It never ceases to amaze me on a daily basis that our state reps and senators were willing to pass such a wasteful, harmful and punitive law and had the audacity to call it health care reform.

This non-reform is hurting far too many residents with regard to their financial stability, medical care and stress levels, yet these same reps and senators continue on their merry way ignoring the concerns and pleas of their constituents. The canned response is: It’s not perfect but we’re working on it.” To me, this means they were (and are) willing to play with lives, and it makes no never mind to any of them if people are being hurt while they experiment. I never gave them my permission to experiment on me.

When a bicycle manufacturer hires a designer to come up with a child’s bike, and the design is manufactured and mass marketed, although both the designer and manufacturer know that one of the wheels is going to fall off, this constitutes a lack of due diligence. Our MA legislature did not practice due diligence in the case of Ch. 58 and, in fact, could be accused of depraved indifference if they didn’t have immunity.

Today, and not for the first time, my state senator’s health care aide told me that MA will continue to implement this health care reform, it’s here to stay, and, in fact, they are working on Step 2 (S2526) which will address transparency of cost, gift bans, offering incentive to attract nurses and/or doctors to MA and one or two other items. (I don’t have it in front of me at this moment.)

So I guess the MA senate thinks we can tell the food market owner and heating oil man – hey, we’re waiting for S2526 to kick in so we’ll pay ya later OR gee whiz, what am I gonna do? I have a medical crisis and can’t find a doctor who will take Commonwealth Care patients. Guess I’ll have to wait and see if S2526 attracts any medical people to MA.

S2526 doesn’t begin to offer the immediate and necessary relief residents require and is merely political pandering in an effort to prop up a failing policy and keep up the charade of “success.”

Too many residents couldn’t afford the plans at the 2007 prices, much less the 2008 increases that kick in on July 1, particularly those for Commonwealth Care (300% FPL and below) which include doubling the copays which discourages care, thus, saving the state money. And many cannot afford to upgrade their coverage during 2008 to meet the state’s requirements under this law.

When do our elected state officials get real and realize that this MA freak show is hurting a lot of hard-working taxpayers and it’s going to get worse as living costs continue to skyrocket weekly while incomes remain stagnant? It’s also doing a heck of a job on the state’s coffers which were on shaky ground before this bloodsucker came along.

Deval Patrick could have done something to alleviate the stress, waste and hurt this law has and is causing by dropping the mandate, changing it to $1 per year or postponing it for 10 years, just to name a few ideas. But he considers it a success although he admits that it’s not good if it’s hurting people. (Cliff notes version but he DID say this on the March 13 NPR statewide call-in.) Alas, his political ambitions seem to be more important to him than the residents and small businesses in MA.

We deserve and have the right to quality, affordable, equitable health CARE, not a health INSURANCE mandate that was designed for the profits of the industry and not for the well-being of the people.

A group of dedicated professionals and grassroots MA residents have joined together with doctors, health care professionals and other citizens across this nation to educate Americans about the harmful effects and wastefulness of the individual health insurance mandate. Thus far, our efforts have borne fruit and, soon, as a nation, we will come together to stop such an assault on hard-working taxpayers here in MA and throughout this country.

In the meantime, please check out HR676, the viable solution to this country’s health care crisis:

http://www.phimg.org or http://www.healthcare-now.org

And to the MA powerbrokers, insurance companies and legislators: Our health is not your wealth.

http://media.bryant.edu/Mediasite/Viewer/Viewers/ViewerVideoOnly.aspx?mode=Default&peid=7705278a-cd9f-45d1-b696-37de8b309e70&pid=ac7bc554-8ed6-4326-9d73- ba8a65a473b6&playerType=WM7#

“The Nature of Health”
Presenter(s):Michael Fine
Date:2/25/2008
Time:3:00 PM EST
Length:1 Hour 27 Minutes 23 Seconds
Description:What Has Gone with Our Healthcare System and How We Can Fix It

Michael Fine has given us a convincing post about the central role of primary care in an effective health care system and I thank him for his efforts, both in writing this and in his work as a primary care doc.

In addition to universal primary care we also need–and must demand nothing less–than a program to guarantee comprehensive care for all, such as the reforms in HR 676 (see http://www.healthcare-now.org ). HR 676 will create a complete health care system in the U.S. modeled on Medicare-for-All that is much more cost effective, more clinically effective, and light-years more humane and civilized.

Everybody In, Nobody Out, comprehensive care for all is the only sensible and civilized way to do it, so that if the mammogram Dr. Fine orders for his patient shows a mass that turns out to be cancer, his patient will not be without access to tertiary care (acute care) and so she will not have to start holding bakesales or max out her credit cards to pay for her cancer treatment or worse, ie impoverish herself to become “eligible” for needed care, or die from a treatable illness due to inadequate “coverage”.

The profit-driven insurance and drug companies are killing many of us–20,000 a year per the non-partisan Inst. of Medicine–and maiming many more while getting away with the biggest rip-off ever seen in this country; the money that Americans pay to this industry is way more than to the Iraq war–just add up the insurance co. and drug co. profits year after year. It’s obscene.

“Joke” makes a sobering point about the fight we’re in the midst of to reclaim our healthcare system for ordinary people’s needs rather than for corporate and individual fortune-making. But it IS a winnable fight. Every other corporate democracy has such a system and each spends far less and gets far better health outcomes from it. Americans are increasingly demanding an overhaul of our broken system so that it is funded fairly and will guarantee care for all (not to be mixed up with passing a law that forces everyone to purchase expensive private insurance of questionable valuable, ie “The MA Plan”).

Improved American Medicare-for-All is an excellent model that hundreds of thousands of activists, including many elected officials, are already working toward; in MA 7 of our 10 congressional reps. have endorsed HR 676 and citizens have held 3 statewide events to educate others. Primary care is essential and it needs to be the central component of cost-effective, clinically effective, comprehensive quality healthcare for all. PBS did an excellent program on this May 9, 2008 “Nurses: Standing Tough on Health Care” that shows one reason why this fight IS winnable in our lifetime http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05092008/profile.html

A guy goes to heaven.

God says that he can ask 3 questions. So the guy asks, will there ever be world peace? God says, “in 6000 years men will realize that peace is better than war and put down their arms.” The guy asks, will men and women will ever get along, and God says, “in a million years, men and women will evolve to the point where there will be true joy between them.” For the final question, the guy asks, “Will we ever have a health care system that makes sense?” God thinks for a while, then says, “Yes, but not in my lifetime.”