On the Way - Make America Sick Again?

Yesterday on Capitol Hill Vice President Elect Mike Pence reassured Republicans that repealing Obamacare will be "first order of business for the incoming Trump administration".

But as Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer pointed out in a press conference yesterday, Republicans simply have no idea what they're going to replace Obamacare with.

"My republican colleagues don't know quite what to do, they're like the dog who caught the bus. They can repeal but they have nothing to put in its place and that means so many good things go away."

Repealing Obamacare altogether, and thus going back to letting the insurance company banksters rob us blind and then throw us off coverage when we get sick, would be a disaster, and the Republicans know that.

But they've spent the past 6 years telling their base and their donors that that's exactly what really, really, really needed to be done, and they were so persistent that they actually got some people to believe them.

So now, they're trapped.

Basically, the only real choice Republicans have now is to continue the giant con on their voters.

They're going to make a few small tweaks to Obamacare -- probably to the individual mandate because that's the most unpopular part of the law -- call it a "repeal," and then rename the finished package something like "Trumpcare".

Republicans will then declare victory and head home, having accomplished nothing but make an already compromised healthcare system even more compromised.

This will be a big missed opportunity, both for Republicans and the country.

Ultimately, the problems with Obamacare aren't really problems with Obamacare per se - but problems with the whole idea of for-profit healthcare industry.

Seriously - Canada, Mexico, all the major European nations - even Costa Rica - are NOT having this conversation, because in all those places healthcare is a right, not a privilege.

We're literally the only country in the world that lets rich banksters hold citizens' health hostage in exchange for profits.

The sad reality is that most of what Obamacare really did was make a few changes to an already-corrupt private for-profit healthcare industry - good changes, certainly, but still within a for-profit system - and put the government on the hook for the political backlash to those changes.

It did some good things, but it left in place the major problem with the American healthcare system: we treat healthcare as a profit engine, not a human right.

Until that's changed, nothing will really improve.

So if Republicans were actually serious about fixing Obamacare, they'd take this opportunity to do what Democrats should have done 6 years ago when they had the chance - they'd make healthcare a human right by either passing a public option or they'd do what the Swiss have done and require all health insurance companies to operate as nonprofits.

Or better yet, they'd lower the Medicare eligibility age to 0 and create a real national single payer health insurance system.

Those are the only real ways to fix Obamacare.

Comments

TimFromLA 6 years 11 weeks ago
#1

Did you read what Tom just wrote?

Seriously - Canada, Mexico, all the major European nations - even Costa Rica - are NOT having this conversation, because in all those places healthcare is a right, not a privilege.

Even MEXICO has a better health care than we do!

PhilipHenderson's picture
PhilipHenderson 6 years 11 weeks ago
#2

Republicans in Congress will not accept Thom Hartmann's solution because his idea requires the elimination of health insurance companies. The health insurance companies should be made illegal in my view. They only draw money from the system without helping to provide health services. The high earnings of the executives and the profits of the health insurance company stock holders only act as friction in the system. The cost of selling health insurance, managing claims, processing claims, denying claims, adds to the expense of health care. Doctors and hospitals have to hire claim adjusters and coders to submit the claims to get maximum payment from health insurance companies. This is all friction in the system. Eliminate health insurance and offer Medicare for All as Thom Hartmann suggests and you will make a huge improvement in the availability of health services, but the Republicans in Congress will not take that step. They want to keep health insurance companies open with their thousands of employees. They want to keep the executives of health insurance companies pulling in huge earnings. They do not want to make high quality health care available for everyone. They believe a certain number of people should not receive health care.

heirloomerfarm's picture
heirloomerfarm 6 years 11 weeks ago
#3

"and create a real national single payer health insurance system.". Does that Thom Hartmann quote look familiar? It should. That was the meat of Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders ......Remember him, Hartmann?

Legend 6 years 11 weeks ago
#4

Ban all health insurance then no one could afford medical care and the costs would come down.

