Thom Hartmann: 'Greece’s New Americanized Health Care System'

Source:Russia Today- Thom Hartmann's talk show, on President Vladimir Putin's Russia Today.

"Just when the austerity-ravaged people of Greece thought things couldn’t get any worse for them, their universal healthcare system is dismantled and turned into an American-style death system.

As the New York Times reports this week, the Greek healthcare system that ensured coverage for all of its citizens before the financial crisis hit has today been completely decimated by Conservative technocrats and austerity-pushers.

In the past, Greece provided universal care thanks to employers, individuals, and the government contributing to a fund to administer medical services to the entire population. Even those Greeks who lost their jobs still received health benefits for one year, and after those benefits expired, Greece made sure those individuals still received the healthcare they needed at no cost to them.

But then, as we all know, the banksters swept into Greece and swindled the country. And when the global financial markets went bust, Greece was left with a debt crisis and the banksters demanded ALL of their failed investments back. So the banksters decided to suck whatever money they could out of Greece’s social services, in particular, its healthcare system.

So in July of 2011, the banksters and technocrats put up their demands. They said they’d give Greece a bailout to ward off complete collapse, but in return they wanted a big chunk of the money that was being used to treat sick Greek citizens. Under pressure from the entire Eurozone, Greece agreed to the deal.

And for the first time, unemployed Greeks who had lost their health benefits now had to pay out of their own pocket for any medical care they needed. If that sounds familiar to you, it’s because that’s essentially how our healthcare system works today. If you don’t have a job, and you don’t have healthcare, you’re on your own.

And while Conservatives here tout our healthcare system as the best in the world – even though every international study disproves this claim – the Greek people are horrified with that they now have to deal with: Americanized healthcare.

As Dr. Kostas Syrigos, the head of Greece’s largest oncology department told the Times, “We are moving to the same situation that the United States has been in, where when you lose your job and you are uninsured, you aren’t covered.”

Today, that’s the case for roughly half of Greece’s 1.2 million long-term unemployed workers.

As reported by the Times, one of those unemployed workers is a woman named Elena who was diagnosed with breast cancer a year ago, but under the new Greek law could not receive any medical care because her benefits had expired and she had no money. Without treatment, her cancer grew to the size of an orange and broken through her skin leaving a gaping wound. At this point, any sort of medical treatment for Elena was hopeless. She was, essentially, given a death sentence by the banksters.

After seeing Elena, Dr. Syrigos told the Times, “Things like that are described in textbooks, but you never see them because until now, anybody who got sick in this country could always get help…In Greece right now, to be unemployed means death.”

The same is true in the United States right now where being unemployed and being sick is literally a death sentence in the American healthcare system. As a 2009 study by Harvard University found, 45,000 Americans die every single year because they lack health insurance.

The difference between the United States and Greece is we’ve never had a universal healthcare system that covers everyone like Greece has. So when we hear that tens of thousands of Americans die because they don’t have health insurance – plus thousands more who are condemned to death by for-profit health insurance death panels denying treatment – most Americans shrug it off as just the way things work here.

And there are those like Mitt Romney who say, “We don’t have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don’t have insurance…No, you go to the hospital, you get treated, you get care, and it’s paid for.” Unfortunately, that’s only after your cancer has grown to the size of an orange and ruptured through your skin and you’re already well into your death sentence. That’s the sort of ignorance you’d expect from a Plutocrat who resides in a different United States than the rest of us.

That’s why we should all be paying close attention to how the Greek people handle their new Americanized healthcare system, because it will give us a clue as to what we as Americans, living in the wealthiest nation on the planet, should be demanding from our government when it comes to health services.

In the face of rising unemployment, lost pensions, and skyrocketing suicide rates, we’ve seen Greek workers pour into the streets demanding an end to austerity. And now, faced with a new healthcare system like ours that doesn’t care for the nation’s most vulnerable, then expect those protests to grow even fiercer.

It’s still unclear what the endgame will be for Greece in its fight against Conservative austerity. But they certainly won’t go down without a fight. And it’s time for us in the United States to at least begin our fight for universal healthcare."

This article is from TruthOut

Maybe Greece will move to design their health care system like France, where the French get to decide for themselves how and who they pay for their health care, as long as they pay for it. Meaning they pay for their health insurance and they have the choice of buying the public option. Which is what Democrats wanted to do in America in 2009-10. Or they can purchase private health insurance. 

