KissyKissy says the Beltway reporter

Comment re For Baucus, health care is the issue of a lifetime http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/23/
AR2009052301893_Comments.html


Good grief, Washington Post. You've reminded me again never to underestimate the delusional mindset that often overcomes Beltway newspaper reporters. Anyone who can write about Baucus without mentioning his obligations to those who fund his political campaigns is missing the point. By a wide margin. Baucus receives more money from the drug and health insurance companies than any other Democrat in the Senate or the House. So it is no surprise that his recent superficially complex proposals mask love letters to the HMO interests. If the Times falls, is the Post next?
5/25/2009 2:08:36 AM

ObamaCare

•What He's Learned
A Conversation with Barack Obama
By Jon Meacham | NEWSWEEK
Published May 16, 2009
From the magazine issue dated May 25, 2009
http://www.newsweek.com/id/197891/CommentSuccess/false#CommentBox

•• COMMENT
Nonsense. Obama's ignorance about health care is being writ large across the nation. Many people are going to catch on: ObamaCare means:
• an overall decline in quality of care for the vast majority of low-income and middle-income Americans;
• Continued high quality care for the upper-middle class, the rich and the political class.
• little or no change in costs for consumers ... you pay less, you get less .. then you get sick and pay more;
• reduced reimbursements for providers;
• reduced benefits for consumers;
• few or no consumer protections;
• Hostility and ignorance toward people with politically incorrect chronic or disabling health problems;
• Universal managed care.
• No thanks.

Date: May 4, 2009 5:55:59 AM EDT
To: letters@nytimes.com
Subject: letter to

"Where did all the doctors go?" (Letters, May 4) is more nonsense promoted by the HMO lobby and its dupes in the media. Should we pay people more when they are less educated, less trained and less experienced than people who know more, train longer and have more experience? Only in the dreamland inhabited by the puppets programmed by the HMO propaganda machine. More than a third of our population has a chronic or disabling health problem that requires expert care by a specialist serving as a principal (not primary) care provider. Most specialists are doubly credentialed, in internal medicine and in their specialty, and are more than capable of doing both jobs. It's time for an end to the attacks on them by the less deserving and jealous MDs. They have made their own bed of nails. Let them lie in it. Nobody put a gun to their heads and forced them to choose to serve a less needy and healthier population requiring simpler services. And nobody guaranteed them equal pay for less work.

GALA SEASON!!!

IT’S GALA SEASON FOR THE HEALTH “ADVOCATES”. My, my. Isn’t that Nice? Especially because of all the awards they are giving out. Who is getting them? Each other of course! Who is not? Tara Parker-Pope. She wrote “Voice of Lung Cancer,” for the April 22 New York Times. Lesley Alderman. She wrote When Medical Bills Outpace Your Means, Seize Control Swiftly, for the April 24 Times. These are just two of the people who will not get awards for not babbling the Paterson-Obama line. Instead they are doing the hard work: reporting on what is actually going on. Are we hearing anything specific from on high about how the people being driven into bankruptcy by health insurance and health care costs are going to be helped by ObamaCare? Are we hearing anything about the people with politically incorrect cancer and other unpopular diseases and what ObamaCare is going to do for them? Ssshhh. Listen hard. You won’t hear anything. But want to know about Preventatatatative Community Care? Buy a Gala Ticket and find out.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/voices-of-lung-cancer/

LUNG CANCER

April 22, 2009, 4:46 pm
Voices of Lung Cancer
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/voices-of-lung-cancer/

Lung cancer is the biggest cancer killer in the country, killing more than 160,000 people a year. Yet the disease remains low on the list of cancer funding priorities. In 2006, the National Cancer Institute spent $1,518 for each new case of lung cancer and $1,630 for each lung cancer death. By comparison, the agency spent $13,452 per death on breast cancer, which takes 41,000 lives annually.

Patients with lung cancer are well aware of the disparity in spending and sympathy, an issue addressed in the latest Patient Voices series by my colleague Karen Barrow.

“Because lung cancer is associated with smoking, there’s a stigma that makes it a much less sympathetic disease,” said Dr. Lisa Wood of Guilford, Conn., who was diagnosed last year with late-stage lung cancer.

Part of the problem is that lung cancer is often so deadly, patients don’t have the opportunity to become activists for their disease, said Jerrold Dash, 35, a nonsmoker who received a double lung transplant after developing the illness.

“A lot of lung cancer survivors don’t make it past five years, so there aren’t many voices to speak up like the other cancers,” Mr. Dash said. “I find myself always having to answer the questions: Did you smoke? How long did you smoke? Did you work in a coal mine? Every answer I give them is no.”

Click on this link to hear all the voices of lung cancer.

Let's Have Another Summit!

Arthur Springer, on April 26th, 2009 at 3:05 am

Letter to the Editor, The Times-News, Cumberland, MD
re the Fifth Annual Western Maryland Democratic Summit, 4/25/09
Your health summit is like all the other health summits: phony.
I am a Democrat but I have to say that the White House and the Democratic Party are rigging these meetings — the one at the White House on March 5 and all the others since. They all sound the same, say the same and are the same: Let’s have a miracle! Let’s get rid of all the sick people and use the money we would waste on them for Preventatatatative Care. What an Idea! What a scam! Let’s just set up one big managed care plan! And then let’s just shoot the wounded! How’s that for a Plan?

Another sleeper about PREVENTION!!!!

The Huffington Post 4/21/2009
Dr. Agatston, it's a little late for this kind of thing. You don't understand what is going on. Or maybe you do. The HMOs are carrying on a huge campaign about "prevention" in order to disguise the fact that they want to defund services for people with chronic or disabling conditions and shift the money into their own pockets. Nobody is against "prevention." Nobody is against doing something about obesity and all obesity-related health problems. What we should be against is HMO greed and fraud. What we should be against is a revolting lobbying campaign to paint all sick people as irresponsible, to blame for their own health problems, and needing the heavy-handed ministrations of HMO gatekeepers who don't know squat about this problem. My state is full of this crap from the governor on down and we don't need any more. I would suggest that if you want to separate yourself from this scam, just tell us how much you want to raise your reimbursement rates for nutritional counseling and whether or not you will hire skilled nutritionists to do the counseling you haven't been taught to do. I know what that is because I have such a counselor. If it sounds reasonable, you'll get support. If not, you won't. It's a little late in the game for anything else, for drivel about "prevention," for HMO scams. Get with it or get lost.