Twelve Things We'd Say About Health

... if we weren't afraid of getting sued"
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Obama Health Care: Taking on Big Pharma

"Taking on Big Pharma

Paul Jay continues his conversation with Roger Hickey of the Campaign for America's Future at the Tides Foundation's Momentum conference in San Francisco. The first segment of this interview was done before President Obama's speech about his health care reform. Now, after the speech, they speak about what the president said and the feasibility of the health reform taking on the Single Payer system which would allow for everyone to be covered. They also speak about President Obama's centrism, and that his collaboration with major pharmaceutical companies, also known as Big Pharma. Hickey says that questions about the functioning of the drug and insurance industries and the deal President Obama invariably agreed to with Big Pharma, "are now politicized questions in the United States of America, while a few years ago they were not. Whether or not we get a good bill, and I think we will, that would be only the beginning of the process of getting public power countervailing and regulating and cutting back the private power of those insurance and drug industries that control our lives."

Bio
Roger Hickey is co-director of the Campaign for America's Future, an organization launched by 100 prominent Americans to expand the national debate about America's economic future. The Campaign seeks to empower working Americans, middle-class families, and the poor to make their voices heard in support of a populist economic agenda and an expansion of democracy. Recently, Hickey organized and helped to lead a national coalition of citizen leaders known as Americans United to Protect Social Security."

With thanks to the The Real News Network and the Tides Foundation.

NYT: Big Food VS. Big Insurance

Image: LAST BREAKFAST by Ron English

"...Our success in bringing health care costs under control ultimately depends on whether Washington can summon the political will to take on and reform a second, even more powerful industry: the food industry.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, three-quarters of health care spending now goes to treat “preventable chronic diseases.” Not all of these diseases are linked to diet — there’s smoking, for instance — but many, if not most, of them are.

We’re spending $147 billion to treat obesity, $116 billion to treat diabetes, and hundreds of billions more to treat cardiovascular disease and the many types of cancer that have been linked to the so-called Western diet. One recent study estimated that 30 percent of the increase in health care spending over the past 20 years could be attributed to the soaring rate of obesity, a condition that now accounts for nearly a tenth of all spending on health care.

The American way of eating has become the elephant in the room in the debate over health care. The president has made a few notable allusions to it, and, by planting her vegetable garden on the South Lawn, Michelle Obama has tried to focus our attention on it. Just last month, Mr. Obama talked about putting a farmers’ market in front of the White House, and building new distribution networks to connect local farmers to public schools so that student lunches might offer more fresh produce and fewer Tater Tots. He’s even floated the idea of taxing soda."

~ Michael Pollan
Read the rest of his op-ed at the New York Times

Humor: Help Dr. Frist Find His Lost Kitty!

Link to spoof

Bill Frist medical experiments controversy

HCA scandal (Forbes)


Is your health insurance making you feel like a cat in a cage?