Senators Klobuchar, Franken and staff,



Please SAVE THE PUBLIC OPTION, DO NOT GIVE UP!!!



My mother had to pay cash to go to Switzerland for cancer treatments to save her life.



Our surgeons bone stimulator supply company wrote off a $1000.00 bill just because we asked them too. Medical supply company's have no oversight as to what they charge, WE ARE BEING RIPPED OFF!!!



THE CEO OF UNITED HEALTH MADE $60,000.00 AN HOUR IN 2005 (based on a 2080 work hour year).

Health care costs are killing us!!



Signed

Just as the Iraq war was used to steal public funds and launder them through Halliburton, the same modus operandi can be seen in the fall of the markets. Bushco has proposed a 700 billion dollar bailout of the financial markets with no oversight. The problem is, the Democrats might just do it.

How far must we fall? How valuable are these people that risk other peoples money? I don't pretend to know everything about economics, but I'd like to know where all the money went. It had to go somewhere right? Where is Halliburton keeping all its (our) money? In a USB bank in Switzerland? I heard an interesting line the other day: Socialized Risk. It means that taxpayers bail out distressed financial markets. This is what conservatives are proposing. They can deal with socialized risk but have a problem when it comes to health and education? Try explaining that to an ill informed but strident right winger. They cant even grasp the concept!

The bottom line is that in order to steal funds bushco needs chaos. Whats more, it appears they will steal the funds with the blessings of Congress. Now might be the time in which our country absolutely needs radical change.

In my household we live basically from check to check, and though my job is a crappy one, I have no fear of downsizing. Adam Smith might have been accurate to describe the 'invisible hand'; this might be a massive economic 'correction' required by the market. No doubt there would be suffering, I guess it would all depend on if you want to slowly pull or rip off the band-aid.

Finally, I spent some time reading "The Prince" by Machiavelli. It is absolutely frightening how that book mirrors our current neo-con agenda. Lie to stay in power and war is acceptable foreign policy. I heard one day on Ed Schultz' show that Karl Rove reads "The Prince" every year. Somebody needs to stop bushco and his followers before the world deems us unnecessary.

The End of the Saga.

The story goes like this. My wife had back fusion surgery on her lower back in mid June of this year. She was given a 'bone stimulator' which promotes bone growth. The bone stimulator is a prescription device of which my insurance pays 80%. We are responsible for the balance. After the surgery when the bone stimulator sales rep came to visit my wife she asked him about the cost of the device to which he referred my wife to his wife because "he doesn't do the billing". The surgeon and his assistants were also asked and they told us they didn't know the cost.

We get a statement in the mail about mid July stating that the bone stimulator company requested $5800.00 for the device (about the size of a walk-man for those of you who remember those things). I could not believe it. Late July we received a bill stating that the insurance company approved a device cost of $4700.00 and paid 80% of that leaving us responsible for $940.00. I posted my story and a very kind DU'er offered her bone stimulator for us to use so we could return the one we received. She mailed it to us and we still have it, though we are going to send it back to her with a nice little gift for her kindness. Here is where the story gets good; here is the problem with our health care system.

I was furious that the piece of junk bone stimulator that they 'gave' us was costing $4700.00. I called the surgeons office to ask his assistant why they use 'brand A' versus 'brand B'. They had no answer other than 'brand A' is the one they prefer to use. They refused to answer whether or not they both worked. According to both internet sites describing both devices, they are both used to this day after surgery. The only difference is 'brand B' is free to us. I must point out that we were given no CHOICE in the matter. Choice seems to be the meme of the day.

I called my insurance provider and asked what I could do. The wires from the device had frayed already; it seems this device has that problem because an additional part was provided with the fancy carrying case that came with it. My insurance provider stated I could appeal the price paid, to which I requested the necessary paperwork. I have since received the paperwork.

Finally I called the sales rep's wife who provided the device and left a message on her answering machine stating I want to speak with her regarding the billing. I left the message in the morning and received no reply that day.

The following day (the 2nd week in August) we had a phone message on our answering machine that referred us to another billing representative at the home office in New Jersey. Long story short, the New Jersey rep dealt with people who are unable to pay their portion of the bill. That day we never called her back. The following day the New Jersey rep called my wife at work (a number to our knowledge we never provided to anyone but the surgeons office). The rep spoke to my wife for a couple minutes asking questions about our income. After this brief conversation, the rep decided that we qualify, without submitting any paperwork, to have our portion of the bill written off. She has since sent us a letter stating that we have a zero balance.

I am embarrassed to say, my fellow DU'ers, we have accepted the bribe.

Our health care crisis is not even remotely related to choice. Choice is smoke; I believe the overwhelming majority of physicians are competent. The problem is accounting. Someone decided that this simple, POS bone stimulator was worth almost $6000.00. It is not. Medical billing should be regulated, price caps should be enforced. I come to this conclusion having had the worst summer of my entire life: a back surgery, a tonsillectomy, foot surgery, inguinal hernia surgery and an entire family with pneumonia for the month of July. I have become familiar with medical billing practices.

First a bit of history on my terrible summer thus far.

