If you're serious about boycotting, I'm considering trying to set up a web site dedicated to this idea. I have some friends who are interested in this concept, and they'd like the opportunity to talk with like minded individuals about the economics of this, financial strategies for handling health care costs without insurance, and so forth. Send me an email and let me know if you and anyone you know would be interested in joining. I'm trying to find at least 20 people who have done this before setting up the site, since I think you need a community to have a site. email me at mister.robinson@hotmail.com
I could not possibly agree with you any more when it comes to the spin, public relations, propaganda and marketing tricks being used to subtly manipulate the blind masses straight towards the money. Ever heard of Edward Bernays? Of course, you haven't. He is the Father of Spin and one of the most influential figures of the 20th century. You didn't read about him in your history books because the victors "write" history and they always disguise their keys to success.
"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country." ~ "Propaganda" by Edward Bernays
However, we need to take this one step further because our medical system is even more broken and more corrupt than the insurance industry. They are most certainly putting profits ahead of our health and well-being. In fact, our health and well-being are not even a consideration. The business model of medicine relies on us being sick and staying sick. Show me people who go to the doctor for chronic degenerative diseases such as heart disease, arthritis, diabetes, or caner and are cured or even improved. Now, I am not talking risk factors (the signs and symptoms of disease) but the underlying sickness. Zero! Your body was designed to heal itself but you believe "star wars" medicine is going to save you. If you can't see this with your own eyes then their memes have infected your mind. You have literally been re-programmed to believe in their most profitable story...which is ultimately the key to effective branding/marketing. I congratulate them on being so effective that people are willing to kill themselves to help them profit.
"Commercial interests are so successful in appearing to represent the public's interest that doctors, health policy experts, and the public are unable to discern the commercial distortions of the medical knowledge upon which they rely. 'Quality of care' is now defined largely in ways that best serve the financial interests of drug and other medical industries rather than the health needs of the American people.
In this context, the most urgent challenge facing American medicine is not how to guarantee adequate access, but first to determine "access to what?" Nor is it even how to ensure quality of care, because this presumes that the available scientific evidence is adequate to make that determination. The most important health care issue in the United States today is whether our current method of creating medical knowledge realizes the full potential of medical science to improve our health, and whether this knowledge is then best applied to clinical practice and communicated effectively to the public. By these standards, American medicine is clearly failing to fulfill its promise."
~ "Overdo$ed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine" by Dr. John Abramson (family doctor and clinical faculty of Harvard Medical School)
America needs to wake up but this isn't going to happen anytime soon because part of the American dream is being able to consume unlimited quantities of addictive drugs (alcohol, nicotine caffeine, illegal substances, fat, sugar, salt) which numb their minds. The brainwashing is so dominant that 80% of people feel privileged to waste all of their money on useless activities all designed to keep them blind to the fact they are headed for a cliff.
When Marketing Leads to Unnecessary Deaths:
http://blog.thefolderstore.com/2008/12/03/when-marketing-leads-to-unnecessary-deaths/
About 346 people die every week from lack of health care (health insurance). Thousands of people are losing their health insurance every day because they lost their job, couldn’t (or can't afford to) pay their premiums, or were kicked out by their health insurance company.
These events/occurrences are happening every day while our federal workers and Senators and members of Congress enjoy excellent health care benefits and other benefits at tax payer expense. We're entering flu season, and how many more uninsured people will die from the H1N1 virus and other viruses.
It is shameful, morally reprehensible, and outrageous; but the tax payer (especially ignorant town hall protesters) seems not to care. They rail at government, but have not the guts to stand up and ask for equal treatment.
Members of Congress and the Senate play down this offense by stating they have employer sponsored health insurance. They seem oblivious to the fact or just don’t care that their employer is the tax-payer (Americans).
We pay about 72% of federal employees (and that includes members of Congress and the Senate) health insurance premium. Yep, that’s right, the tax payer pays about 72% or slightly less of federal employees health insurance premium; and if you think about it, we really pay the entire premium because we pay federal employee’s wages and salary (which from that, they pay their share of the balance of that premium).
Why don’t you visit the Federal Employees Health and Benefit website and pay attention to what the entire premium is, and what portion we (tax payer) pay and what portion the federal employee pays.
Are you looking? My, what a large number of (tax payer subsidized) insurance companies and plans these federal employees have to choose from. Sort of like a health insurance exchange … don’t you think?
What really irks me and is the most reprehensible, is that we (the tax payer) is making the corrupt health insurance companies richer and richer while they turn around and deny you and me (the tax payer) coverage/insurance or they won’t pay for certain treatments/tests or they kick us out after they’ve paid an expensive claim or series of claims (which by the way, they’ve reported to the medical information bureau [MIB] for other health insurance and life insurance company members to see … so those other companies can deny you coverage if they so choose).
So again, hundreds of people are dying every day and others losing their health insurance (health care) while the corrupt health insurance companies (that Wendell Potter talks about) get richer and richer; all the while the tax payer pays Congress and Senate member’s health insurance premiums, wages, salary and other benefits.
Do you want this to continue? … Or are you going to tell your Congressman/woman or Senator that you want equal treatment (quality, affordable, comprehensive single payer or public option universal health care), or you’ll simply not support or vote for them ever again? It’s up to you. Make your choice.
This is a continuation of the downhill fiscal and financial slide facing virtually every landscape in America...rural, suburban and urban. The very first seed was planted in 1964, growing into an unhealthy tree that could not be distinguished from the healthy ones then surrounding it (the latter being the ones planted after 1945). From that single toxic tree fell cancerous seeds in 1981 and 1986...seeds that took root and began choking the life out of a heretofore healthy forest. There were brief attempts in 1990 and 1992 to eradicate the unhealthy scourge running rampant across America's fiscal and financial landscape. However, those attempts were completely short circuited in 2001...owing to the single December 12, 2000, swing vote of the supreme Court. The American voting electorate managed to eke out a 53% "mandate" for complete eradication in 2008. The question is, "When will the elected eradicator step back from the trees and look at just how sick the forest has become...just how cloudy the big picture's horizon presently is?" It seems that even new nonnative species have been imported by the descendants of that mad Johnny Appleseed of 1964...and by his descendants in 1981, 1986...and in 2001 when even more toxically expensive species were imported---their shipping containers harboring the nonnative diversionary pipe dreams of "democracy" in SW Asia and "universal" health care in America.
As always ... Money talks and you know the rest!
Pages