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.
Labor, Health Care, and the Corporate Media
Or, What Happened to Alternative Radio on Labor Day?
Can anyone explain to me WHY our health-care system, one of the vital systems of society, the state, the community, and/or the species, is somehow turned over to the profiteers and politicians of the "insurance industry", better called "the Health Insurance Protection Racket" or "Health Extortion, Inc."? Why do the media and all political candidates (except Greens and a few socialists) insist on keeping the discussion focused on "health insurance" and how to subsidize it, rather than "providing quality and appropriate health care for everyone."
I'm sorry. I just don't get it. Is there some RESPONSIBLE person in government, academia, or the media, who can actually make an argument why this should be happening? We've seen the discussions and the process totally subverted by people like Max Baucus, who is unashamedly and totally sold out to the corporate racketeers, even while he pretends to be a "Democrat."
They will not answer the questions; they will not listen to the experts in health care administration and policy; they will actively arrest and suppress the real advocates for free, universal medical services, or at least a system where everyone is included, with health care services being defined as a human right and the most fundamental function of good government.
We also need vigorous consumer protection laws so that no one can be made to pay inflated prices for unnecessary or inappropriate services -which some of us would claim is just about all that our present "health care system" provides. The irony of terminally-ill patients being treated for the last few weeks of their lives at costs which will more than liquidate a life-time's work and savings in their estates is not lost on us. But if these people are elderly or poor, they are "covered." Yet, the rest of us still have to pay for it, at the same fictional or vastly inflated prices.
The present system "rations" by means of income or ability to pay (or have someone else pay) for the treatment. But it also excludes millions from easy minor and preventive treatments which will save 10-fold what they cost. Instead of passing a whole ACA which pretends to correct these problems while actually making them worse (and more profitable for the medical, insurance, and Pharma monopolies), all they needed to do was provide all the basic health care services free, or at (real) cost, rather than shifting all the tremendous costs of a monstrous and unworkable system on to the taxpayers, insurance buyers, etc.
Remember, real insurance is by its very nature, gambling (and "discriminatory" according to risk or probability of loss). "Health insurance" isn't really insurance at all. It was originally intended only for the wealthy, or those who wanted to use it as an incentive to attract healthier employees by guaranteeing that they would not go broke if they were injured or made ill in the workplace or anywhere else. No one's health is being "insured," technically speaking. All that Health Insurance provides is a legally-enforceable guarantee that someone will receive health care from certain providers. There is no guarantee that anyone will stay healthy or be cured, which is the obvious sense that most people understand by "insurance."
In fact, you're insuring your property and estate against confiscation by the medical bill collectors (of which there are more than doctors). Even then, unless you have the most expensive policies, there will be co-payments or exemptions which will probably result in your paying more out of your own pocket than the services actually cost, in addition to having to pay for the original "insurance." A totally unworkable system unless enforced by the state and its legal and police power. No one would voluntarily pay for such a system, which costs at least 4 times more than the socialist alternative.
The idea that "insurance" (which was a very good deal for the healthy people who had it in those days) would cover all the health care costs of the country was never dreamed of, until some politicians decided to reframe "socialized medicine" (unpopular in the McCarthy era) by calling it "national health insurance," and fund it with a payroll tax. (Again, working people paying disproportionately to cover everyone else's health care expenses) So long as it remained free and consumer-driven, it worked. Most of the providers remained in private practice, working at public or non-profit hospitals and clinics, but regulated as to the price and quality standards they had to meet.
This is the so-called "Single Payer" system. It is not "socialized medicine," but a hybrid. Some people on the left still don't like that. They claim that "payment for service" (treatment) greatly expands the number of unnecessary or inappropriate treatments, and that is certainly the case, today. And that is why insurance companies rarely pay the inflated, false prices which people not covered by insurance (but with recoverable assets) are forced to pay - often through their estates. Still, the laws are continually being revised in favor of the medical collectors - in many states, medical bankruptcies aren't even permitted, and where they are, they're the single largest category for bankruptcy proceedings.
So, the first step is to re-define our terms:
It's not about "coverage" or being accounted for in some bureaucrat's ledgers. It's about anyone being able to walk (or be carried) into a health care facility, and being able to receive the best possible health care commensurate with their needs and resources available. And for those who are terminally ill, they won't have to sign away their homes and future income streams.
