Genocide is always and everywhere a political occurrence.

– Irving Louis Horowitz, Genocide

As you’re reading this I’m sure your eyes are beginning to roll, indicating how peeved you’re probably getting over yet another tirade on the subject of health-care-overhaul. Fear not. To prevent this article from joining the all-embracing tautology of other recent health care polemics, a juxtaposition of statistics will suffice: according to the U.S. Census Bureau, 20 percent of the general population under the age of sixty-five is without health care coverage; one out of three, if not more, American Indians and Alaskan Natives, under the age of sixty-five, is either uninsured or dependent on the deficient services provided through the IHS (Indian Health Service).

As claimed by the Office of Minority Health, an adjunct of the Department of Health and Human Services, as of 2008 there were an estimated 4.9 million people who classified as American Indian and Alaskan Native alone or American Indian and Alaskan Native integrated with one or more other races [sic]: comprising only 1.6 percent of the U.S. population. The IHS, according to the Office of Minority Health, provides services to only 39 percent of American Indians and Alaskan Natives — that is approximately 1.9 million individuals out of 4.9 million who qualify for IHS services. This laggard expanse of services comes at a time when American Indians and Alaskan Natives are plighted by appalling conditions and afflictions such as:

• infant death rates 40 percent higher than the rates that exist for whites;
• death rates from alcoholism and tuberculosis approximately 650 percent higher than overall U.S. rates;
• a male population twice as likely as white men to have liver and IBD cancers;
• a male population 1.8 times more likely as white men to contract stomach cancer and, twice as likely to die from stomach cancer;
• a female population 2.4 times more likely as white females to contract, and die from, liver and IBD cancers;
• a female population 40 percent more prone than white females to get kidney/renal/pelvis cancers;
• 31 percent of the population will die before the age of 45; “…the overall adjusted death rate for American Indians is 35 percent greater than the U.S. rate…” (The age-adjusted death rate for those living in the Aberdeen area — a region that harbors most of the Lakota-Sioux reservations in South Dakota, has risen beyond 1,000 percent);¹
• higher rates of diabetes and obesity than the general population;
• an unemployment rate of 49 percent — approximately five times the national rate.

What no one is talking about right now is how the most blighted class of people in this country, the most marginalized group of people in the history of the U.S., will be affected by the proposed health-care-reform-bill. But perhaps that is because this bill may not actually provide any measures to ameliorate these abysmal conditions at all. And that may be the case because no one has ever really talked about the historical and ongoing destruction of this country’s native population honestly and publicly enough.

There are many bones to pick with the judicatory infrastructure of the United States of America concerning the failed restitution of history’s most victimized and terrorized peoples. For now, let us focus on bringing an ailing population back to good health through a program hatched for the absolute benefit of a class it is designed to provide services for, alongside being unequivocally structured according to how the said class determines it to be.

What I am asking, and what we should all be asking is: Why is it so difficult to provide fair and equal health care to an entire group of people that comprise less than two percent of the general American population? And: Will the administration’s health-care-reform-bill ensure fair and equal care be provided for American Indians and Alaskan Natives? And more importantly: If so, will the provisions enumerated for American Indians and Alaskan Natives, included in the health care proposal, be drafted along the former and latter parties’ terms, unescorted by any equivocal provisos and/or tendentious legislative furnishings?

Health care as a euphemism for the euphemism that is assimilation

Health care for American Indians and Alaskan Natives is essentially the extenuation of assimilation programs, sanctioned and directed by the IHS under the auspices of the Department of Health and Humans Services (DHHS).

In 1921 a piece of legislation known as the Snyder Act warranted legislative authority for a federal health program designed to provide services to American Indians and Alaskan Natives. According to literature on the IHS website, the act authorized funds “for the relief of distress and conservation of health…[and]…for the employment of…physicians…for Indian Tribes throughout the United States.”

However, even prior to the ratification of the Snyder Act of 1921, the United States government was well involved with juridical “health care” measures (i.e. expedients) designated for the remaining native population. Holly T. Kuschell-Haworth wrote for DePaul Journal of Health Care Law in the summer of 1999:

The Origins of Federal Native American Health Care Attention to Native American health care began in the nineteenth century when contagious diseases, such as smallpox, threatened the once substantial populations of Native American people. The Federal government’s earliest goals were to prevent disease and to speed Native American assimilation into the general population by promoting Native American dependence on Western medicine and by decreasing the influence of traditional Indian healers. In 1849, responsibility for Native American health was transferred from the War Department to the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). The BIA oversaw the use of congressional appropriations for the establishment of health programs for Native Americans. Responsibility for Native American health has since endured many organizational transfers, and now resides with the Indian Health Service (IHS), an operating division of the Department of Health and Humans Services (DHHS).²

In 1976, the United States passed the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. This piece of legislation detailed the U.S.’ responsibilities, citing: “Congress hereby declares that it is the policy of this Nation, in fulfillment of its special responsibilities and legal obligations to the American Indian people, to meet the national goal of providing the highest possible health status to Indians and to provide existing Indian health services with all resources necessary to effect that policy.” (I’ve added the italics to emphasize the obscene irony of these words with respect to the real, physical effects of the referenced promulgation).

Aside from the year the Ramones released their first album, 1976 also happened to be the year the U.S. government admitted to running a covert program of involuntary sterilization, affecting about 40 percent of all American Indian women of childbearing age.³ Article II of the United Nations 1948 Convention on Punishment and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide explicitly proscribes involuntary sterilization as a means of “preventing births among” a targeted population. Nonetheless, the IHS — an adjunct of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) at the time, authorized and administered the illicit sterilizations. The putative termination of the program resulted in the transfer of the IHS to the Public Health Service. There were no indictments or punishments for those reprehensibly involved.

Furthermore, it was revealed in 1990 that the IHS was inoculating Alaska Inuit children with Hepatitis-B vaccine — after the WHO placed an interdiction on this particular vaccine for having a strong correlation with HIV-Syndrome, which is, in essence, directly linked with AIDS. In 1992, a “field test” of Hepatitis-A vaccine, also HIV-correlated, was controlled on reservations in the northern Plains region.⁴

The IHS fails as it continues to expand assimilationist health care

Founded in 1955, the IHS is a federally administered health care program, accredited by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. It was designed to provide services for North America’s members of the 546 federally recognized indigenous tribes. Those who receive IHS services reside mainly on reservations and rural communities within thirty-six states, mostly contained in the Western U.S. and Alaska.

IHS dependents are not eligible for access to the bulk of hospitals and medical practitioners ubiquitous throughout the U.S. They are restricted to services provided by the clinics and hospitals that contract with the IHS only. Moreover, the majority of IHS facilities are located within “contract health service delivery areas” comprising reservations, the counties circumscribing the reservations, and the adjacent counties. The IHS itself approximates that 43 percent of American Indians and Alaskan Natives live outside the parameters of “contract health service delivery areas.” And according to Bonnie Duran, writing for the American Journal of Public Health in 2005: “…more than 60 percent of members of US tribes reside outside their home reservations at least part of the year, but only 1 percent of the IHS budget is earmarked for urban Indian health care [urban clinics service, in toto, nearly 600,000 individuals].”⁵

In the 1950s the U.S. passed a sequence of “termination” statutes by which, in the words of American Indian scholar, author and activist Ward Churchill, “the federal government unilaterally dissolved more than a hundred indigenous nations and their reservation areas.” Furthermore, concomitant ruling was enforced to “encourage” the relocation of sizable “numbers of Indians from the remaining reservations to selected urban centers;” a colonial tactic designed to obviate any recrudescence of social solidarity within native communities.⁶ These legislative instruments were prorogued (suspended but not dissolved) in the 70s, but by the 90s the federal relocation program had succeeded in pushing more than half of all U.S. indigenous peoples out of reservations and into city ghettos, under the ostensible objective of “assimilation.” Would you care to be prodded out of your home and marshaled into an economically depressed area of one of America’s major cities? I didn’t think so.

Owing to the fact that the preponderance of IHS facilities are located not in city ghettos but on and around reservations, concurrent with the actuality that virtually half the native population resides nowhere near service areas on account of former federally mandated relocation programs, not only substantiates the concern that adequate health care is not being provided to America’s indigenous, but that these conditions are federally ignored, and met with silence and depraved indifference.

As regards financial deficiencies, IHS is bracketed for budgetary purposes as a discretionary program. In other words, there is no federal guarantee that there will ever be adequate pecuniary allocations (funding) for the IHS. On the other hand, for the general public, being predominantly Eurocentric, white-American, Medicare and Medicaid are federal prerogatives. And those who are eligible are guaranteed plenary (full) access to their programs. To adduce another excerpt from Bonnie Duran’s piece in the American Journal of Public Health in 2005: “For reservation-based populations, the level of per capita funding is less than half of what is provided to those on Medicaid and in prison.”⁷

In 2005 the General Accountability Office (GAO) controlled a study that revealed a number of IHS facilities with zero funding to contract for “non-urgent care.” The same GAO study discovered that eleven out of thirteen facilities surveyed had zero to limited ability to treat chronic pain. Seven out of thirteen facilities had zero to limited ability to perform cancer screenings.⁸ Let me remind the reader that these findings pertain to a specific group of people who are, at the very least, twice as likely as white folks to contract, and die from, preventable cancers.

As if that isn’t bad enough, despite the claim that Congress still allocates funds for the IHS (in lieu of the expiration of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act in 2000), the IHS only receives 50-75 percent of the requisite funding needed to operate.¹ Regardless of the increase of federal appropriations over the years, the amount of real money doled out has decreased. To put it another way, the IHS is virtually bankrupt. The amount of federal allocations may have increased, but the amount of actual capital put into the system has considerably decreased.

Meanwhile, the Pima of Arizona suffer the highest diabetes rates in the world. And in 2007 their tuberculosis rate was 5.9 compared to 1.1 for whites.⁹

The 1.8 million-acre San Carlos Apache Reservation, home to a community of 13,000, is one of the poorest reservations in the States. Writing for Congressional Quarterly, Peter Katel quotes Tribal Chairwoman, Kathleen W. Kitcheyan, lamenting: “We suffer from a poverty level of 69 percent, which must be unimaginable to many people in this country, who would equate a situation such as this to one found only in Third World countries.”⁹

Less than a tenth of the recent bonuses awarded to certain peoples by certain businesses, generated by the taxpayer bailout could have sufficiently extended IHS services and advanced aid to improve these inimical conditions greatly. It is the very least this country could have done on behalf of long overdue reparations.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter which end of the political spectrum one is ensconced in — negligent and damaging policy written by U.S. lawmakers is negligent and damaging policy. If one leans further to the right, obdurate ethnocentrism (the whole “…I’ve seen one Indian, I’ve seen ‘em all…” mentality) often accompanies those at the helm. If one leans further to the left, liberal and “humanitarian” agendas often obfuscate the implications attached to policy destined for nothing short of the same old hegemonic ends. In the words of Oscar Wilde, “Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.” It does not matter whether one is right, center, or left.

The syndicated creation of disease and destitution

Would it surprise you if I told you that most of these despairing conditions could have been prevented? Well, it’s true — they could have been prevented. More than one half of the nation’s uranium deposits, one-fourth of its low-sulfur bituminous coal reserves, one-fifth of its oil and natural gas, alongside substantial deposits of copper and other ores are confined within the margins of reservations.¹⁰ These resources are lucrative, to say the least. They are also lethal once taken from out of the ground and/or processed on site. Nonetheless, it is peculiar to find the most impoverished demographic in the U.S. residing directly above a copious amount of the world’s most profitable resources. As claimed by Ward Churchill, in his essay “The Political Economy of Radioactive Colonialism,| the natural resource base of the Navajo alone is far greater than that of Luxembourg, Lichtenstein, and Monaco, combined.¹¹

Through a series of ratified acts (e.g., Indian Reorganization Act, 1934), the U.S. defined itself as the primary governing body of Indian reservations, establishing a system of tribal council governments for each reservation, whose main responsibilities (under the rubric of “economic planning”) include: minerals-lease negotiations, contracting with external corporations, long-term agricultural leasing, water-rights negotiations, land transfers, and more. History has shown that such “economic planning” is nothing but a damaging strategy for an exploitative U.S. bylaw apparatus.

After decades of uranium mining on American Indian territory, many lives have been ruined. Uranium tailings, fifty to sixty feet high litter the defunct mining sites situated on reservation lands releasing radon, actinides (responsible for long-term radioactivity), and other debris into the topsoil and groundwater of the surrounding regions. There is no such thing as “safe doses” of radiation. The debris that sullies the climes of Indian country is replete with alpha-emitting substances often resulting in cancers and other degenerative diseases. Remember that most IHS facilities cannot afford to offer cancer screenings.

Dr. Gordon Edwards, writing for Perception magazine in 1992, explained that leftover uranium tailings contain about 85 percent of the original radioactivity found in the ore. They emit at least 10,000 times the amount of radon gas (able to travel a thousand miles in just a few days) as the undisturbed ore. In the Southwestern U.S., schools were once built using uranium tailings as construction material.¹²

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) estimates radon emissions from uranium tailings in the Southwestern U.S. will result in over 3,000 cancer deaths per century over the entire North American continent. Other researchers posit that this assertion is underestimated by at least a factor of ten.¹²

By the 1950s cases of lung cancer, pulmonary fibrosis, pneumoconiosis, silicosis, tuberculosis, birth defects, kidney damage, and more, began to show up in populations near uranium mining sites. By 1978, the GAO had recorded 140 million tons of “on site tailings piles at twenty-two abandoned and sixteen operational mills.” There are more than 1,100 abandoned uranium mines in the Navajo Nation alone. Continued production results in the creation of six to ten tons of tailings annually, alongside small cell carcinoma for the Navajo miners.¹³

Yucca Mountain, situated on Shoshone Nation land, is a proposed nuclear waste repository site. Left with thousands of tons of nuclear waste per annum, U.S. nuclear power facilities are desperately seeking a place to store their ever-increasing stockpiles of deadly wastes. America’s best idea thus far is to stuff it all inside a mountain, on land that does not belong to the U.S.

Backed by the Ruby Valley Treaty and the Nevada Enabling Act, Yucca Mountain and its surrounding region are not U.S. territory, therefore not for federal use. Not surprisingly, this injunction is flouted by military nuclear weapons testing on Shoshone land, during which 700-ton explosives are detonated. Moreover, nearly 70 percent of the nation’s gold mining occurs upon Shoshone Nation land, despite the fact that gold ore is commonly found throughout the U.S. What’s wrong with industrial gold mining, you may ask. Well, for one, it’s stupid.

Gold mining is a highly nocuous vocation. Not only does it threaten the health and livelihood of miners and occupants of the surrounding communities, but it is deleterious to its own and surrounding landbases, ultimately threatening the natural ecology of the region.

Tons of rock must be extracted from the earth to extricate an ounce of gold. The processing of the metal involves (depending on its metallurgical makeup) the application of a diluted cyanide solution (sodium cyanide), sulfuric acid, mercury, and other noxious and fatal substances, alongside being water intensive (drawing intensively from a diminished water-table).

There are literally thousands of other examples I could provide to illustrate how the U.S. and its corporate collaborators create poor health conditions and abject poverty among an already marginalized population for their own profitable gains and neocolonial, hegemonic aspirations. And matters are made desperately worse by the incompetence of the IHS.

Seeking solutions

Rectifying a longtime problem, one as grisly as the diminution of America’s indigenous, followed by destructive protocol delegated by U.S. decree, is indeed a difficult task at hand. As regards restoring a broken and virtually bankrupt IHS, some lawmakers are pushing for the reauthorization of the Indian Healthcare Improvement Act.

On October 14th, Rep. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., sent a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller urging “the inclusion of reauthorization of the IHCI Act as part of comprehensive health insurance reform,” nmpolitics.net reports. In the words of Heinrich, “Our country desperately needs health insurance reform — but our pursuit of reform cannot leave Native Americans behind,” he said. “I represent tens of thousands of Native Americans in central New Mexico, and my constituents have made it clear that they cannot wait any longer for health care reform in Indian country.”

According to New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone: “Less is spent on providing health care to American Indians per capita than any other sub-population. In fact, we spend more to provide health care to federal inmates than we do for American Indians.” As reported at racewire.org, Pallone is appealing for an amendment to the current health care bill that would add changes to services for American Indians to “any health care reform that happens in Congress.”

Many wonder, though, would reauthorizing the Indian Healthcare Improvement Act, with a few additional furnishings, really ameliorate the problem at hand? Obviously, U.S. legislation has not worked thus far and, moreso, it has been the driving impetus behind the historical disintegration of this country’s indigenous.

If anything is to suffice, health care services for Native Americans must be developed in accord with Native Americans’ requirements and wishes. Services must incorporate the indigenous traditions and practices of each tribe, alongside the option to access conventional methods of treatment.

More capital should be injected into the system. There are absolutely no excuses to do otherwise. The money is there — it’s just being misspent, primarily on an already-bloated defense budget. Allocations for environmental clean-up costs must be put in place, too. And clean-up projects must be enforced with full speed ahead. This would — with the adequate sanitation gear — provide a massive amount of new employment as well.

A concerted effort, from all angles, on behalf of U.S. policy-makers, must culminate in an unprecedented level of reparations that not only rectify centuries of genocidal maltreatment, but also recognize, with respect, indigenous sovereignties. This includes the withdrawal of all unwanted military and corporate activity/occupation from Indian country. In the end, the health of one’s landbase is commensurate with the health of one’s community.

1. Goldsmith, M.F. (1996). First Americans face their latest challenge: Indian health care meets state Medicaid reform. JAMA, 275, 1786; also see Voss, Richard W., Victor Douville, Alex Little Soldier, and Gayla Twiss, Tribal and shamanic-based social work practice: a Lakota perspective, Social Work, Vol. 44, 1999.
2. Kuschell-Haworth, Holly T., “Jumping Through Hoops: Traditional Healers and the Indian Health Care Improvement Act,” DePaul Journal of Health Care Law, 1999.
3. Dillingham, Brint, “Indian Women and HIS Sterilization Practices,” American Indian Journal, vol. 3, no. 1 (1977), pp. 27-28. For more info on this, see Churchill, Ward, “In the Matter of Julius Streicher: Applying Nuremberg Precedents in the United States,” From A Native Son: Selected Essays on Indigenism, 1985-1995 (Boston: South End Press, 1996).
4. Andrea Smith, “The HIV-Correlation to Hepatitis-A and B Vaccines,” WARN Newsletter (Chicago: Women of All Red Nations, summer 1992).
5. Duran, Bonnie M., American Journal of Public Health, May2005, Vol. 95 Issue 5, pp. 758-758.
6. Churchill, Ward, “Since Predator Came: A Survey of Native North America Since 1492, From A Native Son: Selected Essays on Indigenism, 1985-1995 (Boston: South End Press, 1996), p. 26. Also, see House Concurrent Resolution 108 of August 1953, which promulgated a policy of “unilaterally dissolving specific native nations.” This resulted in the “suspension of federal services to and recognition of the existence of”: the Menominee on June 17, 1954 (ch. 303, 68 Stat. 250); the Klamath on Aug. 13, 1954 (ch. 732, 68 Stat. 718, codified at 25 U.S.C. § 564 et seq.); the “Tribes of Western Oregon” on Aug. 13, 1954 (ch. 733, 68 Stat. 724, codified at 25 U.S.C. § 691 et seq.); and more. In total, 109 nations were statutorily “terminated” in the 1950s. Some were restored and federally recognized in the 1970s. Also, see the Relocation Act (PL 959) of 1956; for more info on the latter “Act,” see Fixico, Donald L., Termination and Relocation: Federal Indian Policy, 1945-1960 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986).
7. Duran, Bonnie M., op. cit.
8. James, Cara, Karyn Schwartz, and Julia Berndt, “A Profile of American Indians and Alaska Natives and Their Health Coverage, Race, Ethnicity and Health Care,” Kaiser Family Foundation, September 2009, p. 6.
9. Katel, Peter, (2006, April 28), “American Indians,” CQ Researcher, 16, 361-384.
10. Churchill, Ward, “Native North America: The Political Economy of Radioactive Colonialism,” From A Native Son: Selected Essays on Indigenism, 1985-1995 (Boston: South End Press, 1996), p. 147; also see Garrity, Michael, “The U.S. Colonial Empireis as Close as the Nearest Reservation,” Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management, ed. Holly Sklar (Boston: South End Press, 1980), pp. 238-68.
11. Churchill, Ward, “Native North America…,” From A Native Son…, p. 150; also see U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, The Navajo Nation: An American Colony (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976).
12. Edwards, Dr. Gordon, President of Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, “Uranium: The Deadliest Metal,” Perception Magazine, v. 10 n. 2, 1992.
13. Quartaroli, MaryLynn, “Leetso,” the Yellow Monster: Uranium Mining on the Colorado.

