Universal Health Care

I have been thinking about the need for universal health care since the ruling by a federal judge last week. The appeal process will take a while and I am confident that eventually the Supreme Court will rule in favor of the Commerce clause. That being said we still need to go further and have universal health care in this country. Health care companies had a 56% increase in profits in 2009, while they chopped over 2.7 million people from their coverage. Total profits for 2009 were in excess of 12 billion dollars. CEO bonuses ranged from $4 million  for Well Point to $38 million at Etna. The top six companies had $3.4 billion in profit for 3rd quarter 2010. These numbers just go on and on. The health care companies are making more money spending it on less people and the CEO's are getting paid more. This isn't about companies making a decent profit, this is about companies gouging and even killing people all out of greed. More opinion too follow.

Continue response.

You referred to Alex Sink and her banking abuses. I will at this point, for full discloser, acknowledge that I retired from Bank of America. I did not know Ms. Sink personally, however I knew of her. I disagreed and continue to disagree with several BofA policies and will address this in the future. Sink was the head of BofA of Florida, her title being President of Florida Operations at Bank of America, Late in 2003 brokers in New York were involved with after hours trading in mutual funds. They were under Banc of America. That was not a misprint. Banc of America is the investment part of Bank of America. When Bank is used, these are FDIC products and by federal law there had to be a difference between the two. Sink directed the retail banking operation in Florida. The brokers work for a separate division and not in an area that Ms. Sink had any dealings. So, there was and is a difference between them. You need to be careful when using broad strokes to paint a picture. Look at facts. This is not easy. I will talk more about where we agree later today, but again, thanks to Danny and Jessica for having the courage to state opinion and discuss issues.

Continue response.

I am going to now shift gears to your comments concerning Rick Scott. Jessica could have revised her remark about Scott in this regard, is he a criminal or an incredibly stupid CEO. Either way he has, in my opinion, no qualification to be our Governor. You asked if she, "heard" about the fraud, like it was a story made up to discredit him. The facts are, Hospital Corporation of America, of which Rick Scott was CEO admitted to fourteen felonies and paid the federal government over $600 million. They paid $17.5 million to states in Medicaid fraud. They also paid out over $2 billion in civil suites. This amounted to the largest fraud settlement in United States history. The felonies HCA admitted to include, systematically over charging the government, illegal deals with home care agencies and physicians, fraudulent billing of Medicare and other health programs, kickback for doctors and home health care agencies for referring patients to HCA and gave "loans" to doctors that were never intended to be repaid. I will touch on Alex Sink in my next response.

Continue response.

Congress tried to pull the Executive branch back somewhat, when in 1973 they established the War Powers Act. This set down rules by which the President would have to notify Congress in writing, that an armed conflict has been entered into by American troops. It also states that Congress then has to authorize this conflict within 60 days for the troops to continue. All of this is nothing more then a legal CYA for Congress and the President. Distasteful to Americans, yes, illegal. no.This is the same laws used in our current conflicts. I next want to touch on the Vietnam conflict. You mention Laos as something that we did not even acknowledge. What about Cambodia. We lost more troops there and killed more civilians there, then in Laos. In Vietnam we lost over 58,000 men and women. Civilian casualties in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos were over 2.5 million people. What a waste. One thing that is important for me to say, though, is I do not agree with our leaders, but I support our troops. These are the finest men and women our country has to offer and we have in the past and continue today  watch them die, for political and economic reasons. I will continue in another post.

Response to Comments from Danny

Danny let me start by saying that I totally support your opinions and this is why I wanted to establish this blog. I will take exception though to some of the facts that you used. First I am going to focus on the war part of your response. I have not and will not support the wars that we have entered into in Iraq and Afghanistan, however Congress is within their rights to authorize these actions. If you look at the Constitution Article 1 Section 8, this the article that addresses among other things the right to declare war by Congress, the last paragraph gives them a broad opening to make laws to carry out the way that this is done. Now lets see how Congress has accomplished this. The so called Quasi-War against France in 1798 was the first time they authorized war. This was done to protect American commerce from French intervention. It has been used several times since, including the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1964, when North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked, (reportedly) the U.S.S. Maddox and President Johnson asked for the power to go to war to  protect and assist members of the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty. I will continue in next post.