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To Betsie, people in this country are starved for inspiring examples of courage and ethical leadership, that’s why the outpouring of positive comments here, imho, and the alcollades for Bill Moyer’s journalism.

Abuses by the U.S. Corporatocracy are rampant. Media, The War, Off-shoring Jobs, For Profit Health Care, and on and on. The harm done to individuals and to entire communities is impossible to accurately measure, but it’s huge. I’m a nurse and nursing faculty member, so I know the health care issue best. For years alongside other activists I’ve tried to speak truth to power to advance the cause of health justice and fundamental health system reforms in the U.S., to little avail. It’s quite pathetic how the MSM is spoonfed false rhetoric (aka half-truths and lies) by the insurance industry then simply turns around and regurgitates it as “news” to the public. Case in point the Massachusetts Mandated Purchase of Insurance Law known as Chapter 58. For those who are interested in this issue, read on.

For quite a few years now, since 2000 when Massachusetts Blue Cross and Blue Shield set up their “foundation”, it’s been obvious to many serious health reform activists that real reform of the system in our state is next to impossible to achieve b/c MA Blue Cross Blue Shield has bought off just about everybody involved in helaht policymaking in this state.

You can buy off a lot of folks by doling out $21Mil in “grant money” over 8 years, which is what MA BCBS has done, so there’s not much opportunity to advance meaningful reform when that amount of hush money is used to silence almost all the advocates and the media. BCBS of MA also spends millions on manufacturing an endless string of self-serving “Reports”.

I used to regularly interact with executives BCBS MA, Partners Health Care and other industry power-brokers along with the state politicians and so-called community leaders, who all attend the frequent BCBS health policy forums. But after observing, year after year, the growing silencing effect of BCBS spreading around millions in hush money, I stopped attending the annual BCBS of MA “Health Access” events. BCBS has paid folks off in advance; they fill the hundreds of chairs and media spots at the JFK Library with people who need next year’s BCBS “grant money”, advertising revenue, and/or political support from the medical-industrial complex in the state (that’s led by BCBS and Partners), so everyone who’s there have all drank the Koolaid, so to speak, and they pretend that the Emperor has such pretty clothes on, all the while the state was going bankrupt from health insurance costs before passage of the Ch 58 law and now it’s much worse with NO SERIOUS COST CONTROLS IN SIGHT. (Senate President Murray’s cost control law is merely a drop in the bucket.)

BTW the MA Medicaid Policy Institute is an outfit of MA BCBS, and the chairman is none other than Richard Lord of Associated Industries of MA (AIM). And people wonder why so many employers have the state paying their worker’s health insurance costs in the form of Medicaid? Duh. Follow the money trail, folks. And look beyond the rhetoric of the spin miesters (aka paid liars).

It’s so discouraging that more people don’t look beyond the industry-sponsored rhetoric and demand the full facts when results of the “MA Health Reform” are being rolled out. At least Charlie questioned a few things. But how ’bout asking for a full reporting of how much state money per newly insured person this Chapter 58 law has us taxpayers doling out to buy HMO policies, to pay the 40+ Connector staff salaries (some make over $250k!), and to buy tens of million$$ in Ads and Marketing contracts!!!???? If and when we had these facts and figures we, the public, could assess what value we’re getting for our ~$1BILLION in new spending under this law.

Who’s speaking up about these abuses of public spending? Sadly, John McDonough, the outgoing CEO of a group in MA funded heavily by BCBS and HMO’s was the leading cheerleader from the “advocacy community” for this sham reform. It’s very depressing to think that McDonough is supposedly going to work for Ted Kennedy in DC on health policy issues…

I’ve blogged quite a lot on this topic, both in MA and nationally (when I can, having 2 small kids and 2 PT jobs). I came across a recent blog comment from another activist who offers an insightful big picture critique of the MA Mandated Insurance Law. She is responding to J McDonoughs post on his blog trumpeting the successes of incremental tinkering with the MA health care system:

Susan Says June 2nd, 2008 at 5:05 pm
http://blog.hcfama.org/?p=1663...

Bravo for what? For the continuation of our obscenely expensive, largely broken, and often harmful healthcare system? …

Folks, follow the money trail and think about “who wins and who loses” under the various ["healthcare reform"*] proposals. In case you haven’t noticed, the MA Plan is a sham that forces us all to pour more of our hard-earned money into the coffers of the insurance industry.

