Kaiser cancelled from AFL-CIO convention

A short CNA clip from Kaiser nurses.  The AFL-CIO convention was apparently ready to applaud kaiser as the model health care provider.  The California Nurses Association (now an AFL-CIO affiliate) contacted the AFL-CIO complaining about Kaiser's anti-worker anti-patient practices and published this statement:
Nurses once again let Kaiser Executives know that we will not be idle while Kaiser Cancels Our Patients’ Care.  Kaiser was slated to be spotlighted as a model healthcare company at the AFL-CIO convention.  When we let the AFL-CIO know about Kaiser's plans to cancel our patients' care Kaiser was cancelled themselves.

"Our patients have too much at stake for us to allow Kaiser Executives to move forward with their plans.  Patient care should always be first." CNA states.

Unfortunately, the same AFL-CIO leadership pushed the Team Concept on Kaiser employees when John Sweeny was president and  Sal Roselli's Local 250 was still in SEIU.  The CNA was not in the AFL-CIO at the time and did not join the team to my knowledge.  Naturally, there will be no internal debate about the disastrous consequences of the Team Concept and the idea that bosses and workers have the same interests or that the same AFL-CIO pushed it with gusto. Cancelling a glowing presentation from the bosses at the AFL-CIO's convention won't do much to turn the tide either.

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Capitalism = Mental Illness = Profits

by Richard Mellor
Afscme local 444, retired

America is not known as a human friendly society.   It is money friendly, but that doesn’t mean human friendly. It is an extremely fast paced society that will leave you behind very quickly.  It doesn’t matter if you are a war hero, a Vietnam veteran, have worked steadily all your life contributing to the wealth of society---if you have no money in this country, you’re on your own baby,

A friend from Sweden who had spent considerable time here described the difference between the two societies this way: “In Sweden, if you fall on hard times there is this safety net that catches you, prevents you from falling all the way to the bottom.  In the US, not only do fall all the way to the bottom, then they stomp on you with their feet.” He showed by example twisting his heel in the dirt like he was stubbing out a lit cigarette. You can be homeless, broke, go from what appears to be a comfortable middle class life in short notice. Whatever you do, don’t get sick. Ion many ways, we get the worst bang for the buck when it comes to public and social services.

We are not a happy society. It is a stressful existence the rat race, and as public services and jobs, which tend to be somewhat more humane are privatized, the insecurity and fear of losing everything will intensify.

A recent Gallup Poll found that 70% of Americans hate their jobs Bruce Levine writes at AlterNet pointing out that US society “…has become increasingly alienating, isolating and insane, and earning a buck means more degrees, compliance, ass-kissing, shit-eating, and inauthenticity.” And this has resulted in a huge increase in mental illness; what he refers to as an “epidemic”.

Levine quotes Marcia Angell who wrote a piece in the New York Review of Books:

“The tally of those who are so disabled by mental disorders that they qualify for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) increased nearly two and a half times between 1987 and 2007—from 1 in 184 Americans to 1 in 76. For children, the rise is even more startling—a thirty-five-fold increase in the same two decades.”

And here’s another interesting statistic:

In 2011, the  U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that antidepressant use in the United States has increased nearly 400% in the last two decades, making antidepressants the most frequently used class of medications by Americans ages 18-44 years. By 2008, 23% of women ages 40–59 years were taking antidepressants.

The CDC, on May 3, 2013, reportedthat the suicide rate among Americans ages 35–64 years increased 28.4% between 1999 and 2010 (from 13.7 suicides per 100,000 population in 1999 to 17.6 per 100,000 in 2010).

  

This should come as no surprise given the insecurity and ever-present fear of falling through the cracks wears people down.  The intense ideological war aimed at convincing Americans that life is what you make it, that the rich all pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps and that the individual is in control of their own destiny has a very powerful influence on thinking.  Day in day out we are bombarded with ads in the media selling us something, more than any other country in the world we live in a twenty four hour marketplace.  My mother used to complain about paying for a TV back home until she got a taste of US TV, 200 channels, nothing to watch.  Ads every three or four minutes during late night movies and sometimes the same ad repeated. How insulting.  It’s not that Americans have gotten used to it. We kid ourselves that it doesn’t affect us, that we just ignore it. But it does, it contributes to the alienation that exists in US society although there is a strong urge to deny it. If one believes one can get what one wants in society, it’s up to you and you alone, when you fail, you blame yourself with devastating consequences.

As I have pointed out before, another major factor is the view that there’s nothing we can do about it.  “It is what it is” is a common phrase or “You can’t change city hall”and similar resignations.  There is reason for this as there has not been a mass movement in this country for years.  The Occupy Movement received tremendous support from many layers of society but didn’t know what to do with it. The trade Union leaders are pretty much absent form people’s lives and if given any thought at all are distrusted, even hated, down there with Congress when it comes to popularity contests.

There is nothing worse than victimhood.  We all know the feeling when we stand up to a bully or our abusers even if it costs us a black eye.  But US workers have seen wages, benefits and working conditions that took decades to win stripped from us by the capitalist offensive. We have lost homes, jobs and witnessed increased surveillance and interference in our private lives as the TV blasts out 24 hours a day messages contradicting this objective reality adding to our frustration.  We can’t travel to half the countries of the world because of the actions of our government murdering and slaughtering people from Pakistan to Yemen and if not directly involved in such practices, supporting ruthless dictators who do their dirty work for them.

There is no significant objective force in US society that the masses feel they can turn to. As I have pointed out, the heads of the Labor Movement with 12 million members, a huge budget and full time staff not to mention physical structures, could transform this situation but instead appeal to the very politicians whose policies are at the root of this crisis.  In the absence of a real mass movement that can challenge the offensive of capital, drive it back and organize an offensive of our own, millions of Americans simply bury their heads in the sand, party themselves to death or escape in to mental oblivion to avoid the pain.  But inequality is on the rise, the bosses will not stop in their efforts to place the US workers and middle class on rations and at some point the eruption will come. It will be messy and confused and contradictory but come it will.

You can read Levine’s piece here.“Why Life in America Can Literally Drive You Insane”

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Public Sector Workers Must Claim Our 'Entitlement ."

by Wendy Forrest

It is difficult to instill a sense of entitlement among nurses and teachers.One of the most difficult challenges of a union steward in the public sector these days is to encourage and promote awareness of the value of our work - to help them achieve a sense of entitlement.


At work I talk a lot everyday about the attacks on public sector workers. I try to get them to see the erosion of our rights as workers and how attacks on us, our wages, benefits and likely soon our pensions is connected to the undermining and theft of our public services such publicly funded and administered health care and education.

There are many days when I leave work tired of my own voice and wonder if a word I have said has sunk in. I wonder if I have been the least bit effective in exploiting the constant opportunities to help my coworkers see that what is happening to them is not incidental but is part of a deliberate well orchestrated attack, local and global , on us as workers.

I do not overuse the term austerity. I try to get as close to the bone of what is actually happening in the moment to us as workers and draw out a few implications for folks.
Nurses often resist understanding themselves as "workers." Most prefer to use the term colleague or employee. It is one of the challenges of working as a so-called “professional “ to constantly challenge language we use , to deconstruct and challenge the ways we see ourselves and the work we do.

