Bill Moyers Journal: Money-Driven Medicine
By Heather Sunday Aug 30, 2009 8:00am
For anyone that didn't watch it, check out Bill Moyers show from this past weekend featuring the documentary Money-Driven Medicine. Here's how Bill wrapped up his show.
BILL MOYERS: MONEY-DRIVEN MEDICINE, a film produced by Alex Gibney, Peter Bull and Chris Matonti; directed by Andy Fredericks; and based on Maggie Mahar's book of the same name.
Log on to pbs.org and click on BILL MOYERS JOURNAL - Maggie Mahar will be there to answer your questions online. We'll link you to the Money-Driven Medicine website where there's more info about the book and the film. We'll also link you to some analysis of what advocates of reform are up against in taking on the health insurance industry, the drug lobby, and the Wall Street equity firms.
Take a look at this recent cover of BUSINESS WEEK. Reporters Chad Terhune and Keith Epstein write that the CEO's of the giant insurance companies should be smiling - their lobbyists have already won. Quote: "no matter what specifics emerge in the voluminous bill Congress may send to President Obama this fall, the insurance industry will emerge more profitable."
And remember that television ad Barack Obama made as a candidate for president?
BARACK OBAMA: The pharmaceutical industry wrote into the prescription drug plan that Medicare could not negotiate with drug companies. And you know what, the chairman of the committee who pushed the law through went to work for the pharmaceutical industry making $2 million a year. Imagine that. That's an example of the same old game-playing in Washington. I don't want to learn how to play the game better. I want to put an end to the game-playing.
BILL MOYERS: Now look at this recent story in the LOS ANGELES TIMES. Lo and behold, since the election, the pharmaceutical industry's $2 million dollars a year superstar lobbyist Billy Tauzin has morphed into President Obama's pal. Tauzin says the President has promised not to pressure the drug companies to negotiate with the government for lower drug prices and has agreed not to allow cheaper drugs to be imported from Canada or Europe - contrary to the position taken by candidate Obama…
Each of these stories illuminates the scarlet thread that runs through Maggie Mahar's book - the story of how today's market-driven medical system gives Wall Street investors life and death control over our health care, turning medicine into a profit machine instead of a social service to meet human need. That's the conflict at the heart of next month's showdown in Washington.
I'm Bill Moyers. See you next time.
I am so thoroughly disgusted by what I'm watching now and the deals that are being cut on this sorry excuse for what is supposed to be health care reform that I am past the point of being fed up. Howard Dean had it right.
Howard Dean: You Don't Have Reform Without the Public Option:
My advocacy would be for this. If you're not going to have a public option, then don't call it health reform. Strip all the money out of the bill and just do something we did here in Vermont about fifteen years ago, guaranteed issue and community rating. Require insurance companies to insure everybody. Stop them from kicking people off and don't let them charge huge amounts of money for sicker patients.
That's not health reform. It's insurance reform. You won't do much for the uninsured but you will make the health insurance market work better for the people it does work for. And you know, that's an incremental step and I wouldn't want to throw that out, but I'd strip the money out of the bill because this is going to be and expensive bill and if you're not going to get reform then you shouldn't bother with the expense.
Amen Howard.
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Even if there is a 'public option' it may be so crippled as to be of a minor importance.
At what point is something better than nothing?
Watch for the spin doctors.
We should have been talking about single payer, at the very least, from the beginning.
Wall Street should be banished from health care.
all it contains are provisions benefiting the insurance industry? Better to still have the possibility of change than something that hurts us further.
Sign this petition to fix the prescription drug benefit. Do it for retired parents, friends and for disabled people you know. Do it for them.
http://healthcare.change.org/actions/view/con...
by Barack Obama and the Democratic Party.
But this shouldn't come as any shock to us. Especially considering that they allowed Bush to get away with murder from 9/11 until the day he walked out of The White House.
