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- Living Sickly, Dying Quickly
- By: James Boyne
- OpEdNews.com
- There are two immense, goliath forces in a constant state of
collision and collusion that are presently working to destroy the
health care system in America. Corporate and personal greed are the
motives. The American health care consumer is caught in the middle,
being financial obliterated; quickly and silently being relieved of
their life savings, retirement funds, and a good portion of their
salaries and incomes. Tens of thousands are declaring bankruptcy due
to enormous, crushing medical bills. Forty million Americans have no
health insurance whatsoever.
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- The two destructive, deceitful, and deceptive forces at work are the
pharmaceutical industry and the health insurance industry. There are a
half dozen other groups that operate on the fringes of this nucleus,
that nibble away for any remaining money to be scooped up from the
sick, the injured, the disabled, and the dying. It is a multi
trillion-dollar system of extortion, price gouging, bribes, special
interests, blackmail, greed, and local and national politics, in its
worst form.
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- The pharmaceutical industry exists for the sole purpose of preying
upon Americans who are sick, unhealthy, in discomfort and injured.
Their goal is to insure that only your symptoms are treated. Your
symptoms may be pain, weakness, dizziness, headaches, itchiness,
constipation, diarrhea, depression, anxiety, or any number of other
maladies. It’s strange that most of the prescription drugs often
cause the very symptoms that the drug is trying to alleviate, which
then necessitates additional prescription drugs.
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- In various studies, and in reality, prescription drugs are often of
dubious value and are astronomically overpriced. In many clinical
trials, a significant percentage of people are helped by a placebo.
And often the human body and the passage of time is the real healer.
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- Once your condition
improves or disappears you are no longer a customer of the
pharmaceutical company and of no value to them until you become sick
or injured again. The sicker you are, and the more often you are sick,
the more money the pharmaceutical companies make. It is in the best
interests of the pharmaceutical company to never actually cure you of
anything. Their goal to go keep your underlying problems at bay, but
to keep the symptoms marginally improved or lurking in your body to
reappear at a later time.
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- Smoking, drinking, divorce, getting fired from your job, driving
fast and recklessly, gambling, eating all the wrong foods, sun bathing
and potentially dangerous sports are all activities that make the
pharmaceutical companies hundreds of billions of dollars a year. The
obvious reason is that all these activities can lead to things like
cancer, liver disease, heart attacks, depression, anxiety, broken
limbs and bodily trauma, strokes, head and spine injuries, and finally
death.
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- Death is not in the best interest of the drug companies. There is no
treatment and no prescription drug for death. The drug companies just
want you to “live sickly” and live long.
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- The health insurance industry strategy on the other hand is a
constant opposing force from the drug company strategy. Insurance
companies only make money if you stay as healthy as possible. Their
quandary is that they don’t want to pay claims (their revenue) to
see that you stay healthy, or keep healthy, or get healthy, in the
event that you become sick, injured, or disabled. Insurance companies
will do anything to delay, deny and obstruct your claims that are
submitted.
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- They will set up obstacles to confuse you, your physician, your
pharmacist, and themselves. After denying your claim, they will make
you appeal it and after appealing it they will deny it again. If they
approve it, they will pay only a portion of it as “reasonable and
customary”, which is way below the rate you may have been charged.
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- The financial health of the health insurance industry is based on
discrimination. It is one of the few industries that is Federally
permitted to discriminate against you based upon your age, your
gender, your geographical location, your occupation, your activities,
and your health. They regularly discriminate against policyholders
based upon race (since your race may be an indication of certain
diseases you may be prone to).
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- The goal of the insurance company is to insure only healthy people,
people who never get sick, and never file claims. If you need
medication, they will fight against giving you what you need, in the
doctor’s office, at the pharmacist’s counter, in the fields and in
the trenches. Of course, this assumes you have coverage of medication
in the first place.
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- The insurance companies only think for the short term, for the
bottom line of the next quarter, or the next year. They really have no
interest in your health, your pain, your disability, or your life.
Death, your death, is the ultimate way out for the insurance
companies. Once you get so sickly, or in ill health, you become a
tremendous liability to the insurance company. Death, your death that
is, relieves them of this tremendous financial burden that you have
caused them. Of course, when you die slowly, the pharmaceutical
companies make millions, and the drug companies truly grieve when you
pass, because you are no longer a good customer.
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- The drug companies want you to “live sickly” while the health
insurance companies want you to “die quickly”.
