Push the Prez to fix Health Services NOW

by sidestepper Saturday, Jun. 06, 2009 at 8:02 AM

MoveOn.org has a petition on line that goes right to your representative...but you can create and write your own better version. Send it out now. To everyone and every govt official you can find. Make your thinking known. Make a change. Now !

Health Care is again returning to be more of the same FOR profitable ins. companies. Not for the USA public.
So ...write someone quick !

This is a letter written to my Congressional Representatives today. The Prez is not clearly moving in the directions he promised [so what's different about this one, huh??]

Moveon.org initiates some petitions with which I agree. This is one I chose to write my own words and express my own thoughts and strong feelings... If you too want to write any blog, newspaper, letter, AND your govt representatives, take off from here on your own or quote [please use " marks] for attribution and not plagiarize, tho you don't have to state where the source comes from this time]

here it is....

Dear MY-Representatives:

Please take our public citizen concerns in consideration when you vote.

We need to significantly change how health care is delivered in USA. We spend too much on end of life and guilt of family issues without concern for cost, which benefits the medical & health ins. industry more than any human beings who received excessive medical services.

Please start counting up how much it costs each of us for excessive lab tests [to cover malpractice and pay tort attorneys and cover costs of those who practice poorly ]and account for how much goes into for technology that is way beyond the reasonable and necessary for the medical condition as we have assumed [ like with financial debt and housing bubbles and toxic assets] that we "need" more when it is not cost effective nor actually helpful to better or good enough health.

Notice how much insurance companies & their affiliates are profiting from the premium /cost raises [every year over 6-12% so far, every year, way above the CPI too!] with easy excuses as to why they continually have increased annual fees and premiums for less and ineffective services...to pay their shareholders and accrue more $$$ holdings [to make them safe, not the saving the patients paying them ].

Be aware of how our health coverages have be paying for much 'middle managers /& clerks' bureaucrats and they are not-all-needed to provide good health services ....the corporations are cleverly covering-their-bottoms- paperwork-about- illegalities-unethicalities-siphoning -off-money-from-direct-treatment-funds... and the extra created organizations, the MCO red-taped bureaucracies that are not helping the patients or payees but covering the insurances instead. So much focus goes into their corporate workings instead of money utilized for direct treatments and interventions.

With managed care not being all it was suppose to "save" everyone, not just pay the corporations & agents thru profits and employments. Most medical providers did NOT want to move into managed care but were forced into being supervised by non-medical staffers in far away places who limited services, set reimbursement rates, required more and more malpractice insurance and made sure all negative responsibility was finally not theirs, but landed on the provider again.

And the MCO's have kept their hold over the medical field even tho it is not ever clear who benefits from these extra costs - certainly not the paying public or patients, maybe the practitioners who formed 'groups' to gain access to more per "captitation" [paid by number of patients in a group if or not they utilize services, hoping not to give away services if possible to profit more themselves].

"Most often, the physicians are paid on a basis of capitation, which in this context means a set amount for each enrolled person assigned to that physician or group of physicians, whether or not that person seeks care." [Wikipedia] A frustrating, delaying, stealing from us all system has become standard practice, to the dismay and disservice of patients and many medical professionals also.

Be sure to read the MoveOn.org petitions, as well, which focuses not on these specifics as much but may also show the multitudes that are concerned in different way that we are being - and have been for a long time now - pushed out of plain simple helpful medical care and into more and more fancy expensive "newest" technological and pharmaceutically-profitable maneuvers instead of given helpful & necessary direct treatment.

Some of the older fashioned healing [medine in many forms] versions did as well or better in many cases,than what we pay for so dearly now, tho not all. Ask anyone, including yourself please, how much your/their DEMAND for increased novelty, insisting on the latest, newest, fanciest,expensive treatments and services are expected, of course ! -

not that the basic help that is actually required has even been tried... but all the advertising is effectively believed, advertising that is done for upgrading, up-costing medical drugs & equipment and hospitals and such, all this is based mostly on FEAR OF DEATH & DYING.

And also families fear of being guilty of 'not doing enough" when they don't know how much they are actually paying indirectly for all that fake reassurance of their "caring". The patient suffering from excessive, short-lived if effective, painful and distressful treatments [costly too] is not the focus, the family guilt is. huh ? But often so.

All the FEAR MONGERING that is daily urgently stressed in our devoted media - focusing on any and all dangers anywhere - shown with great & exaggerated bloody pictures and each tear caught on millions of screens - all add to the desire & demand & then insistence for more and more Expensive medical aids - that so many hope will save them from suffering - to not be one of those that they see on the "news" .

Fear is definitely driving up our health costs along with all the paid advertising and public relations [costs are then included in our premiums and charges, of course, trickle down, it is called] all done to profit those who say they only insure the USA public.

And as 'good consumers' and fools, many have agreed that we "need" those "recommended by my doctor" tests or mis-directed treatments is so that all those expenses land back on those who pay - YOU, me, us passive consumers. Yes,it is we who fall prey to those business predators.

Insurance and health corporations are mostly not healers. They are "providers of services" but that means computer- paper-work, price-management, administrative, or all that claimed as extra 'needed' part of providing medicine or treatment. That also includes the advertising to us, the public, to doctors, to each other and the high costs of public relations to help those same corporation look good, that insurance be purchased and known, all that is included in the final 'health care costs' and premiums set for us. Huh? No wonder premiums are excessive and ridiculous.

And note what is not openly revealed: the increased selection of increasing our medical costs just because of who they chose to ally with to then contract for that increase their profits or businesses...instead of improving our actual services. And the corporations are also "lobbied" by their trade-favors-giving friends and profit-selected-alliances. So where can costs be cut ? It has long ago been obvious but also difficult to change.

Dont ask because the actual collusions and corruptions are well hidden, tho PUBLIC CITIZEN, CONSUMER REPORTS UNION, and some other watch groups are slowing leaking out some true stats and information. Search it out.

Share it with everyone you know, everywhere. We need to be our own public & relations.

The disease is in the system, more than in any patient. Question: how much can that entrenched system be changed ? Now.

It is time to open our eyes, minds and accounting practices to see what has been our mainline health care services and who gets the most out of it...not the ordinary citizen patient, not the burdened care-giving family...not the paying for high fees employer or employee...but whom ?????

yep, you already know and so do I.

Please make CHANGE OF MINDS and cost effective medical services a reality NOW

thank you