The lowest priority for a public health care system is those about to die. That's why we have hospice. That's why doctors use triage in emergency situations. It's simple economics. We must make the best use of the resources available - something "liberals" never seem to understand. We can no longer waste expensive treatments and services on those who cannot benefit from them.
And, conversely, the young, the working, and the HEALTHY need these services most of all - to keep them that way. So, call it "throwing grandma under the bus" or whatever - it's a necessary survival strategy in this case. Instead, the "insurance model" insists that the healthy continue to be forced to pay the unrealistic and unaccountable (and most expensive) services for those who are both poorest and sickest. If this is "socialized medicine" (and no one would honestly claim that it is), then it's no wonder that people don't want "government health care" - especially not those who are already on Veteran's, Indian, or other government-provided health care systems, right?
Instead, everyone is promised "good insurance" which covers all the costs of quality health care - something which is impossible for more than a small minority. It's the INSURANCE MODEL which is fundamentally wrong, and it's obviously a much worse disaster after being made compulsory. It's the difference between a numbers racket and a protection racket. You don't have to play the numbers, but it pays off well enough so that people like to play them (unlike the state lotteries designed to replace it, which are actually another tax on the poor and stupid.) That's like the original health insurance policies - you only want to pay for one if you're actually going to need that much health care, or somehow feel "safer" or "more secure" having it.
A protection racket, on the other hand, is pure extortion. It demands "Your money or your life" (or at least your knee-caps or your daughter's virginity). And that's exactly what our "health insurance" racket does, today. The ACA is like telling local storekeepers - 'Yeh, there's nothing we can do about the mob, but we'll help you pay your protection money if you're below a certain income level or number of employees." Seriously. Am I the only person in this universe who understands?
We need to start over. If we're going to spend taxpayer's money on health care, we'd better be damned sure it's being spent in the most cost-effective ways. We want to save the most lives with minimum suffering. We must re-dedicate ALL of our healthcare dollars and resources to actually providing health care, rather than paying off any number of wealthy racketeers - whether insurance extortionists (who make the Mafia look benign in comparison), drug pushers, and the thousands of other Iatrogenic Specialists in every area of our present health care system. (Iatrogenic = doctor-caused).
"We sicken 'em, you cure 'em". It's like a variation on the old undertaker joke - "You stab 'em, we slab 'em." We know this happens, and some (like the saintly Ivan Illich) actually claimed that the medical profession is the single greatest threat to public health. It certainly needs to purge itself of these tendencies. Instead, the "profiteers and monopolists" wing of the profession now rules unchallenged. It's only a matter of time until they completely eliminate any sort of natural remedies, holistic medicine, acupuncture, and homeopathy.
So far, we've stayed safe by NOT accepting (or being given) the same status for insurance payments or govt. programs as aliopathic medicine receives. No mystery - they write all the legislation, and have a monopoly on the very term "medicine" - something which we, along with the Blackfeet and other traditional belief systems, strongly contest. But the recent crackdown on medical cannabis indicates that they will not rest as long as there are profits to be made by eliminating the competition.
Let's put it in the Constitution. First, we have the right to self-medicate, and select and utilize any alternative methods and philosophies of medicine and health care. This is especially true of natural and traditional treatments which do not involved patents and high-tech equipment. Although there are many problems with that, too, which can be easily resolved in a nationalized, public health care system, we don't have to worry about that, here. Just recognize our right to treat ourselves, and use whatever we think best and appropriate in our treatments.
Occupational licensure is another related issue that needs to be addressed, but suffice to say that a license should not be used to create or enforce monopolies, or prevent people from using the products or services they think best, and at a fair price.
All government expenditures on health care should be spent in public clinics and hospitals, laboratories, etc. And all such facilities should be defined as "public" ("nationalized" or some operational equivalent). Those who don't use government funds are, of course, free to do whatever they like within the usual limits of common law.
If they are public or non-profit, there are no stockholders or other "owners" to reimburse. Non-profits with a legitimate history and policies may continue under present staffing, with only their rates and access policies having to conform to national or regional norms. For-profit medicine is over (at least insofar as it collects tax-payer money and enjoys other special privileges) and those companies engaged in it can sell their assets to the new system or its local components for whatever the market will allow, and their employees find an honest job where they are free to actually put the patients' well-being ahead of political and economic interests..
This is really the only answer left. Until we start talking straight about this issue, and listen to people who know what they're doing, things will only get worse.
