Thank You, Bill Maher, For Asking Where in the World is Barack Obama and What is He Going To Do About Healthcare?

Just yesterday I asked my husband, "Who does Obama think he is -- Lindsay Lohan? Every time I look at the news, there is Obama -- having another Kodak moment." Then I find out Bill Maher noticed the same thing. And had the audacity to mention it on national television.

I think President Obama makes a brilliant President. In the sense of a corporate President, not the kind that runs a country. He is great at making speeches, shaking hands and should be the PR rep for our country. He and Michelle make Americans look their best. God knows we can use Obama in the bully pulpit to mitigate the damage by the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfield regime -- who were only bullies.

However, we have a couple of issues that need some attention. Our PR is not going to matter much if the Ship of State is rudderless and we crash on the shore of our own greed and stupidity. Americans have been fat, dumb and happy. Now they are now fat, dumb and sick. Not to mention broke. Our currency is going in the toilet as a result of printing money to spend our way out of debt. And more Americans are declaring bankruptcy over their health care bills than for any other reason because they cannot afford simple necessary surgery.

Not being a financial pundit, I will stick to my ideas on health care. I have practiced under socialized medicine in the United Kingdom and under the insurance-based system of the U.S. Which is better? From my viewpoint, as a cash based practitioner who is exempt from the system, I say neither.

As Bill Maher also mentioned, it is a given that we need to get rid of insurance. Take out the middleman and you have doctors and hospitals that have to deal directly with the consumer, and have to answer for their mistakes and get lauded for their successes. It makes medicine compete in a marketplace. And why not? Medicine is big business. A friend of ours just had his neck vertebra fused. The bill was $80,000. This is not charity, nor non-profit. $80,000 is 30% more than the median annual household income in 2007. Our friend's daughter had a premie baby a couple of years ago. For her family of four, insurance premiums are now $4000.00 per month. Annually that is nearly equal to the annual median household income. No one should have to pay that much money for health insurance.

What Bill Maher did not mention is that the other responsible party for the fact hardly anyone can afford to be sick in this country is Pharmaceutical. With socialized medicine the cost is shifted to the government, and borne by the taxpayers, but Pharmaceutical companies still make out like bandits.

But they need the money for research, right?

In The Cost of Pushing Pills: A New Estimate of Pharmaceutical Promotion Expenditures in the United States from the online Public Library of Science researchers Marc-André Gagnon Joel Lexchin concluded:

"From this new estimate, it appears that pharmaceutical companies spend almost twice as much on promotion as they do on R&D. These numbers clearly show how promotion predominates over R&D in the pharmaceutical industry, contrary to the industry's claim. While the amount spent on promotion is not in itself a confirmation of Kefauver's depiction of the pharmaceutical industry, it confirms the public image of a marketing-driven industry and provides an important argument to petition in favor of transforming the workings of the industry in the direction of more research and less promotion." http://http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0050001

And here is where the financial crisis meets the health care crisis in this country. You don't have to be a financial pundit to know that any public company is responsible first and foremost to their stockholders. As a public company how do you meet your fiduciary responsibility? You ensure the price of your stock by increasing your bottom-line.

Does that require that you make up new "diseases" as you go? (Restless Leg Syndrome, for example.) Do you bend the rules of science in how you determine what constitutes disease so you can repackage old drugs that have lost their patent? Do you push dangerous new drugs on the market knowing that a little collateral damage is the price of making money, just as it is the price of making war?

According to USA Today in 2005, there were 1,274 registered pharmaceutical lobbyists in Washington, D.C. -- more than two for every member of Congress. In 2003, $143 million was spent on lobbying activities by the Pharmaceutical industry. There are more lobbyists from pharmaceutical than any other industry trying to bend legislators' ears. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/23518.php

This is big business, and that means that your health care is not in the hands of people who really want to help you, but in the hands of people who view you as a market.

Caveat emptor. You expect to beware in a used car lot. But buying a lemon auto is not nearly as likely to kill you as prescription medicine. Approximately 43,000 people died in car crashes in the U.S. in 2004, and the rate has been declining every year since. 100,000 people die in the U.S. every year from properly prescribed and properly administered prescription drugs, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association. The Florida Medical Examiners concluded that three times more people die from prescription medicine as die from illegal drugs.