I especially worry about younger nurses starting out. In Ontario most nurses in hospitals are unionized. As a result they have no idea what it was like to work without a union. So I tell them. Some days it seems important to tell them a little bit of history of our union. I may just mention to them how the rights and protections we have were not always there. I recount anecdotes about working in a non union hospital decades ago. I tell them about being forced to work for 10 days in a row without a day off-about having to work double and extra shifts without overtime pay and leaving work at midnight and having to show up again at 8 am with no choice and no overtime pay. I try to take every opportunity, heed sighs of frustration, fatigue, signs of too much stress and to bolstering the anger I see and hear when workloads seem overwhelming, when our safety is at risk, when we are harassed regarding “overuse of sick time”. It is a constant activity to deconstruct the language used by the employers, terms like “attendance management” reminding them that no matter what we are told it is our collective agreement that determines our rights.

Sometimes it feels like an intricate dance, stressing the importance of our union and at the same time emphasizing the need to challenge the leadership of our union and all public sector unions to fight for us more aggressively. I have never been a good dancer and often chastise myself for being too clumsy in the way I do this. I remind myself that the task is to not to act like a blunt instrument , like a baseball bat rather like a delicate scalpel to expose the lies we have internalized , the myths about ourselves as workers and our work as an essential social function.

It is absurd that many days I must remind new nurses to claim their overtime, to take their lunch and supper breaks.

I talk to them as well about the realities of working in a female dominated profession-and to claim their right to “care” without letting the caring nature of our work be used against us as a source of exploitation.

It astounds me how uncomfortable most nurses are with the words labour and worker. Most “professionals” do not want to see themselves as “workers.” They resist, as if it is an insult to be seen as having the same class interests as a city worker or a bus driver. It takes a lot of imagination to construct analogies that help them see differently. I often tell them about the “professionalism” exhibited moment by moment by the transit driver who every day takes abuse from the public, who is verbally and physically assaulted at work yet continues to maintain his “professional” behaviour and to keep her passengers safe.

I ask them who is more important to us in the midst of a power failure and tell them the story of watching three city workers outside my window in an ice storm at 3 am in the morning, while my son and I shivered under blankets and duvets inside. Who do you want to see in a case like this, a lawyer, a professor, a banker or stockbroker, even a teacher or a nurse outside your window? No you want to see a city worker acting in the public interest not only to restore our conveniences but to prevent an elderly person, a disabled person or newborn baby from getting sick even dying from the cold.

I value my Saturday mornings when I read the weekly edition of my newspaper and savour my coffee at leisure.  I subscribe to what is considered to be the newspaper of business and finance. And I have to admit what I read is biased towards the enemy of my class. But it is in this newspaper that I see to a better extent the degree of threat working people face.

These writers are bold. They write to and for the capitalist class and leave no stone unturned. I believe all working people should once in a while read what these apologists for the greedy unproductive bankers and business class have to say about us as workers.

We have become used to references to public sector workers as the “bloated public sector.” 

These lies come from the vampires whose CEOs" salaries define the meaning of "bloated."We have become hardened to this. But when we take a good look at the language of their propaganda we become more skilled at analyzing their repetitive narratives . It can help us learn better how to talk among ourselves to build a counter narrative and a shift in how we see  and understand ourselves as workers.

More often we hear the use of the term "entitlement" to refer to workers. Ironically it is the most non-entitled parasitical representatives of the privileged and exploiting class that throw this word around to bully and demean us .

The capitalist class has been very successful and can claim many victories in part thanks to a failure of the leadership of our unions to reject the mantra of labour peace and build a  fighting opposition  across unions-their refusal to utilize their tremendous resources to build  genuine resistance to neo-liberalism and austerity agendas . Concession after concession in the name of labour peace has pretty well dug us into a hole. So far they have not quite yet thrown in the dirt to bury us completely but it a very deep hole with very steep sides to scale.

The mantra of “increasing the productivity “of public sectors workers has been around for awhile. But I wonder how many of us understand the level of sophistication this particular piece of propaganda has taken on. I marvel at the success  they have enjoyed in convincing a large section of the public that we are lazy, that we waste and exploit tax dollars as they viciously attack our “sense of entitlement.”
A favourite site of attack is our sick time. Putting aside the reality of wage freezes and cuts, the attacks on defined pensions plans, all those “entitlements, “ it seems that “abuse” of sick time by public sector workers is slowing down productivity. Enter attendance management programs with a vengeance. 

Apparently the average amount of sick time used per year by government employees in Canada is approximately 12.5. In my experience as a health care worker this amounts to maybe one good bout of influenza and maybe a common cold if we insist on staying off work until were really well. This is for a “healthy” worker with no chronic illnesses. It does not account for unforeseen injuries, stress related illness, “mental health days” (which at one time were written into some collective agreements), the need to use sick time because our children are sick -most collective agreements do not cover this reality. Forget about the fact that we are allowed 4 entire days official bereavement leave (which must be taken consecutively) if a child, partner, mother or father dies. and of course ignore the number of unused sick days , hours and hours of unclaimed overtime.

Never mind that the average number of vacation days for a worker in Italy is 42, in France 37 and in Canada 26. In the US it is 13 days per year on the average.

Their response is the introduction of attendance management programs that “entitle “ the boss to harass workers at home, violate a workers right to confidentiality regarding health care history, frequent calls into the bosses office to be intimidated and threatened, demands for letters from our physicians after even one day off sick and threats of dismissal.

And beware the “more enlightened” approach" – so called employer driven “health and wellness programs” which under the guise of "caring" for  to the health and well being of workers ends up placing full responsibility for our health on the worker/individual . These programs are introduced into the workplace in what appears to be a benign and even benevolent way.

Unfortunately some public sector unions are buying into these sneaky programs and promoting them. These programs ignore workload issues, continual increased stresses in the workplace, close monitoring of workers, increased intimidation etc.

Workers may be  enticed to volunteer for a 2-4 week “project” where that keep track of the foods they eat , the amount of exercise , how much alcohol they consume , whether or not they smoke etc. The employer exploits  the dreaded “team concept“, with all its whistles and bells and appoints or solicits “champions “ among the workers to promote  the project.

Not only does this distract from real and serious concerns in the workplace that union steward must address in a vigourous way, but it reinforces the notion that the individual worker is responsible for his or her health exclusively. The social and political context of health is deliberately ignored. A careful examination of these programs reveals that more and more information is revealed to the employer, more responsibility for being sick is placed on the worker as well as providing the employer with more and more tools to penalize and punish workers who are sick. You have to marvel at the sophistication and the stealthy deception used. Beware the wolf in lambs clothing.

