Kaiser "good cop" image a very serious mistake- LA Times



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Subject:
[SpinLyme] Kaiser "good cop" image a very serious mistake- LA Times
Date:
Wednesday, December 27, 2006 3:54:26 AM

[View Source]

It's amazing that people so out in left field get published (LA Times,
below).


Kaiser is ruining US healthcare as the biggest corporate monster
America has
ever seen. Not even second to Enron.

Kaiser is involved in the spin that denies early diagnosis and
treatment of Lyme
disease when Lyme is a known cause of ALS, MS, Lupus (Yale's former
Lyme and Lupus
clinic, which is now L2 Diagnostics, a central player of the 5
companies involved in the
RICO-Kaiser being Numero Uno), stroke, pregnancy loss, heart block,
arthritis,
dementia, Bannwarth's...

Do you get that? Missed early diagnosis leads to death and these other
serious
disabilities. I am not going to again prove it, because I am quoting
the
published journal articles on MedLine (National Library of Medicine's
PubMed or Entrez).

Kaiser is at New York Medical College actually instructing MDs, and the

instruction is that Lyme is a knee-only disease, and the neurologic
disease
should be malpractice-treated with psychotropics. Kaiser participated
in the
founding of the ALDF.com, which was the central RICO entity until
William Weld's
brother David Weld croaked, and then a member of the original
self-described
"entrepreneurial trio," Gary Wormser, simply shifted the spin to the ID
Society
of America, who had early published in a special edition, about how
very serious
Lyme disease was (1989).
http://www.actionlyme.org/Infectious%20Diseases%20Reviews_1989.htm

Kaiser and these other insurance companies are dictating healthcare
criteria.
At Richard Blumenthal's 1999 Lyme conference, Edward Eisenberg from
Oxford Ins.
perjured himself and said that the testing for Lyme was as accurate as
any other
test for any other infectious disease. Let us hope the HIV test does
not miss
96% of the cases. What do you suppose Oxford pays Eisenberg?

$600,000 a year? Consultant fees?

Anyone who does not understand the mechanics of pathophysiology should
not
comment on the status of US healthcare. It is as much garbage,
bull***, and
spin as BushCo. Moreso. Note that at the ALDF's "GALA" Philip Morris
was invited:
http://www.actionlyme.org/OTHER_ALDF_SPONSORS..htm

'Think that has anything to do with Lyme disease being "controversial?"

BigPharma is bad enough, but they're not as bad as Kaiser, et al.
These people
are so bad, that they conspired to create a law which stated that a
physician
who was considered an "expert" in any medical-legal case could not give
his expert
opinion, if his expert opinion differed from the "guidelines" or the
evidence
biased medicine - protocols for which are written by the likes of
Kaiser at New York
Medical College. These psychos also happen to be heavily represented
in a
dot guv entity called the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research.

It's actually a corporate lobby with a dot guv address. Look who are
their
advisors.
http://www.ahrq.gov/about/council.htm

American Enterprise Institute?

'Think THEY give a *** about quality healthcare? HMOs should be
illegal.

When the hell did we decide an insurance company can determine whether
or not we live or die? This is precisely what is happening and the
reason is
that there are no intelligent people looking at what these creeps are
up to,
- and also have the actual nuts to do something about it -
because every single person who has the ability to do something about
this
is thinking about their own income, status and position, first.

For example, *I* filed the RICO complaint, and not anyone from
ILADS.org
*I* looked at the data from the LYMErix trial. *I* ordered the
Dearborn booklet
to find out what the hell went on in that FARCE of a conference:
http://www.actionlyme.org/Dearborn_Who_Approved.htm

This fact disgusts me more than anything. The people who have the
means, and who know this is wrong, don't have the balls to take these
people on. If something is true, ya say it. Otherwise you're a coward
and should not be allowed to buy a burial plot on US soil. I fault the
cowards even more than the crooks.


KMDickson
23 Garden Street
Pawcatuck, CT "USA"

============
Going universal
The American healthcare system is, simply put, a mess, but we may
finally be
ready to fix it.
By Ezra Klein, EZRA KLEIN is a writing fellow at the American Prospect
and a
blogger at www.EzraKlein.com.
December 26, 2006

THE STATISTICS, by now, are well known. Forty-seven million uninsured
Americans.
Premium increases of 81% since 2000. Small businesses failing, big
businesses
foundering, individuals priced out and, amid all this, skyrocketing
profits for
insurers, hospitals and pharmaceutical manufacturers.

The American health system, put simply, is a mess. An expensive one.
Indeed, in
2002, we spent $5,267 per capita on healthcare - $1,821 more than
Switzerland,
the nearest runner-up. And yet we had higher infant mortality, lower
life
expectancy, more price inflation and an actual uninsured population, a
phenomenon virtually unknown in the rest of the developed world, where
universal
healthcare is, well, universal.