I propose tax free health savings accounts that you can spend in other countries. You go to Doc in the Box as needed in USA. If something major is required like heart surgury go to India. Annual trips to Panama or other country with good medical for a physical, Dental and eye check up . Spend a few days on the beach and de-stress. Also pick up any required pharmacuticals while out of country. If you live near Canada or Mexico you can do it for very low cost. flights to Cuba are cheap. It is called Medical Tourism. If done enough countries will build a business for it. Quit making USA medical a billionaires profit industry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_tourism

gmiklashek950's picture
gmiklashek950 6 years 11 weeks ago
#5

Well done, Thom and commenters! I'm a retired physician and life-long proponent of a single payer not-for-profit healthcare system. It is the only fair and efficient, inexpensive healthcare system, as proven all over the world. Shame on anyone working in the "healthcare industry" for a profit! Greeley Miklashek, MD (retired)

Mulakush 6 years 11 weeks ago
#6

I live in Canada and we hear so many good things about our system. Most of them are true. But any single payer system that Americans are bound to adopy in the future should do somethings better than ours. First, we do not have a single payer system. we have an individual province wide single payer system. Care varies depending how well the provincial governments fund hte systems. Tory ruled provinces have poorer coverage. Many procedures are not covered. Most procedures have poorer standards than in the US. Whenever we had Tories running the federal government, their effort was to defund coverage as much as they could to enrich their freinds following the lead of the US Republicans - total lack of empathy. They could not do too much damage as the health system is very popular. As a layman, I cannot comment more but I do advise you folks to study our system very well and avoid the many pitfalls that got in due to ongoing Tory financial and policy strangulations.

There are many good things about your system such as the standards of medical investigations, procedures and follow up care; you must preserve them. I can guarantee you that they are better.

I do wish our cousins to the south well. I hope you recover from this Republican setback and do what is good for your people at large rather than your super rich folks.

cccccttttt 6 years 11 weeks ago
#7

In Asia they say that "money is life".

US repubs say it their own way:

"more cost effective to die".

ct

j.jonik 6 years 11 weeks ago
#8

Health care also a basic necessity...not just for individuals but for society as a whole. If care isn't universally available, even for those sleeping under bridges, many people with diseases will not be identified and helped...thus threatening the spread of disease to everyone. That's not to mention the cost to the public for emergency services that would have been prevented if people were properly treated before illnesses became critical...and much more expensive to treat.And, people in low-income areas that may be plagued with lead in water or toxic industrial fumes will be more quickly protected...the causes of illnesses more quickly identified and eliminated.

timallard's picture
timallard 6 years 11 weeks ago
#9

I noticed where pot is legal the states have more money, less crime and healthier people ... hmmm, in spite of "laws" all pot is medicinal in spirit or health benefit, we're sure Congre$$ i$ addicted to lobbyi$t$ $ugar of $ome kind, eh?

What's proposed is a form of feudal thinking at best, we relive Charles Dickens' era restaged like a good opera in modern guise, Scrooge far too kind against the pall of false-flag popularity acts-of-terror from storyboarded agendas to decimate areas to cause more areas to be decimated as a profit-making methodology.

House of cards ... poof.

We follow the Romans in Philosophy of Conquest, grabbing territory is easy to pay for with spoils from those plundered, when you run out of plunder pools to suck on it costs real money and the Powers go broke fast.

You can smell the corruption from here ...

RepubliCult's picture
RepubliCult 6 years 11 weeks ago
#10

The ONLY concrete health care proposal put forth by Republicans was in the 2010 election, where Republican senate candidate Sue Lowden declared her support for "Bringing a chicken to the doctor's office. ...Offer to paint the doctor's house."

No Republican has yet to come up with anything more viable than that. There are not enough chickens to compensate for millions of patients medical bills. And, what's to become of the price of chickens? And too many people needing medical care are not physically capable of painting someone's house. So, Republican "Plan A" is an epic fail. What is "Plan B"?

deepspace's picture
deepspace 6 years 11 weeks ago
#11

"Plan B" is what former D. Rep, Alan Grayson, described on the House floor a few years back as the Republican two-part healthcare plan:

#1. Don't get sick.

#2. If you get sick, die quickly.

It's all part of their master economic plan to cleanse the excess population of poor people who cant afford healthcare, food, shelter, clothing, or anything else -- because of starvation wages -- without a little help from public assistance, and who probably vote Democratic, anyway. Then the cons will pay less taxes for all that nonsense and have less political opposition to boot. It's a win win!

UNC Tarheels's picture
UNC Tarheels 6 years 11 weeks ago
#13

There's a reason that education sucks, and it’s the same reason it will never ever ever be fixed. It’s never going to get any better, don’t look for it. Be happy with what you’ve got. Because the owners of this country don’t want that. I’m talking about the real owners now, the big, wealthy, business interests that control all things and make the big decisions.

