Amerindia US Blog

What’s wrong with the world economy? A lot of things, many of which we will discuss. But one of the most appalling, and preventable, are the practices of banks – large, international banks in particular. The good old notion of banks lending money, and making their living by charging interest seems to have long gone by the wayside. In its place the banks have gone mad, and we have let them do it, by their descending into what is essentially gambling. Case in point, as we have mentioned in a previous blog entry, derivatives and credit-default-swaps.

No one says it better than an in an excerpt (below) from a NY Times article. Would banks and bankers be so greedy, so depraved as to make a bet that pays them preposterous profits at the expense of destroying an entire country? It seems so.

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Banks Bet Greece Defaults on Debt They Helped Hide

By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ and ERIC DASH
Published: February 24, 2010, New York Times

Bets by some of the same banks that helped Greece shroud its mounting debts may actually now be pushing the nation closer to the brink of financial ruin.

Echoing the kind of trades that nearly toppled the American International Group, the increasingly popular insurance against the risk of a Greek default is making it harder for Athens to raise the money it needs to pay its bills, according to traders and money managers.

These contracts, known as credit-default swaps, effectively let banks and hedge funds wager on the financial equivalent of a four-alarm fire: a default by a company or, in the case of Greece, an entire country. If Greece reneges on its debts, traders who own these swaps stand to profit.

“It’s like buying fire insurance on your neighbor’s house — you create an incentive to burn down the house,” said Philip Gisdakis, head of credit strategy at UniCredit in Munich.

While so many US companies and financial institutions are run by people focused on breath-taking salaries and benefits for themselves, Vermont comes to the rescue by proposing legislation that blends good business and social benefit. The below guidelines are lifted from the Burlington Free Press. We hope the BFP and Vermonters won’t mind our spreading the news and highlighting credit where it is due.

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From the Burlington Free Press:
Legislation has been introduced in Montpelier that would allow companies to exist for other reasons — providing a social good for the community while returning gains to investors. Such companies would register as a “beneficial corporation.”

Vermont would be the first state to enact such legislation, although similar measures are being considered in several states.

What makes a company a B Corp.

The bill pending in the Vermont Legislature to establish so-called beneficial corporations provides several specific examples of such a benefit:

• Providing low-income or underserved individuals or communities with beneficial products or services.

• Promoting economic opportunity for individuals or communities beyond the creation of jobs in the normal course of business.

• Preserving the environment; improving human health; promoting the arts, sciences or advancement of knowledge.

• Increasing the flow of capital to entities with a public benefit purpose.

The measure requires companies make an annual report, detailing their community benefits. A third party rating agency, possibly B Lab, will score the impact of the company’s efforts and those scores will be public. Companies, however, will not be disqualified from being a benefit corporation if they fail to meet goals.

“We didn’t truly know the dangers of the market, because it was a dark market,” says Brooksley Born, the head of an obscure federal regulatory agency — the Commodity Futures Trading Commission [CFTC] — who not only warned of the potential for economic meltdown in the late 1990s, but also tried to convince the country’s key economic powerbrokers to take actions that could have helped avert the crisis. “They were totally opposed to it,” Born says. “That puzzled me. What was it that was in this market that had to be hidden?”

At the time Brooksley Born was trying to propose regulation it is estimated that 594 Trillion in OTC derivatives were being sold in “black box” markets. “Black box” means no regulation, and actually no recording of who is selling what to whom. There were derivatives, derivatives of derivatives, and derivatives of derivatives of derivatives being sold. And neither the individuals selling, or the buyers, understood what a derivative really was.

A derivative is, as best we can understand, a form of “insurance” that is in essence a form of betting. A simple example is that one could take out insurance on an neighbor’s house, without the owner’s knowledge. And then one could bet against it – sell it short (because of hidden knowledge of its real worth) – in essence, set fire to your neighbor’s house, and then collect the insurance.

Also, derivatives were (are) sold in such secret, that the buyers didn’t (don’t) know how many people have bought the same derivative. So there might be several buyers wanting to collect on a single derivative, while there is only enough to pay one. The complex mathematics of determining a derivative creates a kind of imaginary financial product, with no real money to pay anything.

Derivatives have payed up to 40% profit to the black box buyers. Since the time of Ronald Regan, who elevated Alan Greenspan to Chairman of the Federal Reserve, this market has been growing. Those that got in, sold, and then got out, got the money. The rest of it is a large vacuum with no real money to cover the crisis. Sound like the crash of 1929, with no real money and runs on the bank? We think, yes.

But Brooksley Born knew, warned, tried to stop it, but was defeated by the powers in Washington. Even after this meltdown, the financial lobbyists in Washington are still winning. Regulatory proposals have been written up, but are stalled. The time to move on shutting down further money drain is passing.

US citizens could be asked to poney up yet more money for the unregulated securities and derivative black box deals that go bad, since all this stuff is “too big to fail.” And they will get the apology of having to live in hard times, but not much else. We used to write about and believed that our biggest problem was the players in oil. At least that was one issue that we could see. But the financial games now being played, on a national and worldwide scale that boggles the mind – and brings down whole countries – is what worries us most at this time.

Without transparency and regulation, money that should go to the people who earned it, will continue down the black box hole. How much more financial blood can the average American donate. We are very, very worried to think.

This is a 55 minute program by Frontline of PBS see “The Warning.” After seeing this, we may not understand the mathematics of derivatives, but we do understand the problem. Obama, can you overcome the financial lobbyists and lift up your country?
Frontline: The Warning

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A bit more about Democracy. In a democracy, the people are sovereign. Is that (liberal) populist? – we think so. We also think that the terms “activist” and “socialism” have been unfairly demonized in too much of the US consciousness. Many fellow countries that we count as friends are socialist, and in their commitment to the welfare of their people, they are doing reasonably well.

