How We Got the Worst Health Care System Mountains of Money Can Buy

How We Got the Worst Health Care System Mountains of Money Can BuyBy Jeremy Brecher and Tim Costello and Brendan Smith, TruthOut.org
Posted on December 16, 2008, Printed on December 16, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/113112/

As Americans respond to President-elect Barack Obama's call for town hall meetings on reform of the American health care system, an understanding of how that system came to be the way it is can be crucial for figuring out how to fix it. The American health care system is unique because, for most of us, it is tied to our jobs rather than to our government. For many Americans, the system seems natural, but few know that it originated not as a well-thought-out plan to provide for Americans' health, but as a way to circumvent a quirk in wartime wage regulations that had nothing to do with health.

As far back as the 1920s, a few big employers had offered health insurance plans to some of their workers. But only a few: By 1935, only about 2 million people were covered by private health insurance, and on the eve of World War II, there were only 48 job-based health plans in the entire country.

The rise of unions in the 1930s and 1940s led to the first great expansion of health care for Americans. But ironically, it did not produce a national plan providing health care to all, like those in virtually all other developed countries. Instead, the special conditions of World War II produced the system of job-based health benefits we know today.

In 1942, the United States set up a National War Labor Board. It had the power to set a cap on all wage increases. But it let employers circumvent the cap by offering "fringe benefits" -- notably, health insurance. The fringe benefits created a huge tax subsidy; they were treated as tax-deductible expenses for corporations, but not as taxable income for workers.

The result was revolutionary. Companies and unions quickly negotiated new health insurance plans. Some were run by Blue Cross, Blue Shield and private insurance companies. Others were "Taft-Hartley funds," run jointly by management and unions. By 1950, half of all companies with fewer than 250 workers and two-thirds of all companies with more than 250 workers offered health insurance of one kind or another. By 1965, nearly three-quarters of the population was covered by some kind of private health insurance.

This private, job-based insurance covered millions of workers who had never had health care insurance before. But this victory also set patterns that are responsible for many of the problems the health care system faces today.

Because this private system was tied to employment, millions of people outside the workforce were without coverage. Those most likely to be covered were salaried or unionized white men in Northern industrial states. Two-thirds of those with incomes under $2,000 a year were not covered, nor were nearly half of nonwhites and those over 65 years old.

Employer-based plans tied workers to their jobs -- something that benefited employers but not workers or the economy as a whole. The quality of the coverage was spotty -- some plans were excellent, others completely inadequate. Doctors accepted this revolution because it didn't challenge their power; but, as a result, the system provided no public control over medical costs.

This revolution had a subtle political effect as well. By giving much of the workforce health benefits, it reduced the incentive for them to pursue a system of universal care. And it gave unions a stake in the private, employer-based health care system. One opponent of publicly financed health care said the greatest bulwark against the socialization of medicine was furthering the progress already made by voluntary health insurance plans.

Since then, many layers have been laid on top of employer-based health care. Medicare and Medicaid provided government-funded health insurance for the elderly and impoverished. The "managed care revolution" led to the takeover of 90 percent of employer-based health care by HMOs, most of them driven by profit rather than health concerns. But most people continue to get their health care through their employer.

Many of the problems of American health care grow out of this history. The system is so complex that even experts -- let alone ordinary people trying to find care for themselves and their loved ones -- are unable to fully understand it. The system spends one-third of its cost on paperwork, waste and profit over and above the cost of actually providing health care. Yet, nearly one-third of Americans are without health insurance over the course of a year. In all other developed countries, more than 85 percent of citizens have health coverage under public programs. The American health care system is full of inequalities: People who work for one company may have high-quality insurance, while those who work for a similar company have none.

All of these problems are due at least in part to an employer-based system, the original intent of which was not to provide quality health care to all, but to circumvent wartime wage regulations. As we begin to debate how to reform health care, we should keep in mind that the American health care system was not created to express American values or to meet Americans' health care needs. And knowing that, we should not be afraid to change the system if we can come up with a better one.

