The Games People Play Part 2 - Military Medical Care - Vets to Active Duty

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Oh the Games People Play Now

Every night and every day now

Never meaning what they say now

Never saying what they mean now

Once upon a time there was no higher honor in America than to be a member of the armed forces.  But little and long wars have a way of desensitizing people to the dangers, the deaths and the casualties of war.

I remember after World War II that we celebrated our veterans and their role in world peace every year and multiple times a year during holidays, parades, and the many air and military shows that were ever present.

As a kid of a veteran we grew up to know every battle in every war our parents had fought in and we were thrilled to go to the military air shows and parades where all the planes and equipment that protect our parents was on display.

Over time the Korean War stalemate seemed to dampen the enthusiasm for the military and by the time college came and brought Vietnam there seemed to be no sense in why we were fighting wars as 55,000 of our classmates died.

America had become split.  And the more and more we learned about the war the more the prestige of the military, the intelligence agencies and our federal government lost popularity.

Then came 9/11 and the World Trade Center destruction and suddenly the nation rallied around the military and the government once more.  Faulty intelligence led to the invasion of Iraq and God only knows what led to the invasion of Afghanistan and we were suddenly pinned down into two wars without logic, without purpose and without the support of the nation.

Most certainly the arms industry, what President Eisenhower warned about when he said the military-industrial complex could become our biggest enemy against peace, has profited from these and every other war the last few centuries.

So have the financial institutions and Wall Street.

But the endless wars seemed to sap the enthusiasm of the public and suck the money out of our economy that was desperately needed for some crucial services.  While we were spending billions of dollars every year fighting wars that could never be won back home our infrastructure like roads, bridges, sewer and water systems, power plants, even the schools where we sent our children, were falling apart by American standards.

When the budget is tight it seems greed always profits at the expense of the people.

Our twin wars brought out greed to a brazen degree never seen before as millions and even billions of dollars in military, foreign aid and intelligence spending disappeared somewhere between America, Iraq, Afghanistan and the pockets of the rich.

What was our reward?  A housing, banking, automobile and stock market crash in 2008 that nearly wiped out what little assets the middle class had to begin with.  So we were the victims of lousy government and the victims of unscrupulous hucksters in the housing, financial and banking industry.

What happens next?  Well us victims, thanks to the omnipotent wisdom of Washington, use our money to bail out the bankers, bail out the brokers, bail out the unethical auto people, bail out crooks and creeps of all manner of dress, status and income.

But all that is behind us now.  Except there is a problem with the very government leading us down the path of self-destruction.  Thank Divine Providence our leaders are so busy name calling and fighting that nothing happens in our Capitol since they are too busy stealing our capital to cause us more problems.

Then we find out the Veterans Administration, another of those agencies President Obama is responsible for until the buck is passed to him at which time he passes it back like a hot potato, well we find out the Obama Vet gang is killing our soldiers.

Seems the Veterans Administration has hospitals that created secret lists so they could improve their election year statistics.  Many of  those vets in need of life saving treatment are refused treatment by the hospital regardless of the seriousness of the condition and told to get on the primary physician care waiting list, thus there is no backlog of hospital cases.

In the Phoenix VA hospital alone it is alleged over 40 real people were refused emergency treatment by the hospital and moved to the secret list of those waiting to see VA primary care doctors.  They have now disappeared from the secret waiting list, allegedly, because the 40 have died waiting to be seen by doctors.

Seems a bunch of other VA hospitals might have done the same thing perhaps to make the Administration look good during the fall elections.  These actions, like a host of other acts swept under the rug by the Administration and the Administration press agency, the national news media, shed a disturbing light on the underbelly of the beast we call the US government.

You see, this is not just a policy dispute or a partisan blow up, this is criminal bordering on murder.  You can bet the spin doctors will be burning the midnight candle once again.

And speaking of doctors, stay tuned for one of my next articles, again trying to shed light on the lousy way we treat our military and vets, and my analysis of the health treatment of our veterans while in the service where they supposedly get the best medical help available yet it seems they are virtually lab rats rather than patients.

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Health Care in America - Where Politicians Fear to Tread

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The Broken American Health Care System

Do you notice something wrong with the following statistics?

Chldren 3-17 years of age ever diagnosed with ADHD: 5.2 million

Cildren now on prescription drugs to treat ADHD - 16 million

Adults with Type 2 diabetes in 2010: 25.8 million

Adults treated with Metformin HLC for diabetes: 48.3 million

Adults with chronic pain: 56 million

Adults prescribed Vicodin for chronic pain: 131.2 million

Adults with high cholesterol: 36 million

Adults prescribed Zocor for high cholesterol: 94.1 million

Adults with high blood pressure: 75 million

Adults prescribed Prinivil for high blood pressure: 87.4 million

Adults prescribed Norvasc for high blood pressure: 57.2 million

Adults prescribed Hydrodiuril for high blood pressure: 47.8 million

Adults prescribed just 3 drugs for high blood pressure: 192.4 million

We have a problem in America, a problem people and politicians do not want to hear or think about.  America spends more money than any other nation on health care, far more than most nations, yet we have a mediocre health care system.

