SeniorJunior

Lied to, we are.                                                                                                              Yoda, Senator from Dagobah             When you hear SCARY STUFF about Medicare for All, you are hearing propaganda from the for-profit health insurance companies and their plutocratic pals in the Republican Party.  Look for more reliable sources! I'm serious! A new study in The Lancet by a team of Yale epidemiologists finds that Medicare for All would save more than 68,000 lives and $450 billion in cost EVERY YEAR. Volume 395, Issue 10223 , 15–21 February 2020, Pages 524-533 Truth is Breaking Out All Over There is more and more of this truth telling about single payer. The for-profit health insurance companies have spent and are spending huge sums to keep us repeating their memes, "how are you going to pay for it?" and "socialized medicine!!" Nuts to them.   The on

For-Profit Health Insurance Companies They Are a Plague on all our houses (except theirs, of course) For many decades America has handed the vital insurance responsibility of keeping our citizens healthy and well to corporations driven by profit. It's worked great - for making corporate profit.  Not so much for the citizens. Millions have no health insurance. Millions more have inadequate coverage. Our workforce is constrained and debilitated by the for-profit system. There are some responsibilities that are too important to let profit supercede their fulfillment. The way to a fair and universal health plan for America is to DO AWAY WITH FOR-PROFIT HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANIES. We don't want "socialized medicine" with the government running the health biz. We don't want health care to be "free." We will all pay our fair premiums. We want every penny to be paid by the recipients of the care, just on a progressive ability-to-pay, non-profit insuranc

One Big Plan, Man Bollixed: The Current U.S. Health Care Situation: Our private, mostly unregulated, profit-driven insurance system guarantees by its very nature that millions of citizens, many who are highly productive workers, are either uninsured or under-insured. This situation cannot be improved significantly without eliminating private health insurance as the primary form of healthcare financing. Adding approximately 30% to the cost of healthcare (that's about $300 BILLION A YEAR!) private health insurance is parasitical in that it helps only the owners, stockholders and employees of the insurance companies and does essentially nothing to improve health care. Converting from private health insurance to Single Payer Government Insurance - "Medicare for All" (MFA) faces formidable hurdles, which are addressed in this plan. Hurdles. (I'm talking high hurdles, track fans.) The private health insurance companies are an immense po

Two Thangs, 1. I am now DEFINITELY for the elimination of private health insurance companies. The good old "American Way" of profit-driven health insurance just ain't working, folks, for anybody but those companies, their executives and stockholders. The rest of us are getting regularly screwed, and the country is way worse off for it. When you hear "single payer," that's what they are talking about. The "single" part is a government insurance program that you purchase for a fair, non-profit price. The "payer" part means the bills actually get paid. No delays, no disqualifications, no cancellations, none of the bs the private insurance companies do every day. Here is a great article (and lots of great responses) on just how bad it really is. 2. Dennis Kucinich continues to be a hero of mine. He's got the guts to keep the impeachment of W on the table. To ignore his persistence is getting harder and harder for the "off

"Comments" For several years, most of my opinionating happened on this blog.  Lately, my time at the keyboard has been mostly devoted to fictionalizing.  However, the opinions keep storming up out of my deeper brain centers and are impossible to repress.  So my efforts have moved to making "comments" on various articles, columns and op-eds. I have a sneaking feeling that these tidbits get more readership than they would if they appeared only on this blog. And since they are in response to something (sometimes to other commenters commenting on the column), I don't really have to establish a context, thus I can be pithier.  I love pithy. ANYWAY.... Here are my recent efforts.  Granted they might not make any sense if you didn't read the piece I'm commenting on. But at least you can see I haven't entirely abandoned reality for sci-fi. NEW SEQUENCING   From this point, the latest comments will be here first, rather than at the ever-retreating