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Friday, January 3, 2003 |
QUOTE OF THE DAY
"To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth."
- - Voltaire
RHINO HERE:
Further on the topics of Tennessee's Senator Frist and the nation's health care system, I direct your attention to 2 articles today.
The 1st comes again from FTCR (Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights) & the Institute for a Civil Society.
http://www.consumerwatchdog.org
http://www.civilsocietyinstitute.org
After citing examples of how corporate greed is destroying the health care system, it spells out a clear vision of a public-utility model health care system which would regulate profiteering to achieve universal coverage & cost-efficiency. It would keep the private delivery system but install strict public control of rates, like the Public Utility Commissions.
The 2nd article is by the ever brilliant high school teacher, William Rivers Pitt, author of "War On Iraq" (with Scott Ritter). After a quick summary of how many U.S. corporations made the big bucks arming Iraq under the Reagan Bush watches, and after describing Senator Frist's role in facilitating corporations & the government's collusion "to keep average Americans from being able to call to account those who poisoned children during 40 years of profitable manufacture of what appears to have been a neurological poison", Mr. Pitt then makes an evocative challenge to each of his readers.
8:12:48 AM 
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by Jerry Flanagan, & Frank Smith, S.F. Chronicle, Thursday, January 2, 2003
(excerpted from mid article)
...The answer to our crisis lies not with simply creating a product that everyone is required to buy. We must reformulate the health-care system, make services available to all who need them and place cost-efficiency requirements on every player.
Recent news reports showed yet another way that the state's HMOs are getting fat at the public expense. Kaiser, Health Net, California Physicians, Aetna and Blue Cross are sitting on more than $2.2 billion in excess cash reserves, called "tangible net equity," while instituting premium increases.
Rampant profiteering and creative accounting strategies leave employers, employees and consumers...with no recourse in the face of 30 percent to 40 percent premium increases. Unfortunately for us, California is not one of the 26 states that require health insurers to get "prior approval" from the state before raising rates. California can stop an unreasonable premium increase for our auto insurance, but not for the most precious possession -- our health....
SEE THE ARTICLE AT:
The Universal Approach
8:08:48 AM
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By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective, Wednesday 1 January 2003
(excerpted from mid article)
... Enter Bill Frist in the wake of disgraced Senator Trent Lott. Frist, formerly a surgeon, has been tapped to be the new Senate Majority Leader. On the eve of Lott's racist self-immolation, the Homeland Security Bill made its way through Congress. Originally a Democratic concept, the legislation to create a Homeland Security Department to defend the nation against terrorism was graced with a number of strange amendments.
Oddest among them was an amendment protecting the pharmaceutical corporate giant Eli Lilly from any and all lawsuits pertaining to their manufacture of thimersol, a mercury-based preservative for childhood vaccines produced by Lilly for 40 years that has been connected to the development of autism in children. Thousands of families seeking redress for the neurological disorders their children suffer have been sent packing, because Lilly has a contract with the U.S. government to provide vaccines against biological weapons. One hopes thimersol is not included in the processing this time around.
Early in 2002, Bill Frist tried to get protection for Eli Lilly from these suits attached to legislation that would increase the availability of vaccines to average Americans, but this attempt was thwarted by Senator Edward Kennedy. The Homeland Security legislation mysteriously found itself amended to carry the Lilly litigation protections, written in language virtually identical to Frist's original attempt. The bill passed, and no one in Washington DC is willing to take responsibility for it. Frist, whose ties to the corporate healthcare industry are blood ties, whose family made its fortune through the massive Hospital Corporation of America HMO, who helped scuttle the Patient's Bill of Rights, whose book was promoted and distributed vigorously by Eli Lilly, denies all knowledge.
The White House likewise denies any knowledge of the author/sponsor of the Lilly amendment. This stretches belief, considering the ties the Bush administration has to the pharmaceutical giant. George Herbert Walker Bush sat on the Lilly Board of Directors during the late 1970s, appointed by the father of Bush Sr's. vice presidential candidate, Dan Quayle, who owned controlling interest in the corporation. Bush Sr. was personally ordered by the Supreme Court to stop lobbying the IRS on behalf of Lilly for tax breaks in 1982. The Bush family has been substantially invested in Eli Lilly stock for years. Enter Bill Frist in the wake of disgraced Senator Trent Lott. Frist, formerly a surgeon, has been tapped to be the new Senate Majority Leader. On the eve of Lott's racist self-immolation, the Homeland Security Bill made its way through Congress. Originally a Democratic concept, the legislation to create a Homeland Security Department to defend the nation against terrorism was graced with a number of strange amendments...
THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IS AT:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/010103A.wrp.dead.htm
Reprinted under the Fair Use doctrine of international copyright law ( http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html ).
All copyrights belong to original publisher.
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8:01:50 AM
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