Health care costs have been rising for several years.  Expenditures in the United States on health care surpassed $2.3 trillion in 2008, more than three times the $714 billion spent in 1990, and over eight times the $253 billion spent in 1980.

In 2008, U.S. health care spending was about $7,681 per resident and accounted for 16.2% of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP); this is among the highest of all industrialized countries. Total health care expenditures grew at an annual rate of 4.4 percent in 2008, a slower rate than recent years, yet still outpacing inflation and the growth in national income.

The following chart shows how much we spend on health care.

We now spend about $2.6 trillion on health care.  The average cost of a family health insurance policy offered by employers was $13,375 this year, up 5% from 2008, the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust survey found.

So where does this spending leave us in terms of the quality of our health care system compared to the rest of the world?

Here is the ranking:

Americans spend twice as much as residents of other developed countries on healthcare, but get lower quality, less efficiency and have the least equitable system, according to a report released on Wednesday.

The United States ranked last when compared to six other countries -- Britain, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand, the Commonwealth Fund report found.

How about in terms of developed and undeveloped nations?

1.         France

2.         Italy

3.         San Marino

4.         Andorra

5.         Malta

6.         Singapore

7.         Spain

8.         Oman

9.         Austria

10.       Japan

11.        Norway

12.       Portugal

13.       Monaco

14.       Greece

15.       Iceland

16.       Luxemburg

17.       Netherlands

18.       United Kingdom

19.       Ireland

20.      Switzerland

21.       Belgium

22.      Columbia

23.       Sweden

24.       Cyprus

25.       Germany

26.       Saudi Arabia

27.       U.A.E.

28.      Israel

29.       Morocco

30.      Canada

31.       Finland

32.       Australia

33.       Chile

34.       Denmark

35.       Dominica

36.       Costa Rica

37.      United States

Astonishing!  Our quality of health care is not even as good as nations spending ten times less per capita as we do.  That is not a logical problem, or a cultural problem, it is a criminal problem that our profit driven health care industry and our corrupted political system perpetuate.

There are ways out of the mess.  They will not come from Washington, D.C. however.  Not when billions of dollars are being spent by the industry to protect what they own.

For the past three years and the next four years insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, HMOs and other healthcare profiteers will spend billions in advertising and more billions in lobbying to convince us that we have the BEST healthcare system in the world.  The truth is far from that claim.

That is why I am starting a series of articles on the broken American Health Care system, and what it will take to give us the quality of health care we deserve for the money we spend on health care.

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The Health Industry Capitulation - This Sure Ain't No Pythagorean Theorem

This week Obama announced that members of the doctors, pharmaceutical, hospital and insurance industry involved in health care have agreed to give up 1 1/2% of their future price increases. Man would I like to be a hero for giving up 1 1/2% of what I don't even have and may never get.

That is a slick math move like many we have already witnessed from these clever craftsmen of New World economics. We are going to save $2 trillion over the next ten years in health care costs, $2 trillion in price increases that haven't even been approved. Is that a negative attitude or what. If you buy the language we already have the 7% a year in price increases guaranteed for the next ten years.

Obama isn't even going to be president for ten years unless that is another law they intend to disregard. Anyway, the problem with health care is that we already have the most expensive system in the world and still 46 million Americans don't have health care and we are far from the healthiest people on Earth. I guess money not only can't buy you love but it can't buy you quality health care either.

Now 12 million of the 46 million uninsured are illegal aliens. Most already have insurance so we really should not count them as uninsured. Of course the liberals still think our social programs are inadequate but they don't understand how many people have already figured out how to take advantage of the programs.

Another 10 million uninsured are college students but they could be covered by family or school insurance programs. That leaves 20 million Americans really uninsured, not 46 million. In spite of the generous cut in future increases by the health industry, it means health care costs will still increase by billions of dollars a year in the most expensive but not the best health care program in the world.

If the program is already too expensive then cut the budget, don't let it increase. Believe it or not that is how you get budgets into balance. Obama has got a 1 1/2% reduction in future costs leaving a 5.5% annual cost increase that he says is acceptable. He has asked for $750 billion more in health care spending next year alone.

So why is it costing us billions more to reduce the cost of health care? I say a 7% annual increase on top of the astounding increase in health care costs the past two decades is ridiculous. Just eliminate the 7% we don't even have and cut the fraud, corruption and waste in what is here right now. We should be able to cut the budget and still expand coverage to everyone. Does that sound too American and not enough socialist, I mean liberal?

If you really want to cut health care costs stop prescribing prescription drugs to our children and seniors and we can save billions. Do you know the average senior in America has 6-8 drug prescriptions? Then there are estimates that up to 6 million kids are taking Ritalin prescriptions for attention deficit disorder though less than half that number have been diagnosed with the problem.

Prescribing unnecessary drugs does have a multiplying effect in terms of a stimulus program however. The excessive payment to the pharmaceutical company that makes it, the payment and/or kick back to the doctor who prescribes it, the insurance company for processing fees for the claim, why even the patient who is transformed into a Zombie by the tranquil illusion from the drug.

You could eliminate half the cost of prescription drugs and have no effect on the health of the patients. Better still go to a Medicine Man or Woman and actually get healed. What a concept!