If prescription drugs weren't so dangerous, why would the pharmaceutical industry have to spend so much time and money on lobbyists in Washington?

That is why I say that neither socialized medicine nor insurance-based medical programs are the answer to our health care problems. The only answer is to make pharmaceutical not-for-profit and remove the greed incentive.

Anti-capitalism and free market, you say? I say that people are dying from an industry that is out of control and refuses to govern itself with any responsibility or ethics. The FDA is the fox guarding the hen-house because it is rife with former and future pharmaceutical executives apparently motivated by vested self-interest.

Most decent people cannot conceive that anyone would profit from knowingly harming others. That is the flaw in capitalism. And that is one reason that evil can exist.

We can create a new health care system, where people receive the help and care they need, at a price that is affordable. We can have dedicated doctors who earn a handsome wage for their hard work. But we have to confront the real issues before us. The system that now exists in all Western countries leaves us all slaves to greed and corruption. We can stop marketing illness and turn our attention to wellness. This means starting over with an entirely new model.

To food companies, restaurants, agribusiness, industry and pharmaceutical we need to say: The health of our children and our own well-being is more important than your bottom line.

We have to willing to unplug from the Matrix, because we are being bilked. If it were only money, let the games go on. But the cost is human suffering and death. We are eating, breathing and drinking man-made chemicals on an unprecedented level. We are Fat, because the food is engineered to make us over-eat. We are Dumb, because we are being lied to regularly. We are Sick, because we are consuming poisons faster than we can process them. We are Broke, because our only value has become the money others can take from us.

It does not have to be this way. It can be how we decide to make it. Are you listening, President Obama?

Comments

[GordonA]

There is enough money between the progressives who want it, to fund such non-profit's creation and operations, and since it would be so much more efficient it would have no trouble getting customers. So why don't they do it? Why don't wealthy progressives run their own insurance companies, pharmaceuticals, and hospitals and show the advocates of for profit enterprise up? Why don't progressives pool their money and just cut the government and it's attendant problems out?

[ladyvader]

If we don't get a public option on health care it will not be Pres. Obama's fault. It will be the fault of the spineless cowards in the Senate.

[yakmeat]

A few years ago, Obama said he was for a single payer system, but that in order to get there Dems would have to take back the House, the Senate and the White House. Done. Now, what's the problem? (Besides all of those legislators on the take from the insurance and pharmaceutical industry...)

[punkindmb]

So who had five months in the betting pool? I knew it was only a matter of time before the democrats would start whining. Sheesh. Lets fall apart at the seams because he isn't doing what we want at this very moment. He's not concentrating on gay rights, like I want? whine. His economic recovery plan hasn't effected me directly? whine. He's gotten the people of Iraq and Iran to hope that they can change their situation? Whine because I never leave the country.

[Coltrane1234]

I think you're confusing whining with conviction for a better world, why are you so content with half as sed measures that don't solve the problems?

[iblogleft]

Well said.

[whitegayrepublican]

We need to stop helping up for this President.

As his appeasement whaffle are starting to look lame even to the most serious believers of change; ME.

I voted for the guy but he is sucking and much faster than Bush. That is generally the consensus as "He's not the change most Americans believe in". We voted him in and if he does not stop playing politician and become the President soon, it looks like he may not get another 4 years.

The Gays are talking about a tax strike. Imagine no longer spending our money to take care of straight folks and their offspring while we're still treated like the "People under the stairs". Taxation without representation is illegal. As a result, where do you think the benefits of marriage on the tax code comes from.

Everyone is growing tired. If we're not careful, we just may have another Tehran crisis on our hands but only in Washington.

[Havnagudtim]

Excuse me, but you don't speak for me. So 'everybody' isn't as short-sighted as you are. Healthcare is very complicated, and very lucrative for the wrong people, and no one has ever changed it yet. We are engaged in a national debate, and that takes time. PLUS the republicites have decided to be the G-NO-P and automatically vote against the President on everything no matter what, and they have nothing to propose of their own except the same retarded policies that got us here today. Wah, wah, I want it NOW, and if you can't give it to me now I hate you.
Grow up.

