Of Pearls and Pig Diarrhea

Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus

Have you heard of this?  It's spread throughout the mid-west "hog belt" - vast, factories for hog breeding, fattening, and slaughtering - they actually call it "hog confinement operations" or some such thing.  Apparently it affects piglets, and is said not to provide any "health hazard," but decimates herds and profits...  Yet, the price of live hogs is (and has always been, for decades) about 50 cents a pound.  And they are drugged to the gills with all sort of antibiotics, hormones, etc.  In many counties, their by-products are the single largest source of point pollution, even with lagoons, cesspools, etc. which often leak or overflow.  It isn't even fit to be spread on the land as fertilizer.  

If there's any issue I would want to follow, it's the negative consequences of swine confinement operations in Montana.  The Hutterites are some of the biggest producers (along with ducks, turkeys, chickens, etc.), but they probably do it a little more humanely and cleanly.  Unfortunately, they're part of that larger corporate food chain, and often swindled by the agri-biz con artists.  I've urged people to work with them on this, and I think AERO and some others have done so.  They do produce healthier food in most cases, and most importantly, it's local, thus avoiding wasting more energy in bulk transport over thousands of miles.

Anyway, when this story appeared on the Noon News today (not the infomercial Northern Ag Broadcasting segment, but in the main newscast), I was astonished.  Apparently, it's been happening since last April, and a law passed last year actually prevents the Montana Department of Agriculture from releasing the location of the outbreak!  [Go for it, public interest lawyers.]  I follow most of the Montana press and media fairly closely, and this was absolutely the first I'd heard of it.  

Barber, barber, shave a pig.
How many hairs
to make a wig?
Four and twenty
should be enough
 nd give the poor barber 
a pinch of snuff." 

- nursery rhyme  

Right after the pork story, there was a story on state crop insurance, and the massive losses last year because of climate change (although they certainly didn't mention climate change as the cause - that would probably be grounds for immediate firing at MTN news).  

Here is another case where the word "insurance" is totally corrupted to mean "corporate welfare".  Real insurance is risk-pooling.  It's a very good - even necessary - strategy for a farmer if being hailed out (flooded, wind erosion, or whatever) would put you out of business.  Since the chances of a major loss are only maybe 5% (one year out of 20 equivalent), then an insurance company can take the 5% each year, and in effect, capitalize it so that in the 10-year average before a claim is made, it can invest the money and make a handsome profit.  That is how insurance companies came to dominate the economy.  

When hail insurance was strictly private, I believe they charged about 10% of  the value insured , but many were "mutual" insurance companies, too - real co-ops where the profits stayed with the insured.  It's  hard  to tell, but from this report, the state hail insurance fund may be just that - and not relying on taxpayers to subsidize risk.  But that is not usually the case, or what I am objecting to, here.  

"Health insurance" has nothing to do with real insurance or risk-sharing.  Health care isn't a "risk" - it's a public service, and perhaps the most vital one.  By turning this into someone's "profit center," the whole idea of insurance (and medicine,  itself) is violated.  Insurance is what  people buy to protect themselves or their heirs  from loss.  The illness is a loss, which happens whether we are insured, or not. And the monetary compensation goes, not to you, who suffer the accident or illness, but to the "health insurance" racket, and the predatory, criminal "medical industry" riddled with every kind of graft and fraud - even from its most "respectable" elements - the senior doctors, hospitals and established clinics.  

You can almost depend on primary care to prescribe extra tests, X-rays, etc. to "protect themselves from law-suits," they might tell you (at your, the patient's, expense).  Or, in my case, recently, "because I  am a smoker" (which I will never admit to, again).  Often, they have a financial interest in the local lab or diagnostic center, for which "services" they often charge from 4-10 times an actual competitive, cost-based price.  The same is true for "patent medicines" - prescriptions, which are monopoly products.  They charge whatever they can get to maximize revenues and profits. 

Even when the generics come out, major pharmacies (like Target, in a recent "60 Minutes" segment) still continue to bill at whatever price they think they can get, and "rely" on customers to challenge their price with competing stores.   Target is happy to match a lower price shown to them, but you have to make a point of asking, and most people just assume they (or their "coverage") are being charged a fair price, which in fact hardly ever happens.  

Thus, our present health care system is often involved in "cultivating illness" just as agribiz corporations "farm" the government (or taxpayers-consumers) rather than the soil.  Just listen to the ag-promotion shows - even on public television, from most Land Grant colleges, anyway.  Monsanto is off the table (or rather, just assumed to be a normal, public-spirited business), along with factory farming in general. Our station ran Food Inc. all of once, I think, and it was a year or more delayed.   And yet, all the rest of the world is most concerned, and blocking US food imports at every turn - the main reason for the TPP and other "free trade" agreements, incidentally, and why Baucus and Tester support it.  GMO's and Monsanto, itself, have been completely banned in several countries, and the evidence is mounting that this is the only way to "fix" this world's worst corporation.

