Nothing is free – certainly not health care. So why should I turn my precious dollars over to an insurance company which provides no health care but instead extorts money from me to DENY me health care?

People did not leave in the hurricane because they had no cars, or no money for gas, or no money for a motel or food, or they were old and infirm. And it WAS the elderly who were the most likely to die. And because the Bush Administration, advised as it was as to the storm’s tenacity, chose to play golf and shop. I think many days in the astrodome is sufficient time to say that help arrived late, shit, it did not arrive at all. That’s Conservatives for you. People pay taxes all their lives and when push comes to shove, the feds have dismantled your emergency management administration and given the money to Wall St. sharks.

Danny Ray understands quite well what democracy is about – rule by, for, and of the lobbyists – just as it oughta be.

I have a problem with the fact that our current government is NOT going to give people what they think they are working for. The “reform” will be another favor . . . to someone else.

I have a problem with the fact that as “reform” gets argued about and obfuscated, health freedom is going down the tubes. Make no mistake, this “reform” will come with strings of some kind, and it will enrich pharma, and starve the more sustainable, sane and truly healing alternatives. Pharma, with FDA and Judicial help, is killing and criminalizing natural medicine.

I wish there were a balanced approach. But I will just prepare myself and others to deal with a jump in the percentage of people who like mind-bending pharma drugs to soothe the effects of not taking care of the real issues that plague all of us. Just take a pill . . . blech.

Melissa

I believe you have anarchy and societal Darwinism confused. Try Google it’s a wonder in these situations.

What I do not wish to inconvenience me is the do-nothings we have bred over the past 50 years, the entitlement generation if you wish to call them that. You know who you are, the people who think the government owes you bread and circuses. Not to mention free health care. Who are too stupid to leave during a hurricane and then bitch when help takes to long to get there.

You said, “The real enemy is the inherited aristocracy. Those who talk of rising on merit but insure that their useless spawn are protected. “

(Sorry I corrected your grammar you seem to have a problem with tenses.)

So harry, I will guess you were born nothing and have manager to remain the same. Congrats!!!

Hey social darwinist how would like a society where the biggest badass with the biggest knife could walk up and take what you have? I thought not. So you believe in society and limits, you just do not want them to inconvenience you.

Yes sometimes I think corporations are the enemy because they are a tool of the real enemy. The real enemy are the inherited aristocracy. Those who talk of rising on merit but insure that their useless spawn is protected. And corporations are a tool to protect these people from liability and responsibility for their actions. If all corporations were sole proprietorships, there probably would not be a problem. And if the business owner who decided to cheapen up the product so it maims someone or who chiseled on the supports for the coal mine which collapsed were not able to hide behind his business there would not be a problem. If the business owner were not able to walk away scot free with a bankruptcy paying 20 cents on the dollar to creditors who behaved honestly there would not be a problem. If the bankster who screwed up royally were not able to call in politial favors and have his hind end bailed out while the auto worker has his wages cut and pension taken there would not be a problem.

But corporations as they exist now are a huge problem.

Corporations are not the enemy – it’s just a matter of who owns them.

Just remember, it’s the US gov’t that landed people on the moon and brought them back. Private efforts can barely get off the ground without blowing themselves up.

Most Yankees are not roof squatters, the yankees thing was an attempt at humor. you should try that sometimes.

so was the remark about my kurdish best friend, who says that he may not wash the knife if he needs to cut on me next time. He is reading over my shoulder.

Yes I am a social darwinist. I thought I would get that out of the way before it becomes an issue.

I do not beleive that the enemy is corporations. have you ever flown in an airplane made in Joe and Eddies garage?

If you don’t trust the government and work for the govt. are you referring to your own work ethic? My co-workers are dedicated public health careerists – when we are forced by Republicans to hire contractors, the contractors pretty much make off with the money – because that’s what they are in it for – unlike my co-workers who believe in the mission of public health.

So you’d rather trust a pencil pusher who works for a for-profit corporation answerable only to its stockholders rather than a govt employee that is answerable to the people. Boy, did you ever drink the Reagan kool-ade!

As far as BC BS goes my whole medical service now is Kurdish guy with a big knife and a box of band aids.

I work for the goverment also, ( well I have been told that I never actually work) and I do not trust them if they say the world is round.

The post office? I have not missed a bill (unfortunately) in decades. My netflix movies are mailed on Monday and I get them on Tuesday. I work for the government and because of asshole conservative Republican ideology much of the work is farmed out to contractors. And you know what? They suck bigtime. Because they are in it for the cash, not for the citizenry.