It seems to me that all Bush did was to hand Obama the baton. Nary a blip has been created on The White House radar since Obama walked into The White House and did the photo-op/back slapping routine with Bush that nauseated me.
Obama, the Democrats (with the rare exceptions of Kucinich etc.) and the Republicans are owned by corporate America. They do NOT respect the American people and they certainly do not CARE about us.
If they did they would see that, especially in these rocky financial times, we NEED a health care plan for ALL Americans where every cent of profit is eliminated.
But unfortunately, until corporate American influence is removed from our body politic, there will be zero chance of us attaining such a system of health care.
H.R. 3200 is the Mass Plan on steroids. It was hatched by Mitt Romney and Ted Kennedy. It is such a massive failure in Massachusetts, but unfortunately the news of all this is only trickling out to the public.
Just last night I was out to dinner and I met a guy who works for a big company here in Mass. He's about 30 years old and he told me he's elected to just pay the fine because it's cheaper than paying the monthly premium that he cannot afford! So he's going without any coverage!
We have been had.
n/t
Well stated Abbywood, we have been had, and the worst part about it is the Government mouthpiece, Mainstream Media, is pushing the corporate/government agenda. HR 3200 is a bad bill period.
I am neither left nor right and one thing that irks me is when the left calls you a right winger or the right calls you a left winger when you disagree with either one. Two words, two administrations, really pissed me off; Criticize Bush=unpatriotic and criticize Obama=racist! This is an attempt to silence dissent. The false left/right paradigm is used to divide the people while Government passes laws that have adverse affects on each and every one of us. The issue of health care is one example and the frenzy storm driven by the MSM, Lobbyists, Bureaucrats, and Politicians has caused a hateful division amongst the followers. I refuse to engage in that kind of useless dialogue.
Congress does not write most if not all bills, Lawyers who generally represent a Corporation or group that stands to gain writes them. I will stop short of proclaiming that HR 676 is the answer since it is sponsored by Conyers, the same Conyers who said "what is the use in reading the bills" (in reference to HR 3200) due to it being over a thousand pages and he said they would need two lawyers to go through it. This alone should be a cause for concern. In this case KISS comes to mind; keep it simple stupid. The legalese in HR 3200 is also cause for alarm, as is such the case in the majority of bills written and is done so for a good reason; they don't want you to understand it!
I have government health care and you know what? I hate it for the reasons such as costs rise and I have no recourse because all the plans are pretty much the same. For example, recent they added a co-pay for hospitalization and this varies from plan to plan at the cost of 250.00 to 500.00. My current plan now requires me to pay 300.00 or a 100.00 a day for the first three days. Since I am on a fixed income, if I am hospitalized, I can't pay that money if it is short term; long term or anything over a month would be no problem but now days it is in and out as fast as possible. Many tests which used to be free now have a 100.00 co-pay, yet my insurance premium, co-pay for visits, and prescriptions continue to go up. Again, I have no recourse and no say.
Unless we stop the wars, close our bases worldwide, stay out of the affairs of foreign governments, and cut unnecessary spending I can't see how any health care plan by the Government will work. A better option would be a large network of employers and employees as one that can negotiate plans to fit the needs all parties involved. If it is about 45 million people without health care, then give them health care but don't start something that will create a huge bureaucracy. Government is already too big. With that rant I leave you with this video "The Followers"; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Htyt7yu0NKU and the statement below;
In Germany , the National Socialists (Nazis) gradually desensitized the nation to death beginning with abortion. Then they quietly, seemingly with the noblest intentions, rounded up the retarded and insane, claiming that the state could take much better care of them, but no one ever saw or heard from them again. Then they did the same with the elderly. As word slipped out that they were being euthanized, it was explained that war made it necessary to eliminate all of the “useless eaters” so that the troops could be fed, as well as those who worked for the war machine. By that time, the grip of control was too strong for anyone to protest or they would also be sent to the camps. Life became cheaper and cheaper, people became more and more depraved, and millions were slaughtered in the death camps.
Neither left nor right!!!