This piece is excerpted from "Doctor Wall Street: How the American Health Care System Got So Sick," from a popular pamphlet on the history of the American health care system available for free download at http://laborstrategies.blogs.com/DoctorWallStreet.pdf


Tim Costello, Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith are the co-founders of Global Labor Strategies, a resource center providing research and analysis on globalization, trade and labor issues.

© 2008 TruthOut.org All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/113112/

A few good MEN

"Now, some may ask how, at this moment of economic challenge, we can afford to invest in reforming our health care system. Well, I ask a different question – I ask how we can afford not to." [Barack Obama, today.]

On the occasion of Barack Obama's rollout of his health policy team, and given that, according to a couple of pieces of paper I have around here somewhere, I'm a doctor, this seems a good time to spout off -- yet again -- on the state of health care in the US. What it really boils down to is this: we need to reduce cost and raise quality. As long as the discussion is only about paperwork, ie, single payer vs current insurers, electronic vs paper records; and as long as the only real efforts to control costs are in reducing payments to providers, we'll be getting nowhere. As usual.

I've written about why I favor single-payer, and have acknowledged that among physicians I'm in a distinct minority. I've said pretty much all I know about that aspect of it. Moreover: as controversial as it is, it's really only nibbling around the edges. Solutions --REAL solutions -- will come from fundamentally changing the nature of care itself, and how we provide it. And if you think addressing insurance is complicated and daunting, you ain't seen nothin'

yet!......................................read the rest here

The HMO Death Watch 2 - How Shall We Regard Medicare Advantage?
December 12th, 2008 by DrRich

DrRich has never really understood the government’s rationale for funding Medicare Advantage.

Being a Milton Friedman capitalist, DrRich is all in favor of having plenty of robust, profit-seeking entities knocking about within the American economy, even within the healthcare sector of the economy. In principle, he is even in favor of giving for-profit health insurance companies a chance to prove that they can deliver quality healthcare with greater efficiency and better outcomes than certain non-profit entities, such as, say, the government. If the insurance companies can give us good healthcare at lower cost,

...............................read more here

NYT reports more Pharma scams...breast cancer propaganda

These so called scientific studies and expert articles are being controlled by the drug companies.....it is wide spread and includes lead Harvard doctors(Biederman), NPR radio show hosts...now drug make Wyeth....it goes on and on. The level of crap that we are bombarded with from drud TV ads to our confused family doctors is obscene. More than ever you must be pro-active to protect your family...especially since the FDA is caught up in this growing scandal. Here is a good place to start...go there after you read the TIMES article. Citizens for Health

Wyeth, the pharmaceutical company, paid ghostwriters to produce medical journal articles favorable to its female hormone replacement therapy Prempro, according to Congressional letters seeking more information about the company’s involvement in medical ghostwriting. At least one article was published even after a federal study found the drug raised the risk of breast cancer.

Read more here

How to cure cancer??

Full articleScientists tell us that if we give our bodies the nutrition, water, sunlight, exercise and rest they’re designed to use, they should be good for 150 years. We’re only averaging half that, so we’re really screwing up. Most of us are screwing up on all five requirements.

How often do you sleep for eight hours, and in total darkness and quiet?

How often to you get out for at least a couple miles of fast walking?

Is it a news flash to you that your skin and eyes need to be exposed to the sun...and not through your car windows?

There’s no way you’re drinking the six to eight glasses of pure water every day that your body needs. Nutrition is where we are really doing a job on our bodies. We happily stuff in poisons like sugar, alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, aspartame, and, by far the most insidious, cooked food.





When our body design was firmed up we were eating raw food. And that includes meat. I learned about that when I read Dr. Bruno Comby´s Maximize Immunity . He points out that in dog and cat research, those fed cooked food only lived about half as long as those eating raw food. Not being stupid, Dr. Comby started putting his patients on raw food diets...and curing them of cancer, AIDS, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and so on, He could find NO incurable illnesses.

Then I heard Dr. Lorraine Day on the radio explaining that she was days from death from cancer when she changed to raw food and totally cured herself. She, too, now says, "There are NO incurable illnesses." You can read all about it, plus many details, in my Secret Guide to Health.