“Western Ukraine was hit by a severe epidemic of unidentified influenza, tentatively diagnosed by doctors as viral pneumonia. The number of dead has climbed dramatically. Doctors advise Western Ukrainians to stay home and use preventive medicine.”

On October 30, Jane Burgermeister’s theflu.com reported that:

“More than 30 people have died in the Ukraine as a result of a mysterious new virus that has an affinity for the lungs,” according to Swiss reports. Ukraine’s Health Ministry said the virus’ origin is unknown and showed “no signs of mutating to become more virulent.” So far, 40,000 people were reported sick and 951 hospitalized.

On October 30, healthfreedomalliance.org reported that Ukraine’s Health Minister, Vasyl Knyazevych, said two laboratories diagnosed 11 of 33 samples tested as “highly influenza A/H1N1.” As a result, he considered declaring a nationwide quarantine, even though western areas alone were affected.

Since October 19, 30 deaths, including one child, from “acute respiratory infections,” were reported, at first called SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome, a serious form of pneumonia caused by a virus). Influenza A virus affects birds and some mammals like pigs.

WTO Fear Mongering

The WTO says Swine Flu is similar to seasonal strains. Most cases are mild, and many people recover unaided. Yet it called the virus “unstoppable” and, on June 11, declared its highest phase 6 alert, saying: “The world is now at the start of the 2009 influenza pandemic.” On July 13, it stopped just short of mandating mass vaccinations to halt the pandemic’s spread.

On its November 1 “Pandemic (H1N1) 2009″ update, it said “more than 199 countries and overseas territories/communities have reported laboratory confirmed cases of pandemic influenza H1N1 2009, including over 6,000 deaths.”

On November 3, it reported the outbreak in Ukraine, “confirmed (as) H1N1 (based on) samples taken from patients in two of the most affected regions,” and concluded that “most (Ukraine influenza) cases are caused by the H1N1 virus.

Infectious disease expert, Dr. Donald Lau, disagrees, saying:

“The statistical probability of this being the same H1N1 virus (is) infinitesimally small.” He believes a highly virulent new strain is to blame. Public health authority, Dr. Leonard G. Horowitz sees a deadly connection between governments and the drug cartel over dangerous, toxic vaccines. On You Tube, he recently warned that:

“These vaccinations contain highly unstable viruses that easily mutate, because they are ‘live active’ laboratory mutants that are being administered…. People shed these ‘live’ viruses up to three weeks following vaccination. That means if you haven’t been vaccinated, and you get near someone who has and then sneezes, you can get their H1N1 laboratory infection.”

He explained that anyone contracting H1N1, from vaccinations or other Swine Flu-infected persons, risks combining it with other internal or environmental viruses, creating a lethal mix that can kill. He expressed great concern about vaccines used to transmit dangerous viruses, capable of mutating into deadly ones, believes this may be happening in Ukraine, and thinks America and other nations may be next.

Ukraine Reports of Overhead Aerosol Spraying

On October 31, Kiev newspaper editors got dozens of calls about light planes doing aerosol spraying during the day. In refuting the claims, the district’s Emergency Response office said “no permission had been granted for small aviation aircraft to fly within the city limits.” Yet eye-witness accounts from Lviv, Ternopil, and other Ukraine cities said the same thing.

On November 8, the South African web site fto.co.za reported that last June 26:

Suspicious aircraft were forced to land. A US operated (Russian-made long-range heavy transport) AN-124 changed its call sign from civilian to military which then triggered a response from the IAF (Indian Air Force) upon entering Pakistani air space (forcing) the plane to land in Mumbai while (a) second one was forced down by Nigerian fighter jets that also arrested the crew.

According to reports, China’s People’s Liberation Army Air Force contacted the Indian and Nigerian intelligence officials about the presence of these US operated Ukrainian aircraft amidst growing concern that the United States was spreading ‘biological agents’ in the Earth’s atmosphere, which some Chinese officials believed to be an attempt to (commit) mass genocide via the spread of H1N1 swine flu.

These aircraft “were carrying ‘waste disposal’ systems that could spray up to 45,000kg (nearly 100,000 pounds) of aerial type mist from sophisticated….nano pipes” in the planes’ wings – called chemtrails.

“Then last week, (aircraft) sprayed (an unknown) substance over Ukraine days before the (mysterious) plague outbreak.”

Quarantine and Martial Law Declared

On October 30, president Viktor Yushchenko quarantined nine regions, ordered mobile military hospitals established throughout the country, and was expected to declare martial law. Reports from western Ukraine said a “severe outbreak of UNIDENTIFIED Influenza, (is) suspected by doctors to be a form of viral pneumonia.”

On November 4, in a nationwide address, Yushchenko cited:

– an “emergency epidemic situation in the country,” caused by “infections of viral origin, including A/H1N1 flu (that are) rapidly spreading across Ukraine;”

– “People are dying; the epidemic is killing doctors;”

– “three pathogens of viral infections came to Ukraine at the same time: two of them are seasonal flu and the third is the A/H1N1; according to virologists, such a combination of infections due to mutation may produce a new, even more aggressive virus;”

– “It is generally known that the only way to prevent any infection is vaccination;” Dr. Viera Scheibner, the world’s foremost vaccine expert, calls it the worst way as vaccines often cause the diseases they’re designed to prevent;

– “in early October,” it was known that “viral infections in the west of the country” were spreading;

– “The current Constitution after alterations in 2004 makes the Government solely responsible for conducting state healthcare policy….(by) my decree I put” the National Security and Defense Council (in charge) of decision-making;”

– “Failure to comply with its orders will immediately result in application to the law enforcement authorities.”

In other words, Yushchenko declared martial law. He also ordered a crackdown on political protests, the arrest of public health officials opposed to mass Swine Flu vaccinations and quarantines, arrests of anyone not complying, and a ban on all infection medicines except Swine Flu vaccines.

By November 6, Deputy Health Minister, Zinovy Mytnyk, said “633,877 people (were) suffering from flu and acute respiratory infections,” and “95″ had died.

On November 7, healthfreedomalliance.org updated the totals to “871,037 Influenza/ARI (acute respiratory infection) cases, 39,603 hospitalized, and 135 deaths, and asked if Baxter released a bioweapon in Ukraine, saying “Evidence appears to suggest” it. It cited a February 24 bloomberg.com report that “Baxter Sent Bird Flu Virus to European Labs by Error (containing) contaminated (virus) samples….”

The problem was discovered when inoculated ferrets in a Czech lab died. Austrian health minister, Sigrid Rosenberger, confirmed that Baxter supplied batches “infected with a bird flu virus.” Company spokesperson, Christopher Bona, blamed “human error.” Others were skeptical, including Austrian journalist Jane Burgermeister.

On June 10, she filed sweeping criminal charges with the FBI in addition to earlier April 8 ones with the Vienna State Prosecutor’s Office against Baxter AG, Baxter International and Avir Green Hill Biotechnology AG, “for manufacturing, disseminating, and releasing a biological weapon of mass destruction on Austrian soil between December 2008 and February 2009 with the intention of causing a global bird flu pandemic virus and of intending to profit from that same pandemic in an act that violates laws on international organised crime and genocide.”

Baxter operates Biosafety Level 3 (BLS-3) labs that take strict precautions to assure against accidental H3N2 (human influenza) and H5N1 (bird flu) co-mingling contamination. Letting it happen suggests something more nefarious than an accident.

BLS-3 personnel are trained in handling pathogenic and potentially lethal agents and are supervised by competent, experienced scientists. In addition, these labs have specially engineered design features for added safety.

By combining H3N2 and H5N1 viruses, “Baxter produced a highly dangerous biological weapon with a 63 per cent mortality rate. The H5N1 virus is restricted in its human-to-human transmissibility, especially because it is less airborne.”

“However when… combined with seasonal flu viruses (easily transmitted by air), a new flu virus is created which is unknown to the human immune system and which will have a severe impact on an unprotected population. A deadly virus of this kind could spread around the world in a short time and (potentially) infect millions (or) even billions of people.”

Baxter (via Avir) “distributed (72 kilos of) contaminated (live bird flu) vaccines using false concealment and false labels to 16 laboratories in Austria and… other countries at the end of January/beginning of February, potentially infecting at least 36-37 laboratory staff, who (were) treated preventively for bird flu and ordinary flu.” On the same day, 18 Avir employees were as well at Vienna’s Otto Wagner Hospital.

Burgermeister cited a Baxter-Avir 2006 contract with Austria’s Health Ministry for 16 million vaccine doses in case a bird flu pandemic was declared. This “laboratory incident shows that national and international authorities are not able to fulfill their obligations to ensure the safety of the Austrian people,” and indicates they engaged in a cover-up.

“If a pharmaceutical company can breach laws — and almost trigger a bird flu pandemic, which (potentially could spread worldwide) — without being made accountable for it… then there is, de facto, no rule of law on Austrian territory.”

She also contends that Baxter’s production system, “namely, the use of 1200 liter bioreactors and vero cell technology,” meets “the technical criteria to be classified as a secret dual purpose large-scale bioweapon production facility (able to produce) a huge amount of contaminated vaccine material… rapidly.”

“If (this) material were added to the 1200 liter bioreactors, it would replicate and infect the entire batch of vaccine material in (it). Contaminated material could (then) be distributed among sections of the population using false labels and secretly marked batches (able to) infect millions of people.”

Burgermeister accused high-level Austrian Health and other Ministry officials of knowledge and support of this practice. Otherwise, controls would have prevented it. In June, she named drug producers Baxter, Novartis and Sanofi Aventis; world agencies, including the WHO, UN, and CDC; and high-level officials in Austria, other European countries, and America.

Did Baxter Release a Bioweapon in Ukraine?

Baxter has a facility in Ukraine. Given the above evidence, it may be behind the current outbreak. A November 1 David Rothscum infowars.com article headlined: “Has Baxter International released a biological weapon,” in citing an earlier Huffington Post report on a man named Joseph Moshe, a Mossad biological warfare expert. True or not, he warned, on an August radio program, about “a biological weapon… being made by Baxter International(’s Ukraine facility) that would be spread through vaccine and would cause a plague upon its release.” Having reported this two months before the outbreak lends credence to his story.

In August, Ukraine was almost influenza free. On October 30, earthtimes.org said only two cases of Swine Flu had been reported. According to fto.co.za, on March 26, reports were that “thousands of Ukrainians refused” to be vaccinated, because of fears about “diphtheria, mumps, polio, hepatitis B, tuberculosis, (and) whooping cough among others. Health officials said (this) could lead to disease outbreaks….” Perhaps unleashing a “biological weapon” is how to convince them and millions elsewhere.

Rothscum confirmed Moshe’s credentials, noting that “massive numbers of microbiologists have been dying bizarre deaths.” Among them:

• Stephen Lagakos, Professor of Biostatistics and AIDS researcher at Harvard’s School of Public Health, died in an October auto collision;
• Malcolm Casadaban, reknown molecular geneticist, died of plague in September;
• Wallace Pannier, noted germ warfare scientist, died in August of respiratory failure;
• August “Gus” Watanabe, former Eli Lilly and Company Executive Vice President of Science and Technology and former head of its Research Laboratories, died of apparent self-inflicted wounds from a .38-caliber handgun; a note left behind cited depression over his daughter’s death;
• Caroline Coffey, Cornell University post-doctoral biomedicine researcher, died in June from massive cuts to her throat; and
• Nasser Talebzadeh Ordoubadi, a Mind-Body-Quantum medicine pioneer and discoverer of an antitoxin treatment for bioweapons, died in February of “suspicious” causes.

On November 7, theflucase.com asked:

Is the Ukraine outbreak “the plague? A mutated virus? Or is the plague the cover for introducing a mutated virus?” Citing the South African web site fto.co.za, it wondered if the Ukraine Swine Flu strain “might have mutated (to) pneumonic plague.”

It reported Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Health saying his nation has a different H1N1 strain than the rest of the world because of how many were infected so fast. Other officials disagree and suggest this one may have mutated to something else because it “has a much bigger rate of filling the lungs with blood…. The plague or virus in the Ukraine has 10 times the mortality rate (attributed to) normal swine flu.”

However, unconfirmed reports are that “people are going on as normal… they also say this is fear mongering” to promote voluntary vaccinations. “Everyone is waiting for the gene sequences which will confirm whether this has been hyped up, a real mutated H1N1, or just bad (Ukraine) health services.” Perhaps exaggerated illness and death reports to stoke fear and be a pretext for what followed.

Ukraine is now under martial law. Civil liberties are suspended. By government edict, anyone may be criminally prosecuted. Scheduled January elections may be delayed or cancelled. Public demonstrations are banned. Political opponents are prohibited from traveling in quarantined areas. Borders are partially closed. Mandated vaccinations are coming. WHO fear-mongering is hyping the danger. A month before the outbreak, it took part in a bioterrorism plague exercise. On November 7, Lake of the Hills, IL police conducted their own against pneumonic plague as part of the McHenry County Department of Health’s emergency planning.

Burgermeister suggests to Baxter the:

WTO and the international corporate crime syndicate that funds them may have decided they could go ahead with their plan to trigger a pandemic in Europe and the USA because the public awareness of the dangers of the vaccine has become too great, not least as a result of WHO and Baxter being caught contaminating 72 kilos of vaccine material with the live bird flu virus in February.

Opposition to Vaccinations in Europe

Across the continent, opposition is widespread. Few are showing up to get it. On November 7 in Paris, a public demonstration against them was held. As of November 5, less than 0.1% of the French population was inoculated despite a mass vaccination campaign. 90% of Greek health workers oppose them. Reports from Portugal say vaccine centers are nearly empty, and doctors and nurses won’t take them. Sources expect a “revolution” if they’re mandated.

A mid-October Der Spiegel article reported an “open rebellion” among general medical professionals and child physicians across Germany over dangerous Swine Flu vaccines. Dieter Ludwig, drug commission chairman of the German medical profession, said health authorities colluded with drug companies to promote them.

In Denmark, most public officials and healthcare workers won’t take them, citing the danger and saying H1N1 is no different from seasonal flu. Throughout Scandinavia, sentiment is the same with up to 75% opposition. In Sweden, as few as several thousand have gotten them. Across the continent also, in the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium and elsewhere. Also large segments of the US, Canadian and UK populations voice strong opposition. Open protests are occurring in Austria. In other countries as well. Millions know the toxicity and won’t touch them. Ukraine’s outbreak may be a counteroffensive to force them, first there, then globally.

Ukraine Outbreak Spreads

On November 6, innworldreport.net headlined, “Pneumonic Plague Outbreak in China Follows Outbreak in Ukraine.” The town of Ziketan (population 10,000) reported two deaths and a dozen others infected. The “area inside a 17-mile radius” was quarantined to contain it. The “highly contagious disease, one of the most virulent and deadly diseases on earth, (is) usually fatal within 24 hours. It attacks the lungs and kills nearly everyone who catches it unless treated rapidly with antibiotics.”

On the same day, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko called the panic over Swine Flu artificially created by drug companies. He urged people not to panic, and said authorities are monitoring the situation in neighboring Ukraine. Ten deaths were reported in the Minsk, “preceded by flu-like symptoms.”

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty disseminates US propaganda in 20 countries, including Russia, Ukraine, Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan. On November 4, it headlined, “Swine Flu Fears Spread from Ukraine to Afghanistan,” then reported, true or false, incidences showing up in Iran, Belarus, Turkmenistan, Serbia, and other Balkan countries. “Afghanistan has declared a nationwide public health emergency and closed all educational institutes for three weeks.”

On November 2, the Chinese web site sina.com reported that authorities in a southeast Bulgarian district declared an A/H1N1 epidemic, according to local media accounts. The “sick rate” rose “to 200 per 10,000 people,” and in some towns is approaching epidemic levels. A later report said 210 per 10,000. Two deaths were reported, and Bulgaria’s chief health expert, Tencho Tenev, said “at least two million Bulgarians, or 30 percent of (the) population, could become infected with the flu virus over the coming months.”

On November 9, thebirdflupandemic.com headlined, “Russia, Belarus and Bulgaria On The Verge Of A Flu Epidemic As Cases In Ukraine Near 1 Million.”

Same day Ukraine reports said 1,031,597 people are sick with flu-like symptoms, 52,742 have been hospitalized, and 174 people have died. On November 6, Russia’s Chief Health Official, Gennady Onishchenko, said most regions in the country “are on the verge of a flu epidemic.”

“Disturbing reports are beginning to surface in western Europe. In Austria, special army units based in Korneuburg (where Baxter’s facilities are located), have been conducting pandemic emergency exercises and quarantining patients in hospitals. Are they expecting something to happen?”

WHO “Whole-of-Society Pandemic Readiness Guidelines for Pandemic Preparedness and Response in the Non-Health Sectors”

Prepared in April 2009, the same month Swine Flu was reported in Mexico, it was revised in July and now easily accessed coincidentally with the Ukraine outbreak. Its aim is:

“to prepare the whole of society, beyond the health sector, for pandemic influenza….including public and private sector organizations and essential services.”

The flucase.com says it “outlines how WHO will take over a country’s essential services, including water and sanitation; fuel and energy; food; health care; telecommunications; finance; law and order; education; and transportation under the pretext of a pandemic emergency.”

The “guidelines” state:

“National inter-ministerial pandemic preparedness committees should map out the central government’s roles, responsibilities, and chain of command and designate lead agencies,” answerable to the WHO that’s perhaps enforceable during a “health emergency.” It may work like this.

Vaccine law attorney, Alan G. Phillips says: “… underlying laws… allow states to mandate vaccines in an emergency… throw out exemptions, (and) impose quarantines and isolation outside of our homes.”

US laws are similar. They can mandate vaccinations and let states isolate and quarantine influenza victims if authorities call the disease infectious and life-threatening. Under the 2006 Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act, the HHS Secretary may declare any disease an epidemic or national emergency requiring mandatory vaccinations, quarantine, or other protective measures. It’s a short step to empowering WHO with authority over most nations in short order.

Its “guidelines” also want Defense Ministries to designate military assets to enforce vaccinations and quarantines under pandemic conditions. They also say: “Ministries of Justice should consider what legal processes could be suspended during the pandemic and make alternate plans to operate courts” while it continues.

According to theflucase.com: “leaked (French) documents show that the Minister of Justice has ordered the suspension of the most basic rights, and people can be incarcerated for up to six months without having to appear before a judge in a pandemic emergency.”

Might America and other nations order similar measures under a “pandemic emergency,” real or bogus.

Internal 2006 IBM Document Reveals Advance Knowledge of a Planned Pandemic

Titled, “Services & Global Procurement pan IOT Europe, Pandemic Plan Overview,” it was distributed to upper-level management in France. It predicted a “100% chance (of a) planned (pandemic) occurring within the next 5 years,” covering quarantines and operational procedures to be taken after an official WTO announcement. This document suggests what many believe — that governments and the drug cartel, in collusion with the WTO, orchestrated the current crisis, choosing Ukraine as the lead target. The situation there deserves close monitoring because of what may happen globally.

Advance Pandemic Warning and Early Preparations

Replikins, Ltd. is a small Boston-based biotech firm that “develops and markets… predictive products and vaccines… based upon the company’s discovery of Replikins, a new group of peptides related to the rapid replication function in viral and other diseases (capable of) predicting the emergence of virulent strains of particular diseases.”

On April 7, 2008, a year before the reported Mexican H1N1 outbreak, it published a “FluForecast” stating the following:

Replikins, Ltd. has found that the Replikin Count of the H1N1 strain of influenza virus has recently increased to 7.6 (plus/minus 1.4), its highest level since the 1918 H1N1 pandemic…. A rising Replikin Count of a particular influenza strain, indicating the rapid replication of the virus, is an early warning which has been followed consistently by an outbreak of a specific strain. The current increase appears to be specific to H1N1; there was a concurrent 80% decline in the Replikin Count of (seasonal) H3N2, for instance.

The current H1N1 appears to be rapidly replicating simultaneously in the US and Austria…. However, the same virus replikin structures detected by FluForecast software in all three previous pandemics, namely 1918 H1N1, 1957 H2N2, and 1968 H3N2, as well as in H5N1 (Avian Flu), have not yet been detected in the currently evolving H1N1.