A useful  article by Steve Early in The Nation , February 26th 2013 www.the nation.com/article/173088/why-workers-should-be-wary-about-corporate-wellness.#axzz2WejzCNXG lays out clearly the dangers of these programs. The article cites the experience of the Chicago Teachers Union who signed on to a wellness program. The result was increased mandatory monitoring of workers health and lifestyles, fines for not participating in the program, excessive monitoring of workers lifestyles, excessive employer and insurer intrusion into workers lives and right to privacy, their “preexisting conditions.” Ultimately workers who do not cooperate often end up having to pay more for health care benefits or endure other penalties.

A fundamental question arises then for the work of the union steward in the workplace whose work is voluntary and largely unrecognized. Who rarely goes to convention with all the perks of hotel rooms and free meals and paid time off work. Whose efforts often bring them into conflict with their boss and whose ears must at all times be to the ground, listening to coworkers, grasping at every moment their anger and their fear and capitalizing on every almost microscopic opportunity to intervene, educate, reframe in an attempt to shift their consciousness to one that makes them proud to be workers and determined to feel entitled.

For me it highlights the need to build solidarity among the closest to ground, the steward in the workplace. No one is more important in the workplace, in the union except the workers themselves. There is no one better placed to understand the consciousness of the workers, their anger and their brilliance as well as the opportunities and the obstacles. Stewards share the shop floor, do the same work and endure the same oppression .

It struck me a few days after my boss asked me several months ago “who do you think you are?” how much I  wish I had a quicker wit , had said to her. “I am an entitled public sector worker, my entitlements were hard won and many have suffered, even died so that I can claim that entitlement as a  right and  I am determined to make sure the workers in my union understand that they too are entitled to rights and privileges even beyond your imagination.”

Maybe next time I will be faster on the draw.

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Capitalism and Big Pharma an unhealthy concoction

by Richard Mellor

One of my favorite lines from the movies is from Crocodile Dundee.  The wild Aussie has been brought back to the US by his new upper middle class girlfriend. At a party in her rich parents house she points out the guests.  One of them is a wealthy woman who is talking to her shrink.

“Is she nuts? the outback man asks.

The girlfriend laughs and explains that sometimes people just need someone to talk to.

“Hasn’t she got any mates?" He replies.

The problem is that “mates”don’t normally charge a fee for providing emotional support and friendship.  They also don’t prescribe drugs.  “Mates” in the way Crocodile Dundee meant it in the film, are simply not good for business and for capitalism in general.

Health care in the US is a huge and very profitable industry.  It is better described as the sickness industrial complex. Prescription drugs are pushed on television through aggressive advertising, something that is illegal in many countries.  If it’s a football game or a male oriented show the viewer will be bombarded by ads about erectile dysfunction and other newly discovered diseases and the cure will be offered in the form of some sort of medication that will ensure you are “ready”whenever the woman demands you perform; just head down to the hospital if your erection lasts more than four hours, it’s not a good sign. If it’s a more sedate show appealing to older folks, the drugs being pushed might be for hair loss (another syndrome) or for peeing too often. There is such a thing as peeing too often possibly related to kidneys but if you don't have it they'll convince you you do.

Excessive shyness, baldness, anger, restless leg syndrome; we have them all and the pharmaceutical companies have the pill for these medical conditions.

Then there’s ADHD, or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder an affliction that I have been accused of having.  The symptoms are severe: “fidgeting” “overlooking details” “difficulty remaining focused during lengthy reading” “Taps hands”.  It took thousands of years of human existence for psychiatrists and other scientists to figure out that these symptoms are not connected to people losing their jobs and homes, or are unhappy at work or who can’t get basic health care for them and their families.  Nor is the existence of ADHD among children related to these social issues-----they have ADHD, and thanks to the pharmaceutical industry they have the pill for it.

An op ed piece in today’s Wall Street Journal points out that almost one in five boys in US high schools have been diagnosed with ADHD according to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention. Six million children between the ages of 4 and 17 have been diagnosed with it and are prescribed amphetamines in the form of Ritalin and/or Adderall as a cure. 

Originally, amphetamines were pushed as the anti-depressant of choice and were once given to US soldiers in WW2 to “boost morale and improve performance in combat” the authors tell us.  The drug was also used by some major corporations for the same reasons; they can improve productivity up to a point, until the addiction sets in that is.  Amphetamines were also pushed as the go-to weight loss pills. One prominent 1950’s ad for the amphetamine AmPlus promised people that they would be “beachable by summer.”

The benefits of the drug as a cure for depression and as a weight loss pill were soon found lacking as its addictive qualities became apparent in the long term but “….the lack of proof didn’t hold doctors back from liberally prescribing stimulants to millions of housewives in postwar suburbs” the authors add, prescribing 120 mg of amphetamine for each American.  Despite further studies revealing the dangers and addictive qualities of speed, the drugs were very profitable and doctors continued prescribing them until some restraint was introduced with the passing of the Controlled Substances Act in 1971. Between 1969 and 1972, prescriptions for speed to treat depression and obesity fell 90%.

This was not a good development as far as big Pharma was concerned and (just by chance?) before long a new use for the drug popped up as a treatment for Hyperkinetic Reaction of Childhood now called ADHD.  The problem was that the addiction qualities kept prescriptions low along with the “watchful eye” of the DEA say the authors; another example of “big government” regulation interfering with market opportunities.  Something had to be done.

By the nineties various advocacy groups began making the argument that speed didn’t lead to addiction in the treatment of children with ADHD.  In fact, using speed actually helped prevent future drug abuse advocates argued. “ADHD itself” was a risk factor in future drug abuse and so by treating ADHD wih speed actually reduced the chances of their children using drugs in the future.  Putting their children on speed, parents were told, “…would decrease the risks of future trouble with alcohol and drugs.”  According to the authors of the WSJ piece this was based on very flimsy evidence.  But we are taught if someone in a white lab coat or who is an accepted “expert” in their field tells us something it must be accurate.  They have a white lab coat after all and are doctors.

It turns out now that ADHD does predispose children to substance abuse later in life but there is “…no evidence that stimulant medication reduces this rate any better than treating ADHD with behavioral approaches” say the authors.

The first issue for me is whether there is such a disease at all.  The symptoms displayed by children that lead to these diagnoses and the corresponding cures seem natural responses to social conditions.  Most of these syndromes we hear about on TV now for which there is a corresponding cure in the form of a drug are simply natural physical and emotional responses to the degenerating objective conditions we find ourselves in, societal decay and lack of control over our lives. One doctor friend once told me she was called by a patient who claimed she had a syndrome/disease the doctor had never heard of.  Her patient had heard about it on TV and was told, as the ads always tell you, to “call her doctor “ and ask if the advertised drug is, “right for you

The same with depression.  While I am sure there are real physical/mental imbalances that can lead to depression, it seems it is a natural response to the world around us.  Surely we have an abundance of reasons to be depressed. The fierce competition for work; fear and anxiety caused by economic insecurity; social isolation; the trauma of war, racism, sexism and all forms of inequality all contribute to the increasing levels of stress in America undermining the mental welfare of all working people. The message of the corporations and the rich is for everyone to take care of themselves and to treat our problems by buying pharmaceuticals.

