On The Money; What’s Weird About Health Care in America

On The Money

Economics for the 99%

What’s Weird About Health Care in America

 

I don’t read the New York Times because New Yorkers have all lost their minds. If “the Gray Lady” ever published an above the fold headline proclaiming “We’re Live in a Cockroach Infested, Piss Drenched, Rat Maze and We Fuck the World Over by Remote Control, for What? Spiderman?!?” I might believe New Yorkers had finally come to their senses, but I don’t see that happening any time soon.

I don’t watch Fox News, or Comedy Central. I’ve seen Bill O’Reilly and Steve Colbert. One’s a little scarier and ones a little funnier, but it’s all the same idiocy, and that gets depressing, so I don’t bother with them. I don’t look at The Economist, The Wall St. Journal or Barron’s, because I figure that as long as they’ve got something to write about, we’re all doomed.

However, I do think it important to stay informed about the world around me, so I always make a point of reading Chuck Sheppard’s News of the Weird, and so should you. If you had read News of the Weird this month, you would have read the following story, which tells you everything you need to know about health-care costs in America. The following paragraph appeared in News of the Weird this month, under the heading:

Leading Economic Indicators

Scorpion anti-venom, made in Mexico, sells in Mexico, for about $100 a dose, but for a while over the past year, the going rate in the emergency room of the Chandler (Arizona) Regional Medical Center was $39,652 a dose, charged to Marci Edmonds, who was stung while opening a box of air-conditioner filters. She received two doses by IV and was released after three hours, to later find a co-pay bill of $25,537 awaiting her (with her Humana plan picking up $57,509), according to the Arizona Republic newspaper. The Republic found that Arizona hospitals routinely retail scorpion anti-venom for between $7,900 and $12,467 per dose – except for Chandler. Following the newspapers report, Chandler decided to re-price the anti-venom at $8,000 a dose, thus eating a $31,652 “loss.”

This was no typo or computer error. That was the real price Chandler had set for a dose of scorpion anti-venom in their ER. You’ll notice that Humana didn’t bat an eyelash about paying almost $60,000 for a three-hour hospital stay. They were quite happy to simply pass those costs on to you, in the form of higher premiums. It was only after The Arizona Republic reported the story, that the Chandler Regional Medical Center reduced its price for a dose of scorpion anti-venom to the lower end of the range of astronomically high prices charged by other Arizona hospitals.

Just for reference, a pound of marijuana also sells for about $100 in Mexico, but only retails for about $1,000 in Arizona. That’s because, compared to hospitals and insurance companies, Mexican drug cartels are run by good honest businessmen.

For the same price as her three hour IV drip in the ER, Marci could have spent the whole night in a luxury suite in a Las Vegas resort hotel, and enjoyed the services of sixteen Elliot Spitzer class, $5,000 a trick prostitutes, with enough money left over to cover the mini-bar bill and cab fare home.

Instead, she had the misfortune of being stung by a scorpion in a rural part of Arizona, where they have a lot of scorpions, but only one hospital, and she lives in a country where the whole health care system is set up to fuck you the hardest when you are the most vulnerable.

Scorpions only sting in self-defense, but hospital administrators and insurance executives intend to eat you for dinner. There’s a view of Health Care in America that’s On The Money

 

On The Money, Obamneycare is a Symptom, Not a Cure

On The Money

Financial Advice for the Working-Class;

Obamneycare is a Symptom Not a Cure

In an attempt to alienate all of my readers by denigrating their political views, I weigh in on a hotly, although mostly inanely, debated topic, the new mandatory health insurance law, the Expensive Insurance Act, also known as Obamneycare.

With people currently paying $500 or more a month for a health insurance policy with a $5,000 annual deductible, you are better off diagnosing yourself and buying drugs on the black-market than buying health insurance.

 

At 50 years old, I have never run up $5,000 worth of medical bills in a year, if I had been insured since I was 25, I would have already paid 150,000 for nothing, and if I missed one payment, even that flimsy coverage is gone. Health insurance has become a ripoff of epic proportions, and Obamneycare just made it mandatory.

 

While conservatives cling to the delusional belief that the worst people, acting for the worst reasons, will always produce the best results, liberals think they know what’s best for everyone, and live in a grand illusion of their own design. When liberals and conservatives work together, they deliver the worst of both worlds. Such is the case with the new Expensive Insurance Act aka Obamneycare.

The American people gave Obama a clear mandate to make health-care more affordable, and he used that mandate to sell us all out, especially young people. According to Harper’s Index, in the last 25 years, the net worth of Americans 65 and older had risen by 42%. In the same 25 years the net worth of Americans 35 and younger dropped by a whopping 68%. Now Obama has screwed young people again, the very same young people who got him elected, by imposing a huge new tax on anyone who chooses not to pay for an extortionately overpriced product, that most young people don’t need, and would be better off without.

 

Obama didn’t make health-care affordable, he fed the people who elected him, to the bloated health insurance and pharmaceutical industries. Health insurance rates continue to climb because our health-care system remains broken. Thanks to this new legislation, we will all be sicker and poorer as a result. Obama sold out young people with this new law, just like Clinton sold out American workers with NAFTA.

 

Once Democrats know you like them enough to vote them into office, they can’t wait to screw you for the people who paid for their campaign. Republicans know you don’ like them and screw you anyway. Romney screwed people in Massachusetts with a very similar law, because this is what democracy has come to. Politicians exist solely to sell us out to a corporate agenda, Democrat or Republican, they all work for the same people.

 

So, Obama caved to one of the most predatory industries in our whole economy and screwed young healthy people with an expensive new tax for not buying a ripoff product they neither want nor need. So, now life sucks even more for young working people who face rising tuition, inflated housing costs, stagnant wages and scant employment opportunities, and have already lost almost 70% of their net worth in the last 25 years. Like that wasn’t bed enough, now Obamneycare forces America’s young and healthy working people to subsidize two million BMW driving yuppies in Hartford CT, even though they could never afford to live there themselves.

 

It is surprising that we actually have any healthy people left in this country, considering how sick our culture is. Today, millions of children will consume psychiatric drugs, millions of senior citizens will take insidious cholesterol lowering drugs with side effects far worse than high cholesterol, and millions of adults will take mood-altering drugs that cost in excess of $1000 a month, to treat anxiety and depression. Anxiety and depression caused not by a “brain chemical imbalance’ but because life sucks, because people are under attack, being played like pawns, and they have no idea how to make sense of their lives.

 

You can’t solve the problems we face with elections, no matter how many people tell you otherwise.  Obomneycare does not cure anything. Obomneycare is a symptom, and the disease is democracy. The sooner we stop trusting the people who caused our problems, to solve them, the better off we will be.