In an October 24, 2007 press release, the US Treasury Department discussed the “preliminary results of the industry-wide pandemic flu exercise…. More than 2,700 organizations registered to participate anonymously (which) began in September and ran for three weeks.” Involved were banks, insurance companies, securities firms and exchanges, and state and federal regulators.

“The exercise simulated a pandemic wave with a peak absenteeism rate of 49 percent…. President Bush directed Treasury in May 2006 to coordinate with the banking and finance sector to better prepare its response to a pandemic crisis.”

On December 12, 2007, FEMA Region I (for New England) hosted a joint federal-state exercise “to strengthen contingency plans for an influenza pandemic. Operation PANEX 07 is the first functional exercise of its type in this country designed to determine best practices for a coordinated multi-agency response to an outbreak.”

Participating agencies included the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Health and Human Services (HHS), and Defense (DOD) “in partnership with their counterparts in the six New England states.”

On July 28, 2009, CNN reported that the Pentagon will “establish regional teams of military personnel to assist civilian authorities in the event of a significant outbreak of the H1N1 virus this fall, according to Defense Department officials…. The plan calls for military task forces to work in conjunction with (FEMA).”

Consider the implications. On October 23, Obama declared a H1N1 national emergency. The Pentagon will be in charge if conditions warrant it. Civil liberties may be suspended. Martial law may be declared. Mandatory toxic, dangerous vaccinations may be ordered, known to cause auto immune diseases ranging from annoying to debilitating to life-theatening. The situation in Ukraine bears watching. It may signal what’s soon heading everywhere.

Still, the conceiving of a tax-financed single-payer system, let alone a “socialized” one, is nowhere in sight. It still sounds bizzarre to people like myself, who live on the other side of the pond (where systems, it should be pointed out, differ both in terms of organization, financing and quality, but still rest on the principle of free, or almost free health care for all), that the largest economy in the world would choose not to grant what is considered as a right (generally enshrined in the Constitution) in most of the world’s advanced countries. Autocratic Germany passed the Health Insurance Bill in 1883, which was gradually extended to cover the entire population; Britain created the NHS in 1948; Italy officially created its in 1978, to make just a few examples. Too often have I listened to horror stories concerning many Americans (including personal friends) who developed serious illnesses and thanked fate for residing abroad, thus obtaining free health care in their new country of residence.

Now, the way this US bill was elaborated and passed represents, in my opinion, further corroboration of the fact that the US presidential system was devised, more than 200 years ago, to attain a specific goal: that is, preventing “radical” legislation from being passed by the political system. As I argue in my book The Roots of Contemporary Imperialism: The Founding Fathers, the U.S. Constitution, and 200 years of corporate dictatorship, the Founding Fathers were cunning enough to devise a system which would create “a path strewn with obstacles in the belief that it would encourage the kind of slow, deliberate politics that were their ideal,” as Daniel Lazare has argued; or, as Charles Beard has put it, “disintegration of positive action.” The political system they devised aimed at preserving the status quo, that is, domination by an already powerful business elite over the people. Only overwhelming popular pressure, extreme crises and the risk of implosion of the system have led to major legislative breakthroughs (or, rather, “concessions” from the elite), such as, to make just a few examples, the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, the Minimum Wage Act of 1938 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Indeed, as street riots or a widespread popular rebellion directed toward obtaining a national health care system appear as a remote possibility, the vicissitudes of the health care bill show the truthfulness of such assertions.

Constitutional engineering alone does not explain the shortcomings of the presidential system.

There are three additional elements, not strictly related to the US Constitution, which nevertheless overlap and help create a situation in which:

• party nominees are not necessarily their parties’ leaders (as a result of primaries), and thus their political platforms do not necessarily tally with their parties’;
• with very few exceptions, only those “eager to ‘go along to get along,’ ” as William Domhoff has put it, that is, those willing to accept massive corporate donations will win a Congress seat or the presidency, a phenomenon which is obviously not just Republican, but regards Democrats as well, thus further alienating Democratic voters as well as potential ones;
• the electoral system, in joint action with the size of the US territory, stimulates fragmentation and therefore party weakness, thus resulting in lack of party discipline, a situation made even more serious by the influence of corporate interests on elected politicians.

These three elements overlap with constitutional ones, such as the rigid separation of powers: two separate Houses, elected in different ways and at different times; and an executive (that is, the President), elected by a state-based electoral college. Thus, the President is not guaranteed a majority in one House, let alone in both; or, the President might have a majority for a limited time, and then lose it at mid-term elections; or, he may have a majority for his entire term of office, but that does not guarantee party discipline or a common plan on specific issues (with Democrats being a perfect example, supporting, for instance, emancipation in the North and Jim Crow in the South). Also, the President is not even allowed to introduce bills into Congress, and therefore has to rely on Congressmen for that; and Congress is fragmented into countless committees and sub-committees, which in most cases do all the work and leave just the final yea or nay to the whole Chamber. Besides, once a bill is passed by one House, the other House will not vote on the same bill, but present its own and, after voting on it, a conciliation committee will meet to find an agreement between the two Chambers (further delaying as well as watering down legislation). Such a complicated, fragmented system cannot help becoming a prey to lobbies. The same applies to the European Union, where the system is absolutely unintelligible even to experts, and the overlapping of different bodies and levels of governance complicates things, and has paved the way for massive lobbying by corporate interests. In my book, I argue that a parliamentary system might mitigate this phenomenon. That is not to say that lobbying and compromise would disappear, far from that. In many parliamentary systems, committees are very powerful and bills are elaborated in closed committee meetings; filibuster is common practice (for example, by introducing hundreds or thousands of amendments, both within a committee or on the floor of the House, or giving endless speeches on each one of these amendments); there are coalitions and minority governments, which may slow down a government’s action, as this would need to reach compromises with its majority partners or other parties in Parliament; lobbying and electoral financing may be aggressive; and often bills have to be passed by both Houses of Parliament, although often the Upper House can only delay the passing of the bill, but not prevent it, and the government needs the confidence of the Lower House alone). After all, the existence of economic pressures on the part of powerful interests influencing the work of elected bodies is inborn to capitalistic systems, whether they are parliamentary or presidential democracies. However, when a party or coalition of parties presents a clear platform before an election, and wins a majority, and has the power to present a bill, the government’s bill, and defend it on the floor of a House wherein parties, rather than individual MPs, are the leading actors, then, things will be more clear and responsibility for failing to pass a certain piece of legislation will be more easily ascribable.

Now, Obama used to be in favor of single-payer when he was a state Senator. In a Youtube video, apparently dating back to 2003, he claimed that “I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its gross national product on health care, cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that’s what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single-payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. That’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we’ve got to take back the White House, we’ve got to take back the Senate, and we’ve got to take back the House.” Apparently, he has changed his mind. Changing one’s own mind is legitimate, obviously. However, what is strange is that Obama became less and less convinced about single payer as his political career went on, first at the US Senate, then as a candidate for the Democratic Party’s primaries, and then as party nominee (source). Obama’s change of heart, however, does not sound too outlandish. Money certainly talks: insurance companies contributed with some $2.3 million for his electoral campaign, and the health sector with almost $19.5 million. In the end, Obama’s platform on health care fully reneged on what he had previously backed as an Illinois senator, that is, single-payer.

The bill’s history is particularly telling in order to show US presidentialism’s shortcomings.

When Bill Clinton was president, the business world was adamantly opposed to health care reform. Thus, Bill’s plan was knocked down even by wide sectors of his own party.

Obama’s plan, however, is not really clear, because the US presidential system does not allow presidents to bring forward a clear and final proposal, “take it or leave it or I’ll ask the President/King/Queen to dissolve Parliament and we’ll go to new elections”, as might be the case in a parliamentary system. Obama made some more or less clear proposals during the electoral campaign, sure. However, the bill, or, better, bills dealing with health care reform have sprouted like mushrooms, in different centers of power. Obama may talk to Congressmen, visit Congress in order to convince recalcitrant Democrats (as he did on 7 November, a pretty unusual move), but still, he can hardly impose his will (if he has one on the issue) on his Congress majority.

The New York Times has given a detailed account of the bill’s history.

Thus, at the end of March 2009, and with the consent of the insurance industry, concerned about the growing costs of health care, the (all) Democratic chairmen of five Congressional committees had reached an agreement on legislation requiring everyone to carry insurance that employers should be required to help pay for, and allowing the government to offer a public health insurance plan as an alternative to private insurance.

However, while House Democratic leaders introduced a bill on 14 June, “which in addition to a public plan included efforts to slow the pace of Medicare spending, a tax on high-income people and penalties for businesses that do not insure their workers,” the seven members of the so-called Blue Dog coalition, consisting “of fiscally conservative Democrats, threatened to block the House bill. After a 10-day impasse, an agreement was reached that would cut the bill’s cost and exempt many small businesses from having to provide health benefits to workers. The bill was passed by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on July 31 by a vote of 31 to 28, with five Democrats joining all the panel’s Republicans in opposition”. The agreement still envisaged the creation by the government of “a public insurance plan to compete with private insurers, but would negotiate rates with health care providers instead of using Medicare fee schedules to pay doctors and hospitals. States could, in addition, set up nonprofit cooperatives to offer coverage to individuals, families and small businesses.”

In the meantime, the Senate went its own way, as “the Health, Education, Labor and Pension committee worked on a bill with a public insurance plan, while the Senate Finance Committee, led by Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, worked on a bill that sought to avoid one, which Mr. Baucus thought was necessary to gain bipartisan support.” The Health Committee’s proposal saw the light of day on 2 July: “employers with 25 or more workers would have to provide coverage or pay the government an annual fee of $750 for each full-time worker and $375 for each part-timer. The government would pay the start-up costs for the public insurance option as a loan to be repaid, and premiums would be set up so that the option was ultimately self-sufficient.” The bill was passed on 15 July. However, Senator Baucus introduced another bill at the end of August, which “did not include a new government insurance plan to compete with private insurers,” and, “unlike the other bills … would impose a new excise tax on insurance companies that sell high-end policies. The bill would not require employers to offer coverage. But employers with more than 50 workers would have to reimburse the government for some or all of the cost of subsidies provided to employees who buy insurance on their own.” This proposal was passed on 14 October.

In the meantime, Obama, the President and therefore Head of the government, limited himself to a speech to a joint session of Congress in September, and to the aforementioned visit to centrist Democrats on 7 November.

So, the bill was passed at the House. However, further compromises had to be reached before the House could actually give its approval. In order to assuage conservative Democrats’ fears of losing their Congress seats, it was decided that the public option plan “will have to negotiate rates just as private insurers do, rather than offering a rate set slightly above what Medicare pays,” and “the plan will also confront strict controls on abortion. After heavy lobbying by Catholic bishops, the measure was amended to tighten restrictions on abortion coverage in subsidized plans bought through the insurance exchanges, to insure that no federal money is used to pay for an abortion. Both changes angered Ms. Pelosi’s base of liberal Democrats, but they chose to support the bill nonetheless.”

What will happen next? Senate majority leader Harry Reid has already “finessed the difference between a health committee bill that included a public option and a Finance Committee bill that favored a system of co-ops by announcing that the merged bill would include a government plan that would let states “opt out.” A Republican filibuster, however, is not too remote an option, as independent Senators such as Joseph Lieberman have already announced opposition to any bill containing a public option, and support from conservative Democrats is not guaranteed. There is widespread fear that the reform will lie dormant in Congress for a long time to come.

The future of the health care reform in the US is therefore still unclear. Anything might happen: a different version might be passed, after further negotiations between the two Chambers; or the reform might even be put off till doomsday. Still, that is exactly the kind of chaos the Founding Fathers wanted in order to preserve order and stability. Whatever happens at the Senate, health care is not the first victim of US presidentialism, nor will it be the last.

The Good

The longer a rotten system lasts, the more any change to it is perceived to be a giant leap forward. In this light, the House health bill contains some positive changes. Insurers will now be prevented from refusing enrollment based on a pre-existing condition or dropping subscribers who become ill. Such policies have allowed private insurers to maintain profit margins and, consequently, are contributing factors to the swelling ranks of the uninsured. Their elimination is certainly a positive reform.

Another provision in the bill removes the anti-trust exemption for private health insurers. Since 1945, insurers have been exempt from Federal anti-trust law but subject to whatever state-by-state provisions existed. Insurers argued that this allowed them to share essential information about pools of subscribers in order to determine risk. In practice, much more than information was shared. The American Medical Association reports that large insurers now control 94% of health care business in most regional markets. A few large-scale private insurers lord over each segment of the country. House Democrats view anti-trust law enforcement as a means to combat this concentration, but it presents a more ominous prospect when viewed inside of the rest of the reform proposal.

Transforming the mass number of uninsured, at last count around 48 million, into potential customers will favor those companies capable of operating economies of scale. In other words, the larger the corporation, the easier it will be to price your way into the new market. For a time, prices may drop, but only at the cost of further monopolization, this time on the national instead of regional scale. Anti-trust law is a notoriously weak weapon to break up monopolies, since enforcement is contingent on the political appetite of whatever administration directs politics in Washington. Removing the exemption is positive, yet creating the conditions to expand the problem of monopolization seems to neutralize the benefits.

The Bad

Many emotional pleas and an equally large number of words have been delivered for and against the public option. Right-wingers point to it as the crux of the secret socialist plan, while honest liberals made it a litmus test for the utility of the bill. What emerged from the debate is a watered-down version of a public plan sabotaged by concessions made to a vocal right-wing and paid for by campaign contributions to Democrats from the private insurance lobby.

Key to the watering-down was de-linking reimbursement rates from the Medicare schedule. Medicare operates as a price-fixed program where rates are negotiated into annual budgets through the legislature. These are, generally, significantly below rates in the private sector. The House bill version of the public plan will operate with rates determined by the marketplace. This means that the private sector will play a primary role in determining the cost structure in which the public plan will operate. This will end the deflationary effect a Medicare-compensation structure would have and may also mean, as the Congressional Budget Office has argued, that a public plan will be forced to offer more expensive plans than private insurers.

The weak public plan will have negative ripple effects inside the overall reform. The uninsured who can prove financial need, can now apply for “insurance credits” to purchase coverage. However, since the public plan may prove to be more expensive than private plans, it is likely that a significant amount of public subsidies will be funneled into the coffers of private health insurers. This fits with a larger pattern being developed by the Obama administration of funneling good public money into bad private sector businesses that have failed to meet the needs of the American people. The double problems of price inflation inside the plan and the issuance of insurance credits to private companies threaten to drive the already inflated price tag for the reform well past the estimated $1.2 trillion.

The Ugly

In another act of right-wing slight-of-hand, House Democrats shifted the mandate burden from the business community onto individuals. Republican pressure forced the ceiling on businesses mandated to provide insurance to their employees up to $500,000 in payroll. This will allow a significant swath of the businesses to be relieved of the burden of purchasing insurance.

Conversely, individuals will be forced by the government to carry some sort of health insurance. The penalty for not doing so will be a fine of 2.5% of your income. Continued non-payment and remaining uninsured will result in further fines and a possible jail term. This is a bonanza for private insurers, as millions will be forced into a new market for low-cost health insurance. Such plans are sure to skimp on coverage and run high on costs.

The site of the herding will be the new health insurance exchanges. This idea, championed by the conservative Heritage Foundation, will insure that market-based ideology frames the new health care system. Rates will be determined here, insurance offerings will be made and terms of care will be formulated here. All this with the continued logic of the marketplace where profits are a central concern and people’s health an afterthought.

Still Single-Payer

None of the changes outlined above amount to socialism. Nor do they even signal the opening of a road which could lead to a socialist health care plan. The hope for genuine reform rests in the same place as it did before the bill was passed – in the certainty that the private sector will make such a mess of health care that the American people will be outraged enough to move towards socializing health care. A single-payer plan would cut across the good, the bad and ugly of this round of health care reform. Our health would cease to be a commodity and be guaranteed as a human right. Plenty of organizing is needed to win single-payer and, in the immediate term, we have plenty of myths to dispel about the wonders of small reforms.

Cowardice asks the question ‘is it safe’? Expediency asks the question ‘is it politic’? Vanity asks the question ‘is it popular’? But conscience asks the question ‘is it right’? And there comes a time when we must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but we must take it because our conscience tells us that it is right.

– Martin Luther King

On Saturday, November 8 the Democrat Congress gave us a corporate driven healthcare bill which amounts to nothing more than a de facto bailout of the healthcare insurance companies. The carnival conducted by the Democrats, masquerading as a debate around healthcare, demonstrates conclusively how craven are Barack Obama and the Congressional Democrats.

We have witnessed cynicism in other administrations but the Obama administration has as raised cynicism to a veritable science. Imagine promising the poor and desperate people of this country healthcare reform and passing legislation which will not only hurt the working class but strengthen the very forces which oppose real reform – the healthcare insurance companies!

The darling of the Democrats, Alan Grayson, voted in lockstep with most of the other so-called progressive Democrats to destroy any possibility for meaningful healthcare reform for the next 40 years. How easily the Democrat rank and file is impressed. Grayson only had to bad mouth the Republicans, something which should be part of the job description of any elected Democrat. For doing the bare minimum he is hailed as a hero. So far removed from real heroism have the Democrats traveled. So ineffective and slimy have the Congressional Democrats become in sucking up to their corporate pay masters so they can keep doing more harm to the American people, that they are praiseworthy simply for criticizing the opposition. Imagine! The Democrat rank and file is impressed by a Democrat Congressman who criticizes the Republicans but votes for a healthcare bill that will spread misery on national level! Only Dennis Kucinich remained steadfast in his opposition to a corporate welfare bill masquerading as a health care reform bill. Perhaps Kucinich does more harm than good by remaining in such a party. By remaining a Democrat he legitimizes the actions he opposes and keeps millions of well intended people from forming a truly progressive opposition party believing the myth that the Democrat Party can be changed form within.

All of the Congressional Democrats and even the successor to George Bush himself recognize that universal single-payer health care (Medicare For All) is the only meaningful solution to the health care crisis in America. But these Democrats have decided that keeping their jobs is much more important than saving the lives of 45,000 Americans. By passing this most cynical piece of legislation they have put their thumbs in the eyes of the American people while the silk tongued oratory of the successor to George Bush will praise this bill even as he delights in the idea of how many people will live in misery.

Obama is so ignominious that even in this miserable mockery of health care reform he will deny benefits to the slave population in the United States as well as to women who need abortions. Obama continues to refer to the slave population created by the heinous William Clinton as “illegal immigrants”. We have 13 million slaves; they are not illegal immigrants. They are economic refugees created by trade agreements like NAFTA which allowed companies like Archer Daniels Midland and ConAgra to ship billions and billions of tons of cheap corn into Mexico destroying the Mexican family farm. We are not talking about dirt poor farmers but farmers who employed 10-15 people. Having lost their farms, they wandered into the streets of Mexico City looking for jobs in those corporations that moved to Mexico thanks to the beneficence of that ever hated sperm stain, the successor to Ronald Reagan, who murdered a million innocent Iraqi men, women and children with bombs and sanctions.

When the US corporations closed up their plants in Mexico and moved off to China and Bangladesh where they could pay people $.50 an hour and $.35 an hour these former farm owners had the option of watching their families starve in the streets of Mexico or live as slaves in cardboard boxes in the underpasses of the United States. They have now become a new slave population, paying taxes and Social Security using phony identifications but denied even what would be considered hospitality anywhere else in the world – health care! Only the pro-slavery Democrats treat human beings in this way. Just as William, the stain, Clinton destroyed the women’s movement with his “Welfare Reform Act” which threw tens of thousands of single mothers into the streets and forced tens of thousands of others into the slavery of Wal-Mart like jobs, so also will Barry The Bomber’s healthcare reform continue pummeling the already staggering working-class American.

Here we have a health care bill which will not only drive up insurance costs but will not even permit the government to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies, thereby driving up pharmaceutical costs as well! The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that only 2% of Americans will be able to participate in this plan while 33% of Americans will remain either uninsured or underinsured. The bill even was stripped of the Kucinich amendment which would have permitted states to develop their own single-payer options. Americans will now be forced to buy health care plans from private insurance corporations. Forced!

