Paul Ryan has the nerve to call this budget crap “The Path to American Prosperity” Prosperity for whom? It is a certain path to ruin and the further decimation of the middle class.
Corporations should be under small 'd' democratic control
by Meteor Blades Tue Apr 19, 2011
At In These Times, senior editor David Moberg, one of the few remaining labor reporters in America, writes The Debate That Wasn't:
Under the guise of budget-balancing austerity, conservatives at the national and state levels are doing their best to dismantle America’s relatively weak social assistance and security policies. They continue to divide workers with issues like immigration and abortion. Now conservatives’ central project is attacking public workers’ living standards, their unions and their right to bargain collectively—and the public sector itself. This is simply the latest inning of a game plan played out over several decades to redistribute income and both political and economic power to the rich, starting with attacks on blacks and the poor.
Business cycles and periodic crises are endemic to capitalism. But this near-collapse exposed how much finance capitalism and its many interrelated industries—banking, insurance, mergers and acquisitions, derivatives and “risk management”—dominate our lives, as Stephen Lerner argues. The solution involves establishing more democratic control over the finance sector, including breaking up the big banks, making finance less complex and more transparent, and establishing competing public institutions, like insurance providers. (The problems with mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not that they are public but that Congress partly privatized them and exposed them to private market pressure to offer sub-prime loans.)
Regulation is obviously necessary, but it is not enough without a comprehensive vision of finance as a public utility, like a highway (or other utilities that would better serve the nation if publicly owned). Regulated industries consistently capture their regulators, and the financial services have ideologically captured Republicans and many Democrats. Little can be accomplished with even a militant campaign if the public and politicians remain captive. The industry needs more than a traffic cop. It needs a new architect and greater democratic control, just as corporations in general should be more closely controlled through national charters.
The goal of any new movement to reform American capitalism should be more than restoring “the American dream” of home ownership and personal accumulation. It should also stimulate dreams of a new America, where people hold more power over the key institutions of our society, and their own lives.
President Obama: “Social Security is a problem but one that we can solve much more easily. So the first answer to your question is, Social Security will definitely be there when you retire. (Applause.) I’m absolutely confident about that. I am absolutely confident about that.
Now, here’s the thing. If we don’t do anything on Social Security, if we just don’t—if we don’t touch it at all, then what would happen is, by the time you retire, or maybe just a couple years after you retire, you might find that instead of getting every dollar that you were counting on, you’re only getting 75 cents out of that dollar. Because what’s happening is the population is getting older; there are more retirees per worker and more money starts going out than is coming in.”
SO, TAKE SOCIAL SECURITY OUT OF ANY DISCUSSIONS
Returning to the rising costs of Medicare and Medicaid; I can tell you from first hand experience that this is largely due to the total disregard to honesty in billing that doctors, labs, hospitals and others in the medical field have. Medicare and Medicaid have become the goose that laid the golden egg.
Just this week alone I analyzed what was paid and how much of it could have been avoided or unnecessary billing. To start with, I had to go to my primary physician for a referral; certainly he didn’t perform any service and didn’t even see me…in fact it was the front desk that provided me with the referral itself. I know they bill Medicare as if that was a regular visit.
Then I get to the labs, fasting and irritated because I had not been able t drink any Cuban coffee. The labs made me sign a paper saying that if Medicare doesn’t pay I would be responsible for $491. I had an ingrown toe nail and the specialist shot some anesthetic on my toe and cut the nail. A week later I had to come back for her to see the progress. I swear, I wasn’t in the 
examining room any more than 3 minutes. The doctor looked at it, pronounced it healed and walked away. The whole thing didn’t take any more than 30 seconds. Mind you, Medicare had already paid for the actual toe nail removal…this was only a follow-up and here is the bill that I get:
That comes to about $507 a minute…hell, even brain surgeons don’t get paid that well.
And this seems to be pervasive, it is everywhere with our health care providers, hospitals and the cost of drugs. It is no wonder then that Medicare and Medicaid are not doing so well and the cow is running dry…they have milked it to death.
I made a post recently on the high cost of medicines; I mentioned that some of these very expensive drugs don’t have to be that costly. My pharmacist friend told me of one practice that just pissed me off. He said that two of the drugs I take have to be taken together because they left out a key ingredient in one and put it in another and the rest is placebo. I question the veracity but if it is true, is the FDA aware the Pharmas are doing this? And these drugs cost about $500 each for a 30 day supply…unbelievable!
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