[pragmaticdallasite]

What about compromises on the energy bill, faillure to support the mortgage cramdown bill, not a peep on EFCA, and of course....the Wall St. situation. We need him to start enacting DEMAND-SIDE ECONOMIC POLICY.

[KofTX]

Okay, the Huff is really turning me off with this "rant first, admit what President Obama is doing right later" strategy. You're only weakening the resolve of the Congress (WHO ACTUALLY HAS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF LEGISLATING CHANGE) by letting them use Obama as a scapegoat. Haven't you people figured it out yet?!? Singlepayer isn't on the table not because Obama wouldn't want it. It's because IT HAS NO CHANCE IN HELL OF MAKING IT THROUGH CONGRESS..­..DEMOCRAT OR REPUBLICAN CONTROLLED!!!!

IT IS NOT HELPING YOUR CAUSE BY BEATING UP OBAMA...YOU'RE SHOOTING YOURSELF IN THE FOOT!

YOU'RE ONLY DRIVING HIS POLL NUMBERS DOWN, WHICH EMBOLDENS REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION AND MAKES CONGRESSIONAL BLUE DOG DEMS WANT TO KEEP THEIR DISTANCE....
THIS IS NOT ABOUT RIGHT AND WRONG, ITS ABOUT MAKING PROGRESS OR NOT!

YOU....ARE­..NOT...HE­LPING!!!

[whitegayrepublican]

Uh...No shes right. I voted for the guy but he is sucking and much faster than Bush. That is generally the consensus as "He's not the change most Americans believe in". We voted him in and if he does not stop playing politician and become the President soon, it looks like he may not get another 4 years.

The Gays are talking about a tax strike. Imagine no longer spending our money to take care of straight folks and their offspring while we're still treated like the "People under the stairs". Taxation without representation is illegal. As a result, where do you think the benefits of marriage on the tax code comes from.

Everyone is growing tired. If we're not careful, we just may have another Tehran crisis on our hands but only in Washington.

[Ugonna]

just repeating the same posts I see? You were responded to above. Everyone will COST THEMSELVES HEALTHCARE if they act with their emotions and keep messing up Obama's plans by whining that he's not doing it fast enough! Help is on the way, it doesn't come in one second!!!

[Jun58]

Agreed, and moreover, he can appear on TV 24/7 if he wants to. He's our president. We want/need/ deserve to know what he's doing about the future of our government and society as a whole ( in a hole). He's trying to be accountable. Give him that credit. He's not speaking gibberish on the podium either, which I'm sure is sorely appreciated after the past eight years, or would you prefer he start the first 24 days of his nearly 300 day vacation which he so deserves given the behavior of past presidents (note Reagan, W).

[suigeneris]

I love how this article is presented as a critique of Obama, then goes on to say tons of stuff that Obama has already said he agrees with. Great.

Did the office of President suddenly become a politics-free affair with the power of a King when Obama was elected? ....No? Then he still has to look forward and plan and execute his agenda with some care. So give him a break, it's been six months and he's gotten tons of stuff done already. Let the peanut gallery sit down and shut up for at least another six months, and then we'll see how he's done.

Jesus.

[Waltb31]

(Continued from above)
3) The only real solution is a non-profit system or single payor option. The greed must be removed from the system; so Doctors can directly help the patients without interference. This will never pass because there are so many lobbyists and parasites getting their cut affecting public policy. There are too many senators getting paid by lobbyists.
4) The pharmaceutical industry must have more aggressive oversight. For example, the whole "ADHD" childhood and adult phenomenon was created by Novartis to sell Ritalin. This country has the highest rate of "ADHD" drug use among children in the world by a factor of 5. The problem is that ther is a study just out that links the increase in sudden death in otherwise normal kids directly to ADHD drugs! So their irresponsibility is killing our kids!!!
Are there more kids in this country with ADHD? No. There is an aggressive drug company pushing this drug and others like it on our children, with complicity from corrupt Psychologists aided and abetted by Psychiatrists trying to maintain business by referrals for prescriptions. More aggressive oversight would vastly curtail this problem.
Yes, we need to fix the system. but we need to get back to the simple concept of "Do No Harm".

