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August 10, 2010
THE DAY HEALTHCARE REFORM DIED
By Samuel Lipari
"The courtroom was adjourned; No verdict was returned."
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"The courtroom was adjourned; No verdict was returned."
American Pie (The day the Music Died), Don McLean United Artists Records 1971.
I was born in 1959. Long, long ago, I did most of my growing up in the heart of the Democratic Party- Independence, Missouri. I was too young to have known the Camelot of Jack Kennedy and Queen Jackie. To the good old boys of my town, Harry S Truman had "the voice that came from you and me." But as a youngster in church I was sometimes bounced on Clarence M. Kelley's knee. I was even a football player on a rural high school team, famed for avoiding a seasonal shutout of "Iron Man" football.
As a U.S. Senator, Truman spoke out bluntly against corporate greed, and warned about the dangers of Wall Street speculators and other moneyed special interests attaining too much influence in national affairs. Later during his chairmanship of what become known as the "Truman Committee", Harry Truman investigated the scandal of military wastefulness by exposing fraud and mismanagement, saving over $15 billion dollars and thousands of lives during WWII. As President, Truman and his Midwestern base of progressives advocated for national health insurance, backed civil rights improvements and saved a disintegrating Democratic Party after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Independence, Missouri is often the headquarters for regional Democratic candidates ' campaign offices and still has banners on light poles with Harry S Truman's silhouette. Across from the Jackson County Annex Courthouse, a large mural retells the accomplishments of the town's most famous resident.
I however, had drifted away from my Democratic Party family roots, moving to the affluent Republican leaning suburb Lee's Summit, South of Independence. I even became a Republican myself and award winning supporter of the GOP Congressional PAC in 2002. But, in 2006, I heard a commercial from a presidential candidate asking if I believed in change, an end to Bush Era politics of fear and cynicism.
I heard the "music" again and voted for a Democratic presidential candidate embodying Hope and Change, stating: "We believe" everybody should have the opportunity to get a job that pays a living wage"we believe nobody should get bankrupt when they get sick, and everybody should have access to decent healthcare, that's something we believe"" in the Draft Obama movement's first presidential TV ad Believe Again. When I today hear the commercial from years before, tears come to my eyes.
In 2006 I knew the "everybody have(ing) access to decent healthcare" part was easy!
In 2000, I had brought a lifetime of work to the market in MedicalSupplyChain.com using the best Web based technology with online software using artificial intelligence to drastically reduce healthcare costs by incorporating common sense supplier bidding and supply chain management practices developed in the automotive and mass merchandising industries I had grown up working in.
Unknown to me, even my bank at the time US Bancorp Piper Jaffray, had done a study showing an electronic marketplace like mine would save over $20 Billion annually in hospital costs by 1998. But US Bank and the hospitals themselves were refusing to deal with me. They even used the newly created USA PATRIOT Act to stop me from breaking a nationwide hospital supply monopoly had been established through the Group Purchasing Organization Novation LLC that Jack Welch's General Electric, Johnson & Johnson and the pharmaceuticals distributed everything from band-aids to imaging equipment through.
Since monopolization is a series felony under federal and prohibited under Missouri state law I went to court starting in 2002. All I had to prove was that the Novation LLC cartel through its members including US Bancorp and General Electric had a significant share of the hospital supply market and were using unreasonable restraints on trade to exclude competitors and inflate costs.
After I filed my lawsuits, a series of NY Times articles by Mary Williams Walsh and other exposed Novation LLC Cartel's ability to exclude hospital supply competitors from health systems across the nation through long term contracts extorting kickbacks from suppliers allowed into the system. But, Judge Carlos Murguia appointed by President Bill Clinton repeatedly through out all my claims, mocking my affidavit that the USA PATRIOT Act was used to make warrantless wiretaps of my associates for the purpose of obstructing justice and excluding me from the market Jeffrey Immelt intended to preserve for the GHX electronic marketplace controlled by General Electric and Novation LLC.
By 2005 I had calculated that the more than 30 million people without health insurance, because employers and states could not keep up with Novation LLC cartel's artificial inflation of hospital supply costs, contributed to over 40,000 unnecessary deaths a year. General Electric itself stated that over 50,000 deaths were resulting from technology improvements being excluded from the management of hospital enterprises.
