Consider this exerpt from Bill Moyers, Sunday Aug 30. Obama is breaking every single campaign promise. All he is doing is enriching the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies. Quality of health care isn’t being considered now, and it certainly won’t be under any new plan. The only improvement in a sea of schemes to enrich insurance companies was the public option, and it is now off the table. Around the world, the only types of plans that work are those that phase commercial interests COMPLETELY OUT OF HEALTH CARE, and yet, Obama has already capitulated to them and not only makes no move to cut them out, but is further empowering them, at the expense of poor people who cannot afford them. (But will soon be forced to pay for anyway). Time to stand up, people. Tell your congressment the insurance companies are rich enough, don’t hand them ever escalating profits while quality of care continues to decline.
(http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/08282009/transcript1.html )
BILL MOYERS: MONEY-DRIVEN MEDICINE, a film produced by Alex Gibney, Peter Bull and Chris Matonti; directed by Andy Fredericks; and based on Maggie Mahar’s book of the same name.
Log on to pbs.org and click on BILL MOYERS JOURNAL – Maggie Mahar will be there to answer your questions online. We’ll link you to the Money-Driven Medicine website where there’s more info about the book and the film. We’ll also link you to some analysis of what advocates of reform are up against in taking on the health insurance industry, the drug lobby, and the Wall Street equity firms.
Take a look at this recent cover of BUSINESS WEEK. Reporters Chad Terhune and Keith Epstein write that the CEO’s of the giant insurance companies should be smiling – their lobbyists have already won. Quote: “no matter what specifics emerge in the voluminous bill Congress may send to President Obama this fall, the insurance industry will emerge more profitable.”
And remember that television ad Barack Obama made as a candidate for president?
BARACK OBAMA: The pharmaceutical industry wrote into the prescription drug plan that Medicare could not negotiate with drug companies. And you know what, the chairman of the committee who pushed the law through went to work for the pharmaceutical industry making $2 million a year. Imagine that. That’s an example of the same old game-playing in Washington. I don’t want to learn how to play the game better. I want to put an end to the game-playing.
BILL MOYERS: Now look at this recent story in the LOS ANGELES TIMES. Lo and behold, since the election, the pharmaceutical industry’s $2 million dollars a year superstar lobbyist Billy Tauzin has morphed into President Obama’s pal. Tauzin says the President has promised not to pressure the drug companies to negotiate with the government for lower drug prices and has agreed not to allow cheaper drugs to be imported from Canada or Europe – contrary to the position taken by candidate Obama…
Each of these stories illuminates the scarlet thread that runs through Maggie Mahar’s book – the story of how today’s market-driven medical system gives Wall Street investors life and death control over our health care, turning medicine into a profit machine instead of a social service to meet human need. That’s the conflict at the heart of next month’s showdown in Washington.
I’m Bill Moyers. See you next time.
Piqued your interest? Also read http://www.moneydrivenmedicine.org/in-the-news/58-money-driven-medicine-producer-alex-gibney-healthcare-dons-on-the-dole
http://bit.ly/3ZIqTu