HEALTHCARE - Big Pharmas Running Scared

"Is Your Doctor Tied to Drug Makers?" Editorial, New York Times

It’s no surprise that the pharmaceutical industry is appalled at proposals to set up a national registry of its gifts and payments to doctors. Too much information might lead patients to suspect that their doctors are choosing costly medicines out of gratitude to the manufacturers rather than for the best medical or economic interests of their patients.

That's just the first paragraph in the full editorial.

Does the technique sound familiar? "Gifts" being use to influence decisions, in this case doctors?

Try Lobbyist giving politicians "gifts." The technique is the same, a way influence decisions made by politicians in making laws.

Big Business, Pharma or others, does not want the public to know what they are doing in the background. They want a shroud so the man-on-the-street cannot be aware that what their doctor or politician is doing may not be in their individual best interest.

"'SiCKO' Truth Squad Sets CNN Straight"

The above link is to Michael Moore's rebuttal to the misinformation of CNN's The Situation Room broadcast of 7/8/2007 (video link to show included).

It's a perfect example of bending the facts to make the American healthcare consumer accept the big-business (GOP) healthcare run programs.

POLITICS - More Hyperbole From Conservatives

"The Fatso Behind Sicko Costs Us $200 Billion in Health Care" by Adam Hanft, Huffington Post

Michael Moore has no shortage of culprits for the millions of uninsured in America, but he neglects to point the camera at himself -- in wide-angle format -- and to address the devilish issue of personal responsibility. How can you talk about health care in America today and not consider the millions just like him who are bankrupting the system, people who live recklessly, eat tons of crap, smoke, and then want to flee accountability, insisting that a single-payer system cover their treatment from dollar one.

Typical hyperbole from Conservatives. In essence, their belief that if you don't behave as they dictate, too bad. You deserve to die.

Never mind the the healthcare industry is fattening up on ever increasing profits.

It is the healthcare industry that can be viewed in "wide-angle format."

It is the healthcare industry's obscene profits that is bankrupting American citizens.

Oh, lets also ignore the the Big Pharmaceuticals are managing to make a profit selling their products in the other nations that do have Single-Payer type healthcare. It's just they can make more profit gouging Americans. Note that Single-Payer health care does NOT mean government run, of course "they" do not want you to know that.

From Fair.org

For someone trying to make fine distinctions about various healthcare systems, it is puzzling to see Greenfield lump together the programs in Britain and Canada. The group Physicians for National Health Program (PNHP) points out that while Britain's system is roughly equivalent to a system where doctors work for the government, "In most European countries, Canada, Australia and Japan, they have socialized financing, or socialized health insurance, not socialized medicine. The government pays for care that is delivered in the private (mostly not-for-profit) sector."

"Health-care costs are sickening" by Cindy Richards, Chicago Sun-Times

On Moore's "Sicko," in part...

In each country, folks attempt to explain the attraction of their national health plans. The Canadian system ensures that health care works for "the least of us and the best of us" and the British system grew from the post-World-War-II belief that "if we can find the money to kill people, we can find the money to help people."

So what does it say about America that we have a system in which no premium charge is too high, no illness too small to be considered pre-existing, and there are wide disparities between the kinds of care we give to the poor and the rich?