Confused, in the middle!!!
And trying to sell a pseudo documentary.
Are you on Medicare? It is not perfect, and the Corporate Congress has made it worse.
It you are a Government employee then you should love the health care, it should be top notch.
You should come clean here, oh one of dubious intent.
"neither left nor right" doesn't have a youtube channel who's most watched video is a promo for a DVD and links to both info wars and prison planet (direct links are censored).
If that's the new center, this moderate is now a flaming liberal and most of this board just vanished into the sun ...
That is going to take a couple of Constitutional amendments to accomplish:
1. "Only human beings of individual existence shall be considered as persons under the Constitution. Constitutional rights that derive from personhood shall never be extended to businesses or to organizations formally or informally organized for any purpose. This exclusion shall in no way exempt such organizations from the being subject to the exercise of criminal or civil laws upon them for crimes or torts they have committed."
2."All Federal, State and Local elections held in the nation shall be solely financed by the federal government, without favor to or prejudice against any particular political party. It shall be a high felony for any person in, or campaigning, for office to accept monies or other recompense or renumeration from any source other than the Federal Government, for any reason, shall be punishable by non-parroleable life imprisonment, the forfeiture of allpersonal assets and properties and the non-restorable loss of the right to vote."
3."The only proper access to elected officials shall be by means of traditional petition or though public hearings and meetings. The Peoples' business shall be conducted solely in public, excepting where state security secrets would be compromised".
4."In any case decided before the Federal Courts or the Supreme Courts, the courts shall be compelled to consider and decide for the the benefit of the the People first above all other considerations."
Or words to that effect, which secure the needed changes. It may only be through Constitutional amendments that the nation can be taken back from the corporations and other entities that control it now. A corrupt Supreme Court can no longer be counted upon to help, given provisions that currently exist in the Constitution and the courts prior and pending decisions. And, as has never before been a real consideration, all future amendments must now be written assuming that the Federal and Supreme courts no longer serve the People. They can be given no wiggle room to interpret against the People.
Nationalize the fuckers...
with pitchforks and torches if necessary...
is turning out to be insurance that is held at an artificially high price so as not to compete with the insurance racketeers. That's not a public option. A public option should be the option to be covered my medicare.
Dean's a good guy, but he's wrong: It isn't reform if it isn't single payer or social medicine.
The ONLY acceptable proposal I have seen is HR 676.
Congress MUST stand up and pass HR 676 - or go down swinging.
Anything less than HR 676 is just another big gift to Big Pharma and Big Insurance.
Congress does not have to pass Obama's bill - or even consider it.
Congress can pass HR 676 and send it to Obama - tell him to sign it or NO HEALTH REFORM for Obama.
It's better we have no "reform" that's just another giveaway. Let the American people stew for a couple more years. Dump some obstructionists from the Congress. Go back again in 2 years.
I was at a meeting yesterday with about ten doctors from Physicians for a National Health Program over at Berkshire Medical Center.
One fellow from Arizona (he summer vacations here) mentioned that the Republicans in the House are now discussing the possibility of voting YES for the Conyers/Weiner amendment to H.R. 3200 (H.R. 676) in order to create a "poison pill" that will be passed on to the Senate for conference.
According to this doctor, H.R. 676 would "poison" the legislative process so badly that the Senate would not be able to compromise any legislation and health care reform would go down in flames.
This would presumably help the Republicans gain seats in the midterm elections.
Does anyone have any further knowledge of this??
They expect a knee jerk reaction from those who oppose them, which would be a vote against anything they propose. They don't really want what they have wrought to go down in flames. They want it passed. So by threatening things like this, they feel they are insuring passage of the big give-away they have prepared for the health insurance industry, and thus themselves. The mere fact that this item "leaked" is enough to make me suspicious. They do not have accidental leaks. They have too much of a vested interest in having things their way.
I'd welcome them voting for HR676 out of spite. The msm would finally be forced to talk about single payer, the Republicans would be forced to talk about single payer, and hell, the Democrats would be forced to talk about single payer.