Once you change over to a raw food diet, drink enough pure water, exercise out in the sun, and get enough sleep, any illness you have, no matter how supposedly incurable, will go away and you’ll never get sick again. The gift of health. There is no greater gift.





The downside is that if we can start convincing others to go raw, we could put the pharmaceutical industry out of business, and need doctors and hospitals mainly for emergencies. You see, medical schools don’t teach doctors about what makes us sick, only how to treat the symptoms. Oh, check Dr. Mercola, too. He’s eating 90% raw now.

If a solar flare, pole shift, a few nukes lobbed at us, or terrorists take down the power grid, its lights out. The gas pumps will stop working, and so will cars and trucks...and our food supply will stop. That’s when you’re going to be thankful you’ve a garden growing your food.

And doing it organically, plus remineralizing it with rock dust. And it won’t hurt to have some solar and/or wind power to keep your fridge and freezer going.

Even more likely is a stock market crash, with bread lines and soup kitchens as millions of people are out of work and their families hungry.

I was only seven in 1929, but I still remember the panic. And that depression kept going until World War II pulled us out of it. Now, with nuclear weapons, we can’t do that again. Luckily, my dad was in the airline business, which was just getting started, so he did okay.

That’s how I happened to be a passenger on the first airline flight between Philadelphia and New York in 1928. Newark airport had a cinder landing strip and a terminal the size of a mobile home.

It’s your choice. You can continue to eat the standard American diet, with a 50% chance of giving yourself cancer, and find yourself unprepared when things crash. Remember, we’ve moved most of our manufacturing to Asia, so as a country we are not making many products.

We’re buying Japanese cars and electronics, and Chinese melamine...and everything else. We really can’t continue to make money as a country just by printing it. Maybe it’s time for you to invest in some gardening books and a whole bunch of non-GMO heritage seeds. I’d like to see our schools encourage the students to start gardens, and if the families don’t have any garden space, for the communities or schools to help the kids find some land within bicycling distance.

If the government crashes, there goes welfare, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, subsidies, bail-outs, a thousand or so earmarks, the war on drugs, the war on poverty, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and millions of government workers (I’m using the term workers loosely). The only main survivor will be Congress´ generous retirement plan for themselves.

Safe food to eat could be hard to find, with so much of America’s farmland now devoted to growing GMO corn to make alcohol and the rest to factory-feed beef. The mineral-depleted, chemical fertilizer-poisoned farms aren’t going to be able to raise edible cabbages and spinach for us. With the dollar defunct, we won’t be able import much food either. What a terrible time to live in a city!

On the other hand, I’m sure Obama will fix everything, so no real need to worry. We can keep eating burgers and fries, and budgeting $7,350 per household member for so-called health care per year.

Yeah, make it a diet cola with that.

Asthma Drugs Controversy

FDA Safety Scientists Warn About Deaths - 4 Asthma Drugs
The New York Times reports (below) "Two federal drug officials have concluded that asthma sufferers risk death if they continue to use four hugely popular asthma drugs - Advair, Symbicort, Serevent and Foradil...."Sudden deaths among asthmatics still clutching their inhalers have fed the debate." Full article here

NEW YORK TIMES SAYS...
By GARDINER HARRIS
Published: December 5, 2008

WASHINGTON — Two federal drug officials have concluded that asthma sufferers risk death if they continue to use four hugely popular asthma drugs — Advair, Symbicort, Serevent and Foradil. But the officials’ views are not universally shared within the government.

The two officials, who work in the safety division of the Food and Drug Administration, wrote in an assessment on the agency’s Web site on Friday that asthma sufferers of all ages should no longer take the medicines. A third drug-safety official concluded that Advair and Symbicort could be used by adults but that all four drugs should no longer be used by people age 17 and under.

Dr. Badrul A. Chowdhury, director of the division of pulmonary and allergy products at the agency, cautioned in his own assessment that the risk of death associated with the drugs was small and that banning their use “would be an extreme approach” that could lead asthmatics to rely on other risky medications.