The fact is there is no such thing as free health care. You pay for it out-of- pocket, or you purchase health insurance, you pay for it out of your savings or you pay for it through taxes. But the fact is you pay for your health care and its just a matter of how you pay for it. And maybe this will give the Hellenic Republic of Greece and opportunity to realize that their socialist government is simply too big and there's a limit to what the Greek Government can do for its people with their money. And they'll empower Greeks to be able to make more decisions with their own lives.

The Nation: Buddy Roemer: 'Banks Need to Put the Customer First'

Source:The Nation- 2012 Reform Party nominee for President Governor Buddy Roemer.

"The repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 paved the way for big banks to gamble with customer money, and eventually trigger the biggest financial crisis in the US since the Great Depression, says former Louisiana governor and Republican presidential candidate Buddy Roemer. "I'm not against large," Roemer says about banking practices in the country, "What I'm against is dumb. What I'm against is greed. What I'm against is the banker first and the customer second. It ought to be reversed." 

From The Nation

Governor Roemer is sort guilty of stating the obvious here but he's correct. Big banks need to put their customers first, or least calculate them in their profit motive thinking. And then they'll make more money at the end of the day, because more people would want to do business with them.

Mitt Romney: 'Big Day Marred by Etch A Sketch Remark'

Source:CNN- Ann Romney vs Rick Santorum.

Source:The Daily Journal 

"Mitt Romney picked up a highly prized endorsement Wednesday from former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush after a convincing victory the night before in the Illinois primary but then saw a top adviser’s televised comment provide new ammunition to his trailing rivals in the Republican presidential race.

Eric Fehrnstrom, Romney’s senior campaign adviser, was asked in a CNN interview Wednesday morning whether the former Massachusetts governor had been forced to adopt conservative positions in the rugged race that could hurt his standing with moderates in November’s general election.

“I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes,” Fehrnstrom responded. “It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up, and we start all over again.”  

From CNN 

"For a candidate who has spent months battling the title of "flip-flopper," perhaps the last thing he would want associated with his name is an Etch A Sketch, those do-over drawing boards that let you shake your scribbles away with the flick of a wrist.

Unfortunately Mitt Romney won't be able to shake away this comparison any time soon. When his campaign spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom was asked this morning on CNN how the GOP frontrunner would make the pivot to the general election, Fehrnstrom compared Romney's primary campaign to an Etch A Sketch, a gaffe that spread like wildfire to Romney's rival's stump speeches." 

Source:ABC News- 2012 Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum.

From ABC News 

A President Mitt Romney and I doubt this would ever happen, but if it did it would be better for comedians. Because he's a gaffe and flip-flopping machine, that would provide comedians and bloggers mountains of material to make fun of him. 

Every comedian in America should endorse Mitt Romney for president for their own careers. Because they would make all the material they had against George W. Bush look as original as the New York Yankees winning the World Series, or Lebron James playing in the NBA Finals and losing. Because when it comes to taking political positions for Mitt, it depends on which group he's talking to and which Mitt is speaking to that group. 

Businessman Mitt, religious fundamentalist Mitt, or whoever Mitt is when he's not running for whatever political office he's interested in at the time.

The fact that someone like Mitt Romney who flips backs and forth more often than tennis balls at a tennis match, could win the Republican nomination for president, is like a quarterback winning the starting position for an expansion team: "Since no one else seriously tried out and you haven't done any time in any mental institutions and don't see same-sex marriage as a threat national security, we'll give the job to you. And good luck to you as we're more interested in 2016 anyway. When we might have at least on candidate who can actually win." 

Mitt Romney won the GOP presidential nomination, because he seemed like the only person who was sane to the GOP establishment and would embarrass them the least and not cost them the House of Representatives. Which they can't afford to lose in 2012.

So yeah, a President Mitt Romney (I'm shitting bricks just saying that) would have been great for comedy and blogging interesting. Especially bloggers who right comedy and I'm one of them. But bad for the American people, because for them to have any idea what their President thinks about any issue, they would have to listen and read every single he says. Because his positions could change the next time he opens his mouth about anything depending on who he's talking too. And what the polls in the Republican Party are saying.

President Romney Senior Adviser- "Aw Mr. President, your current position on that issue is not popular."

President Romney- "Okay, I'll change it."

Senior Adviser- "But you just took that position yesterday."

"Romney-  "So what! I'm speaking to Americans. Their memories aren't that long anyway."

That is what a President Romney would be like. Who knows what the President, because he doesn't even know. Great for comedy, but bad for the country.