Bring it on!
.. but I give that better odds of backfiring on them.
such a vote! It would be enough to carry HR-676. then the senators could all fear for their seats if they opposed it.
exactly.
That's not health reform. It's insurance reform. -howard dean
did you notice the banner behind obama at his last townhall?
"health insurance reform" it said... (arizona, i think)
i feel sick...
At least he is finally being honest about his sell out. I found it greatly insulting everytime he called his paln healthcare reform.
He's going to be a one-termer for sure.
Well, Obama voters, you got duped. I find it hard to believe that anyone who is not totally naive fell for a politician's campaign promises. That you did not seriously know that corporate interests would win in the end. They always do.
So the death squads are for real, only they are run by corporate assholes who don't give a shit if you live or die, just as long as they make money. And Obama is being very helpful to them.
There is your change people. Only it's not called change, it's called status quo. Corporate America is alive and well.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/...
There's nothing wrong, surely, with the president of the USofA, where there are hundreds of thousands of victims of UBS bankers' dealinigs, playing a friendly round of golf with the (scandal-tainted) Chairman of that bank, out of range of all auditors except the Secret Service.
You must hate america...and the Pope of Hope, too...
I do not "hate" anybody.
I think you were being snarky with that comment, no?
n/t
UBS agreed to pay a $780 million fine for their US tax dodger assisting crimes. At the same time they were receiving $2.5 billion courtesy of the other US taxpayers through the AIG
bailoutheist.Anyone powerful enough to be elected US President is FAR TOO CORRUPT to be good for the commonweal.
Sweet!
we are sold, because he looks like he's going to need it soon. Obama should be ashamed of himself. I know I am ashamed of him. I feel sick. I have to go eat some Tums.
It's been my impossible fantasy for sometime, but if Ralph Nader was president, do you think that 8 months into his presidency he would be on a golf course with this asshole? Except possibly to beat the shit out of him with a nine iron? I don't.
Cut the crap. Obama is in bed with the insurance companies now. Time to cut our losses and take the incremental step.
What is that, specifically? Does anyone know? How can one advocate for an unknown quantity? Are you blinded by bullshit?
step one). (say to yourself) "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take this anymore!"
step two). ...get a pair of boxer shorts and "let em' hang"!
step three). ...get out on the steet (and into a townhall meeting) ...and "teabag" one of your representatives.
step four). ...ignore everyone who calls you a republican or a racist and associates you with Glenn Beck.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ts2U1mkfz4
When did money trump everything? The "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is now "do them in and make them suffer on the way out". After watching Chris Wallace interview Dick Cheney and mention only the mistakes that Ted Kennedy and then Dick Cheney then see Cheney take Wallace around his home to see the beauties of nature that Cheney has done his bests to destroy, I really want to cry. We should be shouting everywhere for single payer. No CEO should be allowed to sentence anyone to death. People if we don't stand up now for this, the battle for humanity is over here. I don't want to be around when the people on the Teabag Bus heading across the country are viewed as defenders of the Constitution rather than being called the bigots that they are!
It's called "kapitalismus" in the historical literature...and the stimulus was 'the industrial revolution.'
So, since about the beginning of the 19th Century...
they got a LOT of paying back to do...
the 1880's(?) when the supreme court granted personhood to corporations and business entities.
in their hands, and don't frankly give two toots on a rabid rat's ass whether we live or die, as lng as they make their quota by denying needed care to insureds.
We need to find ways to reverse the leverage here. Somehow, they've gotta be taught that killing people whom they don't even know, or ruining their lives forever, is deserving of some retribution.
There is no justice in this life, and there is n o "next loife." If they're gonna pay, it's gonna hafta be here...
Because the Democratic Party is rotten from the top down.
The fish stinks from the head.
Forget the Green Party.