[Anne Dunev - Huffpost Blogger]

Well said. And well done on getting the point of my post, which so many others missed, perhaps because they only read the first two paragraphs and thought the post was about President Obama. Our health care system is deeply flawed because of those who prey on the frightened and sick. We can change things and develop a sane system. But we need to get some ideas into the national debate where the consumer wins for a change. It won't be easy and it may not be quick. But it will never happen if we don't press for real and substantive change. The United States consumes more than half the psychiatric drugs produced on the planet. The only thing that makes us more crazy is the fact that we are willing to allow ourselves to be labeled mentally ill! We have become victims of our own devices. Remove the profit incentive and the price of getting well will drop substantially. Then it won't be difficult for any of us to bear the burden of cost.

[ladyvader]

I have in-laws that where told to put their child on some ADHD meds or they where kicking their kid out of school.

[DietrichMoody]

I think plenty of Americans have Stockholm syndrome you know, the psychological response sometimes seen in abducted hostages, in which the hostage shows signs of loyalty to the hostage-take.

American, Abducted by Bush and the far right for the last eight years, and now you want Obama to start taking the same tactless tact as Bush.

There is a method, and Obama is not even 5 months in office, and you want it now now now now now.

I guess you want him to go and make a SHOW, be entertaining like Hillary Clinton the first months of Bill Clinton's Presidency and the FAIL and ruin health care reform for at least the next 17 years.

Is this what you want???? A show that has a bad ending.....

[Waltb31]

Wow. Just wow. You are trying to unring the bell.
Back in the early eighties, when the concept of for-profit HMO's took hold, that was the end of quality medical care as we knew at the time. Because, most of the insurance companies started to answer to obscenely paid CEO's and stockholders instead of the patients. About the same time a subtle distinction in the reference to physicians came about: the change from "Doctor" to "Health Care Provider".
We lost all respect at that time due to the pursuit of the dollar by greedy insurance executives.
Now the question is "what do we do now?"
1) I agree with taking the profit motive out of the equation. There should no longer be For-profit health care companies. Because the promised "efficiency, cost containment and oversight" was translated into diversion of health care funds into executive's pockets. Reimbursements for Physicians steadily declined over the time period, but costs and premiums continued to rise. The money wad going to non medical uses and personnel.
2) All Physicians should stop accepting insurance for office visits; (except Medicare and Medicaid). Patients who have insurance should directly negotiate with the insurance companies for reimbursement. Once the patients start figuring out that the insurance companies have been taking their premiums without paying out adequate reimbursement, and receive insurance payments at the rate Doctors have been receiving, the patients would drop insurance companies immediately.
(Continued below)

[Joethepauper]

Obama may look better on camera, engage better with foreign leaders, and make better public speeches, but I'm with Mahr.......I'm audaciously hoping for change. I wanted revolutionary change that would curb excessive greed. Our economy is still limping along because there hasn't been enough change. We would be doing much better if we had taken things into our own hands and just hung all CEOs, executives, lobbyists, and insurance people from the telephone poles on Wall St. and started over from scratch. Let the workers run the corporations. They are the ones who do the actual work anyway. Can't assembly line workers make a better car than the CEO? As long as Iran is having another revolution, we might as well join them. Real change, not just a slogan.

[Jun58]

"Limping along?" Be thankful the economy isn't being desribed as "roadkill", my friend, run over and DEAD. Unfortunately, "limping along" is about as good as it gets, for now. And don't take my word for it, read a few blogs from noted economists on the consequences of not seeing through the administration's measures against the failing economy. The Depression took nearly a decade to resolve. We'll be lucky if this problem stays with us for two years or less.

[Df7702]

Wow ...

[Annette truth teller08]

Does this sound like a President that is not working?

WSJ/NBC Survey

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/06/17/wsjnbc-poll-is-obama-taking-on-too-much/

60% say the president is focused as he juggles many issues at once.

37% think he's taken on too much.

[Annette truth teller08]

W... T... Heck???