This is compounded by the mass media that is designed to demoralize and encourage a feeling of helplessness and that everyone is out to get us. The general bent of mass propaganda tells us there is nothing we can do to change things, we are powerless. There is nothing more demoralizing than victimhood.  And there is nothing more liberating than fighting back, refusing to be just a victim of history but participating in the making of some of it. 

For the sickness industry the pill is a good business decision.  Health care in America is no different than any other business; maximizing profits comes first. Here are some thoughts on an alternative to the business model of caring for human health and welfare.

A Socialist Alternative for Universal Healthcare*

End Poverty

*Decent housing, food, and jobs for all

* A $20 an hour minimum wage and a 32 -hour working week with no loss in pay for all

*All workers to have paid sick time

End Private profiting from healthcare

* One single health collective with publicly owned hospital and pharmaceutical industries that are under the democratic management of healthcare employees, patients and the communities they serve

Free accessible quality healthcare for all

* Fully staffed clinics providing no charge, basic health care in every neighborhood

Free Comprehensive health benefits with an emphasis on preventative care:

* Vision care, dental and hearing aids . Women’s health care including birth

control, morning after pill, and abortion on demand . Alternative therapies with

proven medical benefit such as acupuncture and chiropractic care . Mental

health care with emphasis on counseling, not just prescribing pills

Take the profit out of medical research

* Create a publicly owned, democratically controlled organization to do medical

research, widening and democratizing the current role of the National Institute for

Health . The direction of medical research to be made by elected councils of

researchers, health care employees, and community members

Unite and Empower Healthcare Workers

 * Create an industry-wide union of healthcare workers to include every worker

in a hospital from the janitor to the surgeon . Improve working conditions for

healthcare workers: wages, shift lengths, nurse-to-patient ratios . Free medical

education: Nurses, technicians and doctors to serve the public without decades of

debt .

* Build an independent political party based on workers, our workplace and community organizations and the youth as a mass political alternative that can break the dictatorship the two capitalist parties have over political life.

These are just some thoughts.  But what do I know?  I don’t have a certificate from the state that qualifies me to have an opinion on such matters like the experts that work for big Pharma and I don’t have a white coat.

* From Facts For Working People March 2007

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Ireland and women's health: Dublin Meeting for Abortion Rights

From Irish TD Clare Daly

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Irish TD Clare Daly takes up abortion rights in the Irish parliament.

Followers of this blog are aware of the events that took place in Ireland around the death of Savita Happanavar, the Indian woman, a Dentist, who pleaded for authorities to terminate her pregnancy as she was having a miscarriage. Clare Daly, an Independent TD (Member of the Irish parliament)has been one of the most outspoken critics of Ireland's abortion laws and has campaigned for legalizing abortion when a mother's life is in danger. Ms Daly, along with three other TD's introduced such a bill in to parliament that was voted down.  She is here discussing the issue during a session in the parliament referred to as "leaders questions."

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Nursing homes: Get the corporations out of health care.

by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

The glorifying of Margaret Thatcher by the British ruling class and the vilification of her and her policies by British workers reveals the chasm that separates workers from bosses.  We are not on the same team despite all the propaganda to the contrary.  The British bourgeois are obligated to place one of their own on a pedestal and in an affront to us all, use taxpayer money to do it.  The queen of privatization gets a publicly funded going away party.

No champion of public services would receive such praise today.  The British National Health system is under ferocious attack in order to send it down the same privatization path as the housing, water, gas and transport industries that Thatcher’s and after, New Labor’s policies removed from the public domain.

Here in the US the propaganda against anything public is pervasive. In the mass media on television every minute of every day the market is put forward as the answer to all things despite the most powerful capitalist economy in the world being dragged from the edge of the abyss through a massive bailout by the taxpayers. The postal service, transportation, water, education and social security are all in the sights of the coupon clippers, the private equity lords, the hedge fund managers---------all those who brought us the Great Recession.

The most glaring failure of all is perhaps the health care system.  It is one of the most costly of all the advanced capitalist economies at about 18% of GDP and returns the least bang for the buck. Despite being privately run for the most part, Federal, state and local governments are projected to spend $2.4 trillion on health care in 2021, according to Bloomberg Business Week. This is half of all U.S. medical expenditures.  “Government accounted for about 46 percent of health spending through 2013.” BW adds. 

The private sector does very well out of the sickness industrial complex including many “libertarian”medical practitioners I’m sure. It is a very profitable business, for those who invest in it but not for the most vulnerable of us when we need it most; for those who need care in their later years.  

As Americans live longer the need for nursing home care grows.  By 2030, 73 million Americans will be 65 or over according US government estimates, up from 40 million in 2010.  There is already a Labor shortage in this industry as taking care of sick people, cleaning, comforting, moving them, emptying their diapers etc. does not warrant much respect like gambling on the price of pork bellies or mortgage rates.  Being a nurses’ aide is very hard, mentally and physically and the pay poor.  The Wall Street Journal today estimates, that five million “direct care” workers will be needed to meet demand, an increase in 48% from 2010.

While conditions in the entire industry need to improve, both workers and patients in the private nursing home facilities are among the most abused in any industry. The rate of occupational injury for nurse’s aides, who are mostly women, is higher than construction or factory work says the Journal. This also leads to a high turnover rate that is detrimental to the patients as well.  People with dementia can be extremely aggressive and workers can be punched, kicked, spat on and abused in all sorts of ways.  It is a great public service these workers provide and they are often the person closest to the patient who may rarely or sometimes never see a relative.  The pay is normally under $12 an hour and as a nurses’ aide at Harden’s nursing homes in Texas you can earn $8.25 an hour, a

whopping $1 above the minimum wage.

In 2011 the Government Accountability Office undertook an analysis of the country’s ten largest for-profit nursing home chains.  When compared to others, these top ten for-profit chains had:

• The lowest staffing levels;
• The highest number of deficiencies identified by public regulatory agencies; and
• The highest number of deficiencies causing harm or jeopardy to residents

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported in 2011 that nursing facilities acquired between 2004 and 2007 by the top ten private equity firms:

• Had more total deficiencies than not-for-profit facilities;
• Reported lower total nurse staffing ratios; and
• Showed capital-related cost increases and higher profit margins, compared to other facilities. http://www.medicareadvocacy.org/2012/03/15/non-profit-vs-for-profit-nursing-homes-is-there-a-difference-in-care/

Higher profit margins are the key. If a “chain”of supermarkets or a “chain” of movie theaters must make profits, surely a “chain”of medical facilities for the elderly must. The term “chain” should be enough to put an end to such an arrangement; it’s as bad as the tem “flipping” the coupon clippers invented for trading in human shelter.  We are all witnessing what the market does to an industry when profits need boosting.  Who knows how many people die, how pervasive the suffering of these older people, especially when there are no living relatives and the taxpayer is paying the bills.  We don’t have to look much further than the aftermath of Katrina or other disasters to see how voraciously the entrepreneur, the private sector, dips their snouts in to the public trough.  Hedge funds and other Wall Street firms have bought thousands of these facilities over the years looking to make a buck.

A case in point is Habana Health Care; a Florida nursing home bought by a group of investment firms.