We need a major activist Progressive Party in the United States to bring jobs back here, to form major progressive unions that cannot be co-opted by corporate America, to represent the best health care reform system in the WORLD, to gut the Federal Reserve and to stop military expansionism all over the globe. (South America is in the Pentagon's sights now). ETC.
By now, we must all see, the Democratic Party will NEVER serve a progressive, anti-corporate agenda.
I have not been overly impressed with the Green Party, but concern for the ecology is past due as the paramount issue.
Everything we do is a subset of the ecology.
We have dual converging catastrophes, the collapse of the environment and peak energy.
Peak everything!
It is inextricably related, nothing can separated from an Earth that will no longer supports us.
Maybe a dozen of the super rich might think they can make it as far as Mars, a lot of good that will do them.
The destruction of our Earth is the product of Capitalism and its endless drive for exponential growth.
I want to repeal it, yet I listen to Capitalists to hear what they say.
Marc Faber, to me, has insight in that system.
He says the system, our system, is headed for cataclysm.
His latest here
I think we oughtta try it first!
(markets and our fiat currency) have been manipulated since 1913)
and so, unless someone is (like 97 years old?), (I say) they have never even experienced it.
The Libertarian and the Anarchist!
you wouldn't like "kapitalismus" unregulated at all...
I wish you'd have the chance, but probably it would kill you and any "lesson" would be lost...
The changes of 1913 were predicated on the excesses that led to the crash of 1907.
How did you like those unregulated bucket shops. That was a 'free market'.
Everyone was free to be swindled.
being swindled. nothing has "changed"
I didn't say that 1913 fixed the system.
But Glass Steagall in 1933 went a long way and that was repealed in 1999.
One of the contributing factors to our problems today.
I want Wall Street out of health care.
I want Wall Street out of business, period. It is a rigged Casino.
with all your statements...
Wall street does need to be shut down...precicely because its not "free market"
I say that the period in American history from 1870 to 1913 was a very bright one!
sure there were some ups and down in the free markets but they were usally short lived and were created by large (foreign) banks who manipulated them first place...
We had (real) gold and silver currency!!!
On what planet do you spend most of your time?
That was the Gilded Age, the great BOOM time for the Robber Barons.
John D. Rockefeller was THE man.
It also saw the creation of the Corporation with the rights of a human being, but super human because:
THEY DON'T DIE.
It was a terrific period if you were a Fat Cat. Then came Teddy Roosevelt, but he could not repair everything that needed repairing.
That is who we need again today.
Read some Upton Sinclair and get back to me on just how great that period was.
Bring back some delay and human error/judgement to markets.
was just made up to keep people from wanting too much. You peasants get just what you need to keep you laboring for us "chosen people," and not one thing more. Be glad that our God lets you exist at all. Serve us humbly and well. And shut up, for Christ's sake! This is what comes from letting servants read and get too familiar with us.
Health Care is for Profit not for People!!
http://billionairesforwealthcare.com/HOME.html
Government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations… and their buddies. They're in heaven now, endless wars, endless war profits.
AND, healthcare for profit, NOT PEOPLE.
would welcome the Americans who decide to bail. Maybe there's a better life somewhere else?
Naw. They have enough trouble finding food. Big fat Americans,--wait a minute. Americans as a source of food. Shades of John Donne. I knew that satire class would pop back up someday.
talk about this, there have been health care problems for a while now. it's old news. congress is crooked.
The real conflict is between Wall Street, insurers and pharmaceuticals. The public is not even party to the negotiations.
was both vindicated and appalled. Unfortunately, the vindication is a bitter pill.
I have been saying for years that many of the problems Americans face in the health care arena were brought about by the CEOs of hospitals being MBAs, not MDs. Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath for a reason, and I do not believe MBA's have a comparable, ethical standard.
I loved the line, "Hospitals don't have patients, doctors do." Very telling about how we got here. Medical care is not a commodity, and treating it like one has damaged the entire health care system. When the bottom line is more concerned with profit then healthcare, we all suffer. Wall Street should have no place in medicine.