By making hail insurance or the ACA a mandatory federal program, and calling it "insurance," everyone is defrauded.  It isn't insurance; it's corporate welfare.  Instead of government looking out for the well-being of the people, it enables corporate criminals to exploit them -  even mandating and fining people for not participating (How did this ever stand?).  Instead (and in both case, above), the government provides nothing for the people - least of all, healthy food produced locally and sustainably to maximize health, wealth, and good government.  

Surely this is one of the most perfect extortion rackets ever imagined. Even though most people can easily be shown that we are paying at least twice as much for healthcare as any other country (with taxpayers already providing half the money) with a system that ranks 23rd in the world, or some such thing - behind many "developing" or "emerging market" countries - they seem to think that they are obligated by some sort of coercion of social expectations to partake of it.

This is Max Baucus's real legacy - subsidizing (and even making compulsory!  No shame!) private, profit-making insurance companies, and forcing every citizen to buy their fraudulent policies, whether or not we want or need one.   As Senate Finance Committee Chair, he was also criminally responsible for Medicare Part D  (some $50 billion/year more to the corporate drug cartels), most of the Bankster bailouts (in cahoots with his buddies at Goldman, Sachs and the FED) which many place at $20 trillion or more exposure of US taxpayers to these racketeers.   

Of course he was forced to do it, manipulated, bribed, threatened, blackmailed, and otherwise made to sell out Montana and the rest of the country - not to say the planet.  We can't hold him accountable because he is a "no-account" - he "counts no costs", as Atticus Finch says in "To Kill a Mockingbird."  He's like the bag-man.  He uses the power we have given him, with our votes and recognition, to enrich some gangsters.  It's a familiar story, and as long as we continue to vote for such people, that is what we will get.  

THAT is the real flaw in "democratic" government - the  more power that is concentrated in a few hands (or a "strong central government" with permanent wars and domestic police state), the more easily it can be corrupted and made to serve evil purposes.

Never forget - we spend more on weapons, prisons, and the police state apparatus than most other countries, combined.  (NSA, Homeland Security, CIA, FBI, etc.  Only the Secret Service (and regular military, as well as state militias) is constitutional, and their powers are strictly limited).   We must hold those "Representatives" and "Senators" responsible for the many calamities we face.  They were informed, warned, cajoled, and pleaded to all the way.  

And what have they advocated and supported with their (our) sacred votes?  More military spending, more wars, more attacks on civilians and allied countries.  More drugs, more corporate domination of the world.  More surveillance, more prisons, more torture and assassinations.  

Fewer independent farmers.  No independent thinking or media.  ("Stamp  it out, before it gets established.")  The reduction of education and health-care standards to the lowest in the world among "developed" countries, while paying far more than any other country.  Just look at us.  And thank the Bushes, Baucus's, and other "old money" and "noblesse oblige," as well as the professional crooks and liars who make it all possible.  The academics, the planners, the strategists, the media stars ("presstitutes, " as Paul Craig Roberts says - I'll stick with "mediawhores"), even the Holy Gurus who rarely say anything wrong, but whose lives and actions are the worst possible example for people wanting to be sane, free, and independent thinkers in an independent economy and culture.    
It's the Twilight of the Wine God!  Time to sober up. I don't think the Chinese will be fooled.

The Health Insurance Racket

I wrote the following essay over the past several days, under the title of "The Fallacy of Health Insurance." Ralph Nader had an article in today's Counterpunch called "The Healthcare Racket" which might make many of the same points- I haven't read it yet, but you can read it here:


http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/02/02/the-health-care-racket/


-greateco




The Fallacy of "Health Insurance"


By Paul Stephens


"Insurance" is probably one of the most mis-used and falsely-advertised products or service in our current "service economy." What, exactly is "insurance?" We know what property and casualty insurance are. You pay so much a year, or per voyage, or other period of time, and this "protects" you from calamitous losses - of either your property or your life. If you have a family and up-scale lifestyle, you might want to bet that you could die prematurely, and your family would thereby "win" this bet by collecting the insurance money. That's about as far as the business concept of "insurance" really goes.


What, then, about "Health Insurance?" Apparently, nearly all of our leading political and business people seem to believe in and support this concept, without really knowing what "insurance" is, or what it can and cannot do.


I've maintained for at least 20 years - probably more like 40 - that "Health insurance" is a racket and a fraud, akin to the Mafia "protection rackets" and other forms of organized extortion.


And it should be obvious why this is so. We're not "insuring" our health when we buy health insurance. Instead, we are protecting our assets from confiscation by medical providers and their collection agencies. And even if we don't have any assets, we might want some form of "insurance" now, simply to guarantee access to medical services. Most providers require proof of insurance or other means of payment before they will treat us - something which was unthinkable even 30 years ago.