Habana Health Care Center, a 150-bed nursing home in Tampa, Fla., was struggling when a group of large private investment firms purchased it and 48 other nursing homes in 2002.

The facility’s managers quickly cut costs. Within months, the number of clinical registered nurses at the home was half what it had been a year earlier, records collected by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services indicate. Budgets for nursing supplies, resident activities and other services also fell, according to Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration.

The investors and operators were soon earning millions of dollars a year from their 49 homes. 

Residents fared less well. Over three years, 15 at Habana died from what their families contend was negligent care in lawsuits filed in state court. Regulators repeatedly warned the home that staff levels were below mandatory minimums. When regulators visited, they found malfunctioning fire doors, unhygienic kitchens and a resident using a leg brace that was broken.“They’ve created a hellhole,”one woman whose mother died after a huge bedsore became infected by feces told the Times.  The New York Times:.

This woman and others sued Habana but suing these characters is much like the experience small farmers (those that haven’t been driven from their land yet) are having with Monsanto.* They have the money, you don’t, and in our system, money trumps morality or the righteous. It certainly trumps the views of a worker.  Nurse’s aides say that they have more residents to care for than they can handle.  This contributes to poor service. Of course the worker gets blamed for that, as their opinions are irrelevant.  The statement by a representative from the industry association carries much more weight and he says it’s “difficult” to determine whether inadequate staffing leads to a higher injury rate or poor care.

As for suing them, the NYT article also points out:

“But private investment companies have made it very difficult for plaintiffs to succeed in court and for regulators to levy chainwide fines by creating complex corporate structures that obscure who controls their nursing homes.”

“By contrast, publicly owned nursing home chains are essentially required to disclose who controls their facilities in securities filings and other regulatory documents.”

Disclosing ownership. That’s one thing investors don’t like to do and one of the many reasons public ownership is opposed.

Lew Little, the CEO of the aforementioned Harden Healthcare in Texas is very sympathetic say I sarcastically.  He tells the WSJ that, "These people are the actual backbone of nursing-home care.”  How nice of him, unfortunately though there’s nothing he can do, "We'd love to be in a position to increase aides' pay,..” he tells the Journal, but sees, "no clear path" for raising wages due to cuts in Medicaid and Medicare. He omits what might block that path and that is corporate profits.  It fact, it appears profits don’t exist; he just left them out. Little is the 2013 Chair of the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce and former president of Bank of America in Austin, just the man to supervise the care of older sick people. 

Another Harden VP is Chris Roussos who previously held management positions with King Pharmaceuticals and Élan Pharmaceuticals. These people are not who you want to manage the care of our sick and elderly unless they do so under the direction of a publicly controlled agency where their skills can be directed toward patient care as opposed to profit making.

In 1987, the US Congress enacted the Nursing Home Reform Act.  Unfortunately, “Congress has also been preoccupied with limiting expenditures. It has never appropriated sufficient funds to enforce the provisions of the Act or funded the personnel and training necessary to inspect nursing homes frequently and intensively.” Says Americans For Democratic Action.

Well this comes as no surprise. The problem is that Congress has been “preoccupied” all right; preoccupied with “appropriating sufficient funds”required for costly wars around the world on behalf of US corporations.  Preoccupied with bailing out bankers, hedge fund managers and other coupon clippers whose activities are a drain on society. Preoccupied with protecting the rights of those who own capital as opposed to those whose Labor creates it.

The market is not a friendly beast and capitalism is not a friendly system of production. This relatively small example of its inefficiency in relation to the global crisis of capitalism cannot be remedied permanently within the capitalist system.  The health of the members of society cannot be left in the hands of bankers and investors; it cannot be a business because for business profit comes first, and in the health care business, it comes before the health of the client.

As a socialist I see the only way to solve this is for the sickness industrial complex to be taken under public ownership and control. Those that use it and work in it from the surgeon to the orderly; the sick and the community whose members it serves both nationally and locally should govern it.  That would mean the pharmaceutical and all industries connected to medicine and its distribution including research and development. The money is there; it is simply misallocated which also means that the financial institutions and the allocation of capital has to become a collective process based on need not for profit.

In the immediate term, health care should be a public service available on demand for whoever needs it.  We need a national health care system in the US. In addition, we must raise the minimum wage to $20 an hour. 

Most nurses aides I’m sure want to do a good job, want to ensure their patients are treated well, but there is a limit to this. In a publicly managed and run nursing home system nurses aides could receive better training, work shorter hours, especially important due to the nature of the work, and the industry can be more transparent. Most importantly, our fathers, mothers, grandparents would be able to receive the care they deserve toward the end of their lives; they’ve earned it.

Let’s get the coupon clippers and big business out of health care.

* See the movie, Food Inc.

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It's easier to sign up for combat duty than for health care

They don't make it this hard to join the US military. They come to the school, set up a table, get your signature and you're in.

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What the 1% Heard During Obama's State of the Union Speech

Saturday, 23 February 2013 10:09 By Shamus Cooke, Countercurrents Op-Ed

President Barack Obama acknowledges applause before he delivers the State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., February 12, 2013. (Photo: Pete Souza / White House)When President Obama speaks, most Americans hear what he wants them to hear: lofty rhetoric and a "progressive" vision. But just below the surface the president has a subtly-delivered message for the 1%, whose ears prick up when their buzzwords are mentioned. Obama's State of the Union address was such a speech – a pro-corporate agenda packaged with chocolate covered rhetoric for the masses; easy to swallow, but deadly poisonous.

Much of Obama's speech was pleasant to the ears, but there were key moments where he was speaking exclusively to the 1%. Exposing these hidden agenda points in the speech requires that we ignore the fluff and use English the way the 1% does. Every time Obama says the words "reform" or "savings,” insert the word "cuts.” Here are some of the more nefarious moments of Obama's :

"And those of us who care deeply about programs like Medicare must embrace the need for modest reforms [cuts]..."   

"On Medicare, I'm prepared to enact reforms [cuts] that will achieve the same amount of health care savings [cuts] by the beginning of the next decade as the reforms [cuts] proposed by the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles commission."

This ultra-vague sentence was meant exclusively for the 1%.   What are some of the recommendations from the right-wing Simpson-Bowles commission? Obama doesn't say. Talking Points Memo explains:

Force more low-income individuals into Medicaid managed care.
Increase Medicaid co-pays.
Accelerate already-planned cuts to Medicare Advantage and home health care programs.
Create a cap for Medicaid/Medicare growth that will force Congress and the president to increase premiums or co-pays or raise the Medicare eligibility age (among other options) if the system encounters cost overruns over the course of 5 years.

There were many other subtly-delivered attacks on Medicare in Obama's speech, all ignored by most labor and progressive groups, who clung tightly to the "progressive" smoke Obama blew in their face. Obama's speech also included a frightening vision of a national privatization scheme to previously publicly owned resources. But it was phrased so inspirationally that only the 1% seemed to notice:

"I'm also proposing a Partnership to Rebuild America that attracts private capital [wealthy investors] to upgrade what our businesses need most: modern ports to move our goods; modern pipelines to withstand a storm; modern schools worthy of our children...we'll reward schools that develop new partnerships with colleges and employers [corporations]..."