Even a little arithmetic indicates what a horror show this nasty piece of legislation creates. Imagine a family at roughly 300% of poverty — around $55,000 a year. It will cost them in the neighborhood of $15,000 in taxes, $14,000 in mortgage or rent; close to $20,000 on childcare and they’ll need around $7,000 for food. That puts them in debt already! Now they will be forced to buy health care — forced! Under penalty of law! Even with government subsidies they will still be in debt! (There is not enough money in the bill to subsidize all the people who will need it). Now imagine a medical catastrophe. Even if caps are eliminated this family will be deeper in debt as the insurance companies increase their profits!

But wait! It gets better – worse if you please. The Congressional Budget Office also explained that one of the other reasons why so few people would be able to buy into this plan is that it “would typically have premiums that are somewhat higher than the average premiums for the private plans.” Yes, you read that correctly: “premiums that are somewhat higher”.

What about those people who don’t get coverage through their jobs or who have their health insurance dropped at work because there will now be an incentive to dump benefits? History already provides us the answer to that question. Most of the adults who tried to buy insurance on the open market never bought a plan because they could not afford it or they could not find a plan that met their needs. Now the prices will be higher! What a choice: buy insurance coverage or pay a penalty of hundreds or even thousands of dollars per family if they decide to forgo insurance.

LIEBERMAN TO THE RESCUE

The Senate version of health care reform is even more draconian than the House version, but the real hero of this tragedy, Joe Lieberman, promises to join a Republican filibuster! The independent senator from Connecticut, hated by liberal Democrats may yet save us! The senator told Fox News Sunday today that Democrats can certainly count him in the “no” column if they keep in a government-backed insurance plan. “If the public option is in there as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote,” signaling as he has before that he would back a Republican filibuster — which Democrats need 60 votes to break.

While it is never morally acceptable to do something wrong even for a good reason (the ends never justify the means), it is always morally acceptable to do something right even for the wrong reasons! Lincoln, for example, did not free the slaves because it was the morally correct thing to do. He did it for political reasons but nevertheless he did do it and it was the right thing to do. We may not like Joe Lieberman and Max Baucus but ironically we may be in their debt if they join the filibuster to block this anti-working class, corporate welfare legislation. We should be castigating Conyers and Grayson because of their vote in the House while we may have to heave sigh of thanksgiving for people like Lieberman and Baucus if they are successful in preventing this very dangerous piece of legislation.

Some might say I sound like a demagogue. When you are used to insipid soundbytes and P.C.-fluff, the truth starts sounding like demagoguery. The fact of the matter is that the truth is extraordinarily painful in this country ruled by a peculiar Victorian fetish of the marketplace. Nowhere in the civilized world could one imagine civic leaders fear mongering the populace about the evils of “socialized medicine” without getting laughed out of the country. Unfortunately, these goons of capitalist oppression seem to have been collectively laughed out of the civilized world and into Land of the Free.

Nonetheless, the problem is not this visceral minority. The problem lies in those that pretend to befriend progress: that grand, archaic organ of political oppression called the Democratic Party. This increasingly irrelevant union of crooks, hucksters and swindlers has betrayed the American people beyond recognition. Their failure to enact meaningful health care reform must be the last straw.

From the beginning of the current “health reform” debacle, the game was rigged. Immediately, the only meaningful reform, “single payer,” was taken off the table, and progressives were told to rally behind a “strong public option” by Democratic front groups like Moveon.org and Health Care for America Now (HCAN). These two NGO’s organized numerous “rallies” in order to command a feeble subservience to the Democratic leadership ahead of their caving to corporate interests on the issue.

Meanwhile, single-payer activists were placed in the precarious position of having to advocate against the meaningless and amorphous “strong public option” and the tea-baggers all at once. In a country so dominated by trivial soundbytes, you have to be either “for or against” everything: no shades of gray, no third way. Unfortunately, many progressives got caught in the trap and started rallying behind a bill (Obama’s Health Care Bill HR 3200) that no one knew anything about. This clever catch all was meant to accomplish exactly that: institute no meaningful reform while tricking a significant portion of progressives into thinking that we were now seeing “The change we can believe in.”

Nonetheless, single-payer activists were thrown a couple bones. One was a promise of a vote on the “Weiner Amendment” on the house floor. This amendment would have replaced the current bill with HR 676: the single-payer bill. The other, more meaningful bone was the “Kucinich Amendment,” which would have lifted loopholes that prevent individual states from enacting single-payer legislation. This approach seemed more tactically sound than expecting much of an up-down vote on single-payer on the house floor. The Canadian health system was enacted province-by-province, and it seemed reasonable to expect the same here: the more “enlightened” states lead the way, attract a significant spike in businesses fleeing other states so as to cut health expenses, and gradually the states fall like dominoes.

Kucinich told a crowd in Aurora, IL this summer to focus on his amendment. He informed us that the Single-Payer vote (Weiner Amendment) was a smoke screen doomed to failure because of the lack of adequate time to organize sufficiently for the vote.

I then attended several organizing meetings and stressed the need to emphasize the Kucinich Amendment as the most tactically prescient step forward for single-payer activists. I suggested that people not bite the Weiner amendment bait. As a veteran of the NGO industrial complex, I saw the Weiner Amendment for what it was: a chance for progressive Democrats and single-payer NGO’s to claim victory (just by bringing the issue to a vote), and to thus muster some fund-raising. I could picture the fund-raising letter: “Dear Single-Payer Activist, today we scored a major victory in the House of Representatives by bringing Single Payer Health Care to a vote for the first time. But there remains a lot of work to be done in order to win the vote in the future. Please help us in this mission by donating today.”

Unfortunately, many activists bit the bait. Action alert after action alert instructed people to call their reps and urge them on the Weiner Amendment.

In the end, both the Kucinich and Weiner amendments were removed from consideration by house leadership this past week. Meanwhile, Democratic cheerleaders have been trumpeting the success at instituting a “public option” in both the House and Senate versions of the health reform bill. The proposed public option will cover about 3% of the population, while roughly 33% of Americans are un- or under-insured. Many progressive democrats inform me that this is the best we can realistically do given the conservative dynamics of the American populace. I don’t understand what American populace they are talking about. As someone who goes out to the bungalow belt of Chicago to knock on doors practically everyday, I can say with full confidence that only an insignificant wacko minority is repelled by the thought of “Medicare for all.” Perhaps we can figure out a way to leave those few people out when we finally do institute a single-payer system.

Progressive leaders have fallen to the right of the American people. Americans crave and need meaningful health care reform in line with the remainder of the civilized world. They crave and need leadership in Washington that stands for the interests of their constituents: leaders that aren’t fearful of lifting their heads above the fray, pounding their fists on the podium and declaring “It is time we shut this racket down. Let us throw the insurance companies into the dustbin of history once and for all, and end this domestic terrorism that kills 45,000 Americans a year!”

Unfortunately, to get to this point, we are going to have to purge the Congress of almost every last one of its members, and stop thinking that the Democrats or the NGO industrial complex will ever bring Americans their cherished Medicare-for-all.

Did your doctor pass, Bipolar Disorder: Individualizing Treatment to Improve Patient Outcomes, Part 2 “taught” by Trisha Suppes, MD, PhD and offered by CME Outfitters?

Suppes is a Professor in Stanford’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science and funded by Abbott, AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen, Novartis, Pfizer, Wyeth, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Shire and four more pharma companies.

Maybe your doctor passed Quadrivalent HPV Vaccine May Be Effective in Women 24 to 45 Years Old–which sounds like a sales pitch for Gardasil because it is–which “studies” a Lancet article written by Nubia Munoz, MD, two Merck employees and other authors.

Sample question: “What was the main conclusion of the current study by Munoz and colleagues of HPV vaccine among women between the ages of 24 and 45 years?” (Italics CME’s) Hint: the answer is in the title.

Upon “completion on this activity” offered by CME giant Medscape–still available for credit if you hurry–participants will be able to: “Specify the currently recommended age range for the administration of the quadrivalent human papillomavirus vaccine” and “Describe the effects of the quadrivalent human papillomavirus vaccine among women between the ages of 24 and 45 years.”

Maybe your doctor passed Medscape’s Innovative Approaches to Vaccination Challenges: Overcoming Barriers for Adult Patients sponsored by vaccine makers Novartis, GSK and Merck and referring to sales barriers.

CMEs, continuing medical education courses, are sponsored by pharma, “taught” by pharma funded specialists and bracketed by pop-up drugs ads which sometimes occlude the text you’re reading. (”Which of the following manic symptoms are most seriously impacting your bipolar patients’ lives?” asked a disease-baiting ad for Geodon, direct-to-consumer style, when we looked at a CME.) Yet doctors are required to sit through the canned message like a time-share presentation and answer a quiz just to keep their state licenses and sometimes insurance policies.

In fact the only good thing doctors have to say about CMEs is they are hard to fail–”second chance” questions pop up if you miss the first ones; whew!–and they are often free. Why?

CMEs are supposed to be monitored by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) but like Standard and Poor’s and Moody’s stock ratings funding comes from the client side so buyer beware.

Last year Bernard Carroll, MD a former chairman of psychiatry at Duke, challenged the objectivity of a CME Outfitters course called Atypical Antipsychotics in Major Depressive Disorder: When Current Treatments Are Not Enough (what are they trying to say?) funded by Seroquel maker AstraZeneca and taught by disgraced Emory University psychiatrist Charles Nemeroff, MD who lost his department chairmanship from unreported pharma income.

Two doses of Seroquel were tested, but only the results of one were “statistically significant,” writes Carroll on a blog called Health Care Renewal. “One of the junior presenters stated very clearly that there was ’significant improvement in both response and remission with both doses’ of Seroquel. That is a falsification of the scientific record.”

In October AstraZeneca agreed to pay $520 million to settle Seroquel suits and investigations of “physicians who participated in clinical trials involving Seroquel,” presumably on which safety was established, and a JAMA article red flags Seroquel’s metabolic proclivities in which studied children gained a pound a week and more. Yet AstraZeneca still seeks FDA approval to market Seroquel to kids.

Nor did the April 2009 article about Seroquel, “Maintenance Treatment For Patients With Bipolar I Disorder: Results From A North American Study Of Quetiapine In Combination With Lithium Or Divalproex” in the American Journal of Psychiatry (AJP) by CME presenter Trisha Suppes fare well.

Why were two-thirds of pre-randomization patients discontinued because of “lack of therapeutic response, developing an adverse event” and being lost to follow-up ask Debasish Basu, MD, and Kaustav Chakraborty, MD from Chandigarh, India in the October AJP? “Could it be possible that the remaining patients, who did eventually proceed to the randomization phase, represented a group favorably predisposed to the quetiapine combination?”

A second letter in the same AJP echoes the methodology questions. “Only one-third of the patients were selected for maintenance therapy, which raises the possibility of selection bias,” write Bettahalasoor S. Somashekar, MD, DPM, Ashok Kumar Jainer, MD, MRCP and Wajid Shafi, MD from Coventry, UK. “In this regard, Healy [David Healy, MD, Cardiff University professor] stated that company sponsored clinical trials invariably recruit samples of convenience, which by definition do not actually sustain extrapolation to normal clinical practice.”

Similar methodology questions are raised about the “science” behind Medscape’s Quadrivalent HPV Vaccine May Be Effective in Women 24 to 45 Years Old CME in the October 10 Lancet.

Why did Munoz et al. exclude women “with pre-existing infections and women who do not complete the full course of the vaccine,” ask six researchers with US National Cancer Institute. Is this also a sample of convenience? And why was “infection of 6 month duration or longer” used as an endpoint for showing a public health cancer benefit asks a different set of researchers, Stefanie Schenk and Jutta Halbekath from Berlin–when no “differentiation” between infection and cancer is given?

Clearly the letter writers need to do their CMEs.

It might have been intended as a joke, but one of the most profound comments on this topic was made a while back by Bob and Ray Magliozzi, the car guys. On their radio program, while discussing how to solve the problems of world governance, they said that in order for any nation to function properly it must be small. In fact, they said that the only way for a government to work would be for the citizens to break up into groups of ten. Ten was the ideal number. That way everyone could be heard. Everyone’s rights could be honored. Every nation would consist of ten citizens.

Think about it. How many lives have been lost because of the size of the US Military. The size of the Pentagon Budget has created global harm. In addition, the size of the Black Budget is a major problem. It should be eliminated.

In a nation that is too big, there is no way that citizens can be informed on the complexities of the laws and regulations which impact their lives. Even legislators who vote on the laws are at a disadvantage when a bill is unnecessarily complicated and too lengthy. How many in Congress will have read the nearly 2000 page Health Care Bill before they vote on it? A Bill that is almost 2000 pages in length will most likely be read by Congressional staffers. They in turn will write up a brief — sort of a Cliff Notes for Congress. That’s not the way our forefathers meant for things to be. If the Ten Commandments can be written on an index card, the US should be able to write a health care bill in a few pages.

A perfect example of how complex regulations harm all of us was recently disclosed by Stan Brock during a C-Span interview. He made a shocking revelation. He said that free medical care would be more readily available in the US, if only it was not prohibited in all States except Tennessee. That was shocking — free medical care at no expense to the taxpayer or the patient. Free vision exams, free dental fillings, free medical procedures – unbelievable.

The need for medical services is of crisis proportions — sort of a Perfect Storm. Bad economy, lost jobs, home foreclosures. I started to do the research to prove that Stan Brock was wrong when he said that most States made it almost impossible for volunteer medical personnel from other States to donate their services. Tennessee was the only exception.

I owe Stan an apology. He was right. I was wrong. I had believed that no where in our nation would a doctor be prohibited from rendering free medical care to a sick person. Cause of death — lack of papers of the volunteering physician — sort of a Catch 22 in medical care.

Everyone should research the rules. They are different in each State. My research is not complete but so far this is what it looks like. State Regulatory Boards cave in to the pressure of special medical interest groups. Regulations are written to eliminate competition from out-of-state doctors. A licensed doctor from New York, Massachusetts, or New Hampshire is not permitted to cross the state line and practice in the adjoining Vermont town. In Vermont, the licensing of doctors is controlled by the State Medical Board.

On the other hand, to further complicate things, in Vermont, the licensing of dentists is not controlled by the State Medical Board. The licensing of dentists is regulated by the Office of Professional Regulation, a division of the Office of Secretary of State. The rules for doctors and dentists are different. Rule 4.8 provides for a Transient Practice Permit which allows an out-of-state or Canadian dentist to practice in Vermont for ten days per year. This rule applies only to dentists.

Figuring a way to fix this is not brain surgery, but it might allow a patient to get brain surgery if it is needed. The fix is easy. Medical licensing Boards should honor reciprocity. A licensed doctor from one State should be granted the right to practice in any other State. Red tape and bureaucratic loopholes should be eliminated. Licensing fees for humanitarian volunteers should be eliminated. The lack of reciprocity across State lines denies a patient’s right to choose. Worse, it sometimes denies a patient’s right to survive.

For those who are not familiar with the work of Stan Brock, he is founder of RAM — Remote Area Medical. The original plan was to serve those in remote, jungle areas. Now that the US has become a Third World country, RAM has held several free clinics in the US. News reports have shown people lining up in the dark of night with the hope of getting necessary medical care. Many have had to be turned away.

The need for a Single Payer system is urgent. Until we have a Single Payer system there will be a need for thousands of humanitarians like Stan Brock. On the downside, reliance on volunteer services such as RAM unfairly deprives others around the world of medical care.

In the meantime, the US bureaucracy needs to be downsized and simplified. Only then will heroes such as Stan Brock and the other volunteers be allowed to go about their work of saving lives.

This problem is attributed to a fragmented, profit-oriented medical system that denies millions of people access to care.¹ While a national medical plan that covers everyone is desperately needed, improving the general health of the population requires more fundamental change.

Studies show that social inequality affects the health of populations more than any other factor – more than diet, smoking, exercise, and even more than access to medical care.²

Americans suffer the worst health statistics in the industrialized world because they live in the most unequal society in the industrialized world.

Poor health and lack of access to medical care are both symptoms of social inequality. In 1970 the wealthiest 0.1 percent of Americans took in 100 times the average annual income. By 2001, they were taking 560 times the average annual income. In 1980, U.S. life expectancy ranked 14th in the world. By 2007, it ranked 29th.

Inequality is built into and generated by the capitalist system. Capital is created when employers pay workers less than the value of the goods and services they produce. The resulting profit, or capital, is used to extract more capital. As this process repeats over time, capital accumulates at the top of society and misery accumulates at the bottom.

The strategy of divide-and-rule generates even more inequality: between men and women; White and Black; national and foreign-born; straight and gay; etc.

As social inequality grows, the health of the entire population suffers, not just those on the bottom.³

Inequality Kills

A study of 282 metropolitan areas in the U.S. found that the greater the difference in income, the more the death rate rose for all income levels, not just for the poor.

Researchers calculated that if income inequality could be reduced to the lowest level found in the United States, it would save as many lives as would be saved by eradicating heart disease or by preventing all deaths from lung cancer, diabetes, motor vehicle crashes, HIV infection, suicide and homicide combined!⁴ We would see even greater benefits if we eliminated social inequality entirely.

Consider the lives that would be saved just by ending racial inequality.

Without racism, death rates for Black and White Americans would be the same. Yet, every year, Black Americans suffer 300 more deaths per 100,000 people than White Americans. Compare these 300 additional deaths with the 2005 U.S. homicide rate of fewer than 6 per 100,000. Do the math. Racism kills 50 times more people than die at the hands of individual murderers.

Inequality kills kids. Forty-two nations have lower infant death rates than the U.S. The infant death rate in the capital of the U.S. is more than double the infant death rate in the capital of China. In 25 nations, people live longer, on average, than they do in America.

Inequality is so destructive that it can even counter the benefit of higher incomes. Studies show that poorer people living in more equal nations tend to be healthier and live longer than more-affluent people living in more unequal nations. For example, middle-income people in Britain enjoy better health than wealthier Americans.⁵

Men living in Bangladesh, one of the world’s poorest countries, are more likely to reach age 65 than Black American men living in Harlem. Harlem men have higher incomes than Bangladeshi men but live in a more unequal society. Black Americans tend to die prematurely from cardiovascular and other diseases that are linked with class and race inequality.⁶

How does inequality do so much damage?

Power = Health

A study of the highly-stratified British civil service found that health deteriorated as social status fell. This decline in health could not be explained by smoking, exercise or body weight.⁷ Income is not the factor, because professionals who earn less than non-professionals still enjoy better health.⁸

The answer lay in the surprising finding that those near the top of the power structure had worse health than those at the top, even though their life-styles were essentially the same.⁷ The only difference that could account for this is social power.

People with more control over their lives enjoy better health. Bosses live the longest, healthiest lives because they have the most power. As power diminishes, stress rises and health deteriorates. This relationship between social status and health has been found in every nation studied, including the United States.⁹

A 2008 study found widening differences in health between income levels in America. (Income level is often used to measure social status.) The nation’s poorest adults were nearly five times more likely to be in “poor or fair” health than the richest, and at every income level the wealthier group was healthier than the next lower one. This trend was seen in all racial groups.¹⁰ Michael Marmot, who studies the link between social status and health, explains,

Your position in the hierarchy very much relates to how much control you have over your life…Sustained, chronic and long-term stress is linked to low control over life circumstances.¹¹

Under capitalism, only a few people get to make the important decisions. The rest of us get no say over how work will be organized and how social resources will be used. We don’t get to decide if we will build more schools or more prisons, wage war or make peace.

Exclusion from decision-making is strongly linked with cardiovascular disease,¹² and the more powerless a person feels, the faster the disease progresses.¹³ Oppressed sections of the working-class suffer the highest rates of cardiovascular disease,¹⁴ because they have the least social control.

People with little control over demanding jobs are more likely to be overweight and have high cholesterol regardless of age, amount of exercise and smoking habits. By itself, hard work is not bad for your health unless there is also a lack of control. The most health-damaging jobs saddle workers with great responsibility (e.g. caring for patients) while denying them the resources required to meet those responsibilities (enough time to do what is needed).¹⁵

In Unhealthy Societies: The Afflictions of Inequality, Richard Wilkinson links inequality with health-damaging stress. Children show rising levels of stress hormones as their social position falls.¹⁶ Nurses who work under “unfair and unreasonable” bosses have higher blood pressure.¹⁷ Simply speaking with someone with higher social status will raise your blood pressure.¹⁸ The greatest damage is done to those who are put down and ordered around their entire lives.