This, of course, is the "business model" which hospitals and clinics use. Somehow, they have gone from being a public service to the most predatory and exploitative kind of business - speaking technically, a "coercive monopoly" which prevents using alternatives (drug laws, medical licensing and accreditation laws) while maximizing its own revenues with pricing which has little or nothing to do with real costs, but everything to do with price discrimination and making sure that such payments (revenues) are maximized for the providers.


Yet, somehow, that never gets mentioned! We all know cases from our families and friends, if not ourselves, where they're in the hospital for a few days and come out with a bill so astronomical that we should laugh at it. I'm talking, now, like $20,000 per DAY for a bout of pneumonia or a heart by-pass surgery, with all the meds and dressings itemized at perhaps 10 times or more their real cost. If you're on Medicare, you'll get something like an 80% discount - that's all that Medicare will reimburse for this. "Good" private insurance might result in a two-thirds discount - the $100,000 bill will be paid by the insurer to the extent of $30,000 or so, with perhaps some deductibles or co-payments required to be paid out-of-pocket, or by "supplementary insurance."


If you're indigent, and on Medicaid, the "providers" might get reimbursed $10,000, but don't expect very good care. Still, that's close to the real "marginal cost" and thus "free market price" which all cash payers should be able to negotiate for, except that as a coercive monopoly, our present "non-profit" hospitals don't have to negotiate with anyone. And they have dozens of lawyers and other bill collectors to back them up. The independent physician or private clinic has always been willing to do some negotiating, but now that everyone is "covered" by something or other, they have no incentive to charge fair prices to ordinary people with working-class incomes.


So, where exactly does "insurance" or, especially, "Health Insurance" fit into this picture? Nowhere, obviously. You don't have property, so you don't need to insure it against fire, theft, or bill collectors, right? You don't have a cash income, so you don't need to "protect" your survivor's "rights" to it. (But your estate, if any, will be pillaged by the hospitals and doctors who provided your final health care - probably more than all the rest you spent in your entire life). So, you'd better have insurance or else dispose of your property ahead of time - even that can be traced and recovered (confiscated) under our present bankruptcy and inheritance laws, though.


Yes, you may need healthcare - the services of a physician, hospital facilities, drugs, dressings, crutches, wheel chairs, etc. Where do they come from? They've always been provided both publicly and privately. Doctors and nurses are trained to treat everyone, regardless of wealth or "ability to pay." You pay what you can, volunteer if you can't, trade work or other services, etc. Which all works fine in a free society with free markets and strong "family values" like church, community, being one's brothers' keepers, etc. We all help out, and help is there for us when we need it. The American Way.


In case you hadn't noticed, that's not what we have, now. We have a bureaucratic nightmare dominated by multi-billion-dollar corporations and executives who live under guard in gated communities. We live in a system of economic totalitarianism - call it "gangster capitalism" or whatever - and we must pay everything we have and always depend on the State and corporations to provide us with necessities - think of North Korea. That is what we have HERE and NOW.


I just listened to an hour of discussion on the Helena Public TV channel which covers the interim legislative committees' business. With the "Affordable Care" bill, insurance rates are spiking, as everyone knew they would (insurance companies now have to cover pre-existing conditions and other higher-risk groups), and some of the groups which are being forced to buy the resulting defective products are revolting. College students, for example, must either have proof of health insurance, or buy the university system policy for some $840/semester - which they assure us is a bargain rate - far below "the market price."


But if you're forced to buy it, there is no market price. How YOU value it, as a customer, may be on the order of $20, or nothing at all, since you will still have to pay out of pocket up to some deductible, as well as co-payments, and the cap for "benefits" under this policy is now $50,000, whereas last year, it was $200,000. So, basically, the insurance is totally worthless to the student, but very valuable to the local medical establishment, which is sure to get paid off in case of a car wreck, skiing accident, or whatever.


In effect, the $840/semester is an added tuition fee or even a tax from the student's point of view. And it will no doubt result in a significant number of students dropping out or taking less than 4 credits per semester (which exempts one from the requirement). Someone, it may have been Ms Stearns, the Commissioner for Higher Education, pointed out that they presently have a "soft enforcement" policy for this requirement. Thus, just about anyone could "opt out" pleading poverty or whatever. So, that's why this policy hasn't done a lot of damage already. But never fear: the discussion thereafter included "tightening" up the "enforcement" of this policy, as though that were a "solution."
One used to only read about stuff like this in Orwell or Kafka. We laughed at the idea that America could ever be like this. Well, it is, and hardly anyone is laughing about it, now.


And of course we are hearing the same sorts of promises from the State Auditor candidates, whose business it is to regulate insurance (but not medical services) in the state. Indeed, one wonders who, if anyone, regulates the medical business at all! Obviously, they are guilty of numerous business practices which, in any other field, would be illegal and closely monitored by the Attorney General, if no one else, as part of the Consumer Protection bureaucracy.