The public is waking up to the fact that commercial profit-driven insurance products, and all the bureaucracy that exists around them, are the root cause of so much waste in our current health care system. Make no mistake, the current MA Chapter 58 law is not about reform of the system. But it is very much about selling more insurance products.

Health care should be focused on people’s health needs, not on bogus market-driven product “choices”.[Or, in the case of Chapter 58, false choices since now it's the law-you have to buy this product!]

For healthyblog [and BMG] readers who are interested in a real reform solution, namely improved Medicare-for-All, please look at the website for the statewide coalition Mass-Care [it includes HCFA MA and]… 100 other state organizations as members at http://www.MassCare.org
—–

* DEFINITION OF reform:

http://www.merriam-webster.com...

Function: noun (as in Healthcare Reform)
Date: 1663

1: amendment of what is defective, vicious, corrupt, or depraved

2: a removal or correction of an abuse, a wrong, or errors

——–
People, please think independently about the situation that we’re struggling with for real healthcare reform in MA b/c it’s a dress rehearsal for what’s to come on the national stage. Sorry if this seems out of place or excessive on this post about Barry Nolan and Comcast, but it’s really all about the same thing… (I wonder how the Nolan family gets their healthcare coverage, has it changed since Comcast fired him?)

Does anyone else, after applying the critical thinking process, conclude that the MA Chapter 58 law that mandates the purchase of commercial insurance products would be more aptly described as state-sponsored extortion to benefit the insurance industry?

Visit http://www.defendhealth and take a look at 2 excellent articles on the homepage if you’re interested in learning the truth and not just the VERY SLICK and well-manufactured spin on this law:

“Lost in the Labryinth”, the first MA mainstream media piece to take a critical look at details of MA law, Boston Globe, Page A2, by Sam Allis, March 30, 2008

“Fraud in the Guise of Health Reform”, a western MA Attorney speaks truth to power in his article published in Feb. 2008 in the Greenfield Recorder.

These articles and other health reform materials are at http://www.defendhealth

A website like this should change its name to “Preaching to the Choir”, “The Echo Chamber”, or “I Have a Complex Because I, Myself, Feel Powerless, so I’ll Project My Own Sense of Inadequacy Onto the World at Large”.

Not a lot of food for thought here. Ironic, really. O’Reilly appeals to the group think folks, as does this website. So you’re not as different as you think.

However, the government did not put you in jail, the FBI, CIA and the rest of the law types haven’t kicked in your door, beat you up and hauled you away. Today, I have written to three persons in China who had just that done to them. I have no idea whether my letters will actually reach them or not, I hope so, but, you see, they’re in a country that doesn’t have our first amendment rights, nor the second amendment rights to back up the former.

Your situation doesn’t fit. I’ve been laid off, because a supervisor didn’t like me, I’ve been canned because I didn’t show for work (get lazy get the opportunity to use it), I’ve been asked to retire because I didn’t measure up, and I’ve been laid off because, while they liked me, the new contract only had so many positions and the bosses had to make tough choices. None of that means that my rights were abused. Neither were yours, you made a choice, on your own, to put forward your opinion at the ceremony, you did so using some factual information to make your point. Your supervisors however, were obviously not consulted by you, disagreed with the manner and timing of your presentation and let you know it. Tough, polish off your resume and or retrain for a new job… I wish you the best in it.

Shoot your mouth off all you want, but if your boss thinks it reflects negatively on your job, guess what? You’re gone.

For the slow-witted: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Please point to the place in the 1st Amendment where a business can’t fire you for speaking out. Can’t find it? That’s because it isn’t there!

There should be protests if he wins a bass fishing contest.

Barry Nolan should be promoted for this, and somehow he will be.

The truth shall set all of us free. In time, we will associate your name with people like Daniel Ellsberg, Bernstein and Woodward, Sherron Watkins, Norreen Harrington and others who pursued the truth and ensured others knew it.

… and I wonder if you could kindly share or post a link to that document on O’Reilly’s sexual harassment lawsuit you quietly passed around …

Comcast sucks!
O’Reilly sucks!
and Fox sucks!

And you’re right – freedom of speech is on it’s way out! The corporate masters and the war machine are really one and the same. O’Reilly and the others are part of it as you so painfully have found out. But don’t let them silence you, because if you do, Democracy is dead.