Governments don’t plan open-heart surgery – the physician and patient do that. What the govt does is guarantee that you won’t be taken to the cleaners by surgery. (62% of US bankruptcies are due to medical bills and 78% of these people HAVE medical insurance).

As for the long and short of it, the roof squatters are the insurance companies, as for the Latinos you refer to, they use medical services less than you do despite paying into the system.

And you know why we need to have universal coverage? Because good people realize we live in a society, conservatives think we live in an economy.

hell they run the post office . do you really want those guys planning your open heart surgery.

And the long and short of it is I pay for mine, you pay for your, so why do we have to pay for the roof squatters?

So instead of handing liberty to the paper pushers in the government you give it to the paper pushers at Blue Cross, Humana, etc.? Insurance companies are pure overhead. And they interfere in medical decisions. The cost of the insurance far, far outpaces rise in any other costs. It would not be necessary to consider a government program if the current system were working.

It is all priorities, spend trillions on war but can’t afford health care, trillions on bailing out bankers who screwed up but can’t afford post offices or roads, million dollar salaries for car executives who screwed up but cut wages for workers who did their jobs.

We have the 37th worst quality of healthcare in the developed world.

I know that many of you are angry and frustrated that REPUBLICANS! In congress are dragging their feet and trying to block TRUE healthcare reform. What republicans want is just a taxpayer bailout of the DISGRACEFUL GREED DRIVEN PRIVATE FOR PROFIT health insurance industry, and the DISGRACEFUL GREED DRIVEN PRIVATE FOR PROFIT healthcare industry. An insurance bailout is all you really get without a robust government-run public option available on day one.

These industries have been slaughtering you and your loved ones like cattle for decades for profit. Including members of congress and their families. These REPUBLICANS are FOOLS!

Republicans and their traitorous allies have been trying to make it look like it’s President Obama’s fault for the delays, and foot dragging. But I think you all know better than that. President Obama inherited one of the worst government catastrophes in American history from these REPUBLICANS! And President Obama has done a brilliant job of turning things around, and working his heart out for all of us.

But Republicans think you are just a bunch of stupid, idiot, cash cows with short memories. Just like they did under the Bush administration when they helped Bush and Cheney rape America and the rest of the World.

But you don’t have to put up with that. And this is what you can do. The Republicans below will be up for reelection on November 2, 2010. Just a little over 13 months from now. And many of you will be able to vote early. So pick some names and tell their voters that their representatives (by name) are obstructing TRUE healthcare reform. And are sellouts to the insurance and medical lobbyist.

Ask them to contact their representatives and tell them that they are going to work to throw them out of office on November 2, 2010, if not before by impeachment, or recall elections. Doing this will give you something more to do to make things better in America. And it will help you feel better too.

There are many resources on the internet that can help you find people to call and contact. For example, many social networking sites can be searched by state, city, or University. Be inventive and creative. I can think of many ways to do this. But be nice. These are your neighbors. And most will want to help.

I know there are a few democrats that have been trying to obstruct TRUE healthcare reform too. But the main problem is the Bush Republicans. Removing them is the best thing tactically to do. On the other hand. If you can easily replace a democrat obstructionist with a supportive democrat, DO IT!

You have been AMAZING!!! my people. Don’t loose heart. You knew it wasn’t going to be easy saving the World. :-)

God Bless You

jacksmith — Working Class

Republican Senators up for re-election in 2010.

* Richard Shelby of Alabama
* Lisa Murkowski of Alaska
* John McCain of Arizona
* Mel Martinez of Florida
* Johnny Isakson of Georgia
* Mike Crapo of Idaho
* Chuck Grassley of Iowa
* Sam Brownback of Kansas
* Jim Bunning of Kentucky
* David Vitter of Louisiana
* Kit Bond of Missouri
* Judd Gregg of New Hampshire
* Richard Burr of North Carolina
* George Voinovich of Ohio
* Tom Coburn of Oklahoma
* Jim DeMint of South Carolina
* John Thune of South Dakota
* Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas
* Bob Bennett of Utah

however, sadly, work is owned by private profiteers; it is been hijacked by individuals along with constitution, governance, education, armed services, spy agencies, jurisprudence, senators and other politicos, etc.
tnx

u do, however, have the right to say that that one must pay for own healthcare.
may, i ask, on what principle(s) do u justify itÉ (my query mark dosn`t come on, instead i get an É)
did u consider that “thou shall have healthcare paid by all USans“ was deliberately left out by US plutos“É.
why wld they provide physicians to own slavesÉ. Weren`t some of these fatherly people also slave ownersÉ.
what is that tell usÉ. hvala

http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/141021/getting_laid-off_may_lead_to_early_death_–_but_there_are_ways_to_cushion_the_severe_health_impact_of_job_loss/

By Tom Jacobs, Miller-McCune.com. Posted July 1, 2009.

