Open Letter to ABC's John Stossel... from Julie Pierce, American SICKO

http://www.michaelmoore.com/sicko/news/article.php?id=10226

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I don't want a hit-piece. I want answers. Why does our wonderful profit-driven system of medicine kill 18,000 Americans each year? Why do we pay far more for our health system than any other country, but have some of the lowest life expectancies and highest infant mortality rates in the Western world? Would you discredit the work of your late colleague Peter Jennings who, while suffering with lung cancer, did an excellent report titled "Breakdown: America's Health Insurance Crisis"?

I hope you have answers, but I am not optimistic. I pray that you will never have to go through what we went through — if you did, you wouldn't be so quick to cheerlead the system we were victimized by.
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....Instead of calling me up and doing real reporting, all you can do is throw around studies from 1999 about the supposed inefficiency of bone marrow transplants for breast cancer patients — even though Tracy didn't have breasts. He had kidney cancer! I understand that you want to try to prove that private insurance in this country really isn't that bad. And I can see that you won't let the facts get in the way.

You go on to claim that Tracy wouldn't have received his transplant in a country with socialized medicine, either. Where is the evidence? Not only are more bone marrow transplants performed every year in Canada, but they invented the technology! So much for your ridiculous claim that "profit is what has created the amazing scientific innovations that the U.S. offers to the world. If government takes over, innovation slows, health care is rationed."

You are simply carrying water for the for-profit insurance industry that killed my husband. And then you have the nerve to accuse me of "sneering" about it. My husband has only been dead since January 18th, 2006. It is still fresh to me and my family, and comments like this are inhumane.

I have since tried to contact you via email, but you have not responded. I don't expect an answer. People like you just write with an agenda, without coming to the source or getting any facts, because your main goal is to try to discredit Michael Moore and universal health care. I understand it's a game — you did it without thinking about how you would hurt a family who have suffered — and are still suffering — such a tragic loss.

...not to mention conferring on them the supposed legitimacy of broadcasting these lies over a once-credible network.

This meme about socialized medicine and doctors working for the feds is so easily destroyed that I can't believe that even the dullards of Dumbfuckistan believe this crap.

For example, my doc is in private practice and his business is organized as an LLC (Limited Liability Corporation). Legally, he works for the LLC, as do his wife and his staff -- two of whom spend their entire working days dealing with insurance paper work, fighting claim denials, getting routine procedures authorized, groveling for money they're owed, and so on. Basically, fighting to get people the treatment they need and for which they're paying monthly premiums.

Like anyone but a hypochondriac is going to request more medical treatment than they need. "Oh yes, doc. Please keep me in this boring, ill-lit hospital room -- featuring 10 TV channels, a squeaky electric bed, wake-ups every two hours and horrid food -- for another week... please, please, please. And throw in a few more blood tests and an ultrasound scan if you would."

Anyway, point is my doc doesn't work for an insurance company; he's employed by his LLC. If we went to single-payer, he would still be employed by his LLC. All that would change is the payer. Now, he gets most of his fees for services from insurance companies -- exceptions are Medicare payments (from the feds) and, occasionally, direct payment from a patient.

Under single-payer, he would get his fees paid from a pool of money, much like the SS fund which is supposed to be untouchable for any other purposes (but has been stolen from repeatedly, starting with Reagan and continuing today). This money comes from any number of sources -- anything from an added 2.5 percent tax on income, repeal of the "soak the poor, reward the rich" tax law currently in effect, "sin" taxes on the usual vices -- cigs, alcohol, maybe fast food -- or any combination of the above, plus many more creative revenue raisers.

Personally, I'd like to see a fund collected from the very insurance companies who have ripped us off and, in many cases, killed us over the years to protect their profit margins. But that's just me, and I'm seriously vengeful when it comes to dealing with these parasites.

So my doc and tens of thousands of other docs nationwide are now either employed by insurers such as Kaiser or work for themselves via small corporations. Doesn't really matter which because single-payer would eliminate the insurance side of Kaiser's business while letting it maintain ownership of his hospitals, clinics and so forth.

Kaiser docs could continue to work for a non-profit medical services provider, or could open their own practices -- which would be much easier to do absent insurance company meddling, the cost of salaries and benefits for employees who deal with the bastards full-time, and the constant concerns that somebody like Blue Cross or Aetna will find a way to weasel out of paying for covered procedures and leave them holding the bag for, say, a $20,000 surgical procedure.

Then, of course, they'll have to try and bill the patient, who in most cases don't have that kind of money sitting around, so the bill goes to collections, ruining the patient's credit rating in the process. Then the choices get fewer and fewer -- no personal loans available with poor credit, credit cards maxed out, can't re-fi the house at a decent interest rate because of poor credit score, insufficient income to deal with increased credit card bills, etc. -- until bankruptcy becomes the only way out.

Btw, unpayable medical bills are the tipping point that causes more than half of all bankruptcies in the US. This situation is unique in the industrialized world; nobody, anywhere goes bankrupt over medical bills except here.

One more thing: For those of us who freelance or run our own businesses, medical insurance is prohibitively expensive -- particularly if you've got one of those deal-killing "pre-existing conditions." And who doesn't after a while? It's the price you pay for not living your entire life in a bubble.

But if you own a house, a paid-for car, have a little money saved up, and don't have insurance when some expensive medical catastrophe occurs, the hospital now owns the house, the car and the bank accounts. So insurance premiums are really a form of protection money you're forced to pay to stave off financial ruin if a stroke or heart attack occurs.

So it's like owning a bar in Brooklyn; you've got to pay protection money to the local mob and to the cops as well. And if you don't, you will be seriously beaten, your windows broken and, eventually, your bar will burn down. But at least these guys are honest about what they're selling. Insurance industry parasites, on the other hand, will just glad-hand you half to death while unsheathing the daggers they'll use to stab you in the back.

And yes, John Stossel should be tarred, feathered and placed in stocks in the public square for a month for being such a reliable shill for this protection racket. In more civilized times, people would gather every day to pelt him with rotten vegetables and curse his lies and phony logic. Today, he makes half a zillion bucks advocating for an industry that makes its money by doing the exact opposite of its stated purpose. Some swell swindle, eh?


wp

that is so sad. Why does fucking ABC keep this moron around???? :mad: :mad:

He will never be unemployed in our current system. He's the modern, media version of a Pinkerton.

just for starters

Good for her! I was not even aware of this - because I 'turn off' John Stossel. I guess I better start paying attention to that royal asshole as closely as I watch Billy Bob O'Reilly and Billy Bob Hannity.

"In your 'reporting' of this story, you did not contact me, and you did not contact my husband's doctors. I cannot believe that a publication like the Wall Street Journal would print such an accusation without talking to anyone involved — especially in such a personal matter, which resulted in the death of my 37-year-old husband and the father of my child.

If you had contacted me, I would have told you that bone marrow transplants became a last option, only after our insurer denied many other treatments again and again and again...

Instead of calling me up and doing real reporting, all you can do is throw around studies from 1999 about the supposed inefficiency of bone marrow transplants for breast cancer patients — even though Tracy didn't have breasts. He had kidney cancer! I understand that you want to try to prove that private insurance in this country really isn't that bad. And I can see that you won't let the facts get in the way."

in-hospital medical errors in each of the years 2000, 2001 and 2002, according to a new study of 37 million patient records...

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/11856.php

The number might be higher now.