Somehow the old Cold War opposition to Communism, as an economic system, is still feeding into the term Socialism. And to avoid the now ancient specter of (socialist) Communism “nowhere else in history, have so many [US citizens] voted against their own interests.”

The divide between rich and poor in the US continues to grow. Developing nations bring more of their citizens into a middle class, while in the US the middle class is ever more hard pressed, and dwindles. And help for the Poor, as they are defined, is based on a 40 year old calculation that isn’t updated for fear it will break the bank.

United States people, remember that you, in a Democracy, are sovereign. In Amerindia, we have a monarchy that speaks in the person of we, with the understanding and intent that we, the leader, is representative of, and obliged to, all of the people. Here leaders are sovereign to the people, and people sovereign to their leaders.

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We are distressed, overall, at what has happened to US political parties. Both have been corrupted by lobbying and corporate money. As we can infer from the recent upset in Massachusetts, where a Republican was elected to fill the Senate seat of Democrat Edward Kennedy, the electorate may no longer be so swayed by party, but may just throw up their hands (with their ballots in them) and vote “whatever.” We have received many reports that although the world, even going so far as featuring the news of this upset election on the front of the online BBC World News, was “shocked, shocked”, Massachusetts citizens reacted with a yawn.

Was meaningful health care reform really at stake? It would seem that most voters would agree that the sick should not be denied or thrown off medical insurance, but what else in this ponderous legislation, bulging with pork, was really worthy? Should the American people really rejoice over a 8 billion dollar payout from pharmaceutical companies that take in well over 200 billion every year, at private and taxpayer expense? Is it really fair – or constitutional(!) – to penalize a US citizen, through a government agency (taxation), for not buying under insurance provided by a Private insurance company? We could go on, but what is evident is that, yes, there is a real backlash by a large portion of the middle American electorate that no longer believes that elected representatives are acting in their interests. What were the politicians, and the reporters, missing? What caught them off guard? They failed to predict what might happen in a state where, even though it’s considered “liberal”, there are more Independent voters than Democrat and Republican combined.

So what’s next. Jill Stein declared on February 8th that she would run yet again, this time for governor, and again, with the Green Rainbow (or is it Rainbow Green) party? What is that? It would seem it is a party that comes across as revolutionary, anti-establishment, and pro the downtrodden, oppressed, and disenfranchised. And it defines itself in so many ways as anti-discriminatory. Somehow, this sounds so sixties. It seems an odd choice of focus in a state, Massachusetts, that has a black Governor, and in a country that now has a black president. At some point in the not too distant future, the US will have more people of black, Hispanic, and Oriental heritage than white.

What’s hurting is the US Everyman; those just out of work (who are counted as unemployed), those who have been forced to take jobs below their qualifications for less pay, and those who have just given up (who don’t get counted at all). And their children, who face more difficulty in getting a quality public education, financial assistance for higher education, and a decent job that will help pay off all those loans. The US citizen is not certain for his/her employment, safety, or golden years. But they do have a concrete concern about the costs they are having to pay for all this mismanagement now, and what their children will have to carry as a financial burden in their futures.

Meanwhile, citizens are worried about poor quality or dangerous food, air that is a hazard to breath, and water that contains the contaminants that cause or contribute to illness. Writer Don DeLillo’s “White Noise” has indeed arrived to disturb the American middle class. It’s not about the saving the downtrodden by the efforts of the fringe, it’s about saving all people, all states, in all the country. The problems have become universal.

We think that running as an Independent has a good sound. Hopefully, one is independent of bad influence. Senator Bernie Sanders (of Vermont) seems to have got it right. (Senator Lieberman, fortunately now a laughing stock, did not).

But to get us back to Massachusetts, where we started. Jill Stein, since you are running for governor, why don’t you RUN FOR GOVERNOR? Like really run for governor? If the majority of Massachusetts voters are disillusioned independents, why don’t you focus on that base? Why tilt at windmills about getting minority parties the ability to speak in public debates. Why not come out as something more than a Ralph Nader, limited issue, “activist” candidate – and then say you hope all the disillusioned will be for you? Voters aren’t so much Against The Establishment (as in their ponytails and tie-dye), as For Solutions such as jobs, health care, corporate transparency, education, public services, the environment, meaningful oversight in finance and elsewhere it is needed, getting out of bad wars, and fighting the war on drugs. They are desperately For the things that (the perhaps newly downtrodden) Middle America, which is well on its’ way to folding in all the formerly disenfranchised, wants and needs.

We are for Jill Stein in her principals, but we wish she would stop thinking as the underdog, and get going on a real run for governor, a governor that had a serious plan for more than a few issues, a governor that stands for the interests of all people.

We, in Amerindia, will watch and wait.

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In the US, and the rest of the world economy it seems, corruption and mismanagement are running rampant. It would be much to cover the entire scope of this topic, but in short, it would seem that there is a fundamental lack of transparency, greed and self interest that knows no bounds, and astonishing little attempt at regulation. The “solution” seems to point out the worst offenders, and hand out fines or punish with an increase in taxes. We Amerindians are quite frankly baffled by this limp slap on the wrist, and surprised that it’s not obvious that the cost of any punitive measure will be passed on to those who are paying too heavy a bill already.

We feel that it might help, even if governments don’t, if people get together with their own solutions. The main idea is to keep money from reaching the pockets of big interests in the first place.

1. One way is to focus on buying locally. Besides cutting the energy footprint of purchases, many middle men payments will be eliminated, as well as the insane super payments to corporate giant leaders.

2. Invest in farm shares or local markets. Or at least patronize them. Again, this eliminates the middle man price increase, and cuts into the control that giants like agra business (ConAgra) have over what we eat, what we know about what we eat, and what we pay for the privilege of ingesting food products that are often less nourishing than the over-packaging that they are delivered in.