Studies show that the current economic climate may be eroding months or even years from the lives of those on the bleeding edge of insecurity

When you lose your job, with no prospect of finding another one quickly, you give up a lot more than income. You are deprived of a sense of security, a source of self-esteem, a certain status in the community. And, according to recent research, you also lose something even more precious: a year or more of your life.

That’s the conclusion of two prominent economists, Daniel Sullivan of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and Till von Wachter of Columbia University. Matching death records with employment and earnings data of Pennsylvania workers from the 1970s and ’80s, they found mortality rates for high-seniority male workers spike sharply in the year following an involuntary job loss, and they remain surprisingly high two decades later.

If this higher death rate persists into old age, it implies “a loss in life expectancy of 1 to 1.5 years for a worker displaced at age 40,” the researchers report. Or as von Wachter puts it more informally: “We were convincingly able to show that if you lose your job, you die earlier.”

But the risk of premature death isn’t limited to those who have actually been let go. A growing body of research suggests a nagging, persistent fear of losing one’s job is also detrimental to one’s health. University of Michigan sociologist Sarah Burgard, who has extensively studied the relationship between job loss, job insecurity and health, calls this “the waiting-for-the-other-shoe-to-drop problem.” Given the current state of the economy, many people are anxiously awaiting the thud of that falling footwear.

In recent months, official Washington has been consumed by two issues: jobs and the economy, and the cost and availability of health care. But there has been surprisingly little discussion regarding the ways in which they intersect. A series of recent studies not only provide evidence these public-policy problems are interrelated: They also suggest that if, as many fear, long-term job security is largely a thing of the past, the public health consequences could be enormous.

Let us start with the latest research on job loss and health, published just last month in the journal Demography. Kate Strully, a sociologist at the University at Albany, State University of New York, found herself struggling with a question often raised by economists (including von Wachter). The correlation between ill health and job loss has long been established, but how can we know which is the cause and which is the effect? Surely some sick people are laid off because they’re physically unable to meet the demands of the job. Does this skew the numbers and cause researchers to come to false conclusions?

To find an answer, Strully examined data from the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a nationally representative longitudinal study of American families that includes detailed information on the participants’ health and employment. The surveys reported not only if the person had lost a job, but under what circumstances.

This allowed Strully to focus her attention on what she calls “no-fault” job losses — that is, people who became unemployed when their entire workplace shut down. Examples included factory closings and companies that went out of business. In these cases, literally everyone was let go, making it highly unlikely poor health was a factor in any worker’s dismissal.

The workers were interviewed approximately a year and a half following the layoffs. Of those who were still unemployed, close to 9 percent reported developing a new stress-related health condition such as diabetes or hypertension since parting ways with their former employer. This compares to a 5 percent rate among people who reported their job condition was stable. Those who found new employment also had above-average rates of new health problems, although not as high as the long-term unemployed.

Given these figures, “I’m convinced that a large shock to one’s socioeconomic status, such as job loss, negatively impacts health,” she says.

Burgard, who has done her own research along these lines, agrees. “Job instability is OK for some people, but not for others,” she says. “If you’re an IT guy and you have a high educational degree, part of being successful is jumping from firm to firm. That’s how you increase your income.

“But the type of workers we tend to see here in Michigan, who aren’t necessarily highly educated, are facing a really tough road. I think people have been focused on the economic payoff (of a more flexible economy where jobs appear and disappear), but are less aware of the potential costs in terms of worker health.”

Economists tend to argue that the flexibility to hire and fire workers as needed ultimately makes the economy more productive, and increases overall wealth. If that’s actually true, it would have public health benefits. As healthcare economist Jason Shafrin argued in 2007, the concept of “creative destruction” — that is, a dynamic economy where innovation leads new companies to rise and old ones to adapt or die — “has decreased average mortality for individuals all over the world due to rising living standards.”

In their latest paper, published in the American Economic Review in May, Sullivan and von Wachter present evidence that cuts both ways. They report the association between income and mortality is far stronger than was thought earlier. If the ever-churning economy produces more higher-paying jobs, those able to land one of them likely will see a positive impact on their health.

But the economists also found workers who lose their jobs — and cannot find another quickly — tend to suffer large earnings losses and go through a period of income instability. This is a big concern, since “higher variability of earnings is associated with increased mortality.”

“You’re looking at two people, both with the same long-term earnings,” says von Wachter. “The one with the more volatile earnings dies earlier. Certainly, this is interesting evidence.”

Like many economists, von Wachter isn’t certain that the public perception that jobs and incomes are less stable than they once were is accurate. But he has no doubt that “sweeping restructuring” is going on in a number of industries, and workers in those sectors are experiencing health-sapping stress.