Stress triggers a higher heart rate, a release of adrenaline, glucose and other neurological responses to help the body respond to a short-term threat. But when extended over long periods of time, they can harm the cardiovascular and immune systems, making individuals more vulnerable to a wide range of conditions including infections, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke, asthma and aggression.¹¹

Solidarity is the Best Medicine

Human survival has always depended on the cooperation that flows from strong social bonds. People who pull together enjoy better health and longer lives.¹⁹ Strong social ties may explain why Hispanic Americans have lower rates of chronic illness than White Americans, despite having lower incomes.²⁰

Human beings cannot be healthy in class-divided societies. From birth to death, capitalism ranks people on a vertical scale, with those higher up being treated as more worthy than those lower down. The unequal relationship between bosses and workers is maintained by divide-and-rule policies that generate more inequality based on sex, skin color, religion, nationality, etc. These divisions rupture social bonds and generate sickness throughout the population.

Universal access to medical care would reduce some of this inequality. However, even the best medical system cannot eliminate the health-damaging effects of poverty, social discrimination, unsafe work, bad housing, poor schools and being denied the right to make decisions that affect our lives. To end these miseries, we must eliminate class divisions and all the other inequalities that follow.

Human sickness is a product of sick social relationships, and human health is a product of healthy social relationships. Replacing class divisions with a cooperative, socialist society would reduce the burden of disease and raise the level of health more than any other measure.

1. Hadley, J. (2002). Sicker and poorer: The consequences of being uninsured. Kaiser Family Foundation.
2. Wilkinson, R.G. (1992). National mortality rates: the impact of inequality? Am J Public Health, Vol 82:8, p. 1082-1084. See also, PBS (2008). Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?
3. Rosenthal, S. (2006). POWER and powerlessness, Chapter 11, “Divide and Rule.”
4. Lynch, J.W. et. al. (1998). Income inequality and mortality in metropolitan areas of the United States. Am J Public Health Vol. 88, p. 1074-1080.
5. Quoted in Bowe, C. (2008). U.S. society helping to make people sicker. The Financial Times Limited, February 29.
6. McCord C, Freeman H.P. (1990). Excess mortality in Harlem. New England Journal of Medicine Vol. 322, p. 173-7.
7. DHSS (1980). Inequalities in health: Report of a research working group. Middlesex: U.K. Author.
8. Cited in Schmidt. J. (2000). Disciplined minds: A critical look at salaried professionals and the soul-battering system that shapes their lives. Rowman & Littlefield, p. 103-104.
9. A discussion of American studies linking class and heath can be found in Schmidt. J. (2000). Disciplined minds: A critical look at salaried professionals and the soul-battering system that shapes their lives. Rowman & Littlefield, p. 103-104.
10. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. (2008). Overcoming Obstacles to Health.
11. Cohen, P. (2004). Forget lonely. Life is healthy at the top. New York Times, May 15.
12. Raphael, D. (2001), Inequality is bad for our hearts: Why low income and social exclusion are major causes of heart disease in Canada, North York Heart Health Network, Toronto, Canada.
13. Everson S, et. al. (1997). Hopelessness and 4-year progression of carotid atherosclerosis. Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology, Vol. 17:8, p.1490-5.
14. Raphael, D. (2002). Poor choice or no choice?: Even more evidence links low income with disease so why keep blaming lifestyle choices like fries? Toronto Star, October 11, p. F6.
15. Kivimääki, M., et. al. (2002). Work stress and risk of cardiovascular mortality: prospective cohort study of industrial employees. BMJ October 19. Vol. 325, p. 857.
16. Lupien S.J. et al. (2000). Child’s stress hormone levels correlate with mother’s socioeco­nomic status and depressive state. Biol Psychiatry Nov 15. Vol. 48, p. 976-80.
17. CBC. (2003). Bad bosses bring blood pressure to boil: Study. June 24.
18. Long, J.M, et. al. (1982). The effect of status on blood pressure during verbal communication. Journal of Behavioral Medicine Vol.5, p. 165-71
19. Cacioppo, J.T. et al. (2002). Loneliness and health: Potential mechanisms. Psychosom Med May/June, Vol. 64, p. 407-17. Also, House, J.S. et. al. (1988). Social relationships and health. Science, Vol. 24, p. 540-545.
20. Cited in Cohen, P. (2004). Forget lonely. Life is healthy at the top. New York Times, May 15.

While he praises Medicare for its simplicity and certainty, he has absolutely nothing positive to say about private insurers. They take up huge amounts of time of him and his staff, trying in every possible way to deny services to their customers (his patients) and also to pay as little as possible to him. His endless struggles with the insurance companies make his life miserable. Meanwhile all he cares about is giving his patients the very best care and not making them suffer because of their insurance carriers.

Like so many of us he sees the need for major reforms of our health care system, but remains pessimistic about what Congress and President Obama will eventually deliver. He is incredulous at how executives of private insurers make vast amounts of money while making physicians and their patients suffer endless annoyances and negative impacts on health care. And they get away with making people pay more and more money for worse and worse insurance.

He also has many stories about patients that do not take medications for long term chronic conditions because they cannot afford prescriptions. He gives out as many samples that he can get, is angry that people in other nations pay much less for brand name drugs, and feels terrible for his patients because the US health care system has let them down.

What would be the ideal solution to the current health care mess? My doctor believes that opening up Medicare to everyone would be wonderful, and the system could be opened up immediately. I totally agree. There is no sound reason for Congress to protect the private health insurance industry. But of course they always have and always will because it is the source of huge amounts of money for political campaigns.

While no one should be forced into Medicare, just making it available to all who want it would be fair. If private colleges compete with public ones, and private for profit hospitals compete with nonprofit ones, why shouldn’t health insurance companies be put in a similar position?

Corruption blocks true and necessary health care reform. Remember that the next time you vote.

But they’d had a second child recently, so I visited their tiny apartment to offer congratulations. It was the polite thing to do. (That, and Mom threatened to cut me from the will if I didn’t.)

Dolton sat on a rent-a-sofa in his cramped front room, cradling his newborn daughter.

“I’m so happy for you two,” I lied. Dolton toiled at three part-time jobs; none provided benefits. My sister is disabled and can’t work. They’ve had everything from appliances to vehicles repossessed. Sooo… what to do?

Have another kid! Sigh.

“Dolton, Jr., just loves his new baby sister,” my brother-in-law said, gesturing to his ten-year-old nearby. “Don’t you, little Dolt?”

My nephew winced. The kid was no dummy. Someday I’d have to ask Apolitica who the real father was.

“So,” I ventured, “what’s the new one’s name?”

“Dimina.”

“You mean,” I said, gasping, “she’s going to be… a little Dim?”

“You got it!” Dolt said, beaming.

And some people never will, I thought, glancing towards Apolitica. She dashed into the kitchen. Coward.

From the rent-a-tube in the corner, Bill O’Liely railed against healthcare reform.

“Obama and his damn socialism!” Dolton fumed. “He and that commie Congress’ll bleed America dry.”

It took me a moment to roll my tongue back into my mouth. Finally, I managed: “It’s especially tragic given how well our economy had, thus far, survived two needless wars, tax cuts for the mega-rich and trillions shoveled to criminals who sabotaged the economy.”

“Spew actual facts if you want,” Dolt growled, “but if Obamacare passes, mark my word: soon there’ll be a hammer-and-pickle on every flag.”

The only pickle I could visualize was the one my sister and her husband were in. They’d just received the bill from the county hospital for Dimina’s birth and, without healthcare, bankruptcy was imminent.

“Dolt,” I said, “you slave away and yet you’re still destitute, and now your medical bills will break you. How could you possibly be against affordable healthcare for you, your family and 47 million other uncovered Americans?”

“Because,” he spat, “socialized medicine is un-American!”

Dimina wailed. I could relate.

“Don’t buy the lie,” I pleaded. “Polls show a huge majority of Americans want healthcare for all, and most also know that single-payer is the only real solution. Which, incidentally, is not socialized medicine, but socialized insurance.”

“I’m against socializing. Period.”

Well, so was I — at least with my brother-in-law. Inexplicably, I pressed forward. Why did lemmings come to mind?

“Don’t get hung up on pejoratives,” I urged, thinking of all the ways the extreme right has sullied once-perfectly respectable terms in recent years.

“Then how’re we supposed to buy food that doesn’t rot?”

“Excuse me?”

“Without pejoratives, food spoils. Everybody knows that,” Dolton declared triumphantly.

“I believe,” I said slowly as I wondered what I’d ever had against disinheritance, “you may be thinking of preservatives, which is what they’ll be dipping my brain in in a few hours after I donate my body to science immediately after leaving your place.”

“Ha!” he snorted. “There won’t be any donating needed once you liberals get your death panels in place.”

“They already exist.”

“Huh?”

“Death panels. They already exist. Except they’re usually called ‘insurance companies.’”

“Whaddya mean?” Dolt asked, seemingly genuinely perplexed. (Well, OK, so he always seemed genuinely perplexed.)

“C’mon, Dolt,” I said, “surely even you can see those vultures spare no effort denying as many claims as possible which, once they’re done inventing exclusions and ‘pre-exiting conditions,’ translates into untold real suffering and, not infrequently, death.”

“Hnh,” Dolt snorted. “Why do you lefties hate the free market so much?”

“You mean the ‘free market’ that the insurance companies rig with millions of dollars in bribes, sorry, campaign contributions, and industry-written legislation that best serve, hmm, let’s see, the insurance companies?”

“There you go again with your precious details,” Dolt sneered. “Listen, Mark, government-run healthcare will put an industry out of business, and that’s about as hippo-pinkie as it gets.”

“Then you should love the bogus Baucus bill. Mandatory insurance for everyone, and fines for non-conformers? How delightful — for the insurance companies.”

My brother-in-law was silent. He’d either died, or was thinking. (Barring precedent, it had to be the former.) Cautiously, I continued:

“Dolt, let me ask you something: Are you more interested in the well-being of insurance companies, or tens of millions of your fellow citizens? Because here’s the deal: the sole function of the former is to further line the pockets of shareholders and CEOs by skimming up to thirty percent of a money pool that, were it to populate a single-payer system, could nearly all be applied toward providing excellent health coverage for every American.”

“I don’t want the government choosing my doctor!” he cried.

I wondered how I could’ve missed the moment I crossed into the parallel universe.

“Dolton,” I said quietly, “you don’t have a doctor.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

I simply had to find out where the next Masochists Anonymous meeting was. Solidly cementing my qualifications for membership, I ventured on:

“Listen, Dolt, under single-payer, government simply handles the billing. Period. Current private investors are bought out, then hospitals become non-profit and receive annual payments for expansion and operational expenses. The government owns nothing, thereby debunking that ‘socialized medicine’ hooey. And, you choose your own physician.”

“I’m sure,” Dolton snarled, “doctors and nurses will love working for peanuts, which is all that’ll be left once the government starts handling all the dough in your fallopian world.”

Being in a fallopian world sounded pretty utopian at the moment.

“Hardly. Having the paperwork done by just one not-for-profit entity with low overhead — Medicare only spends about three percent on administration — instead of by numerous profit-sucking, bottom line corporations, not only frees up enough money to provide affordable, quality universal healthcare but also ensures doctors and nurses are well-compensated. It’s a no-brainer [thus making it right up your alley, I didn’t say].”

Dimina squalled. My sister came in swiftly and whisked her up. “She’s been running a fever,” Apolitica explained worriedly as she hurried to the bathroom.

“Yeah, she’s been feeling pretty crummy lately,” Dolt said, looking a little far off. (I mean, more than usual.) He was obviously concerned. I had to admit: for all his faults, Dolton was a loving father.

From the TV, xenophobia burbled: beware medical services-stealing immigrants, warned Glen Blecch.

“Handouts to illegals goes a long way toward making this country sick!” Dolt parroted.

I had to admit this, too: my brother-in-law was a bonehead.

“No,” I sighed, “what really makes this country sick is its sickness, in every way. We Americans pay by far the most for healthcare, yet rank miserably down the list in every major healthiness indicator. And as far as the expediency of denying medical services to undocumented aliens, you might want to think twice about that the next time you read about a tuberculosis outbreak in a farm labor camp or a meat-packing plant.”

“I don’t read.”

Imagine my shock.

“I don’t need the liberal media telling me how lucky we are to have a Marxist president making America more communist everyday,” he ranted. “What happened to good old American self-sufficiency? Why do people think the government owes them handouts? How come — ”

“Dolt!” It was Apolitica, entering from the hallway, carrying her bawling daughter. “Dimina’s temperature has shot up to 106. I told you we should have taken her in yesterday. We have to go the emergency room NOW!”

“But…baby — we can’t even pay the other bill we have.”

“NOW!” Apolitica repeated, already out the door with her ailing infant.

Dolton snatched his keys from the rent-a-table. “How did this happen?” he moaned.

Was there a rent-a-mirror around?

• deliver “value to members through information, advocacy and service;”
• work “tirelessly to fulfill its vision: a society in which everyone ages with dignity and purpose, and in which AARP helps people fulfill their goals and dreams;” and
• speak “with one voice – united by a common motto: ‘To serve, not be served.”

Today it’s branches include:

• AARP Foundation focusing on “education….service, (and) legal advocacy efforts;”
• AARP Services, providing “marketplace access to services that people need and want” related to “health and financial products, travel and leisure offerings, and life event services;”
• AARP Financial, Inc. providing “financial advice and education, and managed AARP-endorsed financial and insurance products,” that include health care and other insurance as well as equity, bond and money market mutual funds sold to members;
• AARP Global Network of “likeminded, nonpartisan, national organizations (in five countries) working to meet the needs of older adults around the world;” and
• NRTA: AARP’s Educator Community (formerly the National Retired Teachers Association) comprised mainly of “educators and school personnel dedicated to educational opportunities, advocacy, and service.”

On March 9, 2009, Roll Call’s Katie Kindelan’s article titled, “Defining a Future at AARP” described the organization as “perhaps the nation’s most powerful and well-funded advocacy” group, both inside and beyond the Beltway, impressively headquartered in a 10-story, 500,000 foot DC building.

Nonprofit in name only, “AARP is the equivalent of a Fortune 500 company, employing a staff of 2,419 employees, (incurring) $1.16 billion in operating expenses and overseeing annual revenues (well above) $1 billion,” around 60% of which comes from so-called Medigap supplemental insurance sales.

According to Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), “Some of these products are total rip offs,” so bad, in fact, that AARP was forced to withdraw its Essential Health Insurance Plan and Essential Plus Health Insurance Plan, developed by United Health Group and sold to 44,000 of its members.

PNHP calls AARP “part of the problem and not part of the solution. It is nothing but an insurance (and financial) broker disguised as an advocacy group – and they will never take on the health insurance industry. (It) represent(s) the insurance industry (and its own self-interest) rather than (its members and) the public welfare in discussions about health reform.”

As a result, it’s largely profit-driven offering 17 types of insurance reaping hundreds of millions annually in royalties. Millions more from selling drugs; other products and services including mutual funds; plus federal subsidies exceeding $80 million annually; and annual membership dues of $16 per year, $43 for three years, or $63 for five x 40 million members.

It’s also active on Capitol Hill with a 50-person staff and a 2008 $28 million lobbying budget, much like major corporations and for the same purpose – profits at the expense of member interests, unaware how they’re ill-served by an organization claiming to be their advocate.

AARP’s Role in Enacting the Controversial Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act (MMA) of 2003 – the So-Called Part D

Costing tens of billions annually, passage came only after initially being defeated, followed by a three hour all-night suspending of proceedings to exert pressure and offer bribes because passage assured PhRMA big profits at the expense of seniors extorted top dollar for prescription drugs, not the substantial savings government-negotiated prices would have delivered. Yet AARP was one of its staunchest advocates.

In an email later revealed, the organization’s associate executive policy director, Chris Hansen (a former aerospace lobbyist), assured Bush deputy assistant to the president, Barry Jackson, that he was on board with only minor issues to resolve. He said:

“We know that there may be details that we will message differently but we are together on the big goal.”

The deal was struck, and in succeeding weeks, AARP leaders worked closely with House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to draft a final bill. On November 22, 2003 the House passed it. The Senate followed three days later, and on December 8, it became law after George Bush signed it as “an important step toward fulfilling a longstanding promise to older and disabled Americans” who later learned they were swindled by the administration, Congress, and their premiere advocate that betrayed them for profits, its ties to PhRMA, and greater political influence in Washington.

At the time, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich explained that AARP’s CEO, Bill Novelli, had “a long history of supporting individual responsibility in health care and doesn’t want seniors dependent on government handouts.” Novelli, in fact, invited Gingrich to join an advisory panel to discuss AARP future strategies, including insurance and other products and services it might sell. He also endorsed Gingrich’s book, Saving Lives and Saving Money by writing in its forward:

“Gingrich’s (marketplace medicine) ideas are influencing how we at AARP are thinking about our national role” in the health care debate. Whether or not “one agrees (with his) policies, the book has interesting and important ideas about transforming the American health care system” to assure it remains a private for-profit system, not one run by Washington.

Novelli also expressed concern about “how (Medicare) is financed and operated,” the program AARP opposed in the 1960s, after which it supported the major 1988 Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act expansion, aligned with the Republican-controlled Congress in 1995 on health issues, backed the 1997 Medicare Reform Act that let recipients choose between private health insurance plans, and was comfortable with a free-market approach after Novelli became CEO in June 2001.

His background foretold his advocacy. His November Group initiative for Richard Nixon helped devise attack ads against George McGovern in 1972. In the 1980s, his Porter-Novelli PR firm helped the drug industry. When he left in 1990, his clients included Bristol-Myers, Ciba-Geigy, Hoffman-La Roche, SmithKline Beecham, and the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association.

As AARP CEO, Novelli began centralizing control at the top, away from greater grassroots input attuned to local needs and interests. He also hired Republican-leaning staff, including former Boeing executive Chris Hansen as chief lobbyist, who along with Novelli and Mike Naylor (a former John Deere and AlliedSignal executive) orchestrated AARP’s position on Medicare Part D. They then worked closely with Republican leaders to pass it.

According to advocates for universal single-payer coverage and others, passage of the 2003 law potentially marked the beginning of the end for publicly-financed Medicare and clouded the future of employer-provided coverage. AARP played a crucial role, much like today in the debate over health care reform. It’s siding with free-market ideologues destroys its credibility as an advocate for seniors.

AARP’s Support for Obamacare

Its initiative Health Action Now calls “this crucial moment (the) opportunity of a lifetime to fix our broken health care system. President Obama has promised health reform before the end of the year but we need to make sure that Congress follows through.”

It asks individuals to email “decision makers” about the the health care crisis and concludes:

“America needs you to take action to ensure that everyone has a choice of health care they can afford. I urge you to commit to working on a bipartisan basis to pass legislation that will provide all Americans with affordable health care choices and strengthen Medicare and improve long-term care services.”

Based on other public and internal messages, it subtly endorses hundreds of billions of Medicare cuts over the next decade as a first step toward ending Washington’s responsibility entirely by shifting the obligation to states that, in turn, will force their residents to bear the burden through higher taxes, on their own, or for those who can’t afford it, get no coverage when they most need it. That’s Obamacare’s promise, the one AARP endorses with thousands of its members dropping their memberships from an organization mindless of their interests.

On its Health Action Now web site, AARP headlines “Myths vs. Facts (saying) Don’t Let the Myths About Health Care Reform Scare You,” then follows with misinformation and outright distortion of the facts by claiming:

– Obamacare won’t ration care;

Fact check:

– proposals call for hundreds of billions in cuts over ten years with near certain greater amounts to follow;

– billions in waste will be eliminated;

Fact check:

– the above cuts will eliminate essential services, thus assuring less care, not more;

– lower drug prices;

Fact check:

– no mandate exists to cut them, just a non-binding promise on existing products and none whatever on new ones;

– “the so-called ‘public plan’ option (will) give American consumers choice if they can’t find affordable, quality coverage in the private insurance market;

Fact check:

– most people won’t qualify for a public option, and the one discussed will provide fig leaf cover for a weak and ineffective plan, not high-quality care for its recipients;

– Obamacare guarantees “all Americans a choice of health care plans they can afford;”

Fact check:

– choices will offer poor options, not quality care;

– reform plans “will NOT give the government the power to make life or death decisions for anyone regardless of their age;”

Fact check:

– hundreds of billions in Medicare cuts and restricted expensive treatments will do it for them;

– “Health care reform will help ensure doctors are paid fairly so they will continue to treat Medicare patients;”

Fact check:

– doctors already are unpaid and $200 billion in new cuts are proposed;

– “None of the health care reform proposals being considered by Congress would cut Medicare benefits or increase your out-of-pocket costs for Medicare services;”

Fact check:

– Obamacare assures both;

– “Health care reform will reduce costly, preventable hospital readmissions, saving patients and Medicare money;”

Fact check:

– less care assures more illness, not less, and higher costs to be borne by recipients;

– “Rather than weaken Medicare, health care reform will strengthen the financial status of the Medicare program;”

Fact check:

– proposed cuts, along with new ones, will weaken and eventually destroy Medicare as well as other social safety net protections because Washington prioritizes banker bailouts, other corporate subsidies, trillion dollar defense budgets, militarizing America, and servicing growing hundreds of billions in debt obligations;

– “The President and Congress have committed to producing legislation that will be paid for so it won’t saddle our children and grandchildren with debt;”

Fact check:

– growing debt obligations place a lifetime burden on future generations to pay for them; and

– “If we do nothing to fix health care, families with Medicare or employer-based health coverage will likely see their premiums nearly double in the next seven years;”

Fact check:

– private insurers are assured unrestricted freedom to raise rates and will take full advantage as they’ve always done.

