NM Rep. Let’s It Slip Out of the Bag…”What’s More, Our Unique System of Private Insurance Has Been Preserved”

~~By InsightAnalytical-GRL

First-term Representative Martin Heinrich, who represents the 1st Congressional District of NM (which includes Central NM and Albuquerque), needs to study up on how he delivers the propaganda message from the Obama borg.

When I read his  opinion piece/guest column in Sunday’s paper, I found myself focusing on one sentence which seemed to get to the whole point of the debacle last weekend as “health reform” passed.

His piece starts out with some hand holding:

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Reality: Health Care Had To Be Repaired.

By Rep. Martin Heinrich

Democrat, New Mexico First District

Health care is a very personal issue for all of us, and as a result, it’s sometimes the cause of great concern, confusion and debate.

While we all have our own personal questions regarding health care, ultimately one question gets to the heart of the public debate: Can we afford this? Can we afford our rising premiums? Can you afford this doctor visit or that prescription? Can I continue to afford to provide health insurance for my employees? Can our nation afford to reform the whole system? Can we afford to do nothing?

Then he seques into some facts:

The simple truth is that right now, we spend $1 out of every $5 on our health care. Without the health insurance reform that is now law, this would become $1 of every $3 within the decade. Try to imagine that – $1 of every $3 you have going to health care. This is not sustainable for you, your family, your employer, and definitely not for our nation as a whole. With costs continuing to skyrocket for all of us, there was no doubt in my mind that doing nothing was something we couldn’t afford.

MMM….from what I’m hearing from people already behind the eight-ball, many still will be paying a HUGE hunk of the income for insurance. Heck, speaking personally, my Medicare premiums and supplemental insurance is literally 1/3 of my monthly benefit right now!

He continues:

Last Sunday, I cast an historic vote for health insurance reform that will bring stability to hundreds of thousands of New Mexicans, provide much-needed support to our small businesses and cut the federal deficit by $1.3 trillion – reducing the deficit more than any other legislation passed since 1993.

I ain’t buying this business about all the deficit reduction, are you???

He then talks about how competitive our nation will become (really?) and how some people will have “greater control of their health care.”

The benefits of reform will be large and immediate for New Mexicans, and our nation will be stronger, healthier, and more competitive because of it.
Families, seniors and small businesses will have greater control of their health care.

Well, that sort of glosses over the fact that women’s ability to make their own decisions ranks BELOW that of  a bunch of church guys who seem to be running a worldwide pedophile ring.  Yup, that crew has superior moral authority compared to that of the average woman…

Ah, and then comes the list of goodies:

Health insurance companies will no longer be allowed to reject you because you or your child have a pre-existing condition or drop your coverage when you get sick.
Seniors will be able to get preventive services like cancer and diabetes screenings at no cost. By closing the Medicare prescription drug doughnut hole, 51,900 New Mexico seniors will be able to afford their prescriptions, year-round. As part of this relief, seniors will receive $250 rebates to purchase medication in 2010, and next year they will receive a 50 percent discount on prescription drugs that fall within the doughnut hole.

Oh, give me a break! If you’re old you can be charged up to 4X someone younger, if you’re a woman, of course, you’ll pay more for less (and don’t forget writing 2 checks), and those free screenings will look pretty inadequate when you’re denied an expensive treatment because you’re too old as the gutting of Medicare begins.  (And that was a cliffhanger when it came to pre-existing conditions with regard to children.)

Heinrich then let’s the cat out of the bag when he says:

What’s more, our unique system of private insurance has been preserved. This reform will create a health insurance exchange of private insurance plans with comparable benefits so consumers can compare prices and benefits to find the plan that works best for them, their family, or their business.

Doesn’t that make you want to rejoice??? Yes, our wonderful, unique way of screwing people out of health care HAS BEEN PRESERVED!!!!   Yippee!

Heinrich closes with another dose of hand holding and comfort:

To some, all this reform may seem scary. Change can do that, even when it’s change for the better. As these reforms start going into effect, and we’re able to separate the reality from the rhetoric, I’m confident that you will be reassured that this reform is something that we could not afford to do without.

“Separate the reality from the rhetoric”??  We will never get the full reality from the propaganda machine until we get ensnared by one of those fine points in our insurance contracts.

Oh, yeah.  I’m so reassured.

Aren’t you?

A Look at the Surreal Health Care Debate…Dr. Weil, A Tea Party Guy, Newt Gingrich and One Unholy Media Stew

~~By InsightAnalytical-GRL

“A Look at the Surreal Healthcare Debate” …well, not by me, but one offered up by Thursday (9/10)  night’s group of cable ghouls that I happened to see over the span of a few short minutes.

For some unknown reason I turned on CNN and caught a bit of Larry King.  Dr. Andrew Weil was on, blasting the same-old, same-old of the current health care “reform” efforts.  While the challenges are correctly recognized, the solutions are within the same model we have now. Weil is usually quite sanguine, but Thursday night in his own quiet way, he seemed pretty frustrated over the structure of our non-system. He predicts that whatever is done will fail, because costs won’t come down.  He thinks that high-tech stuff is way overused and he especially is irate over the drug advertising on TV.  We are the only country that allows this and it makes the physician more prone to dishing out the drugs when a patient comes in with a request rather than time spent on real discussion with the patient.  He wants that advertising stopped now!  He likens our ties to Big Pharma as being like the role of Wall Street in our lives.

