive when they have no hope of an improved quality of life. When this came up in Romneycare, (Obamacare) some corrupt whores called it “death panels”. It’s not a death panel if my patients decide that if they have dementia, they do not want to be kept alive with feeding tubes, urine bags or medications while being tied up in a bed for the rest of whatever life they have with no possibility of me or any other doctor of improving their quality of life. Personally, if I cannot do anything for myself and am just a body being tied to a bed being kept alive with these measures I would opt the hell out of it and so would the majority of my patients. They would rather be made comfortable with pain medication to alleviate their suffering and be allowed to die with dignity. There are many scenarios where monies are going to keep shells of people alive. It should be their choice to decide that this not happen and it would save billions of dollars in the Medicare and Medicaid programs. Go to a nursing home and you will see what the hell I am talking about. Keeping people alive for the profits of hospitals and nursing homes is just another way of pillaging Medicare. You have got to draw a line somewhere. Will the medical care I am forcing on a patient allow them to get up and continue living a normal life? If the answer is “no” then spending money on that medical care should be “no”. If Congress was not so corrupt and protecting profits of healthcare providers they would mandate a “Quality of Life Living Will” as a condition for getting Medicare and they would allow patients, not for profit healthcare providers, to determine their own care and when to end it.
In short, a corrupt Congress that serves corporate parasites and the highest bidders are responsible for the trillions in debt and the solvency of Medicare and Medicaid. Ryancare is just another example.
Congress has a mandate from corrupt oligarch media and the interests it serves to continue to steal from us to give to themselves. Congress had better ignore that mandate. This is what was needed to wake up the masses and we don’t believe a damn word said by oligarch media. Did you see what happened in the Special Elections in New York? The media became irrelevant, finally.
You must draw a line. Start telling the oligarchs Congress serves, that this is a bridge to far. Stop funding the wars, stop giving tax cuts to the oligarchs you serve, especially the military industrial complex and Wall Street and stop making laws that legalize price gouging and pillaging of the masses and Medicare. The oligarchs are not going to destroy Medicare to continue funding their for profit wars and the masses will take out a Congress that allows this to happen and not necessarily with elections.
A bipartisan corrupt Congress is on its last leg. People are not mad. They are murderous. They should be. Corrupt politicians deserve to be hung by a rope. You are either the one crucified or driving in the nails. Please, don’t push us further. Stop the corruption now.

Most sincerely,


cc: US Senate and House of Representatives
cc:Jeffrey Immelt Chairman and CEO General Electric, John E. Pepper, Jr. Chairman and CEO The Walt Disney Company, Robert A. "Bob" Iger CEO ABC,  Rupert Murdoch Chairman and CEO News Corporation, Roger Ailes President Fox News Channel, Sumner M. Redstone Chairman of the Board Viacom & CBS, Glenn A. Britt Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer Time Warner Cable, JEFFREY L. BEWKES Chairman of the Board and CEO, Time Warner Inc, Philip Kent Chairman and CEO
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The letter sent to the whole of Congress included this article “How Federal Trust Funds Really Work” that can be found here:
http://www.blogger.com/lettertocongress/How%20Federal%20Trust%20Funds%20Really%20Work_files/How%20Federal%20Trust%20Funds%20Really%20Work.htmOther References:  1) http://asourparentsage.net/2011/05/28/medicare-trust-fund-projections-what-it-all-means-to-me/ 2) Let the Compromise Show Begin http://ourrighttoknow.blogspot.com/2011/04/let-compromise-show-begin.html 3) Stealing from Social Security to Pay for Wars and Bailouts by Paul Craig Roberts http://www.vdare.com/roberts/110309_social_security.htm%204 4) THE REVIVAL OF THE PROPAGANDA STATE: US Propaganda at Home and Abroad since 9/11 by Nancy Snow and Philip M. Taylor http://www.sagepub.com/mcquail6/Online%20readings/19f%20Snow%20et%20al.pdf

1 comment:

  1. Some very good points. I especially like the references to big pharma and how they work the system for bigger profits. I wrote a piece a while back on the 'coupon' system... since you're in the field read it and tell me what you think?

    ReplyDelete