Forget the politicians, they’re irrelevant.

Politicians are put there to give you that idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land, they own and control the corporations, and they’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the State Houses, and the City Halls. They’ve got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies so they control just about all the news and information you get to hear.

They’ve got you by the balls.

They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I’ll tell you what they don’t want—they don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interest. You know something, they don’t want people that are smart enough to sit around their kitchen table and figure out how badly they’re getting screwed by a system that threw them overboard 30 years ago.

They don’t want that, you know what they want?

They want obedient workers, obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly lousier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it.

And now they’re coming for your social security money.

They want your retirement money; they want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later because they own this place. It’s a big club and you ain’t in it! You and I are not in the Big Club. By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you in the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to believe, what to think and what to buy.

The table is tilted folks, the game is rigged.

Nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care. Good honest hard working people, white collar, blue collar, it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard working people continue, these are people of modest means, continue to elect these rich jerks who don’t care about them. They don’t care about you. They don’t care about you at all, at all, at all.

And nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care.

That’s what the owners count on, the fact that Americans are and will probably remain willfully ignorant. Because the owners of this country know the truth, it’s called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.

Kend's picture
Kend 6 years 11 weeks ago
#14

Americas health care is excellent, if you have money. Truth is Obamacare is just redistribution of wealth. If it was sold that way it probably would have worked. Most people care. But instead middle class working families where told nothing would change for them which of course is impossible. How do you add 20 million people who can't afford healthcare to the system and costs stay the same. If you want to reduce costs in America, reduce to payout outs on lawsuits for doctors, they are only human and will make mistakes. None of the countries Thom mentioned above allow them. Reduce the cost of medications, you pay way more than you should. Probably because of all the payouts insurance companies hand out as well. When I visit America I can't believe how many commercials law firms have on TV.

Legend 6 years 11 weeks ago
#15

I should have added above that employers should no longer be in the health Insurance business. They get a tax deduction and they profit off of it. Why do you think that they are so anxious to do it. Make them pay every employee what they claim they have been paying for medical insurance. Open up the markets across state lines. Allow catastrophic plans for the healthy and allow them to get medical treatment in other countries. Then allow pharmaceuticals to be mail ordered from other countries. Allow considerably more drugs to be purchased over the counter.

larm007's picture
larm007 6 years 11 weeks ago
#16

They may not accept "Thom's decision" but if Americans could engage nationally and start demanding it, we might have a chance. This certainly is a 'Good for All" campaign which we should be 100% behind. I had a colonoscopy a month or so ago and actualy saw the bill. I have 2 healthcare policies and they neglected to bill one them. The bill for 4 hours at the hospital, with almost 3 of those hours waiting, was $8000!!!! I shared that info with a friend and he shared this: his partner had his gall bladder removed laporoscopically--1/2 incision and the laproscope essentially sucks the gall bladder out (I used to be an OR nurse) and is a same day surgery. His bill was $64,000.

larm007's picture
larm007 6 years 11 weeks ago
#17

Would like to add, Unfettered Capitalism is a cancer upon us, 'cause it's 'killing' us (think GMO's and corporate pollution) and our livelihoods. For the benefits of the Capitalist profits, we have jobs sent overseas or simply replace workers with robots, our prisons are for profit, private schools are for profit, new highways are for profit, and of course, healthcare. Privitization for better oversight? No, privatization benefits people who can afford to buy whatever is going to be privatized...so they can increase the costs of service.

Marx was correct about this. I lived in Germany when the Social Democrats were in charge (not aware now who's in charge now)...they had universal healthcare and their 2 week vacation time per year increases from 2 weeks to 6 by the time there are nearing retirement. I lived in China (and no the population was not miserable) and an American friend of mine who fell ill, went to a Chinese hospital. Her 3 day bill was $700. Treatments in the university clinic where we worked were free.

Dianereynolds's picture
Dianereynolds 6 years 11 weeks ago
#18

Obamacare made the US healthcare system unaffordable for most middle class Americans. If one wants to go back through the archives here they would see that many conservative posters here correctly predicted the demise and the dates when horrific cost increases were going to be passed on the the consumer.

Things like,

Mandate everyone must purchase? BS

The young enrollees would offset the elderly? BS

After the 100% Fed to state subsidies for exchanges would end and the states would be profitable? BS

Small Clinics would survive? BS

Less paperwork? BS

Rates would drop? Double BS

You can keep your doctor? Triple BS and earned Obama the title "Liar of the year"

Next time, read the bill before you vote on it.