3. Social Lending. This can be avoiding large banks (like the ones too big to fail) in favor of small local banks, co-ops, credit unions, and even person to person lending with no banks involved.

We think that of course there are many other ways that could be suggested. But the basic idea is not to punish big corporations, but to think carefully about what we need to buy, where we keep and manage our money – and keep it close. In other words, don’t let it get to the big interests whenever there is another option.

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We have been living in relative peace and prosperity on our Island Nation of Amerindia during the Bush years and our temporary secession from the US that resulted from his election. Bad presidents happen. But democracy allows for this, and one hopes, has ways to grow wiser in popular knowledge, revise it’s thinking, and move on to better attending the needs of its citizens.

We supported Obama, and had great hopes. We saw an intelligent speaker who spoke of bold visions for Change. But after a year in office, we are much disappointed. We won’t go on into the details, and in any event, we are glad to see a black man as president so we can get that much out of the way.

However, it is now clear that what runs the US, and much elsewhere in the world, are The Big Corporations and Their Money. It would seem that almost any election is eventually about what Corporate Interest will benefit. We had hoped that, since Obama was elected with the money of the populace, not the corporations, that things would change. But they haven’t. Democracy continues its spiral into the ground, and we don’t see effective choices in elections. When the elected get to Washington, Washington gets to the elected.

As a result, we have decided to again declare our Nation of Amerindia to be separate from the US. We cannot risk a return while Corporate Influence rules the United States. We will continue living with our benevolent monarchy of Amerindia. The only other option we would consider is an annexation to Vermont (as long as they have Bernie Sanders and Patrick Leahy).

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We have not commented on our Amerindia blog for some time. The reason is that there has been an overwhelming number of issues that are in the tank for the American people. To cover it all has seemed impossible, and sad.

What’s happened to this once great country? The answers would seem to be corruption, greed, and incompetence. While these attributes exist in many industries (like pharmaceuticals), they are most centered in Washington, so many of our elected officials, and government agencies (like the FDA).

Having said that, we must mention that there are a some really sincere politicians who are fighting an uphill battle to do a good job (go Bernie Sanders, VT!) – but there are too few, and the electorate isn’t giving them enough credit and the support they deserve in their battle to improve America.

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“Psyched Out – How Psychiatry Sells Mental Illness and Pushes Pills that Kill”
Book Review by Amerindia

Beware this book. There are a few good points to be made regarding the over prescribing of drugs, their dangers, some of the silliness in DSM, and how the psychiatric community should be doing more to clean up its act.

However, this book by O’meara is straight out of Scientology. The author hammers home her point that there is absolutely no “chemical imbalance” in the brain that exists (for anybody), and that no “chemical imbalance” can be measured nor should it be treated – including serious mental illness such as schizophrenia.

If you doubt the Scientology connection and philosophy, skip to Chapter 8 and her defense of Tom Cruise. O’meara really needs to go back to school on body chemistry. (Although we know she won’t – Scientologists don’t.)

From our perspective: Depressed? Check magnesium and vitamin D levels, and be sure not to overlook thyroid function. Problems with these minerals, vitamins, and hormone levels can be accountable for depression, and they can be fixed when identified. Unfortunately it’s what so much of the discipline of psychiatry fails to do. Diagnosis and prescribing are too often determined only by a list of complaints or behavioral observations, without enough chemistry.

We’d suggest taking a look at the good science that is around: the nutritionists, compounding pharmacies, and Wellness Centers that are springing up all over. Can blood tests tell you what neurotransmitters, hormones, and amino acids are out of balance in the brain and the body? – you betcha.

The Integrative Medicine Practitioner can replace the basic imbalances found with a uniquely compounded amino acid mix that can indeed help balance the brain chemistry by adjusting such things as tyrosine, taurine, and l-tryptophan. (BTW, l-tryptophan is a precursor to seratonin, and should be considered as a much safer and better route to take than “we really don’t know how they work” psych drugs.)

Hormones – go bio-identical. Bio-identical HRT, Armour Thyroid. Standard dose mainstream pharmaceutical company psych drugs are bad – all of them are modified to be patentable. Good for company profits – bad for people. Bio-identical hormones are made from substances more like the human system, are made by compounding pharmacies according to your physician’s exact specifications for you – and are way, way safer.

We’d suggest taking a good look at nutritionists and Wellness Centers, such as the one in Northampton, MA (Northampton Wellness Associates, Integrative Medicine for Chronic Illness www.northamptonwellness.com). While this type of practice is more common in California, they are arriving in the northeast, and we hope to see more of them. This new integrative medical approach focusing on nutrition and body chemistry can be a good second look at the treatment of diabetes, allergies, you name it – and yes, mental health.

We should be looking ever more closely at “brain chemistry”, particularly as the American diet becomes ever more deficient, and toxins ever more present.

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Americans are paying too much for health care – and those costs are increasing. While politicians are scrambling to find ways to cover the increasing costs – and the increasing number of uninsured (and one would hope the underinsured), the financial bloat gets worse and worse. What we need to do is separate “health care” from the ticks and blood suckers that feed on the money thrown at our now failed system of providing health care.

Where is all the money going?

• Insurance companies
• Major pharmaceutical companies

Insurance companies are Not a necessary part of providing health care. They are a profit based business and are not part of the universal, single payer health care systems that other countries provide and are able to afford. We should get rid of them. For a piece of detail about how they subvert and increase costs in the system, see the article “Fights Over Health Claims Spawn a New Arms Race” below.

We do Not need to pay for the millions spent by pharmaceutical companies to advertise their drugs, to consumers, or to medical practitioners. Half of the average drug company’s “R&D” budget goes to advertising. And we expect that is an ever increasing percentage.

We paying for paperwork, administrative costs, claims wars, for-profit business overhead, marketing, political contributions, and so forth – on a staggering scale. If we just eliminated the insurance company middle man, we’d double the money available for health care.