“This we can say: The large number of people being laid off in this recession will be subject to higher earnings volatility, and that will likely affect their mortality.”

This is still more bad news for the former employees of General Motors and Chrysler, but what about workers at, say, Ford? Their company hasn’t gone bankrupt, but they’re fully aware that the industry is on shaky ground, and there are no guarantees their jobs will exist in a year. Using data from two nationally representative samples — the Americans’ Changing Lives and Midlife in the United States studies — Burgard and two colleagues looked at people in that precarious situation for a July 2008 Population Studies Center research report.

Their study (to be published later this year in the journal Social Science and Medicine) concluded that “among people who are currently employed, those who have been persistently worried about losing their jobs have significantly worse self-rated overall health than those who haven’t been consistently worried.” Strikingly, these worried workers “are worse off than people who have had a job loss in the past few years, but are currently re-employed.”

That makes perfect sense to psychologist Sheldon Cohen of Carnegie Mellon University, one of the nation’s leading researchers on the relationship between stress and disease.

“There is a fair amount of evidence that expecting a major stressor is often worse than the actual occurrence of the stressor,” he says. “My understanding is people who lose their jobs and get new ones pretty quickly don’t show many of these effects. That’s consistent with what we know about stress in general. Generally, the longer the stressor lasts, the greater the risk you are under for various diseases.”

Cohen reports there are “two general pathways linking stress to disease-related outcomes. One is the behavioral pathway. We know that under stress, people smoke more, drink more. They don’t sleep as well. They don’t exercise. They have poorer diets. All of these things can put people at greater risk of disease.

“The other is the physiological pathway. There is considerable evidence that under chronic stress, the immune system does not work the way it should. There’s evidence for underresponsivity, where the immune system does not respond adequately to challenges and also for overresponsivitity.”

What’s the problem with an overly vigilant immune system? In many cases, the body’s response to a perceived threat is what causes the symptoms we associate with a disease. “In cold studies, we find people who are under chronic stress, when we expose them to a virus, they’re more likely to get sick,” Cohen says. “They’re producing much more pro-inflammatory cytokine, which is what produces the symptoms of colds.”

So expect to hear a lot of sneezing in coming months. But Cohen counters that thought with some good news: The fact job anxiety is so widespread could actually dampen its destructive impact.

“A lot of the experience of stress has to do with challenges to your self-esteem — that feeling you’re not accomplishing what you should be able to accomplish,” he says. “Being out of work is a stressful event, irrespective of the reason, but it is buffered a bit by the idea that it’s the economy that’s at fault — not the fact I’m incompetent.”

Cohen doubts there are any simple public-policy solutions to this particular health facet of the current financial crisis. “There are interventions that can influence aspects of stress in people’s lives,” he says. “But I’m not sure how effective they’re going to be for people who are unemployed. The major stressors that put people at risk are the chronic, enduring problems that are engrained in their lives, and they’re the ones least susceptible to interventions.”

One obvious response is being considered as part of current the health-care debate in Congress: Finding a way to ensure laid-off workers continue to have health insurance. Under the current system, where most people receive health benefits from their employer, laid-off workers are losing coverage precisely at a time when they are at increased risk of disease.

On the other hand, Strully notes, “Making sure people have health insurance won’t negate or undo the health consequences of job loss. In my analysis, it doesn’t reduce the effect of job loss that much.

“If people are developing health problems as a result of job loss, being able to continue their health care will certainly impact how well they can manage. So it’s definitely a good idea (to find a way to make sure the unemployed are covered). But any intervention is going to have to be more broad and holistic.”

Meaning what? “Some combination of income protection and helping people cope with stress in a reasonably healthy way is probably the most practical intervention,” she says. “There’s a lot of research showing social support — access to supportive, healthy relationships — is really important in how people cope with stressful events.

“I was exchanging e-mails with a union organizer. He was asking me what that kind of organization could do. I suggested a support group that offers really practical advice, like how to maintain a healthy diet on a budget, could be really helpful. Having a group in which people share and develop ties with people who have gone through similar experiences has the potential to be beneficial.”

“All the research suggests the mental health costs are reduced substantially when people return to work,” adds Burgard. “You want (as a society) to give people help in finding another job, perhaps retraining, health coverage in the interim. Those are all things our current system doesn’t necessarily supply. So from a policy angle, there’s a lot we can do.

“Will it be expensive? Probably. Will it be more expensive to pay for medical care when they get sick down the road? That’s an open question. We need to think about preventive maintenance. Just telling people to sleep more and buy COBRA won’t do it.”