KCRuger's picture
KCRuger 6 years 11 weeks ago
#19

@Kend: Virtually every policy government comes up with is redistribution of wealth. The question is to and from who. Health care industry executives have made it quite clear to the crowd who favors further redestribution up the ladder by gutting ACA, that such a move would cost them over $16B annually.

deepspace's picture
deepspace 6 years 11 weeks ago
#20

Most of the problems with the Affordable Care Act, which Diane listed, were baked into the cake primarily for the profitability of the insurance industry and wall street investors rather than for the benefit of patients and taxpayers. If one digs into the archives deeply enough, one will discover that it is based thoroughly on Republican concepts, from Nixon to the Heritage Foundation to Romney-care in Massachusetts.

Obama and his advisors deliberately chose this particular plan, to give the bill a better chance to pass, precisely because it had the stench of Republican dogma, thinking, wrongly, that they wouldn't go against their own ideas. Obviously, he vastly underestimated their unlimited depravity.

Before the Affordable Care Act, nearly 45,000 fellow citizens were dying every year for lack of access to healthcare, while Wall Street insurance conglomerates -- principal donors to political campaigns -- were skimming up to thirty, sometimes forty percent profit for their shareholders. Medicare runs with only an average of three percent overhead, which is why the lobbyists for the insurance industry and the for-profit hospital chains fought shamelessly to exclude any public option.

Dr. Miklashek in post #5, Thom, and the majority consensus in this thread have it exactly right -- the citizens should push for a universal, single-payer, not-for-profit healthcare system. It should be available from birth to death. It should cover the myriad medical conditions inflicting humanity, hospice, and basic funeral expenses. Since everyone would pay into it, with no skimming of profits, it would be cheaper. Since everyone is going to get sick and die, it would be humane.

Right now, as always, Republicans are just groping around in the dark, secretly plotting to increase the profits of their donor class while further dismantling -- instead of fixing -- our flawed healthcare system. Now is the time to push for the ultimate fix: Medicare for all! If nothing else, perhaps they'll be exposed for the frauds they are.

FrrThom's picture
FrrThom 6 years 11 weeks ago
#21

When I was a student at FSU, I took a class on The History of the New South taught by Dr. William Rodgers. One of the memorable bits of historical trivia from that class was the story about Thomas Wolfe at the Summer Olympics, 1936 in Berlin.

Every time Jesse Owens won a heat, Hitler would go bonkers. His box was above where Thomas Wolfe was watching. Wolfe soon tired of the Führer's antics and turned and gave Hitler the Bronx Cheer (aka the Raspberries).

In the spirit of Thomas Wolfe, I have created a new award for politicians who act inappropriately this year – The weekly Bronx Cheer Award. The award will be posted on Friday afternoons and the first award is posted here: https://www.facebook.com/134935576920296/photos/a.151496571930863.1073741828.134935576920296/251580505255802/?type=3&theater

Ou812's picture
Ou812 6 years 11 weeks ago
#22

@20

It's amazing, each time I believe I've seen the epitome of stupidity, you lefties manage to top it. You say the ACA was the Republicans fault. Even though not one Republican voted for it. The then speaker of the house, Nancy Pelosi, admits no one knew what the bill contained when she said, "we have to pass it to see what's in it". As you pointed out, Obama and his advisors picked out this plan. Neither you nor anyone else knows what their motivation was for picking this particular plan. Stop lying.

Until you realize you (Democrats) are the cause of your problems, you'll never be able to fix them.

Dianereynolds's picture
Dianereynolds 6 years 11 weeks ago
#23

The party of excuses. If I were a leftie/socialist I would just go into the bathroom and bang my head against the toilet for the next eight years.

deepspace's picture
deepspace 6 years 11 weeks ago
#24

@Ou812 #22:

Ha! Funny!

As usual, you are the insincere troll (by your own admission in a few threads back) who is the one engaging in "stupidity" and "lying" (to use your descriptors), who is just plain wrong about the history, and who unwittingly projects onto others your own shortcomings. I'm not sorry that I previously drew out into the open for all to witness your shallow and shameful retorts, which you sprinkle around just for shits and giggles. This latest angry response, however, is dripping with the resentment of a damaged ego. Grow up!

