Study: Insurance companies hold billions in fast food stock

Imagine that.

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?

Creative Aging With the Raging Grannies

The Raging Grannies "bared all" at the Creative Aging Symposium held in San Francisco, June 15, 2009.
Posing as the scheduled entertainment for the symposium, they took the stage and made the case for Single Payer Health Care Reform.

The Symposium was sponsored, in part, by an insurance company, and also gets funds from AARP which acts very much like a corporate insurance company and is against any health care reform that would eliminate insurance companies.

IN THE VIDEO: Some members of the crowd look suspicious, others sing along with the Grannies who croon, "We won't feed CEO's anymore!" to the tune of This Little Light of Mine.
Eight-minute QuickTime movie. 36MB at Link


Do you have the right stuff to be a Raging Granny?
Raging Grannies Net - with Song Lyrics
Some Raging Granny Songs
Raging Grannies Official Site
Raging Grannies Film Launch
Link to buy Raging Grannies CD
Link to buy Raging Grannies book

Worms infect more poor Americans than thought

Doctors scoff, but Americans may have as many parasites as people in third-world countries do. Sequelae can be neurological, as parasites rob us of needed nutrients, and once in the body, can go to the brain.

Image: Neurocystercosis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cysticercosis
Read a discussion of health care and parasites at Democratic Underground and marvel at America's lack of health care and the billions going towards swine flu while nothing is done about parasites.
You may also find this information of interest.
Link
Link

From truth to fiction....
Colin Wilson's sci fi/horror novel THE MIND PARASITES thrilled us years ago, and we're delighted by this great review: http://realitystudio.org/texts/reviews/mind-parasites/
Wilson's parasites seem to be the sinister love child of
Dow's Scrubbing bubbles... and Cthulu.

Why does your insurer know what meds you take?

"That prescription you just picked up at the drugstore could hurt your chances of getting health insurance.

An untold number of people have been rejected for medical coverage for a reason they never could have guessed: Insurance companies are using huge, commercially available prescription databases to screen out applicants based on their drug purchases.

Privacy and consumer advocates warn that the information can easily be misinterpreted or knowingly misused. At a minimum, the practice is adding another layer of anxiety to a marketplace that many consumers already find baffling. "It's making it harder to find insurance for people," says Jay Horowitz, an independent insurance agent in Overland Park, Kan.

The obstacle primarily confronts people seeking individual health insurance, not those covered under an employer's plan. Walter and Paula Shelton of Gilbert, La., applied to Humana (HUM) in February. They were rejected by the large Louisville insurer after a company representative pulled their drug profiles and questioned them over the telephone about prescriptions from Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) and Randalls, part of the Safeway grocery chain, for blood-pressure and anti-depressant medications.

MENTAL HEALTH IS A RED FLAG
Walter Shelton, a 57-year-old safety consultant in the oil and gas industry, says he tried to explain that the medications weren't for serious ailments. The blood-pressure prescription related to a minor problem his wife, Paula, had with swelling of her ankles. The antidepressant was prescribed to help her sleep—a common "off-label" treatment doctors advise for some menopausal women. But drugs for depression and other mental health conditions are often red flags to insurers."

Read the rest here