ADVERTISEMENT

These are unsustainable trends. The U.S. healthcare system cannot, in
its
current form, go on forever, or even for very much longer - employers
can't
afford it, individuals can't handle it and the country's conscience
won't
countenance it.

And change may come sooner than most think. Across the country there
are
unmistakable signs that the gridlock and confusion sustaining our sadly
outdated
system are coming to an end and that real reform may finally emerge,
possibly
even starting in California, where Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is
promising to
spend his upcoming State of the State speech explaining how he will
push the
Golden State closer to universal healthcare in the coming year.

And it's about time. Few mention this, but the American healthcare
system is
something of a mistake. It blossomed out of a World War II tax reform
meant to
guard against corporate war profiteering. Liberals, with their usual
combination
of good intentions and inadequate foresight, imposed massive marginal
tax rates on corporations, effectively freezing their profits at prewar
levels. But the
law had a loophole: Corporations could funnel their wartime riches into
employee
benefits, such as healthcare, thus putting the cash to use within their
company.
And so they did, creating the employer-based healthcare system.

But healthcare was simpler in the 1940s, and far less expensive. In the
21st
century, it's not simple at all. Once a perk of employment, health
insurance is
now a necessity, and a structure that dumps such power, complexity and
cost in
the laps of employers is grotesquely unfair to both businesses and
individuals.
There's no logic to an auto manufacturer running a multibillion-dollar
health
insurance plan on the side; it should stick to making cars. There's no
excuse
for pricing the self-employed and entrepreneurial out of the market.
And there's
no reason the owner of a three-employee start-up should have to go to
bed with a
heavy conscience because his coffee shop can't pay for chemotherapy.

But health insurance is not only the inexplicable responsibility of
business; it is a big
business, which is why the system survives. The medical-industrial
complex is a
massive, remarkable beast, consuming a full one-ninth of the American
economy
and offering astonishing profits to many of the participants (indeed,
Big Pharma
was the most profitable industry in the U.S. from the 1980s until 2003,
when
energy companies wrested away the top spot). As with any lucrative
industry, the
winners are resistant to reforms, and they have a formidable army of
politically
lobbyists, PR specialists and image consultants helping to preserve
their
position, to preserve a mistake.

But there is evidence, finally, that their castle is being stormed.
Massachusetts has passed the nation's first near-universal healthcare
plan,
creating a structure that should cover 95%-plus of its citizens by
making
healthcare as mandatory as car insurance. Nationally, the Democratic
resurgence
has returned universal healthcare to the agenda and its advocates to
power. In the House, Rep. Pete Stark (D-Fremont), a staunch
Medicare-for-all advocate, is expected to be chairman of the health
subcommittee.

Surrounded by an unlikely array of union leaders and corporate chief
executives,
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has unveiled an inventive, comprehensive reform
plan
that would end the employer system forever. What businesses pay in
employee
premiums would be redirected to employee raises; insurers would offer
their
plans through state associations that would no longer allow price
discrimination
for reasons of health or job status; and everyone would have to buy in.

Universal coverage would be achieved in under two years.

The most compelling evidence that resistance to reform is futile,
however, is
coming from the insurers themselves. Cognizant that Congress and the
nation are
tiring of the current dystopia, the insurance industry recently
released its own
plan for universal healthcare.

It's a bad plan, to be sure. Its purpose is more to preserve the
insurance industry's profits than improve healthcare in this country.
But the
endorsement of universality as a moral imperative, and the attempt to
get in
front of the coming efforts at reform, mark the emergence of a distinct

rear-guard mentality within the insurance industry. Their game is up,
and
they're turning some of their attention to shaping their future rather
than
betting that they can continue protecting their present.

SOME OF THE industry's more enlightened members are going even further.
In
California, the heads of Kaiser Permanente - a historical "good cop"
insurer
amid the almost cartoonish villainy of the industry - have proposed a
serious,
albeit extraordinarily complicated, plan for achieving universal
coverage in the
Golden State. The details of the plan are unimportant; it's the
constructiveness
of the proposal that matters.

And joining them in calling for reform is Schwarzenegger, who recently
seized on
a report by the New America Foundation showing that cost-shifting
caused by the
uninsured population costs each family in the state the equivalent of
$1,186 in annual
premiums. His plans for reform will be announced at the State of the
State
address Jan. 9.

The work is not done, of course. There are arguments yet to be had,
wars yet to
be fought.

Insurers want to retain their ability to discriminate against the ill
and the
old; conservatives want individuals to assume more risk and expense in
order to
force wiser health decisions; liberals want the government to guarantee

universality and utilize its massive market power to bargain prices
down to
levels approximating those paid by other developed countries.

What's important, though, is that for the first time since the early
years of
the Clinton administration, these arguments are being made, and
employers,
insurers, politicians and, most crucially, voters are making their way
back to
the table.

The realization that our illogical, mistaken healthcare system can't go
on
forever has dawned, and so it will end. The question now is what
replaces it.




--
http://www.actionlyme.org



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