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Terry DuBose (Little Rock, AR)

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Mighty Patriotic of them

By Terry DuBose - Nov 17th, 2009 at 2:40 am EST

November 16, 2009; New York Times

Drug Makers Raise Prices in Face of Health Care Reform By DUFF WILSONEven as drug makers promise to support Washington’s health care overhaul by shaving $8 billion a year off the nation’s drug costs after the legislation takes effect, the industry has been raising its prices at the fastest rate in years.In the last year, the industry has raised the wholesale prices of brand-name prescription drugs by about 9 percent, according to industry analysts. That will add more than $10 billion to the nation’s drug bill, which is on track to exceed $300 billion this year. By at least one analysis, it is the highest annual rate of inflation for drug prices since 1992. The drug trend is distinctly at odds with the direction of the Consumer Price Index, which has fallen by 1.3 percent in the last year.

Read on...

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"Corporate Health Care" is an oxymoron

By Terry DuBose - Mar 8th, 2009 at 11:56 am EDT

Also listed in: 5 groups

The Republicans shout “free markets,” but their words casts doubt that they have read Adam Smith’s 1776 publication, “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations,” or what he wrote about corporations. Smith basically believed that corporations were an interference with a “free market”, limited competition, and a way to “fix prices.” Rush Limbaugh preaches free markets, but some human activities are better accomplished by society such as national defense, fire-fighting, highways, streets; and it now appears, health care.

The USA’s health care system is broken and bankrupting businesses. GM has complained about how health insurance is dragging them down for years, while Japan’s auto companies do not have to deal with this issue directly. We pay more and have the worst outcomes of any modern industrialized nation. NeoCons talk about “free markets,” while insurance corporations tell patients which “preferred provider” physicians they can see, and tell the physicians how many diagnostic and therapeutic procedures they cannot order. And everyone, patients, physicians, and hospitals alike, are begging the insurance system to pay for health care as promised. Yet, if a patient misses an insurance premium payment, the corporation will cancel the policy in a heartbeat.

There is a fundamental conflict of interest in “corporate health care” because corporations by law must put the stockholder's profit above any other consideration, including patient care and the environment. For-profit health care reduces the Hippocratic Oath of “First, do no harm” to “You money or your life.” Peace, Terry J. DuBose

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Barack Obama's Grandmother

By Terry DuBose - Nov 3rd, 2008 at 5:23 pm EST

I just heard that Barack Obama's grandmother just died. Is this true?

Barack, sorry for your loss... I wish she could have seen you win. Peace, Terry

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More on USA Health Care

By Terry DuBose - Jul 23rd, 2008 at 12:42 pm EDT

This came to me by way of my sister who is watching the health care issues very closely.

Peace, Terry

From the New England Journal of MedicineVolume 358:549-551February 7, 2008Number 6Market-Based Failure — A Second Opinion on U.S. Health Care Costs
Robert Kuttner

U.S. health care expenditures rose 6.7% in 2006, the government recently reported. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, total health care expenditures exceeded $2.1 trillion, or more than $7,000 for every American man, woman, and child.1 Medicare costs jumped a record 18.7%, driven by the new privatized drug benefit. Total health care spending, now amounting to 16% of the gross domestic product, is projected to reach 20% in just 7 years.

<snip>Here is a second opinion. Changing demographics and medical technology pose a cost challenge for every nation's system, but ours is the outlier. The extreme failure of the United States to contain medical costs results primarily from our unique, pervasive commercialization. The dominance of for-profit insurance and pharmaceutical companies, a new wave of investor-owned specialty hospitals, and profit-maximizing behavior even by nonprofit players raise costs and distort resource allocation. Profits, billing, marketing, and the gratuitous costs of private bureaucracies siphon off $400 billion to $500 billion of the $2.1 trillion spent, but the more serious and less appreciated syndrome is the set of perverse incentives produced by commercial dominance of the system. [emphasis mine BH]

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Single Payer Health Care needed.

By Terry DuBose - Jul 21st, 2008 at 12:37 am EDT

Also listed in: Arkansas for Obama | Health Care for All - Arkansas for Single-Payer | Little Rock Obama

Right now the USA, the country dominating the world, is 37th in health care according to the “The World Health Organization's ranking of the world's health systems”:http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html

33 Chile

34 Denmark

35 Costa Rica

37 United States of America

38 Slovenia

39 Cuba

By Alexandra Marks | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor ; May 05, 2004NEW YORK – Americans spend twice as much on healthcare as other countries, but it turns out that they're not getting twice the quality for the price when they go to the doctor or hospital.http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0505/p02s01-uspo.html

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Energy Policy

By Terry DuBose - Jul 20th, 2008 at 11:08 pm EDT

Conservatives continue to call for drilling and burning all of our domestic petroleum now; how does that support national security? Why is it that anti-environmental conservatives cannot see that in less than 100 years the world has passed the global “oil production peak.” The peak was passed in the last four years according to the International Energy Agency. The situation will worsen as China, India, and other developing nations attempt to raise their standards of living to what we have been fortunate to enjoy. Folks, the easy ride is over. If we burn up all the domestic petroleum (ANWR, off shore & anything else we can find), then what do we do? President Carter told us 30 years ago, “Our decision about energy will test the character of the American people and the ability of the President and the Congress to govern. This difficult effort will be the ‘moral equivalent of war’.” Of course the Republicans did not listen then either. Have they no care or concern for their grandchildren? It is time to support conservation, and alternative, renewable energy with our tax dollars; like the Republicans supported tax breaks for 6000 lb. vans, pickups and SUVs in 2003. We need to slow down, use mass-transit, and walk more. We and the Earth will be healthier for it. Peace, Terry J. DuBose

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