And while we’re at it, we should clean up our information system about health and a healthy lifestyle. Since the health care system has collapsed under the insurance company and prescription drug costs, other unsavory characters have entered to fill the gap with a quick fix (that we pay for) to solve the public health crisis we are having. If you don’t get a quick fix for weight or heartburn problems from your doctor, you can sure get one over the counter. Misinformation and “scientific studies” that promise solutions that should make science blush are growing like a fungus on everything.

For instance, “Special K” anything is going to get you into those jeans. My gosh, just look at the ingredients on the box. Special K is white rice and sugar!

The insurance companies suck money the minute you enter the health care system. False claim products – pharmaceuticals that do more harm than good; misleading, dangerous, or just useless over-the-counter fixes; and “solution” packaged foods – suck your money out of the obesity and other health problems that result from our US lifestyle, twisted health information, wishful thinking for a quick fix, and a cadre of politicians who will not point the finger at the financial “health care” (insurance and pharmaceutical companies) and agra-business giants that support their campaigns.

First, Let’s get the insurance companies out of health care.

See below…….
————————————————————————————-

The Wall Street Journal February 14, 2007
Fights Over Health Claims Spawn a New Arms Race
By Vanessa Fuhrmans

Doctors increasingly complain that the insurance industry uses complex, opaque claims systems to confound their efforts to get paid fairly for their work. Insurers say their systems are designed to counter unnecessary charges and help keep down soaring health-care costs. Like many tug-of-wars over the health-care money pot, the tension has spawned a booming industry of intermediaries.

It’s called “denial management.” Doctors, clinics and hospitals are investing in software systems costing them each hundreds of thousands of dollars to help them navigate insurers’ systems and head off denials. They’re also hiring legions of firms that dig through past claims in search of shortchanged payments and tussle with insurers over rejected charges. “Turn denials into dollars,” promises one consultant’s online advertisement.

The imbroglio is costing medical providers and insurers around $20 billion — about $10 billion for each side — in unnecessary administrative expenses, according to a 2004 report by the Center for Information Technology Leadership, a nonprofit health-technology research group based in Boston…

The denial-management industry’s rise shows how much of medical spending is consumed by propping up and doing battle over an arcane patchwork of claims systems. Roughly 30% of physicians’ claims are denied the first time around. Sales of physician-billing and practice-management technology grew 25% to more than $7.5 billion last year, estimates Jewson Enterprises, a health information-technology research firm in Austin, Texas.

Some doctors say they see insurers stepping up efforts to keep a lid on reimbursements. One increasingly popular tactic among health insurers is to hire “health-care claims recovery” teams or software to dig through claims, some as old as two years, to see if they overpaid and seek redress. That’s partly because more states have been adopting “prompt pay” laws that require health insurers to reimburse claims within 30 or 60 days, says UnitedHealth spokesman Tyler Mason, which sometimes doesn’t leave enough time to review them first. “We need to have a way to still thoroughly review whether a claim’s paid correctly or not,” Mr. Mason says. Some insurers demand the money back. More, though, simply deduct it from future claim payments. That forces doctors to appeal the claim all over again.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117141549626107896.html

Let’s get the insurance industry out of healthcare.

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Once again, we appreciate the recent reporting of the Boston Globe and it’s writers, Alice Dembner and Rick Klein. They are shedding a much needed light on the newly created Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector and what’s going wrong.

See articles “State give more time for bids on insurance” by Alice Dembner, February 2, the Boston Globe, and “Romney distances self from Mass. health plan” by Rick Klein, the Boston Globe, February 3, 2007. Ms. Dembner follows the trail of the anticipated cost of this program for those who will be forced to purchase it, while those involved in creating it are squirming to somehow make it sound right. She quotes Brian Rosman, director of policy and planning for Health Care for All (this agency is one of the main supporters of the Connector universal health care plan) who now says “They wouldn’t necessarily (?) have to pay more….The insurers could rejigger (?) the benefit package.”

Rick Klein reported on February 3, in the Boston Globe, that “Romney distances self from Mass. health plan” that Romney and many others who first championed this universal health care plan are now rapidly trying to distance themselves from what was surely going to be a disaster when it came to implementation. But Romney knew what was good for his timing all along. First press for a health care initiative that special interests will be happy to applaud you for, and then distance yourself from the whole thing while you run for the presidential office – blaming the implementation of a flawed plan on the Democrats in a state you left behind.

Yes, the creation of Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector was a flawed universal health care plan from the beginning. All universal health care plans are flawed, because they are a bandaid solution to cover some people. Special interests are right behind every one of these plans. When you start out to cover some people, first you have to determine who those people are, their social worthiness (we hear a lot about how every child should be covered by Hilary Clinton), and what health care services they should receive. But this is really all about what insurance and pharmaceutical companies want to get paid and about their profit – not what these (a particular group of) people really need.

That’s why you know you’re in trouble with a health plan when you first hear about the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector. It’s about insurance and the objectives of the insurance companies – it’s not about health care.

The only way to have good, quality, health care available for all, is for all to have the same coverage. That is, Single Payer Health Care. Then

Everybody would be a health care watch dog, including both those providing, and those who receive care.

The huge number of wasteful health administration bureaucracies we are paying for now would be eliminated, or at least substantially reduced.

Direct payment to health care providers would eliminate excessive payments that now go to the insurance, bureaucratic, and political middle-men.

We would avoid a ‘universal health care’ system that, contrary to it’s name, it’s always a proposal to cover some population of people.

Find out more about Single Payer Health Care:

http://www.grahamazon.com/sp/
http://www.masscare.org/about

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US citizens are getting close to the worst medical care of any developed nation, and are paying 4 times the cost for that distinction. Look at the statistics. Or, better yet, spend a day people watching. Increasingly we see a tired, overweight, physically broken down population suffering from a multitude of chronic diseases such as high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart & artery disease.