Obama's proposal plans to "rebuild America" in the image of the wealthy and corporations, who only put forth their "private capital" when it results in a profitable investment; resources that previously functioned for the public good will now be channeled into the pockets of the rich, to the detriment of everyone else.

Allowing the rich to privatize and profit from public education and publicly owned infrastructure (ports and pipelines, etc.) has been a right-wing dream for years. This will result in massive user fees for the rest of us, while further dismembering public education, which Obama's ill-named "Race to the Top" education reform is already successfully accomplishing. 

Obama's speech also put forth two massive pro-corporate international free trade deals, which would further drive down wages in the United States: 

"We intend to complete negotiations on a Trans-Pacific Partnership [a massive free trade deal focused mainly on Asian nations]. And tonight, I am announcing that we will launch talks on a comprehensive Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership [free trade deal] with the European Union – because trade that is free and fair across the Atlantic supports millions of good-paying American jobs."

While praising free trade Obama disarmed labor and progressive groups by throwing in the meaningless word "fair.”  

Lastly, Obama's drone assassination policy was further enshrined in his speech. Drone assassinations are obvious war crimes — see the Geneva Convention — while also ignoring that pesky due process clause — innocent until proven guilty — of the constitution.  

But Obama said that these programs will be "legal" and "transparent,” apparently good enough to keep most progressive groups quite on the issue. 

There were plenty of other examples of sugar-coated poison in Obama's speech. It outlined a thoroughly right-wing agenda with no plan to address the jobs crisis — sprinkled with pretty words and "inspiring" catchphrases. 

Some labor leaders and "progressive" groups seem dazzled by the speech. President of the union federation, AFL-CIO, Richard Trumka, praised Obama's anti-worker speech:

"Tonight President Obama sent a clear message to the world that he will stand and fight for working America's values and priorities. And with the foundation he laid, working families will fight by his side to build an economy that works for all."

And here is the real problem; as President Obama follows in the footsteps of President Bush, labor and progressive groups have found their independent voice stifled. The close ties between these groups and the Democratic Party have become heavy chains for working people, who find themselves under assault with no leadership willing to educate them about the truth, let alone organize a national fightback to win a massive jobs-creation program, prevent cuts to social programs, and fully fund public education. Obama's second term will teach millions these lessons via experience.

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Meningitis pharmacy bosses looted firm before declaring bankruptcy

by Richard Mellor

The Meningitis scandal that broke out last year at the New England Compounding Center is yet another example of the complete bankruptcy of the private for profit medical industry in the US.  As I commented in a blog back then, the deaths associated with this outbreak are not an accident.  Compounding pharmacists are businesses that mix certain drugs for people that might be allergic to a compound in the regular prescription.  There were warnings about the dangers due to the lack of regulation in these small drug companies and Congress passed legislation to treat them more like regular drug companies, but the lobbyists for the industry successfully curbed the FDA's interference in their profit making enterprise and the law was repealed.

Now, after afflicting almost 700 people and killing 44, the New England Compounding Pharmacy is back in the news as its victims seek a court order that will allow them to receive compensation.  The problem is that before seeking bankruptcy protection, the "company", which speaks for itself as a company has the same rights as an individual in US law, doled out millions of dollars to company insiders, including the owners Barry and Lisa Cadden. "The company's assets are little or nothing and we know why" says an attorney representing creditors also seeking recompense.

As the deaths, those murdered by the market, have stabilized, this episode is not as newsworthy as it was, but it is yet another small example of the corruption and waste in a market driven social health care system. "Anything of any value was distributed to its owners in the period leading to its demise" the attorney adds.

The company paid $16.3 million in "salary and shareholder distributions" to the Cadden family in a one year period up to Nov. 2012, including a one time $500,000 payment in October of that year five days after the first recall of the tainted compounds, the Wall Street Journal reports. The Caddens received $90,000 from the company for American Express charges that were described by creditors as, "Ordinary living expenses".   The sickness industry in the US provides its owners with a very comfortable lifestyle, not for nothing do we refer to it on this blog as the "Sickness Industrial Complex."

So the company claims only $400,000 in assets after the owners and other coupon clippers looted it knowing full well it was time to jump ship.  Creditors, victims and relatives of the 44 that have died so far may be able to recoup some of the assets back through lawsuits but that's not the main point here.  These capitalists always emerge from these cases secure and the system is set up to offer them many different ways to hide and secure their ill gotten gains.

Very rarely do they go to prison, even when their actions cause death as they have in this case because it's hard to prove intent isn't it?  It is more likely that they can do some time when they steal off each other than when they cause death and misery to members of the general public. There is supposed to be honor among thieves after all.

Not only that, it is not illegal to bribe (what they refer to as lobbying in the US) politicians to ensure that a state agency that would give the public some level of protection does not interfere in the business, does not hamper profit taking and capital accumulation. All lobbying should be banned.

The mass media applauds the market and its efficiency.  The private sector is king but the reality is different.  The US has the worst and most expensive medical system of the advanced capitalist countries consuming almost 18% of GDP.   Thousand of people die each year for lack of basic medical care.  It is an extremely expensive and wasteful system of providing social health care but for the coupon clippers and the CEOS and corporate elite in the drug, hospital care and general health care industry, profits flow freely, profits from sickness.  The example of the Compounding Pharmacies is a small example of the inefficiency and waste of the US health care system.  The drug industry, research, all aspects of this industry is one huge corrupt conglomerate that holds the public hostage over what should be a natural right, a social service accessible to all.

Just like the military industrial complex, the medicine business relies to a great extent on public money and public universities and institutions for its development and research and then appropriates the results for profit.

While its likely the people involved in this relatively small but tragic episode will not be prosecuted for the deaths and misery they have caused, it's the tip of the iceberg and  there is a bigger issue here. In a civilized society, health can't be left to the savagery and insecurity of market forces. Public ownership of the means by which a society cares (or doesn't care) for the health of its citizens is the answer.  This is the case even in a capitalist economy.  But ultimately, the only solution is the public ownership and control of all these socially crucial industries by the workers, scientists, and others that provide them and those that use them. This would include the financial institutions of society that determine how capital is allocated, where our collective financial resources go. Human needs and the general health of society must replace profits as the end goal. 

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US health care: A lesson in market failure

by Richard Mellor

US health care delivers the worst bang for the buck compared to most industrialized nations and we have a worse infant mortality rate than Cuba. In 2012, the US spent $8,233 per year per person on health care, that’s two and a half times more than most developed nations.  And US health care consumes almost 18% of GDP twice that of some countries and one and a half times the OECD average.