Once unheard of, public disagreements among agency experts have occurred on occasion in recent years. The agency is convening a committee of experts on Wednesday and Thursday to sort out the disagreement, which has divided not only the F.D.A. but also clinicians and experts for more than a decade.

Sudden deaths among asthmatics still clutching their inhalers have fed the debate. But trying to determine whether the deaths were caused by patients’ breathing problems or the inhalers has proved difficult.

The stakes for drug makers are high. Advair sales last year were $6.9 billion and may approach $8 billion this year, making the medication GlaxoSmithKline’s biggest seller and one of the biggest-selling drugs in the world. Glaxo also sells Serevent, which had $538 million in sales last year

................more at NY Times

Top Five Ways to Avoid GMOs in Your Food
by Dr. Gregory Damato, Ph.D., citizen journalist
See all articles by this author
Email this author


(NaturalNews) Recent polls across the world have consistently shown that, if they had a choice, 90% of people would actively seek to avoid GMOs (genetically modified organisms) in their food. The large multinational corporations of the world have gone through extensive measures to ensure the citizens of most nations have no possible way of knowing whether the food they and their children are eating contain contaminants of GMOs. The labelling of GMOs on the packaging of any foods in the US for example, is illegal. For example, if a company like Kellogs decided to include a full disclosure label on their cereal box that stated, "contains genetically modified corn" they could be sued by the manufacturer and then face possible prison time.

This is a very important issue because the democratic process of many nations has been surreptitiously supplanted by the corporatocracy of the seed company juggernauts. America has one of the highest levels of GMOs in their food chain in the western world with up to 85% of its pre-packaged and processed foods coming from genetic engineering. The people have never asked for GMOs- but got them anyway. The people then asked that they be properly labeled so they could avoid them- they were ignored. Therefore, seeing how our health freedom and well-being is consistently under attack from large multi-national corporations only seeking to increase profits at the expense of our health, what are we to do?

What we can do is simply try to avoid the GMO contaminants altogether and be extremely vigilant of how we spend our money and which companies we are choosing to support. Here are five simple and effective ways to decrease your contact with untested, toxic and dangerous GMOs.

1.) Buy Locally Produced Food

For now, GMOs are only used by large multinational corporations who buy direct from large farms. Produce from local mom and pop farmers have yet to become genetically modified. Purchasing locally grown food supports your local farmers and your health. Not to worry about GMO tomatoes and potatoes as they have all been pulled from the market.

2.) Buy Organically Grown Food

For now, the organic certification process is a relatively safe bet to ensure your food is free of GMOs, although this may not be the case in the future. Help support global sustainability by purchasing certified organically grown food.

3.) Avoid the Top Four GMO Crops of Soy, Corn, Canola and Cottonseed

This is a bit tricky as most blended oils in North America contain canola and cottonseed. Whenever you go out to dinner and receive anything fried, you are most likely consuming GMOs from the oil, not to mention transfat. A way around this would be to purchase 100% extra virgin olive oil, but be sure to avoid the term olive oil as most of it is blended with some GMO cottonseed or canola. Unless it specifically states "Non-GMO" or some derivation on the label, it most likely contains GMOs.

Likewise, any time you go you consume corn chips, tacos or soy milk, you are eating GMOs, again unless it specifically states Non-GMO or is organic.

4.) Avoid Artificial Additives and Sweeteners

Most of use are aware of the dangers behind the artificial sweetener and excitotoxin, aspartame (known as preservative E951), but may not be aware that it is created using genetic modification. Even the majority of vitamin C (asorbic Acid) and many B vitamins have been created via genetic modification. A Japanese company was forced to pull GMO L-Tryptophan off the market in 1989 after thousands of people became severely ill with many developing an extremely rare blood disorder called, Esinophilia-Myalgia Syndrome (EMS), although the FDA never publicly mentioned that GMO contamination was the true cause of the recall.