Nowhere under “Myths vs. Facts” does AARP suggest the only real reform solution that’s off the table and undiscussed by the administration, Congress, the major media, or by organization officials as a fundamental human right – universal single-payer coverage assuring everyone in, nobody out. Instead, Washington, in cahoots with powerful providers and AARP, highjacked the process for greater future profits by charging more, providing less, making a dysfunctional system worse, and cheating growing millions with promises they know are hollow.

It’s become traditional at AARP, cashing in at members’ expense after advocating to “improve the quality of their lives.” Will more dropouts follow over concerns about its betrayal? Very likely as Washington steamrolls toward an end of year resolution that will erode health care coverage for most Americans and deny it entirely to millions under the mantle of reform and AARP’s endorsement. It’s tradition continues.

“What we have done is kicked this can down the road. We are now at the end of the road and are not in a position to kick it any further,” he said. “We have to signal seriousness in this by making sure some of the hard decisions are made under my watch, not someone else’s.”

Key, he said, is reigning in entitlement costs by making “very difficult choices and… sacrifice(s)… Social Security, we can solve. The big problem is Medicare (and, of course, Medicaid covering 60 million in 2005), which (are) unsustainable.”

In a major April 14 Georgetown University speech, he again highlighted the problem saying cutting health care costs and “restoring fiscal discipline” are two of the top “pillars” of his agenda.

“Let’s not kid ourselves and suggest that we can solve this problem by trimming a few earmarks,” he said. The “biggest cost drivers in our budget are entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, all of which get more and more expensive every year, (so) if we want to get serious about fiscal discipline — and I do — we will have to get serious about entitlement reform,” implying a clear long-term goal of:

– shifting the burden from Washington, handing it to the states, and ultimately to taxpayers directly with no government aid or indirectly through taxes.

The US Debt Clock.org shows why. Besides the official $11.9 trillion exponentially growing national debt (some economists say $15 trillion or more), the big problem is unfunded liabilities:

– $13.9 trillion for Social Security;

– $18.4 trillion for prescription drugs; and

– $73.3 trillion for Medicare/Medicaid for a total of nearly $105.7 trillion.

Primarily through health care cost cuts, Obama pledged in his first year to begin controlling these unsustainable obligations.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and Other Recent Reports Highlight the Problem

The CBO’s June 2009 “Long-Term Budget Outlook” projects future budget deficit and national debt estimates.

Both suggest future economic decline, eventual hyperinflation, and deep erosion of personal savings. Already the national debt is more than during the Great Depression, and it’s fast heading for surpassing WW II. According to the report, this burden will:

• “reduce national saving;”
• create the need for “more borrowing from abroad;”
• reduce “domestic investment;
• depress income growth in the United States;” and
• “seriously harm the economy.”

In addition, “Lenders may become concerned about the financial solvency of the government (and) demand higher interest rates to compensate for the increasing riskiness of holding government debt.” Worrisome as well: “Both foreign and domestic lenders may not provide enough funds for the government to meet its obligations.”

Admitting its estimates may be grossly understated, the CBO said its projected budget shortfalls are unprecedented in US history, signaling a growing urgency to address them.

Further, the analysis omits how financial markets will react, but it anticipates “much more (disorder) as investors’ confidence in the nation’s fiscal solvency beg(ins) to erode… causing (dollar valuations to) plunge, interest rates to climb, and consumer prices to shoot up.”

The Federal Reserve’s second quarter “Flow of Funds Accounts” report highlights the problem by showing federal spending crowding out businesses and consumer households. In Q1 2009, the Treasury borrowed $1.443 trillion, and in Q 2 $1.896 trillion with projected continued high levels ahead.

In contrast, bank credit has dried up. Q1 2009 outstanding loans were liquidated at an $857.2 billion annual rate and $931.3 billion in Q2. In addition, net new mortgages aren’t being created. Instead, annualized liquidations hit $39.3 billion in Q1 and $239.5 billion in Q2. Cash availability through credit cards eroded by $95.3 billion in Q1 and $166 billion in Q2.

According to Professor Tim Congdon of International Monetary Research, “There has been nothing like this in the USA since the 1930s. The rapid destruction of money balances is madness,” suggesting serious trouble ahead.

The September 2009 US Treasury Bulletin adds more by showing America owes foreign investors nearly $7.9 trillion, and suggesting that these sources may begin drying up and eventually contract because dollar investments no longer are safe. Some, in fact, say the time for alternatives is now.

Medicare Reform Through MedPAC: The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission

Established in 1997 as an independent congressional agency, it advises Congress about Medicare. Each year, it submits a “Report to the Congress: Medicare Payment Policy,” the latest on March 17, 2009 for FY 2008 with recommendations to the nation’s lawmakers:

“to help constrain costs both in the short and long run. (These) recommended actions are one part of a broader array of recommendations aimed at more fundamentally reforming Medicare’s delivery system,” including achieving greater overall “efficiency” to control the unsustainable out-year costs.

However, since recommendations aren’t policy, S. 1110: Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) Reform Act of 2009 (with one co-sponsor) was introduced in the Senate on May 20:

“to amend title XVIII of the (1935) Social Security Act, making the Commission an executive branch agency, and providing the Commission new resources and authority to implement Medicare payment policy.”

Then, on June 4, HR 2718: Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) Reform Act of 2009 was introduced in the House (with no co-sponsors) for precisely the same purpose.

In other words, both bills will let White House appointed bureaucrats dictate future policies, including payment rates and benefits, trial programs, and various other initiatives outside of congressional control for the first time ever. Thus far, they remain in committees, so it’s uncertain if Congress will relinquish its long held power. If it does, for Medicare and Medicaid combined, it will be step one toward eventually ending what over 100 million Americans rely on – a steadily rising total as the population ages and growing numbers of poor and lower income people have no other source of care.

House and Senate Health Care Reform Bills

The House bill is HR 3200: America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009. The Senate’s version is America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009. After clearing the Finance Committee on October 13, further consideration now moves to both floors where significant hurdles remain.

In an earlier article, this writer explained that House and Senate bills will ration health care, enrich insurers, drug companies, and large hospital chains, and make a dysfunctional system worse. If Obamacare passes, hundreds of billions in Medicare cuts will harm seniors. Most others as well, especially the poor, chronically ill, all working Americans paying more and getting less, and millions more left uninsured. In addition, employers will be able to opt out of providing coverage, but since insurance will be mandated, those without it will have to buy it or face hundreds of dollars in penalties — still a debated figure ahead of House and Senate floor debate, votes in both chambers, and if passed, approving final legislation to be sent to the President for signing.

Four of the five House and Senate versions include a public option. Only the Baucus bill excludes it. Instead, it calls for expanding nonprofit health care cooperatives, similar to ones in many states that sell insurance, can pick and choose their members, are able to charge premiums comparable to private insurers, and in most areas provide little, if any, real competition.

If a public option becomes law, it will provide fig leaf cover for a weak and ineffective plan, not what many want but won’t get. Most, in fact, won’t qualify because it’ll be a limited to high-risk individuals, offloaded to the government for substandard care under an “adverse selection” process. Private insurers will get to skim off the cream, charge as much as they want, profit handsomely at low risk, and leave Washington stuck with ones the industry doesn’t want.

Yet they want more, are using hyperinflated cost estimates well above projected increases without “reform” legislation, and claim Medicare cuts will mean higher costs for the privately insured. They also say taxing higher-priced “Cadillac” plans and being prohibited from denying preexisting conditions will raise costs for everyone.

More still according to Wendell Potter, former PR executive for CIGNA insurance, now a whisleblower exposing shenanigans he saw on the inside, including the industry’s “Medical Loss Ratio” (MLR) profit margin. Until about two decades ago, it was five cents on the dollar. Now it’s a quarter or five times as much, and they’re still not satisfied, so they’re going for broke on Obamacare to skim hundreds more billions off the top in what will be greater than ever grand theft if they get it.

Other likely final legislation features will include:

• providing government subsidies of about $460 billion to lower income people over ten years to buy private insurance;
• expanding cost-sharing with the states for an additional 14 million Medicaid recipients because of growing numbers of poor and lower income households needing it; in addition, raising the income threshold so more people qualify at a time the need is the greatest in decades;
• exacting deep Medicare and other social service cuts to fund it – for starters, around $400 billion in federal programs for the elderly, poor, and disabled over 10 years; another $200 billion in lower payments to providers; and $113 billion in Medicare Advantage cuts affecting 10 million seniors getting benefits through private insurers;
• taxing so-called “Cadillac” plans by levying them on insurers to be passed on to customers through higher premiums, larger deductibles, and/or less coverage, even though these plans mostly cover state employees, municipal union members, and other working Americans, not just the well-off;
• exacting more Medicare cuts ahead, including from a White House appointed independent Medicare Commission to curb “excess cost growth” by rationing care through capping costs, denying expensive tests, procedures and drugs, and incrementally ending Medicare as we know it to deny future generations of seniors of what those covered now get – packaged as “health care reform” with deceptive promotion to disguise a scheme few will understand until they need expensive care and can’t get it.

As bad, millions will be left uninsured or underinsured as Washington cuts back on its obligation to provide universal quality care as a human right. Instead, final legislation will be class-based on the ability to pay with growing millions of poor and lower income people offered sub-standard care, millions left out entirely, and a time coming when only those who can afford it will be covered, no others. That’s Obamacare’s bottom line, but expect no public discourse to explain it.

The leadership of the Democratic Party is on the verge of passing health insurance reform. The centerpiece of the “reform” is requiring Americans to buy overpriced insurance from private corporations. But, it is evident that many in the Democratic voting base see the insurance industry as the problem – not the solution – and are getting angry about a new law that will force people to buy from corporations they don’t trust.

Just a few weeks ago the Mobilization for Health Care for All was announced. The Mobilization focuses on the denial of doctor-recommended care by the insurance industry. Sit-ins were planned at health insurance companies with demands that insurance corporations stop the denials. The Mobilization sought 100 people willing to sit-in at insurance corporations and risk arrest as people sat in at lunch counters two generations ago.

The response has been explosive, nearly 800 have signed up to risk arrest and thousands have signed up to join the protests. In the last 20 days 78 people have been arrested protesting the real death panels – the private insurance industry – who according to a California study deny doctor recommended care 20% of the time.

The Mobilization hoped to have “patients not profits sit-ins” in three cities last week, and instead it had them in nine cities. On the next Mobilization day, October 28th, there is likely to be twice as many cities protesting the insurance industry – just as Congress considers forcing Americans to buy insurance. This may be developing into the largest campaign of non-violent civil resistance since the Civil Rights era.

Many of the protesters supported Obama and were active in Democratic campaigns. Does the Democratic Party think that people willing to risk arrest against the corruption of the insurance industry will support Democratic candidates with time, money and votes who force them to buy insurance from these corporations?

These are protests the Democratic Party should not ignore. At the Washington, DC mobilization one woman, Linda from Annapolis, spoke to president Obama, said she had helped him get elected in part because he promised real change in health care. She still wants him to come through but reminded him – “we elected you, we can un-elect you.” Linda reflects the view of many Democratic Party activists who are angry at the pro-insurance bill being pushed by Congressional leaders.

As people come to understand the reform bill, which began as health “care” reform but devolved into health “insurance” reform, the anger will grow – not just from the right, but from the Democratic voting base who voted for the hope of real reform, not more of the corporate-dominated Washington, DC non-solutions to problems Americans face every day.

Indeed, Americans of all stripes will be angry. At the Washington, DC mobilization police allowed the sit-in to occur, despite it being illegal, and refused to arrest the participants. We later found out that the police had to make wage concessions to keep their health care. And, when I was arrested protesting the Senate Finance Committee hearing dominated by the insurance industry, one officer told me about his mother who had lost her job, was too young for Medicare and could not afford COBRA payments. The abuse of insurance affects all Americans and they will not be happy being forced to feed corporate gluttonous greed.

Why will Americans hate this “reform?”

First, this unnecessarily complex plan will not achieve any of the goals originally set. It will not cover all Americans, indeed tens of millions will be left without insurance ten years after it is enacted. And, it will not control costs as the insurance industry has said that their already too expensive premiums will increase by 111% in the next decade under “reform.”

Second, few Americans will benefit from the plan. In fact, the greatest beneficiary will be the insurance industry and other health care profiteers. Every ten million people forced to buy insurance by the government will give the industry $100 billion in new revenue – at current insurance rates. With 50 million uninsured that is potentially hundreds of billions in new revenue. In other words, the corporations that are the root of the problem will get rich off of the income of working Americans. This at a time when American salaries are stagnating, debts are high, costs are going up and there is constant fear of unemployment and bankruptcy. Further, those who have insurance but do not like their insurance plans will not be given any choice under the “reform.” They will be stuck with their current, overpriced insurance with rising premiums, co-pays and out of pocket expenses. This is a recipe for populist rebellion, but it does not stop there.

The plan does not create affordable health care. Families earning $90,000 will find themselves paying 20% of their income on health insurance. And, the subsidies for poor and working Americans will be insufficient. The leading source of increased poverty is America’s working poor. How can these working families afford to buy insurance – even if they are forced to by the government – when they cannot even put food on the table? Americans will ask – why are struggling workers being forced to pay the $10 million salaries of insurance executives?

By the time most of this plan takes effect in 2013, the year after the next presidential election, insurance premiums will have increased by 20% to 25%. During the election year, Americans will be looking toward 2013 and seeing increased insurance costs and realizing they will be forced to buy overpriced insurance at the threat of increased taxes. Because of the lack of cost controls and the increased insurance requirements, e.g., like requiring acceptance of people with pre-existing conditions and putting no limits on lifetime benefits, the insurance industry will be increasing rates even more quickly. The failure of “reform” will become evident before it takes effect.

The increased costs of health insurance will affect all businesses small and large. In a “recovery” that is already not producing jobs, these costs will ensure a jobless recovery. The failure to create jobs will be a rallying cry against the Obama economic and health care plans. Democrats should be concerned because Americans traditionally vote based on their wallet more than any other issue.

In fact, bottom line business people and others who can do the math, realize that the U.S. spends double per person than dozens of better rated health care systems in Europe and Asia. If the U.S. merely adopted any of these plans (almost all variations on single payer) we would save $4,000 per person EVERY YEAR. That is a savings of $1.2 trillion every year – a huge recurring stimulus with savings flowing to businesses and others who pay some or all of their health insurance. Quickly thereafter goods made domestically would be competitive again, companies would have faith in a better future and hire employees again, and America would break the stranglehold of corporate-government. None of this will happen under the Democratic “reform” because the waste, fraud and abuse of the insurance industry will continue.

During the next four years the Republicans will use the Democratic “reform” as a political punching bag. The plans to cut Medicare by hundreds of billions of dollars based on increased efficiency will frighten senior citizens. The bureaucracy being put in place by the “reform” will be evident to all. The complexity of the law will include federal rules on what employer-based insurance plans are “qualified.” All Americans will see new income tax forms for the individual mandate and to determine income eligibility for insurance subsidies. The new federal insurance bureaucracy will be ridiculed by the Republicans.

Labor unions will see good health insurance coverage they fought years to get for their members disappearing as taxes on their plans go into effect. These high taxes are likely to cause employers to cut back on the derisively labeled “Cadillac” plans, which are really the kinds of health coverage all Americans should have. The result: more people will be uninsured by employers and forced to buy health insurance on their own, or more working Americans will find themselves joining the large pool of tens of millions of Americans who are underinsured. Reform will make the problems worse for these Americans.

The problem of insurance companies denying care recommended by a doctor is likely to get worse under “reform.” A recent study in California found that insurance company denials can occur in up to 40% of cases with some insurance companies. Congress could fix the problem by giving consumers the power to sue insurance companies for denial of care. But, despite lobbying by consumer advocates, they refused to do so. The industry has few ways to control costs so experts predict that there will be increases in denial of care. “There are going to be a lot of denials,” said insurance industry analyst Robert Laszewski, a former health insurance executive, told the Los Angeles Times. Denial of care is the issue the Mobilization for Health Care is protesting.

During the four years it takes to put the “reform” into place, more than 100,000 Americans will die each year from preventable illness. That is the current rate of annual preventable deaths, something the U.S. leads all developed nations in, and it will not slow when Obama signs the pro-insurance reform bill. Will the Congress close its eyes and watch 400,000 Americans die during Obama’s first term? Or, will it do the obvious and open up Medicare to all during this period of transition? The Democrats paymasters in the insurance industry will urge them to quietly let Americans die so people do not experience that Medicare, America’s single payer system, works.

And, those who were shut out of the process of developing real health care reform – the majority of Americans who favor a single payer, improved “Medicare for All,” national health system – will keep organizing. The Mobilization for Health Care for All, will be one of example of many. Those shut out will fight back and keep pointing out how simple and efficient the reform could have been. How the Democrats could have reduced bureaucracy instead of increased it, helped the economy rather than hurt it and made sure every dollar went to health care rather than 31% of spending going to insurance industry profits and the bureaucracy the insurance industry creates. The already popular single payer system, which Obama himself used to support, will become even more popular. The control of the Democratic Party by big business interests will become evermore evident and “reform” will be understood as a multi-hundred billon dollar corporate giveaway.

The Democrats, like generals so often do, are fighting the last war. The Clinton experienced taught them that failure to pass health care reform cost them elections. The Obama administration experience will teach them that passing legislation that is only good for the insurance industry will cost them elections and could cost Obama a second term. A bad bill will be worse than no bill, will be the new lesson.

Americans voted for Obama who said in 2005 that the country would get single payer when the Democrats won back the House, Senate and Presidency. They even prefer the Obama of the presidential campaign who promised health care for all and opposed insurance mandates. They want the Obama they supported to return and put their interests ahead of insurance company profits.

Simply expanding and improving Medicare so it covers all Americans is the only way to avert this populist revolt. Will the Democratic leadership recognize this and change course or will they steer themselves into a disaster in order to satisfy their big donors in the insurance industry? There is a single payer bill, HR 676, in the House that will be voted on when Rep. Weiner introduces it on the House Floor. Let’s hope for the sake of all Americans that the Democratic Party leadership wakes up and puts the necessities of the American people before the profits of their donors. They still have time.

It appears as though the savior may be riding in on a pale horse.

According to a September 5 New York Times article, banks like Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs are exploring new investment schemes that involve buying up life insurance policies from sick and elderly people, bundling them into huge securities, and selling shares in the securities to investors.

Buying shares is essentially a bet–that the people whose insurance policies on which the securities are based will die “on time” or earlier than expected. According to the Times, “The earlier the policyholder dies, the bigger the return–though if people live longer than expected, investors could get poor returns or even lose money.”

Just when it seemed impossible for Wall Street–still counting the trillions in taxpayer dollars it received in a government bailout to save it from collapse–to sink any lower, greed came to the rescue with the development of a grim new market.

As Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto, “The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.”

Now, the financial crisis has driven capitalists to the nursing and retirement homes, and to the bedsides of the sick and dying.

The credit rating agency DBRS–whose Senior Vice President Kathleen Tillwitz informed the Times that “our phones have been ringing off the hook with inquiries”–is studying how to rate pools of life insurance policies. The main challenge is figuring out how to pool people together. As the Times wrote:

The solution? A bond made up of life settlements would ideally have policies from people with a range of diseases–leukemia, lung cancer, heart disease, breast cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s. That is because if too many people with leukemia are in the securitization portfolio, and a cure is developed, the value of the bond would plummet.