The US sickness industrial complex and mass media boasts of our superior technology and research which is true, but the most important aspect of a nation’s health care is public health.  As I have pointed out many times before, the diseases and death (infant mortality and low life expectancy for example) in the third world, is due to infrastructure and poor public health systems, not specialized care or the lack of liposuction procedures or laser surgery.  This is an economic and political problem, a by-product of the market. Areport on PBS last October pointed out that for this 17c on every dollar we spend on health care we don’t get such a great deal noting that:

In the United States:

• There are fewer physicians per person than in most other OECD countries. In 2010, for instance, the U.S. had 2.4 practicing physicians per 1,000 people -- well below the OECD average of 3.1.
• The number of hospital beds in the U.S. was 2.6 per 1,000 population in 2009, lower than the OECD average of 3.4 beds.
• Life expectancy at birth increased by almost nine years between 1960 and 2010, but that's less than the increase of over 15 years in Japan and over 11 years on average in OECD countries. The average American now lives 78.7 years in 2010, more than one year below the average of 79.8 years.

A new report by the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine published this week finds that things have not improved, “Americans die younger and have more illnesses and accidents than people in other high income countries” the Wall Street Journal quotes the report as saying.  This is even the case with wealthier, insured and college educated Americans.

The study reports that the US comes close to the bottom when measured against 17 other “affluent” countries; the bottom in life expectancy, and "high rates" of infant mortality, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, chronic lung disease and more. “The US health disadvantage is pervasive….” the study states, affecting “...all ages up to 75…”.

The authors of the study attribute these extremely poor statistics given our wealth and technological supremacy to many factors not least the huge chasm between the haves and the have nots in US society which has a greater inequality gap than China. 

The problem is that in the US, medicine is a business and is market driven.  It is not a moral question, people die like flies in the third world for the same reason, food is a commodity, health care is a commodity.  For the market to provide these basic human necessities the private owners of capital must make profit; you can’t pay for food, you don’t get it. If Profit can’t be made out of providing health care, they won’t provide it and you die. It’s basic market economics.

To stave off social unrest and due to the struggles of generations of workers building Unions and political parties, other industrial countries have national health care systems, cheaper and more efficient than here in the US that's why they have this advantage.  But these too are under attack, ideologically and politically under pressure from the IMF, World Bank, EU and other market proponents. More efficient for the owners of capital though doesn’t mean greater access for the public whether health care or transportation; it means more profits. That the most powerful capitalist economy in history cannot provide decent health care, housing, or transportation for its citizens says something about the market although the capitalist class will blame workers, patients, riders whatever, anything but their mode of production.

It's true that these other “affluent”countries are capitalist economies, but workers and workers’ parties social gains have not yet been completely dismantled and there remains advantages we as Americans don’t have although these are being eaten away also.  But we are in the belly of the beast here, without money you are nothing, “you’re on your own baby.” Hero, veteran, work all your life, small community business, if you fall on times it is a ruthless environment as the recent Great Recession has shown. You have to “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” like George W Bush and Donald Trump.  As JP Morgan said; “I owe the public nothing”, when he owed the public everything.

US workers prior to the crash worked on average about two months a year longer than our brothers and sisters in other advanced capitalist countries with less to show for it. It's why we were more productive, we were on the job longer, have less leisure time. The insecurity, pace of life, and living in a 24-hour marketplace takes its toll---we are always customers. In most advanced economies ads for prescription drugs on TV are not allowed.  For us we are bombarded with ads warning us of diseases we have never heard of and the need for their pill to cure them. We are consistently preyed upon by the coupon clippers who must extract their pound of flesh and the TV is their window to the home. This is a major reason for the statistics we read above on illnesses, the social power the capitalist class has and a profit driven health system. A public national health care system is what will open the door to improving the situation

Naturally, the free market gurus and their supporters will oppose such measures and even refer to it as communism which is not uncommon. I can’t help bringing the readers’ attention to Hilary Clinton’s comments in the latest Business Week, a piece covering her trips around the world on behalf of the bankers and US corporations. “If you can’t compete, fairly, honestly effectively…” she tells Business week, “..no government should intervene”.

In the light of recent events when the US taxpayer made available about $16 trillion to US banks to drag capitalism from the abyss, I am wondering if we live on the same planet.

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Capitalism makes us sick

Source

Oh dear! It appears I have hoarding disorder, the Wall Street Journal reports this morning.  It's the new psychiatric condition, "Characterizing people who have persistent difficulty parting with possessions regardless of their value."  I am actually having a serious attack this morning as I am having my old 1988 Sentra towed away after it blew a head gasket.  At the same time, some woodcutters are coming to remove my beautiful Monterrey pine as it's dangerously close to the house.  I am having great difficulty parting with both.

At least I can't be diagnosed with the new "disruptive mood dysregulation disorder" as this is the new diagnosis for children that have three or more tantrums a week for more than a year. 

The American Psychiatric Association voted this last weekend to approve its handbook for mental illness or the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders".  The wording of these various syndromes and disorders affects millions of adults and children as to who gets treated for what or who receives subsidized assistance amounting to billions of dollars in health care spending.

The new definitions include combining Asperger's Syndrome, described as a "mild version of autism" with "pervasive development disorder not otherwise specified" in to one category, "Autism Spectrum Disorder".  The new designation of "disruptive mood dysregulation disorder" (DMDD) for children will hopefully offer an "alternative" to "pediatric bipolar disorder" as apparently, cases of PBD have risen drastically in recent years.  The good news for the drug companies is that prescriptions for antipsychotic medication have risen which is good for profits.

I am not sure my "hoarding disorder" is covered by my medical insurance, I have it bad too. I hate parting with friends and more often than not break in to tears. I gave my old Nissan a pat as the guy towed it off,  and hugged my tree before the arborists got here.   I am a wreck. This is making my restless leg syndrome worse.

I would be interested knowing what the psychiatric manual says about what I call, "overcome by TV advertising syndrome" and "rejection of Christmas music on the radio syndrome". After being bombarded with ads for Halloween candy, black Friday (I just realized I can't really put my finger on what Thanksgiving is really about) and now toys for Christmas which I thought had something to do with a religious celebration, these syndromes should be studied.  "Made sick by sales ads syndrome" is very widespread, especially as all sorts of human emotions and feelings are drawn upon to sell the product and all they want from you is cash.

I have heard of "excessive shyness syndrome" and of course, there are pills for all these ailments including "binge eating disorder".

I remember some 45 years ago visiting a chicken hatchery.  The birds were all scraggly looking and had pecked each other and attacked each other.  The farmer or maybe it would be better to call him and industrialist, said that the stress causes it.  The lights are on all the time and the birds are crowded together like---well, like chickens at a chicken farm.

No one denies there is mental illness, but medicine in a capitalist economy is a business. And like all science, it cannot be seen in isolation, it has a class bias and it is not fashionable or profitable to investigate in a serious way the effect of society on our individual make up, medicine has to create profits.

The alienation, insecurity, individualism and competition  that the capitalist mode of production foster, would make anyone throw a tantrum here and there. It is a credit to the collective, gregarious aspect of human nature that for the most part we feel compassion and solidarity for those in worse shape than we are.  Children see millions of ads in their lifetimes as well as images of death and guns, especially here in the US.  A doctor friend of mine once told me she got a call from a patient about a disease she'd never heard of, the patient saw it on TV as the cure for it was advertised, "Call your doctor and ask her if (whatever pill) is right for you", the ads say.  In many other countries, advertising prescription drugs is forbidden.  