The deterioration of physical health reflects a broken medical system.

There are two good places to look as to why this is so. One is the new perspective on how health care should be provided. Too many well educated medical minds believe that most people don’t require seeing a highly trained medical professional. Those with chronic conditions are often stuck in the first line of medical contact, while degreed physicians are limited to providing legitimacy to a medical team.

Well, no wonder. Medicine education has been handed over to the medical merchandizers. The “science” of medicine is paid for by, and is tailored to benefit pharmaceutical companies, medical instrument companies and the many others who have an interest in profiting in the “health industry.” So indeed, there isn’t much of interest in handing out information sheets and writing prescriptions advocated by the army of salespeople. And then there is that 15 minutes per patient limit thing…

We could go on, but there is a book by John Abramson, M.D., who covers the topic in depth and with great insight. We recommend:

Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine
How the Pharmaceutical Companies Distort Medical Knowledge, Mislead Doctors, and Compromise Your Health

John Abramson, M.D. has worked as a family doctor in Appalachia and in Hamilton, Massachusetts, and has served as chairman of the department of family practice at Lahey Clinic. He was a Robert Wood Johnson Fellow and is currently on the clinical faculty of Harvard Medical School, where he teaches primary care.

Hardcover: 352 pages
Publisher: HarperCollins (September 21, 2004)
Language: English
ISBN: 0060568526

Review: The lengthy title of this book sums up the question of “why are Americans, whose health is at the bottom of the developed nations, are paying so much more for that distinction?” Read this book. It will tell you why. There will be no solution to the health care crisis until we understand the foundation of the problem, and Dr. Abramson clearly explains why and how the current system benefits corporate profits, but not much else.

The only reservation we have about this book is in some of the final chapters. We certainly don’t need most of what we’re being sold as “medicine”, but we think it’s simplistic and unwise to suggest to older Americans, particularly women, that they should just accept growing old gracefully. Aging needs more than a healthy state of mind. When it comes to women’s issues (and we think hormones are both men & women’s issue), Dr. Abramson seems unaware of the important differences in hormone treatment/replacement therapies now available. Synthetic, equine HRT is not the same as bio-identical compounds, and he shouldn’t have missed that very important point. But that brings up a whole other subject worth many more books.

Dr. Abramson is correct in his assessment of what’s wrong with our system. This is a courageous eye-opener of a book, and should be read by every medical professional, every care receiver, and anyone who pays for health care.

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The article below, published in The New York Times, details how the American Medical Association (A.M.A.) is providing information on what individual doctors, including their names, are prescribing. Without the knowledge of most doctors, their prescribing information is being sold to for-profit data-mining companies, who combine it with data from the major drug store chains, and then sell it to the major pharmaceutical companies.

The article comments that this is a devious practice by A.M.A. and an invasion of the privacy of doctors. It is also a way for drug company salesmen to target and influence doctors to prescribe in ways that are not in their patients’ interest.

This is a betrayal by the A.M.A of their member doctors’ privacy – and leads to the corruption of the prescription practice.

If we are told that medical care can be best delivered by a “free market system” then this is a fine example of what we get.

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Doctors Object to Gathering of Drug Data

By STEPHANIE SAUL
Published: May 4, 2006 in The New York Times

Although virtually unknown to consumers, the information has long been considered the most potent weapon in pharmaceutical sales — computerized dossiers showing which physicians are prescribing what drugs. Armed with such data, a drug sales representative can pressure a doctor to write more prescriptions for a name-brand medicine or fewer orders for a competitor’s drug.

But now a rebellion is under way by some doctors, who consider the data-gathering an intrusion that feeds overzealous sales practices among the nation’s estimated 90,000 drug company representatives. Public officials are also weighing in. A vote on a state bill to clamp down on the practice is scheduled for today in New Hampshire, and similar bills have been introduced in other states, including Arizona and West Virginia.

To appease the doctors and try to stave off the state restrictions, the American Medical Association will soon give individual physicians the choice of declaring their prescription records off limits to drug sales representatives. The new measure is viewed as a self-policing move that the drug industry and the A.M.A., which has lucrative contracts with data-mining companies, hope will keep states from banning sales of prescription data altogether.

If the A.M.A effort succeeds, “legislators will turn their attention elsewhere, and the industry can hang on to one of its most valuable data sources,” according to an article this week in the industry trade magazine Pharmaceutical Executive, which was co-written by an A.M.A. official and an executive with the leading vendor of prescription data. Even many critics concede that patients’ privacy is apparently not an issue, because the tracking systems identify only the prescribing doctors, not patients. But many doctors find the use of the data by sales representatives an intrusion into the way they practice medicine.

“These doctors were outraged that people came into their office and talked to them about how many times they prescribed a particular drug,” said Dr. John C. Lewin, the chief executive of the state medical association in California, one of the states where complaints about the current system arose.

The California group is beginning its own program under which doctors who do not opt out under the A.M.A. system will get comparisons of their prescribing patterns in 17 classes of drugs from the data companies, said Dr. Lewin, who added that the program was being started as a pilot effort that he hoped would be extended statewide.

Among the doctors who raised an early complaint about the system was Dr. Brad Drexler, an obstetrician in Healdsburg, Calif., who said he was surprised four years ago when pharmaceutical representatives began thanking him for writing prescriptions — the first time he realized that the drug representatives had information he assumed was private.

“I think it adds to the potential that physicians could be targeted one way or another for perks,” said Dr. Drexler, alluding to the practice by drug companies of deciding which doctors to reward with the gifts, meals and other perks that sales representatives have dangled over the years, or to gauge which physicians might be worthy of signing up as paid speakers or consultants.