And don't get me started on Tennessee and its for profit "hospital row"!
Noah- true enough, but I would add for-profit hospitals to your list of 'concerned' parties.
...Money Driven Medicine right now. Whenever I read something like it, I can't help but wonder what the Wingers would think if they could ever put down Atlas Shrugged and The Road to Serfdom long enough to expose themselves to something that might challenge their ideologically fixed world view. I know it's not going to happen, since actual facts that challenge mindlessly held beliefs are not welcome in Wingerland.
In the end, putting a book like Money Driven Medicine (or The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It by Marcia Angell) into the hands of Republicans, conservatives, and libertarians won't accomplish anything since the content will never penetrate beyond the defensive shields that protect Wingers from anything that contradicts their faith.
Angell is a critic of the current health care reform legislation and both Obama's goals and approach. She argues, persuasively in my opinion, that fixing what we have is not going to work. Like many critics of incrementalism, Angell recognizes that you can't keep (and even strengthen) major features (bugs) of the current system, e.g., private insurance and employer-based insurance, and ever hope to solve the fatal (often literally fatal) flaws of what passes for the American "system" (cue laugh track). The mindless right wing critics of the current legislative approaches to reform, have one thing correct (if for the wrong reasons) -- it is possible to pass reform legislation and make things worse.
Money Driven Medicine describes in detail many of the flaws in our current system that make it unreformable. It may be possible to run an effective health care system using private insurance companies, but not in this country. The American business model and profound corruption at its core mean that efforts to get private insurers to serve the needs of people and health, rather than profits and market share, will fail. It's like trying to get a professional assassin to admit that killing is a bad idea.
Sadly, I feel that Obama either doesn't realize this or he has convinced himself that the political benefit of getting something passed is more important than whether or not the reforms actually work. In either case, Obama is the wrong president to lead us to major, meaningful reform. (Assuming he has any idea what real leadership is; something that the available evidence argues against.) A strong, and I mean very strong, public option may allow wider, more affordable access to health care coverage for many Americans (an undeniably good thing, unless you're a Winger), but it is virtually certain to fail to curb the unsustainable cost increases built into a system that includes profit-driven private insurance companies.
We need to start over, but that will never happen. I realize that Obama would lose credibility (that he doesn't deserve to have anyway), but that's not something that needs to concern us, because he is such a conventional thinker there is no chance he will ever consider abandoning the ill-conceived route he and we are now following. So, we are stuck heading down a path that in the best case scenario will not work and at the opposite extreme will do major damage.
Ribena claims of vitamin C in drink found to be complete BS.
So they lie about one product, how many others are lies too.
Guardian story from 2007
that's easy!
ALL OF THEM!
Advertizing is nothing but a species of propaganda camouflaged as 'consumer information."
There is NO (unvarnished, unspun) TRUTH anywhere in any public discourse as it originates from either segement of the CorpoRat State.
In the CorpoRat state, the corporate media ARE the State's media.
Has Moyers turned Right-Wing because he's taking on a Liberal president?
Must be, according to the Fox News standard of journalism, which says, "The media is all liberal and, therefore, you need to take sides to even things out."
But of course, you'd be wrong. Because journalists are supposed to hold the powerful to account, not be cheerleaders for one side or the other.
It's something called "integrity."
The country is being killed off by Democrat and Republican fatigue.
Moyers said that the LA Times said that Tauzin said that Obama has made promises to Tauzin's employer, the pharmaceutical industry. Tauzin could be (is likely) lying through his teeth. I'd like to hear Obama's take on it before I conclude, as Moyers inexplicably has, that Obama has gone back on his campaign promise.
That being said, I do like Dean's position.
After backing off public option, then reversing that backing off ...
used the exact wording of the Blue Dogs to describe the ideal "Public Option" in his web address.
Now, I don't know what is in his heart, or political plan, but he is going to have to realize that pandering to the right and to corporations will make the left abandon him and the middle nervous.
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