After school let out in June my son had his tonsils out and foot surgery at the same time. My wife then had lower back surgery four days later. I figure, I'm fine, take a bit of FMLA and three weeks later we'll be able to begin our summer. Not so. The wife gets a huge blood clot in her leg.

My younger son develops pneumonia. In three weeks time after his initial surgery my older son develops pneumonia and so do I. After burning my sick and vacation time on FMLA I have to burn the balance of my sick and vacation time trying to get better. I'm not completely healthy, but I have to go back to work tonight (I'm a 911 dispatcher).

So the wife sneaks up on me and tells me that her "bone stimulator" costs $5800.00 of which we are responsible for $990.00. She asked the rep who was pushing the thing how much it costs when he gave it to us and 'he didnt know, his wife handles that'. The doctor recommends the device because it 'promotes bone growth'.

In the last 30 days we have been to the hospital or clinic at least 20 times, each time a $15.00 copay with additional costs for both prescriptions that work and those that don't, a trip to the ER and three CT scans.

The bone stimulator is a little bit bigger than a cell phone. $5800.00???????? For that thing?????
When the rep comes over he brings a device that 'measures' bone growth. We dont know what it is or how to read it but he says it works.

WTF?? I know there are people in much worse condition than we are, however; we are not rich. To pay for the bone stimulator I'm going to have to use part of our home equity loan. Anybody out there have experience with these things? Are they BS? Does anyone have a money tree in their backyard I can pick from?

I come to DU because there isn't as much dissonance as there is on other posting sites. I've been to my beloved Minnesota Wild message board and it is rife with oil and war loving posters. I just don't have the gumption to battle these people anymore. I made the mistake of going on the Comcast message boards and found the make-up of Kool-aid drinking, flat earth society members to be about the same ratio.

So, I've decided to take a break. The sheer level of ego- and ethno-centric thought is overwhelming.

It appears that the bottom line is that we can never go home again. The rules have been permanently changed. Since Bush did away with the GPO he can now refuse to open e/mails that state that global warming is real. It reminds me of my Teamster representative that sends back an auto-reply to all e/mails sent to him. They say "do not trust the e/mail system". And when you try and call the guy he never calls back.

Dick Cheney continues to get rich based on conversations he had with energy producing executives. He is a public servant and yet refuses to provide the transcripts of what was said during those meetings.

George has lied us into a war where there may just be over a million dead people! Where is the outrage? The simple fact is that there is no outrage. I'm outraged but its not like I can leave my job to go scream and yell on a corner (which is what I should be doing). Its not like I can leave my kids without a dad for months on end to go raise hell in places where it should be raised.

The fact of the matter is that George Bush and his cronies crushed the notion of incrementalism. He got things done; the result of which is our situation now. Each and every corner he cut has resulted in disaster. And now neither side will be happy to return to the old ways of taking time to solve our problems. The big difference is that now we owe China our future and we act at the whim of Saudi Arabia who holds our economy in the palm of their hands.

It is not that we are incapable of greatness, the problem is that we are no longer willing to sacrifice what it takes to be great. I am just as guilty.

I remember exactly where I was on 9/11. I remember the statement my boss made after we found out it was a terrorist attack. She said "We need to bomb the people who did this back to the stone age". As difficult as it was, I disagreed. If we are to be considered a superpower in the world, we must take this. As much as it hurts, the country has to absorb the pain and just take it. In doing so we would have gained strength from both within and without our own borders.

As a country we reacted with the mindset of a two year old. Revenge, to satisfy our base instincts.

The mysteries that surrounded the weeks after the attack; mistakes made by our national defense agencies, escorting the Bin Ladens safely out of the country, memo's warning of impending attack. We move on to engage in two wars of choice, both wars in countrys where we neither understand the language nor the culture. Afghanistan bankrupted the Soviets, you'd think we would have learned from recent history. Our Afghanistan will be Iraq. People against war at all levels ignored, the thirst for revenge blinding our sense of justice and compassion.

I believe it was Ron Reagan who changed our country from one with a sense of community to being purely commerce oriented. If you dont pay for it, it is worth nothing. Unions gained power through numbers but somewhere along the line the idea was planted that union labor is comprised of loafers and miscreants. They were the heart of the middle class.

Oil is now used to make all manner of products, plastic and otherwise. We decided that cheap is better than good. China now makes everything and we are seriously screwed if they decide to turn off the tap. If China and the Middle East were to turn off the taps simultaneously where would we be?

Ronald Reagan strove to destroy effective government and liberalism. His unintended consequence was that reasonable conservativism was also tied to the same anchor. Now the only discourse we have perpetrates the polarization that was fueled by Newt Gingrich and his lot.

Government is the only protection a society has against the excesses of the greedy and the unfeeling. Once government becomes ineffective we are at the mercy of those who only value money.

The profession I work in does not pay well but it does allow me coach youth hockey and spend time with my family. We've never vacationed in 12 years of marriage and my kids have never seen the inside of a day care facility. I deeply appreciate those who join the armed services. I also believe that without a willing civilian population to support it there is no honorable military. There is honor in everyday work. It is a lifetime of sacrifice through employment that no one appreciates. I would gladly become cannon fodder if our soil was ever invaded. I will not kill for speculation.

Corporations and corporate types who believe soley in the bottom line you are going to burn in hell.