“It’s the most powerful tool a drug rep has, for sure,” said Jamie Reidy, a former drug salesman who was fired last year by Eli Lilly & Company after writing “Hard Sell,” a humorous exposé of the pharmaceutical industry. Mr. Reidy said the pharmaceutical representatives received updated prescription data every two weeks. The information also sometimes characterizes each physician’s prescribing patterns, Mr. Reidy said.

For example, “early prescribers” — also known among drug representatives as “cowboys,” according to Mr. Reidy — are those doctors who start prescribing a drug as soon as it comes to market. If you are a drug sales representative, “you go to see that doctor in the first week,” Mr. Reidy said.

Although the drug representatives are told not to share the prescribing details with doctors, some nonetheless have confronted doctors with the data. A representative might become frustrated, for example, if after providing numerous lunches to a doctor’s staff, the data show that the doctor is not writing prescriptions for the company’s drug.

“It just creates a weird atmosphere,” Mr. Reidy said.

State Representative Cindy Rosenwald of New Hampshire, lead sponsor of her state’s bill, said she was motivated partly by high Medicaid drug costs, which she said she believed had been driven up by the pharmaceutical industry’s success in coaxing doctors to prescribe expensive brand-name drugs.

“To me this is a money issue,” Ms. Rosenwald said. “When I look at our state’s budget, the fastest-growing part of the Medicaid program here in New Hampshire is for prescription drugs. It’s an enormous cost for a small state like New Hampshire.”

Ms. Rosenwald’s legislation has been adopted by the New Hampshire House and is tentatively set for a Senate vote this afternoon.

She said she did not believe the A.M.A.’s self-policing measure would provide enough protection, partly because even if doctors specify that their prescription records not be available to drug sales representatives, the information would still be sold to drug companies for other marketing and research purposes. The drug companies, she said, would be on their honor not to share the data with their sales staffs. A Gallup Poll commissioned by the A.M.A. in 2004 found that two-thirds of doctors surveyed were opposed to the release of such data to pharmaceutical representatives, and that 77 percent felt that an opt-out program would alleviate concerns about the release of data. Nearly a quarter of the doctors were not even aware that the pharmaceutical industry had access to such information.

That same year, the American College of Physicians requested that the A.M.A. prohibit the release or sale of doctors’ prescribing information. The college represents internists and related medical subspecialties, while the A.M.A. is a broader trade group whose members include all doctors, including surgeons.

Dr. Dean Abramson, an Iowa physician, is among the doctors who plan to opt out under the new A.M.A. process, which will involve a sign-up registry that goes into use on July 1. His opposition began nearly a decade ago, he recalled, when a representative from TAP Pharmaceutical Products let slip during a sales call that Dr. Abramson wrote more prescriptions for Prevacid, a treatment for acid reflux, than any other doctor in the state.

“I was pretty surprised that they kept that data, and I was not happy at all,” Dr. Abramson said. “I said, ‘Why is that data even kept?’ She didn’t really give me an answer.”

Since then, Dr. Abramson has become something of an activist against the lunches and gifts that the pharmaceutical industry dispenses to doctors. His gastroenterology group in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, accepts neither, he said.

The leading compiler and vendor of prescription data is IMS Health, a publicly traded company based in Fairfield, Conn., that had revenue last year of $1.75 billion. IMS and its competitors gather the data through contracts with retail pharmacy chains and companies that manage drug plans for insurers, then sell it to pharmaceutical companies.

IMS and its competitors — the main ones are Verispan, Dendrite International and a Dutch company, Wolters Kluwer — also pay the A.M.A. for access to its repository of information on approximately one million doctors who are graduates of American medical schools, as well as foreign medical school graduates licensed in the United States.

The A.M.A., which calls this repository Masterfile, begins collecting the information when a doctor enters medical school. Over doctors’ careers, additional material includes information on their board certifications, types of practice and disciplinary records. The Masterfile information is among data that companies like IMS use in developing physician profiles.

In an interview, IMS officials said they believed that state efforts to curtail their activities were misguided. “Limiting the access to our data will not stop pharmaceutical marketing,” said Robert J. Hunkler, whose job with the company includes serving as a liaison with the medical profession. Mr. Hunkler also says that the data his company collects is valuable for medical research and is sometimes shared free with researchers.

Mr. Hunkler was a co-author of the Pharmaceutical Executive article describing the new A.M.A. program. The other writer was Robert A. Musacchio, the A.M.A.’s senior vice president for publishing and business services. While Mr. Musacchio declined to disclose the exact value of its Masterfile contracts with the four main data companies, he said that the organization made $40 million a year selling information, which also includes mailing lists and a service through which hospitals can check the credentials of doctors. Mr. Musacchio said that doctors had always been able to put a “no contact” status on their Masterfile record, meaning their name would not be licensed for marketing by mail, telephone or fax.

The A.M.A.’s new registry, administered partly through a Web site, will enable doctors listed in its Masterfile to indicate that they do not want their prescribing data shared with pharmaceutical sales representatives. The decision will remain in force for three years.

And yet, even those doctors’ prescription information will still be collected and transmitted to drug companies, whose other uses of the data include tallying bonuses paid to pharmaceutical representatives, which are based on sales. “What we’ve always stressed is that physicians have rights and they can always tell pharmaceutical representatives that they don’t want to be called upon,” said Mr. Musacchio. But he said the organization had always made clear to the pharmaceutical industry that its representatives should never “badger or embarrass or harass” physicians.

“They sometimes try to get their point across a little too strongly,” he said.

For all the US expenditure on health care, Americans are sicker. Americans are constantly told that a universal, single payer (government) health care system is not affordable. What’s not affordable is dumping more health care money into special interest pockets. See blog entry “What’s wrong with the American health care system?”

More illness found in US than in Britain

By Carla K. Johnson and Mike Stobbe, Associated Press | May 3, 2006

CHICAGO — Middle-aged white Americans are much sicker than their counterparts in Britain, new research has indicated, despite US healthcare spending per person that is more than double what the British spend.