5.) Look For the Non-GMO Label

This includes all animals used for food because most are typically fed GMO feed. If it does not state Non-GMO on the label, then email the manufacturer and ask if they use GMO feed. It is best to attempt to contact all of the manufacturers of the foods you generally eat on a daily or even weekly basis and determine whether GMOs ingredients are utilized in the food. You have a fundamental right to know whether the foods you are consuming have been contaminated with GMOs. When in doubt always look for the Non-GMO label, and unfortunately assume that it has been genetically modified unless the opposite have been explicitly stated.

More.....

Real Doctor criticizes health professionals

I couldn't help but respond to a post in a blog I was reading....here is a snippet of this guys critique (source)

"One of the worst types of drivel is naturopathy. This "specialty" advertises itself as "medicine-plus", but really it's "healing-minus": minus the evidence, minus the training, minus intelligent thought."

Sounds harsh...but he goes on.......

..."First, like all fake doctors, this place has lots of testimonials in place of real evidence. I don't list testimonials at my office. It's tacky, and it doesn't give a measure of success in keeping people healthy. All it measures is how much someone liked a doctor as a person."

Well this "real" doc. is afraid to use his name in his rants about Naturopaths, but if you are so inclined...you can email him at palmd@whitecoatunderground.com

The link to this article is..here go read it and leave your own comment...I did! Here is what I said....

....."You sound threatened...!! We just lost our 9 year old to cancer at Seattle children's...what an education! after his death our Harvard educated doctor and others told us they knew he would die!! and that "they wanted us to have hope from the chemo and other treatment they provided". well that was a change from what they were saying during treatment...treatment that was essentially anything that came from a pharmaceutical company.
This selling us hope at a very high price is what the establishment is going after homeopathic and natural cure companies for!! shouldn't I be able to choose the type of hope..false or real that I want.
until you wake up and and open up to alternatives and integrate progressive approaches in your practice, you are only doing your patients and yourself harm. Yes, the problem is systemic and there are no easy answers...but clearly bashing as you say "well intentioned professionals" only discredits you!"

Obama appointees in question...Daschle?

I read an article in one of my favorite sites,Judicial Watch that was very critical of Obamas's pick of Daschle for Head of the Health and Human Services. The letter by Tom finton outlines how Obama has broken his campaign promise....

..."At issue is Mr. Daschle's work since leaving the Senate four years ago as a board member of the Mayo Clinic and a highly paid adviser to health care clients at the law and lobbying firm Alston & Bird.
In a detailed list of campaign promises, Mr. Obama pledged that "no political appointees in an Obama administration will be permitted to work on regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years."

And then there is his wife...

..."Of course, in addition to Daschle's personal conflicts of interest, there is also the matter of his wife, Linda Daschle, who has been a lobbyist for many years."

SOURCE
This is concerning and worth watching..especially for health care advocates and reformers.

On the flip side, David Kirby a respected author made some important points in his article on the Huffington Post concerning daschle and his record.

"By nominating Tom Daschle to head up the Department, President Elect Obama has selected a man who has demonstrated an unflinching willingness to question vaccine safety, and to fight for the rights of those people who believe they have been, or may be, seriously injured by certain vaccinations."

Daschle and Lieberman fought Dick Armey when he slipped a rider into the Homeland security bill at the last minute that protected drug companies and severely limited the rights of citizens injured.
Kirby also says

..."The military has reported that up to 2% of all military service members may have received debilitating injuries from vaccines they were given. That could mean upwards of 48,000 men and women, some of them likely wounded by the same anthrax vaccine that Senator Daschle was trying to kill.

Again, I am sure that Senator Daschle is not anti-vaccine, and I have no idea what his views are on the vaccine-autism debate today.

But I do know that, six years ago, he said that "mercury-based vaccine preservatives actually have caused autism in children." And I know that he tried to stop production of a vaccine that he felt was hurting far too many people.

Senator Baucus from Montana has already unveiled a plan on health care reform. The key issues are expanded medicaid and medicare, and requiring employers to pay for benefits.

This is gonna be ugly! We will see what it means for Monatnans