Back to what matters: It is solidly on the record that the Affordable Care Act was absolutely based on long-established Republican ideas. This wasn't some big secret with hidden motivations. Obama's team was quite up front about it, and he gave several speeches explaining that very point.

In spite of their own history, however, the Republican crime family manipulated the whole process by stealth, inserting poison pills and false promises before hypocritically voting against the bill en masse. From the very beginning of his presidency, they secretly committed to block everything Obama would attempt to accomplish for the people in order to make him look as bad as possible, trying to deny him any legislative wins whatsoever. Newt Gingrich publicly admitted it as a guest on Thom's radio show. Do your homework and read, "When the Tea Party Came to Town" by Robert Draper.

FYI: Max Baucus happened to be my Senator at the time (a Democrat, unfortunately, who sold out to the insurance industry); consequently, I was compelled to follow diligently the initial hearings and the hopelessly watered-down fiasco all the way to the final passage. Both corporate-corrupted Republican and Democratic reprobates in the run-up had their dirty hands all over it. To deny such a well-documented history is either gross ignorance or a despicable lie on your part. So, which is it, troll?

I very much doubt if "Imus in the Morning" -- one of your (ha ha) go-to sources -- would ever seriously discuss such weighty matters as a President trying very hard to save thousands of people's lives by giving American citizens better access to healthcare.

It's too bad that Republicans didn't even try, and only succeeded in torpedoing Obama's efforts every chance they got. This was bipartisan "sausage-making" at its worst.

Nevertheless, despite such a putrid process, the end result is still a thousand times better than the largely unregulated, hopelessly expensive private insurance market nightmare that used to rule over life and death by denying benefits to the sick. Sure, the ACA needs a lot of improvement. Or better yet, how about just doing away with this monstrous giveaway to the insurance industry altogether and implement Medicare for all, no matter one's age?

Tell us; why should anyone of conscience trust Republicans to do the right thing about one of our most important rights, considering their worthless track record?

sally7's picture
sally7 6 years 11 weeks ago
#25

Thank you Thom for your article. While I am a progressive on most issues, I do not support the so-called Affordable Health Care Act. It has many good provisions such as not allowing people do be denied coverage, allowing children to stay on their parents plan. Yet are also multiple areas of serious problems: lack of price controls on medications and diagnostic tests, over reach and often criminal behavior on part of insurance companies and lack of coverage for complementary therapies which are often extremely effective.

My biggest area of opposition is the mandate. Universal, single-payer coverage is the only viable option in my mind. For people like me, basically healthy, on no medication of any kind, who lives a lifestlye free of risk factors for disease...i.e. (exercise, weight ideal; no fast food, no alcohol, no smoking etc) this is a huge hit on my very tight budget. Secondly, while I am basically healthy, I did have spinal fusion surgery at a teen due to severe scoliosis. I discovered very effective means of dealing with stifness and pain and none of them are covered by insurance. Regular bodywork (therapeutic massage, acupuncture), yoga, meditation keep me pain free and with high mobility. Meditation and herbs work for stress. I am in my 50's on no medication, weight, energy sleep all very good. In order for me to pay for insurance I would have to take the money from my wellness budget which includes high quality healthy food and the above named services. I am unwilling to exchange a sytem of self care which works extremely well for one which only treats disease after it has set in. I am unwilling to take my limited budget and pay for medical insurance which I need only ocassionally when the cost of such a choice would rob me of the option to pay for what works well and which I absolutely must maintain in order to stay well.

The entire conversation in this country needs to shift. It can't only be how to pay for chronic disease, although it must include that. It must also include what cultivates wellness: healthy diet, stress reduction skills, movement, bodywork etc. Our system is riddled with conflicts of interests of "making a killing" off diagnosing and treating disease and doing little to prevent it; junk food is cheaper than healthy food; meditation and yoga for stress related symptoms are not covered but suppressing those things with meds are covered, often for decades. In reality our system has little to do with health and no incentive for moving in that direction. Until we face this unpleasant truth and find the moral courage to not allow such flagrant conflicts of interest, we will never solve the crisis we are in.

This topic is one of my greatest passions. As a practitioner of Chinese Medicine and yoga, as one of many who have found other ways to keep myself healthy and as a daughter/sibling of those with very serious illness and do require the protections offered by Obamacare I am looking at this through a very wide lens. The issue of healthcare for a nation must begin with several assumptions: the foundation must be Health Itself (not just treating disease); It must be universal; it must be free of conflict of interest which includes unfair cornering of markets by those with vested interests. It must include education toward this end... paid for universally. Health itself must be seen as a value worth investing in, for only that will birth an empowered, healthy society.