If the sub-prime mortgage market boom is any indication, an increased demand for existing life insurance policies spurred by increased securitization would lead to widespread abuse and fraud–with policy originators faced with the same incentives that encouraged mortgage brokers to deceive borrowers with “teaser” interest rates that ballooned several years into repayment.

In this case, the victims would be the elderly, the sick, and those who depend on life insurance benefit payouts in the case of the death of a loved one.

A further element of instability would be added if life insurance-backed securities take off–the likely proliferation of illegal “stranger-owned life insurance” or “STOLI” policies.

A STOLI is a policy created when a broker or investor convinces someone, usually a senior citizen, to take out a life insurance policy, with the promise to sell it quickly for a one-time payment. According to Reuters, “The death benefits are immediately transferred to investors, usually hedge funds.”

The securitization of life insurance policies would likely lead to an increase in the number of illegal STOLIs, once the banks exhaust the possibilities of buying up existing, legitimate policies to package into securities. In turn, insurance companies would have an incentive to crack down on this practice to avoid paying death benefits to the investors, leaving the market prone to crisis.

Other challenges for a credit rating agency like DBRS include figuring out what “would happen if health reform passed, for example, and better care for a large number of Americans meant that people generally started living longer? Or if a magic-bullet cure for all types of cancer was developed?” These eventualities, while prolonging and improving the lives of millions, would be bad for investors’ bottom line.

The “potential risk for investors,” the Times continued, is that “some people could live far longer than expected. It is not just a hypothetical risk. That is what happened in the 1980s, when new treatments prolonged the life of AIDS patients. Investors who bought their policies on the expectation that the most victims would die within two years ended up losing money.”

According to an ABC News story:

The industry for selling life insurance [policies to investors] first sprang up during the AIDS epidemic of the late 1980s. “Companies loved AIDS because it was a predictable death sentence,” says Gloria Wolk, a life-settlement expert who learned about the practice while volunteering at AIDS services clinics. “The shorter and more certain the life expectancy, the higher the returns promised to investors and the greater the lump sum offered to patients. It was a grim mix of free-market capitalism and human mortality.”

Wolk nevertheless said she “saw the industry make a huge difference in the lives of terminally ill patients and their families”–by providing victims with funds to pay for the exorbitant health care and other costs associated with dying from AIDS, while it was ignored by a government run by Ronald Reagan.

The only conceivable defense of the practice of bundling life insurance policies into securities and selling them to investors to profit from the deaths of policyholders is that it enables those who sell their policies to get more than they would if they simply sold policies back to the insurance company.

But this option is only attractive because health care costs in the U.S. place quality care out of reach–for the nearly 50 million people without health insurance, and for tens of millions more who are insured, but can’t afford the co-pays and deductibles that pile up when they get sick or injured.

Similarly, for the elderly whose retirement savings have been eroded by the current crisis, the inadequacy of Social Security, and by the long-term shift from defined-benefit pension plans to 401(k)s based on the stock market, the main reason most would be tempted to sell their life insurance policies is that our government neglects to provide a decent standard of living for elderly workers who have outlived their usefulness to the exploiting class.

In other words, the market for securities backed by life insurance policies depends on the absence of universal single-payer health care for all and the lack of a sufficient social safety net for senior citizens.

Almost as disturbing as first-tier financial institutions betting on death is the matter-of-fact reporting of the New York Times.

The Times article, titled “Wall Street Pursues Profit in Bundles of Life Insurance,” ignores completely the question of the morality of human beings gambling on the lives of others, indexing the sick based on the nature of their affliction and when it is likely to kill them, and crossing their fingers that no cure for cancer is discovered. This is a brilliant illustration of Marx’s assertion that capitalism “has left no other bond between [people] than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment.”"

It says a lot about capitalist society’s brutality and indifference to human life that the newspaper of record could cover this story without pause, going no deeper than the pros and cons from the perspective of investors–while “Ads by Google” accompany the story, inviting readers to “sell your life insurance policy” and “find low cost life insurance.”

Nor does the Times question the logic of devoting massive wealth to a market that creates no new value in the form of goods or services, and is of no use to anyone but the few who will profit from it.

According to the Times article, there are $26 trillion in life insurance policies in the U.S, and “some in the industry predict the market [for life-insurance-backed securities] could reach $500 billion.” That sum is nearly three times the total of all the budget shortfalls of every state government for fiscal year 2010.

A just society based on human need would use that $500 billion to preserve and expand essential services that are on the chopping block as states balance their budgets.

A just society based on human need would devote those resources not to betting on death, but providing top quality care to the sick, researching new cures and treatments (and making them available to all), and ensuring that the elderly live the last years of their lives in dignity and security.

According to the economic “experts,” the U.S. economy is beginning to “recover.” But the very nature of the recovery–a return to big bonuses and salaries for Wall Street executives alongside deepening and sustained unemployment, cuts in social services and health care “reform” that amounts to a massive government handout to the health insurance industry–demolishes any idea that the U.S. is not a class society.

It is time to build the socialist alternative. Our lives and dignity depend on it.

This type of ideology may have had some traction back when Russia and China first acquired nuclear weapons. After all we thought god was on our side and had thus bequeathed nuclear weaponry solely upon the United States. What a surprise it must have been to wake up one day and find out that godless Russkies and Chinese had attained the same power the U.S. had, which is to say owning a weapon that could literally destroy the entire planet. How could a good and gracious god allow such a thing to happen? In the case of the Russians getting the bomb, we “discovered” that the Rosenbergs had passed the plans on to them for money.¹ This version proved to be nice, clean and played into sound stereotypes of the period. We even sent them to the chair in an attempt to assuage our collective consciousness that we are the good guys and as such the only ones who should be allowed to possess something that could turn the planet into a dust heap with the push of a button.

Considering that now some dozen or more nations have the bomb, slogans like being better dead than Red appear to be trite. Pakistan isn’t communist and they have the bomb. Israel isn’t a communist nation and they have the bomb, somehow “better dead than kosher” just doesn’t have the same ring to it. It also smacks of abject racism, something many conservatives are, but are loath to admit.

Slogans and stereotypes are better employed where simple minds can easily sum up their non-comprehension of a complex issue with a snappy slogan. Hence we now have loads of right-wing folk parading around with images of President Obama sporting a Hitler moustache and a hammer and sickle tattoo on his forehead. The conservatives claim Obama is turning America into a socialist country. First off while Hitler was the head of the National Socialist Party, this group of wacky characters was anything but. The hammer and sickle was the logo Lenin and his Russian cohorts adopted. Accept for the very brief life of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, also known as the Nazi/Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, Hitler hated the socialists in general and the Russians in particular. Generally it’s a good idea to get your facts straight when you want to protest publicly, but in the case of extreme conservatives when have facts ever impeded them? It’s so much easier to conjure up images of Nazi Germany and claim that the President wants to turn America into a communist country. Just chalk it up to another honest mistake for these plan and simple folks. Communism is a form of government. Socialism is an economic system, but hey who’s counting when setting up a right-wing agenda?

This game plan for employing the Red Boogieman with the Obama Administration’s National Health Care Initiative is right out of the 1950’s red-baiting McCarthy era. Anyone with any sense of history should be able to understand this and see its fallacies. Unfortunately this hasn’t been the case when you look at the rest of America beyond the New York and Los Angeles skylines.

Both of these cities do have a distinct advantage over most other Americans when it comes to understanding the methods being employed by the right. The healthcare initiative is not the first time conservatives have used slogans and Red baiting to destroy something that was for the public good. Conservatives played this same card effectively nearly six decades ago to ensure that the Dodgers abandoned Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field for the sun soaked stadium that would arise out of the fields of Elysian Park Heights, or better known to Angelinos, Chavez Ravine.²

Faced with an extreme housing shortage in the post-war years Los Angeles claimed eminent domain for all of the properties in the three neighborhoods of Chavez Ravine, a sleepy Hispanic enclave just west of downtown. The real estate became the property of the City Housing Authority. CHA had noted architects Richard Neutra and Robert Alexander design a community that would provide low income housing, schools, parks and shops.

As with any government program it takes time to get off the planning stages. Such was the case with the Elysian Park Heights Development Project. By 1952 the thinking had changed. Only Communist countries supplied government funded housing. In America you paid for what you had and if you didn’t have anything that was your own tough luck. State Senator John B. Tenney, chair of the California Senate Committee on Un-American Activities and the leading Red-hunter in the state began an investigation of alleged Communist infiltration into the CHA. The Los Angeles city council immediately sought to backtrack on its support for the CHA, voting that year to cancel its contract with the agency. The CHA appealed all the way up to the State Supreme Court when in April 1952 the Court took the conservatives’ side and decided not to hear the case thus reaffirming city’s right to cancel their contract. Not satisfied with the State Supreme Court’s decision, the Los Angeles City Council placed a referendum on the June ballot. Proposition B prevailed upholding the city’s decision to cancel the CHA contract. This literally changed the city’s mayoral leadership when the three-term incumbent, Fletcher Bowron lost to Norris Poulson primarily over the housing issue of Chavez Ravine.

With the defeat of the public housing and planned community project Los Angeles was now able to use real estate claimed through eminent domain in anyway they saw fit. What better way to say we care about our citizens than denying them quality lost cost housing and literally giving the property to a private business owner? Walter O’Malley had long been considering a move from Ebbets Field. When approached by leading Angelinos such as City Councilwoman Rosalind Wyman and the Chandlers, owners of the Los Angeles Times, O’Malley traded a hunk of downtown real estate less than half the size of the Chavez Ravine property, tax free for 60 years.

All of this sounds very familiar when you know the history. Unfortunately most Americans couldn’t tell you our second President’s name let alone remember something like Walter O’Malley’s business chicanery with the Los Angeles oligarchy. This is undoubtedly why the conservatives have chosen to dig up the Red boogieman imagery when President Obama started mentioning something like government sponsored healthcare.

Currently there are four lobbyists working for the pharmaceutical, insurance companies, medical associations etc. to every Congressperson and Senator on Capitol Hill. Their goal is simple, the defeat of the President’s heath care plan, or at the very least its evisceration. Oddly enough the very same folks that complain about our government embracing socialism are the first to cry “Foul,” and look for a government handout when their bank, auto company or military contract goes belly-up. Somehow it isn’t socialism when the government decides to give taxpayers’ dollars to Merrill Lynch, GMC or Blackwater. That’s just good old fashioned American business and the Red boogieman isn’t even in sight. Knowledge of the issue and looking beyond slogans is the only way to combat such thinking and allowing conservatives to destroy the public good for the interests of private business. A good slogan can certainly come in handy though. Just think of what the Democrats might have accomplished if they would have called the healthcare initiative Medicare for Everyone instead of “public option” which sounds more like a bathroom facility at a park.

1. One of the reasons I italicized “discovered,” while Julius was probably guilty, it is highly doubtful his wife was. They both played into the Jewish stereotype of the day which also made it easier to get a death sentence and carry it out swiftly. This probably wouldn’t have worked with WASP Alger Hiss. He looked too much like “us.” The Rosenbergs were definitely ethnic in appearance which no doubt worked against them in the media.
2. Golden Dreams – California in an age of abundance. Kevin Starr pp. 146-153.

One of the important offerings in Money Driven Medicine is a clear timeline of the development of the private health care system in the United States (US). The first key moment comes after World War II as many other nations shift to public insurance and publicly controlled delivery of care. In the US, doctors played a key role in preventing the creation of such a public system by asserting their right to determine care. But this physician-centered care was displaced in the 1970s with the rise of Health Management Organizations. “M.D.’s,” Mahar states, “were traded in for MBA’s.” As this business-centered system failed in the 1990’s, private insurers tried to reign in costs by denying costly, but often medically necessary, medical procedures. Backlash ensued and since the late 90s, insurers have liberally approved procedures while jacking up premiums to defend their profit margins. Costs have skyrocketed.

The result is a bloated health care system which rewards specialists who perform multiple procedures instead those who provide good preventive care. A critical assessment is, therefore, offered about the myth that America has the best health care in the world. When it comes to what Donald Berwick of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, calls “rescue-care” the system performs quite well, but what most people need is open access to simple preventative care. Here Berwick argues, “We are nowhere near the best and it is reflected in outcomes.” The health care system in US pays for doing things not healing patients.

In fact, as studies conducted by the Dartmouth Institute prove, doing more has little impact on positive outcomes. High-treatment states such as New Jersey, which spends 20% more than the average for Medicaid, have equal or worse outcomes than low-treatment states such as Iowa. Physician interviewees in the movie spoke openly about a health system that has been commodified, industrially produced and, finally, is not designed to improve people’s health.

This leads to the second key argument in Money Driven Medicine. The problem with health care is not just lack of insurance; it is an overall lack of access to the kind of care people need. The fee-structure described above has consequences that have filtered down to the training of doctors resulting in a scarcity of primary care physicians. Medical student Krystal Irizarry called primary care, “A burden compensation wise.” Consequently, the film presents multiple patients who have no “medical-home” – no single primary care physician – and are reduced to emergency room visits when minor conditions turn into chronic illnesses.

It is no wonder then, that Mahar found plenty of willing subjects for her study. Five out of six doctors she solicited responded. Most described a health care system slipping out of their control. This idea is brought home powerfully when Dr. James Weinstein describes the story of his daughter Brianna who was afflicted with childhood leukemia. After multiple protocols of chemotherapy, Weinstein objected to continued treatment – viewing the proposed cure as more damaging than the disease. Brianna’s doctors insisted on continuing treatment and threatened Weinstein with a lawsuit if he resisted. The doctors in this case feared a costly lawsuit. The result? Multiple, and ultimately futile, treatments which had no medical justification other than avoiding litigation.

The experience allowed Weinstein to realize that most doctors are not really trained to provide useful information to their patients. What’s needed, the film then argues, is a shift to a more unmediated relationship between doctors and patients. As Weinstein and Berwick and others emphasize, such a relationship need not be unbalanced – with physicians lording over patients. Berwick points to studies which indicate that when provided with the proper medical information, patients tend to make more efficient and frugal choices about their health care. Removing profit-motive from medicine will allow doctors to act like doctors – to place their ethical commitment to patients ahead of bottom-line calculations – and patients to make informed decisions.

Some reservations can be noted about the film. Mahar is an investigative journalist who relied primarily on interviews with medical practitioners to piece together her narrative. Some of the history presented in the film could use a broader contextualization. For instance, the post World War II turn away from a public system occurred, not coincidentally, with an intense witch-hunting of socialists and communists. Aspiring politicians such as Ronald Reagan made great currency as both anti-communist hunters and as spokesmen against socialized medicine. Similarly the 1970’s pivot toward HMOs occurred in a moment of transition for Corporate America away from the post-war production model and toward a neo-liberal strategy of lean wages and slim benefits. These broader developments informed changes in the health care industry.

Ultimately, Money Driven Medicine offers perspectives essential for Americans evaluating proposals for health care reform. As stated in the film, the goal is not to tinker with this or that part of the market system, but to totally re-think the relationship between doctor and patient that has developed under a privately owned system. Undoubtedly, although the film does not state this explicitly, a single-payer national healthcare system offers to best hope for reclaiming the doctor-patient relationship. Unfortunately, the trajectory of the health care debate in Washington seems to be bending more toward the tinkering side. Money-driven medicine in America may be able to survive another attempt at reform.

It’s only been five years since Pfizer agreed to pay $430 million for seizure drug Neurontin abuses and entered into a Corporate Integrity Agreement (CIA), a trust-but-verify arrangement with the Office of Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services, in 2004.

And it’s only been seven years since Pfizer agreed to pay $49 million to settle charges it defrauded Medicaid by overcharging for cholesterol drug Lipitor and entered into another CIA in 2002.

Pfizer’s fraud settlement for pain drug Bextra, withdrawn in 2004, antipsychotic Geodon, seizure drug Lyrica and antibiotic Zyvox is the largest pharmaceutical fraud settlement in the history of the Department of Justice — and the largest criminal fine ever imposed in the United States.

More than 10,000 postal employees on workers compensation were treated with Bextra, Geodon, Lyrica and Zyvox says Joseph Finn, Special Agent in Charge for the Postal Service’s Office of Inspector General. Forty-three states will share in the givebacks.

But it’s the same off-label and kickback tango — causing “false claims to be submitted to government health care programs,” also known as our tax dollars — Pfizer has been charged with before.

For example, Florida’s Medicaid program paid $935,584 for illegal Geodon pediatric prescriptions in 2005 — illegal because Geodon is not approved for children — and Texas’s Medicaid program paid $557,256 for just two months of pediatric Geodon prescriptions, according to the complaint.

It is an irony that even as Pfizer settles the pediatric charges, the FDA is considering its petition to approve Geodon (ziprasidone) for children. Isn’t that a little after the fact?

In June, the FDA Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee recommended approval of Geodon for “the acute treatment of manic or mixed episodes associated with bipolar disorder, with or without psychotic features, in children and adolescents ages 10 to 17.”

It’s also an irony that the original safety data on which FDA rejected Geodon as a new drug in 1997 — its side effect of QT interval prolongation which can cause sudden death — are still under debate; at the June meeting, Pfizer doctors admitted to committee members that Geodon can add an extra eight heart beats a minute.

Pfizer doctors referred to the adult study 054 — as they did to convince FDA to overturn Geodon’s rejection in 2001 — and FDA doctors insisted no prior ECG should be necessary, but doctors on the panel were less convinced.

Marsha D. Rappley, MD, Dean of the College of Human Medicine at Michigan State University observed that while the average increased heart beat with Geodon in the presented studies might be five to eight beats per minute, “there was 8 percent of the children or young people who had a pulse over 120. And if I had a 15-year-old who had a sustained pulse of 120, I would worry about that.”

And Christopher B. Granger, MD, Director of Duke University Medical Center’s Cardiac Care Unit and Edward L.C. Pritchett, MD, with Duke’s Cardiology and Clinical Pharmacology division focused on the fact that Geodon’s increased heart rate doesn’t indicate blood pressure is going down as with most drugs.

“You know, the interesting thing here is that the blood pressure has actually gone up, so we have the curious situation of the heart rate and the blood pressure both going up,” said Pritchett.

No one seemed reassured when Tom Tensfeldt, MD with Pfizer’s pharmacokinetics group offered, “There may be a bit of a plateau in the effect, at least on average here.” (Heart beats won’t increase ad infinitum?)

Nor were panelists reassured when Kenneth Towbin, MD, Chief of NIMH’s Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Mood and Anxiety Disorders Program asked about one of Pfizer’s Geodon post marketing slides, “that revealed cardiopulmonary failure and stroke in children 3 to 17.”

“We had ten reports of death in our post-marketing database in pediatric subjects. One of these subjects was a 16-year-old male who died of cardiopulmonary failure,” said Susan Anway, MD, with Pfizer safety and risk management. “The second case you referred to was a case of stroke — cerebrovascular effects — or event. This was a subject who had many other comorbidities, as well as on a number of other concomitant medications.”

Of course most children given Geodon will have the same “comorbidities” and “concomitant medications.” And thanks to Pfizer fraud the drug’s already in wide pediatric use. So if FDA approves Geodon for children it will be another Three-Peat.

Does President Obama remember how the Democrats regained the majority in the House and Senate? Does he remember how he bested Hillary Clinton in the primaries? Here’s a reminder.

Republicans dominated politics for the first eight years of the 21st Century. When President Bush attacked Iraq and pulled the U.S. into a war quagmire resulting in mass deaths of civilians and soldiers as well as bleeding of the U.S. treasury, the peace movement reacted. They highlighted the failures of the war, the lies that got America in to Iraq and the death, destruction and economic catastrophe the war was bringing. Peace activists demonstrated in Congress, sat-in the offices of elected officials and protested whenever Bush administration officials testified in Congress.

The public began to hear the full story – the weapons of mass destruction were a lie, there was no link between Saddam and Osama, the casualties of war were increasing, the cost of war was escalating, the largest mercenary force in history was violating laws. Opinion rapidly turned against the war. The result, in 2006, the voters threw out the Republicans and gave the Democrats solid control of both Houses of Congress.

In 2008, the front runner, then-Senator Hillary Clinton, was running a campaign for the presidency that seemed unstoppable. The media and politicians treated her election as an inevitable fait accompli. But, Clinton had voted for the Iraq invasion and this did not sit well with the American public, especially with anti-war Democrats – the base of the Democratic Party. The media anointed then-Senator Barack Obama as the “peace” candidate because of a speech he gave opposing the war before being elected to the U.S. senate. Aware of the mood of the voters he began his speeches with the promise: “I will end the war in Iraq.” Anti-war Democrats were enough to carry him through the primary and into the presidency.