My litigation identified over 14 auto plants that would be closed in North America and millions of living wage jobs would be lost because the employee healthcare cost in the price of each American automobile had made them uncompetitive with Japanese brands.
The Antitrust Complaint showed how states themselves would be bankrupted by the monopoly's artificial inflation of hospital supplies. Yet the case was moved from Missouri to Kansas District Court where Judge Carlos Murguia again threw it out and threatened my attorneys.
I had gone to the Missouri Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill who had narrowly won her reace against the Social Conservative Republican Senator Jim Talent on healthcare, but now was just mouthing the Blue Dog fiscal conservative politics. It was as if she just smiled and turned away.
When I heard then Democrat Senator Barack Obama in the Draft Obama political ad Believe Again I regained my hope that people could rise to public office and end the corruption.
I knew if I had my chance I could cut monopoly hospital supply prices in half and maybe the jobs would be saved for awhile.
Our Congressman, the Reverend Emanuel Cleaver, who had already rebuilt a metropolis spanning two states, both Democrat and Republican, solely as mayor of Kansas City, Missouri came to Washington D.C. with the dream of universal health care.
With Representative Cleaver's Congressional Black Caucus focusing on the need for healthcare reforms that would effectively impact socially disadvantaged citizens, the House would not lose sight of the need for competition in health insurance from a public option. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver in a lunchroom video interview on Fire Dog Lake.com criticized the Senate's version of healthcare reform that excluded even the public option and failed to realize the dream of access to quality healthcare for all.
February made me shiver when I read the White House's "Senate-leaning" proposal to consolidate the bills preserving each of the insurance industry's steps.
After 10 years of fighting on my own, I am almost ready to say goodbye to the American way. Giant corporations are now writing legislation, full of subsidies and without public interest or policy goals being accomplished. That's not how it used to be.
The Ford Plant outside of Independence Missouri made pick up trucks, and across the river in Kansas they made Chevy Impalas. Most auto plants in America are now empty and we have no time left to start again.
On August 3rd, Missouri primary voters overwhelmingly against requiring participation in the Healthcare Reform Act. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch stated "GOP leaders in Washington pointed to the Proposition C's passage with 71 percent of the vote as a further repudiation of the new health insurance law and a signal of their impending good fortunes in November."
There were 667,000 votes for Prop. C. If you assume all 577,000 who voted for Republicans also voted for Prop. C; and that the 271,000 who voted against were Democrats, there were still about 85,000 votes, meaning that 23% of folks who voted for the Democrats in the primary also voted for Prop. C. This vote reflects the failure of the process used to get the Healthcare Reform Act passed.
Missouri citizens, like the nation as a whole are without knowledge of the benefits of the Healthcare Reform Act and provisions that will radically improve public health.
Instead, they are reacting to the most politically undesirable aspect of the statute, the mandatory requirement that health insurance be purchased or fines will have to be paid. Without this requirement, the statute could never transfer the $ 70 Billion in subsidies to private health insurance companies.
It will take a lot of activism to prevent this aspect of the law dragging down our reform opportunity by being perceived as a Poll Tax . However corporations should have never had this power over our public discourse.
I should have been allowed to present evidence on how laws were being broken in the healthcare marketplace injuring consumers, killing American jobs and bankrupting our states. The public and their representatives in the US Senate would have had more meaningful information from which to enact effective reforms.
The Missouri state Democratic Judge from Independence, Michael W. Manners broke his own orders to coordinate the dismissal of the state law antitrust case against Novation LLC Cartel with two related cases proceeding before the federal judges, Carlos Murguia and the Western District of Missouri Chief Judge Fernando J. Gaitan, Jr.
The men I relied on most, attorney's general Eric Holder, Chris Koster, and Governor Jay Nixon are getting on a different train, leaving our Rural Progressivism and Rule of Law behind.
I still want to get up to dance and celebrate President Obama's success bringing access to decent healthcare to everyone. As a nation we are going to have to revisit healthcare reform and address what Congressman Emanuel Cleaver, who can still hear the music, was trying to tell us.
This editorial derives its imagery from the 1968 song American Pie. See the singer/songwriter Don McLean Singing American Pie on BBC in July 1972. McLean would never explain the lyrics of his song universal but I will. Its all about being true to your roots.