further healthcare thoughts

How did we allow the health insurance industry to make the rules about how we access the care and advice we need to be healthy and productive? Doesn't it strike you as weird that status in marriage or employment determines health insurance "benefits"?

The healthier we all are, the healthier we all become. People carrying disease because they can't get the healthcare to cure them are spreading more disease. People chronically too ill to work leave what they would have done to overworked others, or left undone to all of our detriment. Children too sick to learn do not become our hoped for future. When older people are too sick to care for themselves, the subsequent loss from our lives of what they have to pass on is incalculable and their subsequent depression brings us all down. We find ourselves with a system creating much more pain, hardship, loss, despair, erosion of values, sickness.

Itis a whole lot easier to control costs by insuring all and making the process easier and cheaper for everyone through sensible incentives like funding medical educations, standing up to big pharma with big numbers of consumers, keeping electronic records easily shared with all the doctors dealing with the patient, discussing/researching/determining best practices, encouraging lowering of mal or less desirable practice including open access to knowledge of doctors' history, freeing medical personnel from the extra chores and headaches of dealing with cut-throat insurance companies, and encouraging people generally to be more conscious of personal responsibility for their health.

If we were to devise a national attitude toward providing healthcare based on the true goals of optimizing the health of the people while assuring their freedoms of choice, the ultimate result could well be far less costly in the bottom line sense, while tremendously value generating in the larger sense.

How will having a public option (that's option, not taking away anything anyone likes now) prevent any group from forming their co-op to their liking as yet another alternative? In a real market system the point is to have a great diversity of options from which the consumer can choose. The consumer gets to be the evolutionary architect of what ultimately they will buy. If the consumer prefers the public option, it may go all the way to single payer over time. If the consumer prefers the co-op options, they will eventually dominate the market. Consumers seem to be fairly unhappy with the oligarchic system that has evolved from corporate/government collusion. Why not try a more capitalist/socialist collusion based on what actually keeps us healthy?

People seem to be afraid of the word "socialized." The government option is actually based on capitalist theory's idea of competition to create a more broad-based market of choice for the consumer. If the private insurance industry doesn't want government competition, they ought to provide what the consumers actually want, like proper capitalists. But why go through all the trouble of creating business models that serve the consumer when you can pay congressional reps and clever ad agencies to get the consumer to be your foodsource: suck em dry and throw em away.

Where are the modern day protest singers/organizers?

(any more besides these?)

http://www.madashelldoctors.com/

This is not a campaign. In campaigns, there are spectators. This is a movement.
Everybody plays.



The Plan:
Mad Doctors Hit the Road


On September 8, 2009 a group of dedicated Oregon physicians will take the message of Universal Health Care "on the road" in a wrapped and branded Motor Home headed for Washington D.C. Our cross-country mission: to stop in big cities and whistle stops alike, conducting pre-booked, local and national media appearances for a curious press. Every move we make along the way will be recorded on camera and then edited and uploaded to the internet that same day. This will allow our Mad As Hell Doctors Tour to leverage the edited video segments on social networking web sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, et al. In this way, our effort becomes an unprecedented hybrid of reality television and political activism that offers people the opportunity to follow us, in real time, as our story unfolds. The message will be unmistakable: caravan with us to Washington and help make a public demonstration of support for Single Payer Health Care that will be heard around the world.


Imagine...
Thousands of cars pulling into the nation's capital for a protest on the White House lawn. The sidewalks are filled with supporters carrying signs in support of the Mad As Hell Doctors who have captured the imagination and the ignited the passion of their fellow citizens. We wave and honk at the camera crews, as do the endless line of cars behind us, as we wend our way toward the White House. On every antenna, on the backside of every car, and flapping like flags from sidewalk supporters, is the symbol of this new movement: the White Ribbon.




When we arrive, we go directly to the White House Lawn and begin passing out ribbons to the multitude of people waiting for the protest to begin. Politicians, celebrities, entertainers and hand selected citizens stand at the microphone one after the other, offering testimonials and expressing outrage at a corrupted health care system that puts profit before people. Our message to the President and Congress is clear:


Single Payer is the Solution. We Demand it Now.


Listen to the Mad As Hell Doctors Theme Song!

https://madashelldoctorstour.com/uploads/01_Mad_As_Hell_Final_Mix.mp3

Written and Performed by WICKLINE

Content copyright 2009. Adam Klugman. All rights reserved.