In both cases, voters opposed to war were critical to determining the outcome.

But now, the Obama administration is ignoring those voters. The day after the protests at the White House it was reported in Talking Points Memo that the administration said: “White House officials say Obama is not focusing on antiwar protesters — neither the more than 60 who were arrested yesterday at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue nor the handful outside the White House gates today — or on a MoveOn email petition circulating asking him for a clear military exit strategy.”

The peace movement is noting that the president is ignoring their calls to end the war. Even worse for the president, this time we are starting as the majority. Polls show that more than 70% of Democrats oppose the Afghanistan war and sending more troops to the region as do a majority of Americans.

Obama is forgetting how he and the Democrats came to power. Who does Obama think provides much of the person-power for their elections? Or, the small grass roots donations? What do Obama and the Democrats think will happen if the peace movement stays home in 2010?

And, to make matters worse, he is repeating the mistake made in the health care debate. The president has been unable to excite grass roots support for reform because he and Congressional leaders took the most popular option, a single payer national health program, off the table. They would not consider the approach most Americans preferred. Instead, the Democrats have pushed a scheme that will enrich the health insurance industry – corporations that Americans hate and see as corrupt – by forcing Americans to buy their overpriced insurance.

So, what is his administration doing when it comes to Afghanistan? Making the same mistake. They are considering all options except the one Americans want. They have taken off the option list getting out of Afghanistan. Secretary Gates said this week “We are not leaving Afghanistan. This discussion is about next steps forward.” And, the president’s press secretary Robert Gibbs said: “I don’t think we have the option to leave. That’s quite clear.”

At a time when the Republicans are energizing their base by challenging President Obama, the Democrats are turning off their base whether on health care, bailing out Wall Street or now on the Afghanistan war. Do the Democrats really have the hubris to think they can turn their base off and stay in office? If they do, they are likely to learn a very painful lesson in 2010 and 2012.

CSL is “Australia’s leading biopharmaceutical company (and) the only commercial manufacturer of influenza vaccines in the Southern Hemisphere.” It’s currently producing “a pandemic influenza vaccine called Panvax H1N1 which uses the proven technology that has enabled us to provide Australia with seasonal flu vaccines over the last 40 years.”

The New England Journal of Medicine published “the welcome news,” claiming to show one shot produced the same immune response protection as annual flu vaccines. More on their ineffectiveness and hidden dangers below.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (part of the US National Institutes of Health) also claims its early trials and studies confirm one dose provides protection eight to ten days after inoculation. Again beware – their advice endangers your health, especially about Swine Flu and the vaccines designed for it. They advise everyone take them voluntarily. Later, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius may mandate them if enough people don’t comply, and individual states may follow suit.

Separating Facts from Government and Industry Disinformation

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), annual flu shots are advised for “all children from 6 months through 18 years of age,” everyone over 50, pregnant women, and individuals with “long-term health problems” like heart, lung, kidney or liver disease, HIV/AIDS, other immune system diseases or persons with weakened immune systems, asthma, diabetes, anemia, certain muscle or nerve disorders, residents of nursing homes or chronic care facilities, and certain others.

Warning about “seasonal epidemics,” the World Health Organization’s (WHO) advice is much the same, adding that “Seasonal influenza spreads easily and can sweep through schools, nursing homes or businesses and towns…. The most effective way to prevent the disease or severe outcomes from the illness is vaccination.”

The WHO claims, “Among healthy adults, influenza vaccine can prevent 70% to 90% of influenza-specific illness. Among the elderly, the vaccine reduces severe illnesses and complications by up to 60%, and deaths by 80%.”

Information below shows WHO claims are false and misleading. So are the CDC’s and NIH’s and doubly so for the new Swine Flu vaccines.

All Vaccines Are Ineffective and Unsafe

Gary Null is a leading health and nutrition expert, author, documentary filmmaker, founder of the Progressive Radio Network, and syndicated host of the longest running health program in America, Natural Living with Gary Null.

On September 18, 2009, he interviewed Dr. Viera Scheibner, “arguably one of the world’s most respected scientists and scholars on vaccine medical data…. Her investigations uncover how the vaccine industrial complex (and complicit government regulatory bodies produce) pseudo-science that is fraught with inconsistencies, poorly designed studies, erroneous interpretations, and conclusions that are patently false” – by design, not chance.

She calls vaccinations “an illness industry,” causing a “pandemic (of) degenerative diseases (and) behavioral problems.”

From her research and writings on vaccine science and history, she said:

Ever since the turn of the (last) century, medical journals published dozens and dozens of articles demonstrating that injecting vaccines (can) cause anaphylaxis, meaning harmful, inappropriate immunological responses, which is also called sensitization. (This) increase(s) susceptibility to the disease which the vaccine is supposed to prevent, and to a host of related and other unrelated infections.

We see it in vaccinated children within days, within two or three weeks. (Most of them) develop runny noses, ear infections, pneumonitis, (and) bronchiolitis. It is only a matter of degrees, which indicates immuno-suppression, (not immunity). It indicates the opposite. So I never use the word immunization because that is false advertising. It implies that vaccines immunize, which they don’t. The correct term is either vaccination or sensitization.

In addition, “Vaccines (can) damage internal organs, particularly the pancreas,” so everyone vaccinated, including for seasonal flu, is vulnerable to contracting severe “autoimmune diseases like diabetes,” Addison’s Disease, Arthritis, Asthma, Guillian-Barre Syndrome, Hepatitis, Lou Gehrig’s Disease, Lupus, Multiple Sclerosis, Osteoporosis, Polio, and dozens of others.

Some can kill. Others produce a lifetime of disability and pain because autoimmune disease happens when the “body attacks itself,” or more accurately “is attacked” by an unhealthy lifestyle, stress, and various harmful ingestible substances; that is, toxins in drugs, food, air, water, and other liquids. According to immunologist, Dr. Jesse Stoff, human health is compromised four ways:

• by poor nutrition;
• man-made environmental toxins;
• disease-causing organisms and their toxins; and
• immune system trauma from factors like x-ray radiation and stress.

Other factors include a lack of sleep and exercise, smoking, heavy alcohol consumption, and various excesses that throw the body out of balance, making it susceptible to a host of debilitating illnesses.

Known Toxins in Seasonal Flu and Other Vaccines

Millions voluntarily take annual flu shots not knowing their harmful ingredients. With variations by producer, they contain numerous stabilizers, neutralizers, carrying agents, and preservatives, including:

• 25 micrograms of mercury (thimerosal), a known neurotoxin; one microgram is considered toxic; according to the NIH, “mercury and all of its compounds are toxic, exposure to excessive levels can permanently damage or fatally injure the brain and kidneys;” even “exposures to very small amounts” can also cause “allergic reactions, neurological damage and death;” it’s also linked to autism;
• aluminum hydroxide and phosphate, known to be linked to some neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease; the Office of Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) reports x-ray evidence of pulmonary fibrosis among workers studied; it also reports that patients undergoing long-term kidney dialysis develop speech disorders, dementia, or convulsions;
• formaldehyde, a known carcinogen according to the National Cancer Institute; it’s also linked to upper respiratory tract problems and effects on lymphatic and hematopoietic systems (relating to human blood cells);
• gelatin, polysorbate 80 and resin – ingredients causing severe allergic reactions;
• ammonium sulfate, a suspected gastrointestinal, liver, and respiratory toxicant and neurotoxicant;
• sorbitol, a suspected gastrointestinal and liver toxicant;
• phenoxyethanol (antifreeze), a suspected developmental and reproductive toxicant;
• beta-propiolactone, a known carcinogen and suspected gastrointestinal, liver, respiratory, skin and sense organ toxicant;
• gentamycin, an antibiotic;
• triton X100, a strong detergent;
• animal tissues and fluids, including potentially contaminated horse blood, rabbit brain, dog kidney, monkey kidney, chick embryo, chicken egg, duck egg, pig blood, and porcine (pig) protein/tissue;
• calf and fetal bovine serum;
• macerated cancer cells;
• diploid cells from aborted fetal tissue; and/or
• other ingredients varying by producer.

Contrary to industry and government agency advice, annual flu shots are dangerous and ineffective. According to Croft Woodruff, president of the EDTA Chelation Association of British Columbia:

“Statistically, you’d be more likely to avoid the flu if you took nothing at all. So why are we subjected to the flu vaccine media blitz each year?” In a word, profits assured annually as long as enough people take them — for all vaccines (besides the enormous bonanza from the Swine Flu vaccines), billions of dollars in annual revenues, according to leading producer estimates.

On September 29, Wall Street Journal writers Jonathan Rockoff and Peter Loftus explained that the industry believes vaccines:

will become an increasingly important source of growth to replace aging blockbusters that are poised to lose patent protection. Vaccine sales are growing faster than sales of other prescription medicines and are largely immune to the generic competition that is already cost drug makers billions of dollars in revenues on their top-selling treatments. Moreover, government agencies both in the US and around the world are increasingly reliable buyers of vaccines as they seek to stockpile medicines that could help protect the public in case of a major flu outbreak.

Or perhaps, in the case of Swine Flu, infect it as part of a sinister depopulation scheme through involuntary male and/or female sterilization and future deadly illnesses while rewarding producers with hundreds of billions in profits from global inoculations over the next few years. For what may be planned, it doesn’t get any better than that. As a result, the public is cautioned to ignore media and official hype and stay safe by refusing all vaccines, especially the new Swine Flu ones that may, in fact, be bioweapons.

More Disclaimers about Flu Vaccine Effectiveness and the Truth about Their Dangers

First the worst news. Annual flu shots may induce one or more of the above-mentioned annoying to life-threatening autoimmune diseases, including severe allergies, diabetes, and the Guillan-Barre Syndrome (GBS) nerve disorder that causes progressive muscle weakness, paralysis, and at times death. They can also cause encephalitis, an acute inflammation of the brain; various neurological disorders; and thrombocytopenia, a serious blood disorder.

Now the bad news. Annual flu shots don’t work, except to enhance producer profits, which is why the industry, complicit regulatory bodies, and the media tell unsuspecting people to take them.

Each year, government health agencies guess which viral strain(s) are most worrisome. Usually they’re wrong. For example, New York Times writer Lawrence Altman headlined his January 15, 2004 article, “Vaccine Is Said to Fail to Protect Against Flu Strain” in reporting that the CDC said its most recent recommended flu vaccine had “no or low effectiveness” against that season’s Fujian threat, based on study results from its first ever health providers survey. Other studies report similar findings, and so do reliable scientists from their research.

The Lancet reported that a 2008 study on “immunocompetent elderly people aged 65-94 years enrolled in Group Health (a health maintenance organisation) during 2000, 2001, and 2002″ found that “influenza vaccination was not associated with a reduced risk of community-acquired pneumonia during the influenza season.” Influenza predisposes individuals to contracting pneumonia.

In understated terms, the prestigious medical journal concluded that “The effect of influenza vaccination on the risk of pneumonia in elderly people during the influenza seasons might be less than previously estimated.” Yet doctors keep recommending them based on misleading industry and government information.

In October 2007, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health reported on the “mortality benefits of influenza vaccination in elderly people: an ongoing controversy” and concluded:

“frailty selection bias and use of non-specific endpoints such as all-cause mortality have led cohort studies to greatly exaggerate vaccine benefits. The remaining evidence base is currently insufficient to indicate the magnitude of the mortality benefit, if any, that elderly people derive from the vaccination programme.”

On May 1, 2003, the New England Journal of Medicine reported on the largest ever study to determine the effectiveness of pneumococcal pneumonia vaccine inoculations – based on medical data for 47,365 people aged 65 or older from 1998-2001. It found no significant association between vaccination and a reduced pneumonia risk in concluding:

“alternative strategies are needed to prevent nonbacteremic pneumonia, which is a more common manifestation of pneumococcal infection in elderly persons.” In other words, flu shots don’t work, so why take them.

An October 2008 published study in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine had similar conclusions based on doctor visits during the two most recent flu seasons. It reported:

“In 2 seasons with suboptimal antigenic match between vaccines and circulating strains, we could not demonstrate VE in preventing influenza-related inpatient/ED or outpatient visits in children younger than 5 years. Further study is needed during years with good vaccine match.”

In September 2008, the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine reported that the Department of Public Health Sciences, School of Public Health, University of Alberta concluded as follows from “clinical, laboratory, and functional data” collected on 1,813 adults “with community-acquired pneumonia admitted to six hospitals outside of influenza season” in Alberta:

“mortality benefits of influenza vaccination” are “overestimated” even though the population inoculated increased from 15% in 1980 to 65% in 2008.

In the October 2006 British Medical Journal, Dr. Tom Jefferson wrote about “Influenza vaccination: policy versus evidence” and concluded:

Evidence from systematic reviews shows that inactivated vaccines have little or no effect on the effects measured. (In addition), Little comparative evidence exists on the safety of these vaccines…. The optimistic and confident tone of some predictions of viral circulation and the impact of inactivated vaccines, which are at odds with the evidence, is striking. The reasons are probably complex and may involve a messy blend of truth and conflicts of interest making it difficult to separate factual disputes from value disputes.

In other words, influenza vaccination programs are ineffective and worthless. They’re also dangerous.

In 2006, the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews reported on an Oxford University, Institute of Health Sciences examination of “Vaccines for preventing influenza in healthy children” and concluded from the results of 51 studies involving 263,987 subjects aged 23 months to six years that vaccines are little more effective than placebos. It added that:

“If immunisation in children is to be recommended as a public-health policy, large-scale studies assessing important outcomes and directly comparing vaccine types are urgently needed.”

FDA-Approved Swine Flu (H1N1) Vaccines

On September 15, the FDA:

announced today that it has approved four vaccines against the 2009 H1N1 influenza virus. The vaccines will be distributed nationally after the initial lots become available, which is expected to be within the next four weeks…. Based on preliminary data from adults participating in multiple clinical trials, the 2009 H1N1 vaccines induce a robust immune response in most health adults eight to 10 days after a single dose, as occurs with the seasonal influenza vaccine.

The FDA warned that “People with severe or life-threatening allergies to chicken eggs, or to any other substance in the vaccine, should not be vaccinated.”

Approved US vaccines are produced by CSL Ltd., Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics Ltd., Sanofi Pasteur (a division of Sanofi-Aventis Group), and AstraZeneca’s MedImmune LLC. According to the FDA, “All four firms manufacture the H1N1 vaccines using the same processes, which have a long record of producing safe seasonal influenza vaccines.”

Meanwhile, other governments have placed large orders for Baxter’s CELVAPAN A/H1N1 vaccine, Novavax’s VLP, and GlaxoSmithKline PLC’s versions to assure all the major vaccine producers share in the enormous profit bonanza.

Sanofi Pasteur’s vaccine proved ineffective with one shot, and Medscape Medical News reported that while it will have fewer side effects it may not protect against the 2009 H1N1 strain.

Novartis’ version contains its proprietary squalene adjuvant MF59, linked to annoying to potentially deadly autoimmune and other diseases, including paralysis, autism, Alzheimer’s disease, and Gulf War Syndrome. Glaxo’s ASO3 poses the same risks and will be available in America through CSL Ltd.’s vaccine.

Squalene in vaccines has been secretly used for years, but according to Dr. Rima Laibow, Medical Director of the Natural Solutions Foundation:

“Never before has (it) been (officially) approved for use in a drug in the United States. But once before, when it was allowed in certain military vaccines, more than 60,000 soldiers were hospitalized (by what became) known as ‘Gulf War Syndrome.’ (In Doe v. Rumsfeld, a) Federal Court in 2004, forbade its involuntary use by United States troops.”

“This new (Swine Flu) vaccine has, literally, 1,000,000 time more squalene than the experimental military vaccine, known as ‘Vaccine A.’ The attempt to rush this dangerous vaccine into the bodies of the public without safety testing is a violation of US law, regulation and medical ethics and must be condemned.”

Glaxo (GSK) will distribute CSL Ltd.’s vaccine with its own proprietary high potency squalene adjuvant MPL (monophosphoryl lipid A) system ASO3 that exponentially enhances its dangers as Dr. Laibow explained.

After being linked to Gulf War Syndrome, Army scientists concluded from over two dozen post-war animal studies that nanodoses dangerously compromise the human immune system and may also kill.

MedImmune says it FluMist is a “gentle nasal mist. It’s a quick spray in each nostril, one of the places where the flu virus enters the body. (It) helps your body develop proteins called antibodies that help protect you from the flu.”

Dr. Rima Laibow calls FluMist a “recipe for pandemic. (It) contains 3 live viruses. You shoot it up your nose and your immune system gets a chance to make antibodies to three live, weakened viruses while the manufacturer hopes against hope that one of these three actually causes a disease this year…. Of course, if you are immune compromised or go near someone who is, you will get sick or infect them with the virus and they can get the flu.”

Laibow and others also warn that Flu Mist risks potential brain damage, making it an extremely hazardous drug. The nasal passage olfactory tract is a direct pathway to the brain. Ingesting viruses through it risks encephalitis, a viral-induced acute brain inflammation.

British geneticist and bilphysicist Dr. Mae-Wan and biologist Joe Cummins add that:

“Vaccines can be dangerous, especially live, attenuated viral vaccines or the new recombinant nucleic acid vaccines, that have the potential to generate virulent viruses by recombination and the recombinant nucleic acids could cause autoimmune diseases.”

According to Medimmune, “FluMist is a (nasal administered) vaccine approved for the prevention of certain types of influenza disease in children, adolescents, and adults 2-49 years of age,” except for:

– children and adolescents regularly taking aspirin or products containing it; or persons with certain:

• sensitivities,
• health problems,
• illnesses,
• malignancies,
• immunodeficiencies,
• nutritional deficiencies,
• abnormalities,
• allergies, or
• infections — categories applying to the majority of the population, including many in it unaware it means them.

MedImmune’s product information states:

Administration of Influenza A (H1N1) 2009 Monovalent Vaccine Live, Intranasal, a live virus vaccine, to immunocompromised persons should be based on careful consideration of potential benefits and risks. Safety has not been established in individuals with underlying medical conditions predisposing them to wild-type influenza infection complications.

Appropriate medical treatment and supervision must be available to manage possible anaphylactic (life-threatening allergic) reactions following administration of the vaccine…. Hypersensitivity, including anaphylactic reaction, has been reported during post-marketing experience with FluMist…. Intranasal may not protect all individuals receiving the vaccine.

Each producer lists numerous adverse reactions to its vaccines. Those MedImmune reported included:

– “Congenital, familial and genetic disorder: Exacerbation of symptoms of mitochondrial encephalomyopathy (Leigh syndrome);

– Gastrointestinal disorders: Nausea, vomiting and diarrhea;

– Immune system disorders: Hypersensitivity reactions (including anaphylactic reaction, facial edema and urticaria);

– Nervous system disorders: Guillain-Barre syndrome, Bell’s Palsy;

– Respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders: Epistaxis;” and

– “Skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders: Rash.”

The FDA has not approved nasal vaccine sprays for children under two, adults over 49, or pregnant women. Product instructions also warn that:

“FluMist recipients should avoid close contact with immunocompromised individuals for at least 21 days,” that should include health care workers but it doesn’t. It suggests the likelihood that the vaccine’s live virus will spread among immune-weakened hospital patients and elsewhere through close contact with their providers.

In their article titled, “Vaccines’ Dark Inferno,” Gary Null and Richard Gale warn that:

“The vast majority of scientists, physicians, nurses and public health educators’ trust that the ingredients in a vaccine have been individually and synergistically proven safe and effective.” So do most people, even though commonly held beliefs are wrong, including by professionals who should know better. Because they don’t, their patients’ are endangered by the array of above toxins that in combination with new ones can trigger “a pandemic of Vaccine Disease, manifesting in myriad illnesses (including the new H1N1) dependent upon each vaccinated person’s genetic predisposition and the robustness of (their) immune system(s to withstand) any epidemic threat posed by wild infectious pathogens (that) could unfold in so-called developed, hygienic society.”

Since most governments sacrifice human health for business profits, who are the guardians to protect us from the coming pathogenic onslaught that may weaken or destroy the immune systems of millions of unsuspecting people, and likely sterilize and/or kill them. Something to consider before submitting to dangerous vaccines that everyone has a legal, ethical and for many a medical right to refuse.