A higher rate of Americans tested positive for diabetes and heart disease than the English. Americans also reported more diabetes, heart attacks, strokes, lung disease, and cancer.

The gap between the countries holds true for educated and the uneducated, the rich and the poor.

”At every point in the social hierarchy there is more illness in the United States than in England and the differences are really dramatic,” said study coauthor Dr. Michael Marmot, an epidemiologist at University College London in England.

The study is in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association.

It adds context to statistics reporting that the United States spends more on healthcare than any other industrialized nation, yet that it trails several countries in rankings of life expectancy. The United States spends about $5,200 per person, while Britain spends about half of that in adjusted dollars.

”Everybody should be discussing it: Why isn’t the richest country in the world the healthiest country in the world?” Marmot said.

The researchers looked for answers in the data, which came from government-sponsored health surveys.

Smoking rates are about the same on both sides of Atlantic. The English have a higher rate of heavy drinking, but a higher percentage of Americans are obese.

Only non-Hispanic whites were included in the study, to eliminate the influence of racial disparities. The researchers looked only at people ages 55 through 64.

The problem with the American health system is that so much of corporate and political America is ethically bankrupt. This underlying, pervasive malady has given birth and continues to nourish American health care system failures.

What’s sick?

• The American people, in dramatically increasing numbers who suffer from chronic illnesses such as heart disease, obesity, diabetes, asthma. osteoporosis and so forth.
• The American Health System, with health care costs sprinting way ahead of the ability to pay for it. The numbers of uninsured and underinsured grow daily.

What’s doing well?

• Health care insurance companies (Blue Cross just had its highest profit quarter ever).
• Drug companies, the giants that have individuals and their doctors convinced that medicine is the treatment of symptoms, not underlying causes, and that there isn’t a man, woman, or child in the country that doesn’t need at least a few pills.
• Politicians that legislate into law health care patches that sound good – like Plan D prescription coverage. Some of them will actually get re-elected as a result of creating this questionable benefit. Seniors sign up for one of 52 plans that will stop paying them by the time they reach the donut hole – the place at which it would actually begin to cost the drug companies more than they are getting from the premiums paid. Good heavens, does this sound like some kind of price fixing? Could it be? What it does is leave the drug companies with a financial abundance with which to contribute generously at the next election time.

Health industry corporate interests are not only buying politicians, but are robust and bold enough to influence federal agencies such as the FDA. For example, drug manufacturer Wyeth is filing legal action to have the FDA rein in bio-identical hormones, a much safer and more natural replacement for Wyeth’s PremPro, which was recently uncovered as a more dangerous drug than originally indicated.

PremPro has been around for years – with FDA approval. Now we discover it’s not so safe. Why? First because the FDA depends on scientific studies that are provided by the drug companies who want their drug’s approval. Now that PremPro has been determined to be much less safe than originally thought – because of an independent study by the Women’s Health Initiative – the number of prescriptions written for it have plummeted. Suddenly safe, natural hormones are a financial threat to Wyeth’s profits, so Wyeth has taken legal action to get the FDA to declare natural hormones unsafe.

Natural hormones have been around and in medical use since the 1930s. Why is Wyeth suddenly concerned about the safety of a product they don’t (and can’t) sell? It’s pretty easy to see that the corporate interests of the large drug companies can be a powerful lobby in their own financial interests – not the health of US citizens.

Speaking of dug wars, watch the manufacturer of Zocor, which is about to have its patent expire, manipulate the number of generics that will be available to only 3 companies. Large drug companies have also been know to even pay for generics not to be manufactured at all. Anything to keep up patented profits.

The directions being taken as solutions to America’s health care crisis is programs sanctioned by the government, but administered by private interests. What US citizens get is something such as plan D Medicare prescription coverage. Drug companies will pay up to a limit that costs them no more than your premiums. And above all, there will be no control of drug costs.

Insurance companies profit by insuring the well and denying or underinsuring those who need health care the most.

Drug companies are no longer content with a limited market of the sick – they want to increase their marketing scope and will create implied sickness that needs to be fed a pill in every person.

There is a growing health monster created out of these corporate health care interests – an increasing number of sick who need more and more pills, and a sick population of which fewer and fewer have adequate health care coverage. The twin objective of profits for insurance and drug companies creates:

• More sick people
• More uninsured or underinsured people
• More expensive health care

US health care government programs are based on large corporate interests – those interests that contribute to the election of our public officials. The politicians create programs that they can claim are beneficial at election time. But because they are privately administered, so they can dodge the responsibility for the consequences of failure.

The US needs to look at the Government health care programs they do have and not beat the same drum as the corporate health care giants that say they are a failure. We have Medicare, Medicaid, and Verterans health care programs. They need to be made more efficient and better managed. And then they need to be universal under a national single payer health plan, with the needs of US citizens put first.

The Queen of Amerindia

Maybe Americans are catching on. I hope so. Don’t believe the Bush fix for Social Security.

Social Security was created during “hard times” as a safety net for future “hard times.” Now we are told that we are coming up on the baby boomer generation retiring and there won’t be enough to go around because, after all, this is “hard times.”

The very rich have never had to worry about what they pay into social security or what they get out of it; that amount of money isn’t even on their radar screen. Where social security does make a difference is for the poor – and the middle class. Let’s say that again – for the middle class.

What is the middle class usually up to? Paying a mortgage on a house, putting kids through college, saving, and hopefully being able to have a bit of well earned fun. There is a lot of caretaking going on – for kids, parents, and grandparents.

Social security is surely a benefit to the poor, but it is equally essential for the middle class. The way to find that out is to become disabled, be a child without parental support, be a caretaker who has a sporadic work history, or lose your job for a significant portion of your working life.

Yes, Social Security helps the poor. But very significantly, it keeps the middle class from entering the ranks of the poor. Since Social Security has been implemented, the number of older women in poverty has dropped by 30%.