But in order to travel down the road to a more healthy society, we have to eliminate the cause, a system of production that rewards selfishness and individualism in the struggle for profits. We need to replace it with the collective ownership of our resources and a rational plan of production based on what we need to live a secure,  productive life in harmony with the natural world.

I think we'd see much fewer syndromes that way.

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The US health care system, a lesson in market failure

Health care per cap spending country comparison (OECD

by Richard Mellor

 "I owe the public nothing"
  JP Morgan

As public services are cut along with the public sector jobs that provide them, and the Obama administration prepares for four more years of privatization policies, the extremely wasteful and inefficient US health care system continues to drain the public purse.  The inefficiency of the private sector is not just laid bare when rescued in times of severe crisis like the recent bank bailout; capitalism survives on permanent welfare handouts through its daily fraud and plunder of society's wealth. It's very existence is based on exploited Labor of course.

The US health care industry from the providers to the drugmakers and manufacturers of medical devices, feeds heavily from the public trough.  US healthcare spending went from from 9% of GDP in 1980 to 16% of GDP in 2008 and an all time high of more than 18% by 2011. The much maligned (by the US media)  Canadian health care system which in 2006 was 10% of Canada's GDP and was 70% funded by the government while the US spent 15.3% in that year with 46% funded by the government.  A major difference with regard to taxpayer funding is that in the US where the system is a business and more market oriented, the fraud and plundering of state resources is rampant and the taxpayer picks up the tab for those who that the market abandons as well.

"Almost every estimate is that 30% of US medical spending is unnecessary, including fraud" says Elliot Fisher, a Dartmouth College medical professor and director of the Dartmouth Atlas on medical disparities. And a federal report published today and reported in the Wall Street Journal claims that hundreds of nursing homes had billed the taxpayer for skilled services that weren't performed.  "They're billing for therapy they don't provide or which the patient doesn't need" says Jodi Nudelman, a New York state official.

This investigation is just the tip of the iceberg and reveals some $1.5 billion in Medicare theft.  The theft is so rampant the capitalist class feels a need to curb some of the excesses. The Obama administration has recovered some $3 .7 billion in stolen taxpayer funds over the last three years. Coupled with this latest find that would build a few schools I think.  It's unlikely that anyone went to jail for such destructive anti-social activity, no three strikes for them, not even ten or twenty strikes for the perpetrators of such felonious activity.

Those (including some mislead workers) who argue that the market has the answer to all things should take note.  This fraud is a result of the market, it is built in to the system, a system based on theft and exploitation.  Despite these minor efforts on the part of the capitalist class to curb some of the excesses and make an example of some of their naughty boys in the aftermath of the crash and the anger that has resulted from it, they will not rectify this problem. Readers may remember that the responsibility for framing the rules and regulations for deep water drilling were handed over by government regulators to the energy companies themselves.  Then we had the BP spill.  While we would not opposes regulation, the capitalist class cannot make the system nice, make it human and nature friendly.

The opportunities for profit making in the US sickness industrial complex are considerable. More than two dozen pharmaceutical companies made more than $1 billion in profits in 2008 while one report by Health Care for America Now, says that America’s five biggest for-profit health insurance companies ended 2009 with a combined profit of $12.2 billion, an increase of 56 percent as 2.7 million people lost their private coverage. Isn't freedom swell?  And we know that most bankruptcies in the US are related to medical expenses.

The market driven US health care system murders more people than all the terrorist groups put together.  I commented on the recent meningitis outbreak another example of market failure with devastating results.  The death toll now stands at 32 with 438 people infected in 19 US states.  The perp was the New England Compounding Center which made the steroids that the victims took for their pain.  Now, the FDA has found that Ameridose, another drug mixing pharmacy has not the best manufacturing practices either and is guilty of numerous violations of US manufacturing standards.  FDA inspectors found microbial contamination and that sterile gowns and equipment weren't sterilized at all. "Insects were observed to be located" in areas where the finished products were packaged and stored and "At least one bird was observed" in the same area the FDA reports.
The FDA claims that complaints of fetal stress, a result of the company's childbirth drug weren't treated seriously.

It turns out that the founder of Ameridose is Barry Cadden, the president of New England Compounding Center responsible for the meningitis deaths. Cadden jumped ship and resigned from Ameridose right after the meningitis hit the news a month ago.  Ameridose hasn't been linked (yet) to the outbreak but we can see how they're all connected these folks. In fact, these are the people that are applauded by the Wall Street Journal, by Forbes Inc and by all the serious journals of capital.  These are the people we owe our existence to because they create profits, therefore jobs.  They also create starvation and misery throughout the world and a small outbreak of meningitis here and there. The entrepreneur is the the good guy in capitalist society, the paragon of virtue and epitome of success.  It's not that they are bad or good though, it's that the system of production, the means by which we produce the needs of society is hostile to a healthy human existence and a healthy planet. 

Now this doesn't come as too much as a surprise.  Most Americans are well aware of the corrupt and ruthless nature of the system, look how many people don't vote and stay clear of politics altogether.  Even those who vote, hate politicians.  The heads of organized Labor offer no explanation for this crisis other than greed in the abstract and the left has no significant influence in the working class whatsoever. The biggest problem is that people do not see a way out.  The occupy movement offered a glimmer of hope and received tremendous support for a while but lost steam under the influence of forces that relied on hidden and unelected leaders and tactics that excluded political action and any serious mass orientation to the working class.

The caring of human beings, of whole populations is a social need and should not be a business. Take the profit out of health care and we will have healthy people and not richer health care carers and other leeches in the sickness industrial complex. The top executives at the nation's five largest for-profit health insurance companies pulled in nearly $200 million in compensation in 2009

A step toward a healthier society and a real health care system would include:

Fully staffed free clinics providing no charge, basic health care in every neighborhood

Free Comprehensive health benefits with an emphasis on preventative care

Vision care, dental and hearing aids . Women’s health care including birth control, morning after pill, and abortion on demand.

Alternative therapies with proven medical benefit such as acupuncture and chiropractic care . Mental

health care with emphasis on counseling, not just prescribing pills

Take the profit out of medical research

Create a publicly owned, democratically controlled organization to do medical research, widening and democratizing the current role of the National Institute for Health . The direction of medical research and the function of care to be made by elected councils of researchers, health care employees, and community members: Unite and Empower Healthcare Workers

Create an industry-wide union of healthcare workers to include every worker in a hospital from the janitor to the surgeon . Improve working conditions for healthcare workers: wages, shift lengths, nurse-to-patient ratios . Free medical education: Nurses, technicians and doctors to serve the public without decades of debt .

Build a United Front direct action movement to drive the corporations and the profit motive out of this crucial social need and through this build an independent worker or Labor Party to strengthen the power of working people, the unions and community organizations*

*Much of this program comes from a Facts For Working People Health Care issue we published in March 2007. For a pdf of this issue send and e mail to we_know_whats_ up@yahoo.com

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