Healthcare Industry sends out 50,000 operatives to infitrate town hall meetings

If the American Health Insurance Plans' (AHIP) latest move doesn't make you furious, then you probably didn't have access to healthcare, and have died sometime during the night. My condolences to your kith and kin.

For the rest of us, still in the land of the living, here's the scoop: The Congress has been debating healthcare options and many members have been holding town hall meetings, requesting opinions from their constituents online, etc. At the same time, the Healthcare Industry has launched a full court press in Washington with its lobbyists—spending an additional 41% (about $35,000,000--in the first quarter alone), to ensure their interests are met, according to USA Today.

No surprise there, but think about that for a moment. Our Healthcare system has become extremely corrupted and virtually everyone agrees that changes need to be made. Health insurance companies are taking premiums from their members, giving pharmaceutical companies and healthcare providers their cut and all three are spending phenomenal amounts to influence Congress to allow said companies to continue to screw over their clients. That's you and me for those still in the land of the living.

That's not all, according to The Wall Street Journal they have recently organized an AstroTurf movement by mobilizing as many as 50,000 insurance company employees to crash the Town Hall meetings and act as shills. This is disruptive and unfair, but...not really surprising considering the company these guys keep.

Big Pharma is spending big bucks to bilk billions

The pharmaceutical companies are leading the pack on this one. Let's look at those guys and gals first, shall we? The top lobbying group of Big Pharma is the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PRMA). The PRMA Spent about $3.6M in Q1 of 2008, and about $6.9M in Q1 2009—up 91%! That's a lot of money lining the coffers of those representing us. That would be bad enough, but when you look at what its individual members are up to, it gets worse.

Pfizer Corp and its subsidiaries have plead guilty to violating anti-trust laws (one count of price fixing and one count of market allocation—1999), Fraud (the second largest healthcare fraud case in US history—2004), and one count of offering a kickback (which caused them to be permanently excluded from participating in ALL federal health care programs—2007) and many others. Notice I said PLEAD GUILTY, not were found guilty, not made a deal to settle out of court—these are all Federal charges brought by the Justice Department, and not civil actions. Think about that and about these CRIMINALS, these FELONS, by the very definition thereof, are likely to do in the future.

Still not convinced? Then lets look at Merck & Co. While these folks have kept themselves out of criminal courts for the most part (though one of their acquisitions, Schering-Plough has plead guilty to defrauding Medicaid—2004), they have brought us wonderful medications to make our lives better, if considerably shorter such as: Vioxx (which ended in permanent recall and the largest class-action settlement in US History), the children's vaccine HiB (1.2M unit recall of batches of the vaccine used to prevent meningitis and pneumonia in infants from a contaminated facility, given in three doses starting at two months old), Fosamax (which treats osteoporosis, but can cause osteocronosis—rotting of the jawbone—it's not like old people need to eat, right), and Gardasil (HPV vaccine primarily administered to prepubescent girls, reactions occur more often than the the disease it was developed to prevent and can prove horrifically fatal in an Ebola-like fashion).

But wait, there's more. Wyeth brought us Fen-phen, and Bristol Myers-Squibb plead guilty to one count of lying to Federal Trade Commission investigators in 2007 in an ongoing Anti-Trust investigation. These are not exhaustive lists, these are just the tip of the iceberg in an industry where top execs have faced prison sentences in the course of “business as usual.” Big Pharma is run by crooks, scam artists, and people more concerned with making (or stealing) a buck than the lives of children. And guess what? The above-mentioned lobby/companies are spending a combined $16 Million to tell your Congress about how best to “treat” you. Isn't that exciting!

Health Insurers ensuring "business as usual"

To be fair, Big Pharma isn't the only dog in this fight. There's also the Health Insurance/maintenance companies. Let's look at these bastions of moral ambiguity: CIGNA and Pacificare were both involved in the above-mentioned fraud involving Schering-Plough. The New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance fined Aetna Health Inc. for refusing to appropriately cover certain services, including emergency treatment, in 2007. And finally, health benefits provider Humana Inc. engaged in widespread misconduct in Medicare marketing in 2006, according to Oklahoma's insurance commissioner, Kim Holland (not only did they have 68 unlicensed “agents” on their roster, they were systematically misleading Medicare recipients). Oh, and even though they are providing policies “to insure against unforeseen loss,” if you cause them an unforeseen loss by getting too sick or by getting sick too often, they will drop you faster than their own stock prices drop when they loose their “Federal subsidies.” That's right, taking handouts from We the People is the only way some of these creeps stay in business.

Hospital patients will be billed, even if they aren't actually in the hospital

Finally there are the people who actually provide “care,” like HCA – The Hospital Corporation of American. Not only are they our largest healthcare provider, HCA also plead guilty to the largest healthcare fraud case in US history (arising from false claims submitted to Medicare and other federal health programs—2003). Then there was HealthEssentials Solutions Inc. which plead...Guilty to making false statements to...Federal investigators regarding false billing statements to Medicare. There are plenty of other companies involved in stories just like these, but I'm pretty sure you can see a pattern emerging.

In Summation

The Healthcare industry seems to break existing laws as a matter of standard business practice. When they do so, they profit in the millions, sometimes billions of dollars—oh, and people die. The longest term any major healthcare executive has been sentenced (that I can find) has been a year and a day. Would you sit in jail for a year for a million dollars? How about just over $46 million? That's what Ronald Williams, chairman and CEO of Aetna was given in compensation in 2007—the same year New Jersey fined his company $9M for refusing to, among other things, cover emergency treatment that they were required by law to provide—and he didn't even have to sit in jail for an hour, much less a year.

The Healthcare companies have run the show long enough. A good number can't survive without state and Federal subsidies. It's time to stop these crooks from profiting, quite literally, through the misery and suffering of others. Now they are not only going to Congress and whining about the proposed changes in the works (and spending millions to do it), they are sending out shills to infiltrate town hall meetings.

Enough is enough. If you rely on these corporations' sense of honor and decency, people die. Attempt to regulate them, they just break the law. If they keep jacking up the prices, we may all be on a more faith-based system of healthcare. One where we pray we don't get sick or hurt, and if we do, that we just die.

Fix it Now!