Many Thanks!

deepspace's picture
deepspace 6 years 10 weeks ago
#26

sally7:
Thanks for that! Very well thought out, informative, and inspiring. A joy to read!

k. allen's picture
k. allen 6 years 10 weeks ago
#27

I agree. Thank you, sally7 (#25) for reminding us that the real health care debate starts with life care - what serves fundamental health in the first place. The questions of who pays for what, and how in monetary terms, pertain more to the health of insurance and conventional consumer industries and have been driven into the ground - still no relevant solutions.

If I recall, back in the 70's it was illegal to practice homeopathic/naturopathic medicine ((probably associated with witchcraft by those oh-so-enlightened experts of the up and coming modern era.))

When it finally did pass legal muster, many traditional (alternative) approaches to health and healing became available, only, as so many of us know, payment still has to come out of pocket, as insurance generally will not cover those practices.

The good news is, a lot of good-hearted, well-meaning people are employed in the industries. Those folks deserve a chance to serve life without useless industry/economic constraints that obstruct health and effective life care, just as wee people will better serve health for ourselves, and the world we share ... if we can learn to live in peace and harmony with the body of life, to which we are born.

peacelee's picture
peacelee 6 years 10 weeks ago
#28

Ok, now suddenly post election, I am hearing more news about polls that say now Americans are wanting to keep Obamacare. What??? This is the reverse of the impression given by MSM following the enactment of ACA. Is this the Republican machine gearing up to say, well, Americans have changed their minds and we don't know what to do anyway, so we're not actually going to do anything at all???

For me personally, a victim of Chronic Lyme Disease (aka CLD), the Affordable Care Act has ravaged my finances with overwhelming, skyrocketing premiums amplified by the fact that I have to wait an extra year to get Medicare. The Infectious Disease Society of America who very wrongly informs protocols insurance companies use for treatment, has historically stated the infection is no longer there following short term treatment BY DECREE. I became infected in 1984 in Colorado (hey, no one was looking for Lyme then in the west). There was no bull's eye rash so I was deemed depressed and a good candidate for antidepressant mixed protocols with antiseizure meds (which was frankly disastrous). I can't remember how many doctors I saw until I was finally diagnosed in 2013 with deadly Babesia and Lyme and got the standard short term treatment, just like someone with a fresh tick bite would get. The treatment was useless. I was so tired of being lied to, I bought my own microscope and saw my own living, dancing spirochetes in my blood POST TREATMENT.

Here in MIchigan (with a history of de-licensing treating Lyme docs in the past and a burgeoning tick population) any treating doc is hard to find, of unknown efficacy, and wildly expensive. If you are just a millionaire, I would suggest, you still can't afford treatment, as insurance doesn't cover long term treatment for Lyme. ACA is preventing me from accessing treatment because it sucks out my income and fails to cover anything effective, and because it impoverishes me, I can't afford more realistic long term treatment. See films Under Our Skin, Lyme Cryme, and many many others on YouTube. Let's see: CDC says upwards of 300,000 new borrelia burgdorferi, the Lyme spirochete, infections per year, multiplied by congenital and sexual transmission (Men's Fitness Magazine re: the new std) yields millions of newly infected persons estimated, in five years time, many of which will fail the 40% accurate ELISA first tier diagnostic test required by insurance protocols. Gee are they using it so people will deliberately fall through the cracks and suffer?

This is an infectious disaster for America and worldwide with mindblowing consequences for everyone, and ACA as it is currently configured has its head in the sand regarding this tragic vector-borne illness. Lyme Disease will destroy your useful life and cause you to pray for death at some point due to severe pain and organ destruction (brain, heart, GI tract, and more) if you are unfortunate enough to get no prophylactic treatment (at least 20 days) upon being bitten or are one of the 68% (figure received this week from Lyme group survey for early and late treatment outcomes) for whom early treatment fails or you are unaware of a bite or have no identifying rash.

Dr. Alan MacDonald has done wonderful work showing borrelia burgdorferi in Alzheimer's victims and many other revelations. Did that person die of a heart attack or was it really Lyme Carditis? Without a diagnosis, you don't know you're at risk. These spirochetes have serious effects on the human body including permanent immunosuppression, a non-HIV AIDS. Prevention is essential to save your quality of life and that of your family.

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