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- These two industries are not only sucking the life savings out of
Americans, they have now turned their sights on small businesses and
large corporations. In turn, small business are refusing to pay for
insurance coverage, and large corporations are sending as many jobs
overseas where people will gladly work for 35 cents an hour without
any health benefits, just for the sake of any work whatsoever.
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- This system has destroyed the patient-doctor relationship that has
existed for hundreds of years. The current system has turned hospitals
into institutions whose main goal is to either not to admit you as a
patient, or if you are admitted, to see to it that you are whisked out
as soon as possible, sick or not, cured or not, recovered or not.
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- Doctor’s purposely overcharge patients, knowing that the more they
charge, the more likely they will get some reasonable reimbursement
from the insurance provider.
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- Pharmaceutical companies charge stratospheric prices for medications
because they know that certain drugs are on the formulary list and
must be approved because the drug company still has a patent on the
drug. The drug companies routinely employ a staff of hundreds upon
hundreds of attorneys to challenge, delay, disrupt, and ultimately to
attempt to have the patent laws perverted into a scheme that
perpetuates their extraordinary profits.
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- American’s have become hypnotized into a trance from the
bombardment of TV and news ads for prescription drugs. On the nightly
news alone there are usually a dozen commercials for drugs that only a
doctor can prescribe and ones that have extremely serious side
affects. The commercialization of drugs tends to give the public a
mindset that they are sick, and getting sicker, and that only a
prescription drug can help.
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- The one and only answer to the entire problem is to enact single
payer, universal, health care for all Americans. In effect, it would
be Medicare for all, with prescription drug coverage for all. Direct
payment to health care providers by this system would save billions by
eliminated the hundreds of insurance companies and their lust for
revenue and profits. People would become healthier because they would
be able to seek the treatment they need. More people would be able to
work and be productive.
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- The price of prescription drugs should be regulated by the Federal
Government. If a CEO is making $50 million a year but a particular
drug was developed over a ten year period with only a total of $5
million on R&D, one would have to ask “what is the high price of
the drug really being diverted too.
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- TV ads for prescription drugs should be banned from the airwaves,
just as alcohol and tobacco are prohibited. Comparative testing of all
drugs should be required.
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- A recent New Times article revealed that top executives of the drug
manufacturers were instructing their staff to donate large sums of
money to the Bush campaign. The total came to $50 million dollars.
Campaign finance laws insure that the system we have now where
wealthy, monopolistic corporations will determine the future of the
health care industry, will go on forever.
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- There is one candidate and one candidate only that has the
integrity, the honesty, the common sense, the straightforwardness, and
the courage to solve this enormous problem.
- Rep-Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), a progressive, populist Democrat
with an independent streak is the only candidate that has a well
thought out plan to eliminate the insurance companies from the health
care system, and to rein in the flagrant greed of the pharmaceutical
companies.
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- Howard Dean who advocates universal health care has a plan
that will minimally affect the health care system by including
children and poor people. Most Americans don’t fall into this
category. The health insurance and pharmaceutical industry would love
Howard Dean’s plan, because it would still leave those industries in
the “driver’s seat”. Rep. Kucinich is the only candidate with
a logical, comprehensive, pragmatic plan based on common sense,
economics, and financial considerations.
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- I urge anyone who wants to learn more about Rep. Kucinich’s stand
of the various issues of our day to learn for yourself at www.kucinich.us.
I used to be a staunch conservative Republican. I now consider myself
a progressive, populist who would just like to see a President with
integrity, honesty, intelligence, and common sense. I would like to
see a President who is pragmatic, who can think for himself and is not
lead by “special interest groups” controlled by large corporate
monopolies. I would like to see a President who writes his own
speeches and can verbally articulate his views before an audience. Rep.
Kucinich is the only candidate that can save America from itself.
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- Rep. Kucinich has a plan where the doctor-patient
relationship will be restored to physicians and their patients and
where insurance companies are not making both routine and critical
medical decisions for doctors and patients. He has a plan on how to
pay for it that will actually relieve small businesses as well as
large corporations of the outlandish and outrageous amounts they are
now paying for employee health care.
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- James Boyne
- Mt. Pleasant, SC
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- James Boyne is a computer trainer, and former sales executive for
IBM, Sony and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He is a former staunch
conservative Republican who after becoming of victim of the health
care industry, has researched, studied, and written about the health
care industry as a freelance writer. He has made a 180 degree
turnabout an now supports Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) for
President. Mr. Boyne has a B.S degree in Marketing, and MBA in
Marketing/Economics, and a degree in Certified Financial Planning.
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- dboyne@aol.com
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