He stated that places like Germany, Australia, and Norway are places where health care seems to satisfy people (Germany and Australia are part public and part private), but they, too, face the same problems of rising costs.  He mentioned that in Germany and other places, however, people seem to be willing to learn to “take care of themselves,”– they can take care of their own rashes and colds without running to the doctor, he said.

Basically, it seems Weil wants a system where doctors really take the time to know their patients and use modern medicine as well as tried and true remedies and new alternative approaches. He hope kids who are being exposed to new ideas will pass them to their parents. He figures we’ll see a different sort of  person coming into the system to be doctors if the approach to medicine changes, people who will have a real committment to healing  and dealing with patients differently if the attitude about health care changes. He sees some movement among some doctors toward this now. The system currently is all about insurance payments, not medicine, and a fear of liability suits, hence the overuse of reapeated/overkill diagnostic tests.  He strongly believes in preventative medicine, in getting people to understand how they can help themselves in terms of diet and stress management so they stay healthier longer.

He also pointed out that while we hear about eating more fruits and vegetables, they seem to be the most expensive foods, as industry is pushing cheap, processed stuff  full of things that are government subsidized to keep them cheap…all the sugar– corn syrups, fructose, etc.– and oils…which is diametrically opposed to what the message to eat better is saying.

Part of the show involved an interview with the guy leading the “Tea Party Express.”  This guy was revolting to me.  King asked if there was anything in the current reform bills that this guy approved of.  NO.  Well, King asked about the move to end the “pre-existing condition” stranglehold.  NO, was again the answer.  King then posed a hypothetical question…If you wife had a health problem and couldn’t get insurance, would that change his mind?

Well, this BOZO said NO, because he was SURE in the free market there would be someone to write a policy for her!  I guess it was that idiot Roland Martin (?) who actually said the correct thing, that there would be no one there to write a policy for her, that could be easily affordable.  On this I totally agree…this guy, who is leading an awful lot of lemmings these days, has no clue.  Heck, if you’re on disability you pay DOUBLE what the normal Medicare supplement costs!   (I know this from personal experience.) Has this guy ever applied for a policy in the open market with a serious precondition?  The waiting times to be covered, if it’s even allowed, are daunting and the premiums are sky high!  And, not all companies offer the same options. So, yeah, MAYBE she could get a policy, but if she could, it wouldn’t be cheap OR offer immediate coverage in most cases. He’d have to look long and hard. Very hard…

His glibness really bugged me.  It annoys me that that people like him are uninformed or so wedded to their own ideology and are leading lots of people who are also uninformed.  The folks who follow the leaders are often too busy to keep informed or really don’t have the capacity to understand a lot of what’s going on, and are so vulnerable to being fooled and ultimately lead toward their own destruction.  This guy sounded like a Republican or Libertarian, but the key point was he was so rigid. Had the compassion of a a robot…Frankly, I saw the two sides of the same coin (Obama/Organized “Opposition” leader  = same crap) and the pied piper mentality that has befallen this country. The  often-misquoted Janus myth really doesn’t describe this situation, but the visual seems to help create the mood…

Janus

That’s not to say some Tea Party folks aren’t well-informed…many are and many are Independents or ticked-off Democrats who are along for the ride for other reasons than Republican reasons.  But, I’m so uneasy about hooking into people who are so against any change at all.  I wish there were people without long-term agendas doing the leading…and when I say “long-term agendas” I mean the Republican agenda which would love to ditch the security net as quickly as possible or take back ANY restraints on the health industry/insurers.  The leader of the Tea Party Express, along with Glenn Beck fall into this category.

After this little segment of insanity, I then caught a bit of Greta van Susteren who was chatting with Newt Gingrich.  Greta seems to have come completely on board with the FOX stance of complete negativity.  There she sat with old Newt who had the GALL to say that we need more “scientific reasearch” along with the standard GOP stuff about taxes, more freedom to sell policies across state lines, etc., which do squat to really reform much of anything.   Let’s see…didn’t Bush CUT research funds to the bone????

Well, yes, he did without much upset from Republicans, who were also busy doing the cliffhanger bit on paying doctors who participated in Medicare. Dr. Weil mentioned how far back we’ve been set back by this and even referred to the “religious” groups (and Bush) who howled about stem cell research. For Weil to get into that hornet’s nest was pretty surprising, but, as I said before, Weil seemed pretty pissed off in a quiet way.  Weil is grateful that there’s been some restoration of funding for research, but I don’t think he’ll be looking to Newt and the Republicans to come in and do MORE when they retake the government.  Would you??

So there you go…Greta sits there and doesn’t challenge old Newt. I’ve noticed that she NEVER puts anything into context…that lawyer’s brain of hers is permanently atrophied, it seems.  I used to have some hope that she could put together SOMETHING informative, but she’s gone downhill and spends way too much time on missing children cases…

And, so,  people like Newt say things that are LUDICROUS and the Tea Party Express guy with the stick up his ass (looks like a blond, ex-army guy or something, with a strange look in his eyes) leads the way to…WHERE?

Which is why I prefer to watch “You Are What You Eat” on BBC America…at least it provides some visual shock value in terms of the junk people consume, some discussion about the effects on health, and some inspiration that things can actually CHANGE, one unhealthy person at  a time…