Because Bush has cut taxes for the very rich and congress has been spending the nest egg that the middle class has been paying into, the Bush changes for Social Security will create the great divide – the very few very rich, and an increasing number of the middle class that joins the poor.

What Bush proposes for private accounts (2% of income) will amount to very little. One wonders what the big argument is over when there are already 401ks, Keogh Plans, and IRA accounts. If you have the money, you can already invest it as you see fit. However, if you lose your job just as the kids enter college, you could be in a different situation. If you are a single parent (half the population is divorced), you make $26,000/year and you have two kids, you aren’t investing much of anything.
But Social Security as it is will make a difference when you retire. Bush’s 2% won’t.

To have any kind of savings, you will have to be paying in every year over a long time. Plenty of situations come up for middle income Americans when circumstances interrupt that. And what about this 8% yearly increase? The times, and maybe that includes the financial times, they are a changin’. How much of “privitized” money is going to administrative fees? And who is going to get those fees?

Privitization isn’t going to help the situation. It will increase the national debt tremendously. And middle income Americans will be paying for it – the same middle income Americans who have the privitization option. But where’s the savings if you’re paying off that national debt while supporting your parents who’s Social Security benefits have been cut to the point that you have to support them? You’re going to be paying more in general, will have reduced retirement benefits when you get there, and I’ll bet you’ll have more financially marginal people in your family to support on that minimal privitized Social Security account.

Bush wants privitization not because this amount is going to improve the lot of middle income Americans. He wants private accounts so he can hand yet more money to his already very rich friends who will be “managing” it for you. I doubt they will feel financially sympathetic toward the significantly increased number of poor. They’ll already have want they wanted: the money siphoned off privitized accounts.

The Queen of Amerindia

Comments on an article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences via BBC News

A pilot study has been done on 6 cloned animals, two beef and 4 cows, all derived from a single cow and a single bull. It has been determined that, even though the meat and dairy products produced from these animals have higher levels of fat and fatty acids, the products still fall “within the beef industry standards.”

Studies will be continued so that products from these animals can be labeled “safe for human consumption.” People will be reassured and encouraged to consume these products because they are within industry standards – “safe”, even though Americans (and increasing numbers of people in other countries that eat like Americans) are obviously having problems falling within acceptable weight standards. Americans are getting too fat, and they are being told to consume less fat. But we’re creating a more fatty product for them to eat. Go figure.

It is also stated in this article that “the team say that their results suggest cloning techniques could be used to boost food production, particularly in developing countries.” Not that these animals will be produced any quicker; it’s still going to take a cow to produce a cow, cloned or otherwise.

Also, one wonders how this will boost production, since the article also states that “most cloned animals to not make it to term before being born, and many of those that do are born deformed.” And there are some worries that seemingly healthy clones my have subtle defects that might make it unsafe to eat.

Between the juggling of “acceptable standards”, reproduction drawbacks and other caveats, there is one thing that is clear. Cloned animals can be patented. They can be “owned” and therefore can be a controlled (and more expensive?) food source.

Between the lines, it would seem that all this research effort is not focused on the physical or economic health of the consumer. But someone will be making a lot of money on it.

The Queen of Amerindia

Dear American Jesus, you’ve anointed us with oil,
And we’re grateful for this blessing as we fight on foreign soil.

You’re steadfast in your mission, making war without a fear
That the truth will have us question what you said to bring us here.

Now it’s the military mothers who are sinners in our land
For no child of theirs’ will die to buy your wartime business plan.

Your disciples, ah you have them, and you have your Judas too
But he’s turned upon the people and his pledge has gone to you.

Our elections will continue to be bought and sold by those
Whose pocketbooks buy favor where the wealthy donor goes.

We watch as nature vanishes, healthy waters disappear
But for Raptures does it matter when the end is surely near?

As leadership by gospel spreads across our nation’s land
We’re more divided than united, since this Jesus took command.

Received in Amerindia from a US citizen. This poem may be freely copied and distributed in any form. – The Queen

The Founding Fathers of the new nation of the United States were uniquely wise in their understanding of the failings of the systems of government that had gone before. They recognized that a state must be flexible, changing, and able to withstand the imperfections of individuals who govern. The creators of its constitution knew the endless lessons of grief that so many states and cultures had visited upon themselves and others.

Religious men themselves, they recognized the imperative of separation of church and state. The government of the many, by the many, must be able to learn, change, grow wiser, and embrace tolerance. Where the practice of democracy may not have been perfect, the vision of democracy was clear to its creators.

In the interest of unity – and immediate survival – a nation that was born allowing the institution of slavery was not one of universal democracy. The founding fathers left this chapter purposely blank, knowing that it would take time and cultural growth to correct this injustice. They left their conduct as servants of the state as a guide for future generations.

It is not a perfect democracy where any of its citizens do not have the vote or equal status before the law. Where women, minorities or any other disenfranchised citizens are waiting their turn for an equal voice there is a forming democracy – not a mature one.

Therefore, “democracy”? and “freedom’? are relative, not absolute terms. They are labels on a skeleton system of governance that is only meaningfully defined by the tolerance, wisdom and compassion of its citizens.

Democracy is mature and good only when those who make laws and enforce actions would willingly walk in the shoes of those to whom these laws and actions are applied.

We would add corruption to the blights of a democracy. A wise voice (Eisenhower) warned of the military-industrial complex. If money, greed, and dishonesty buy and sell officials and agencies of government, there is a democracy only in name, not in substance.

We of Amerindia are concerned that what is called “democracy”? is turning back the tide of tolerance, compassion and a truly caring state. In its place grows a rigid doctrine of righteousness and exclusion. We wonder what family is “vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,” what rough beast slouches its way through Bethlehem, and on toward an intolerant democracy.

Her Majesty, The Queen of Amerindia