Healthcare Fraudulent Profits Put The ‘Gift Of Life’… On Life Support!

Profits, Frauds And Insurance Premiums

In the West, there is a widespread consensus that costs of living and social status always mirror one another. The more one can afford the wealthier one is. If this adage is no longer true, maybe was it never true at all. Many among the middle class, who still can purchase some form of healthcare insurance, have realized that their security hangs by a thread. Each year health insurance premiums are set to further skyrocket. The average employee receiving benefits through an employer doesn’t feel safer either as the out of pocket (before the insurance kicks in) ever increases. The out of pocket for a minimum coverage varying between 5,000 dollars and 2,500 respectively.

If getting health insurance through the employer is a big plus, a 2,500 dollar expense for family of four still represents financial stress. In 2013, a CNN analysis estimated that 76% of Americans were living from pay check to pay check. Considering that the average household has a mere thousand dollars in savings and credit cards close to being maxed out, financial flexibility has become elusive.

Overbilling Is Only A Fraud Among ‘Many’ Others

Although many have access to programs such as medicare, the latter are such in deep red ink. Medicare liabilities amount to $ 30 trillion. Obamacare did more harm than good. Though realistically speaking, the Trump administration won’t be able to fix anything. Such programs have been the main drive behind healthcare costs and insurance premium increase for many decades. They have fueled the dynamics of demand and supply and reversing the trends is practically impossible. Any new policy attempting to lower the costs in favor of the patients will send the healthcare industry into a tailspin.

Many hospitals and medical professionals have overbilled insurances for quite some time now. The whole industry is inflationary. So on one end, we find that bad health is often linked to bad eating habits, a stained food chain and various chemical invasions; and on the other end, we have a sector profiting from sickness as if there were no tomorrows. One doesn’t need to be a PhD – nor a prophet – to predict how this will end.

There have many articles lauding the efficiency and affordability of the Swiss healthcare system. Though even Switzerland has a massive pension fund headache to resolve within 4 years from now. The country could just go under if nothing is done, contended a Financial Times article in 2010. Aging population is a dire problem because the birth rate in the West went drastically down compared to 70 years ago. Financial projections were based on 3 or 4 kids per household. Today the birth rate is about 1.2 or three times less. It is not just Switzerland but the entire West that should be extremely concerned.

Major Economies As Health Hazards.

America and Europe being major economies, money printing to delay the day of reckoning remains a solution. The Federal Reserve has already done that several times since the 2008 crisis. Unfortunately, the price tag has still yet to come. Switzerland and ECB will also have to resort to the printing press. However, we can always cynically speculate on a war causing mass casualties to fix this mathematical equation. While this really sounds like an absolute worse case scenario, world tensions are rising. Something is definitely brewing.

The majority assumes that assessing the quality of healthcare systems is a tricky business. That all methods and prognostics have their own flaws. Well, if one is going to monetize the ‘gift of life‘, there are more incentives to profit from diseases to start with. On the other side of the Atlantic, the U.K seems to have the worst healthcare system by far. The latter could collapse at any moment as over 3 million people are on the NHS waiting list. According to the telegraph.uk, hundreds unnecessarily died between 2006 and 2009 waiting to see a doctor! But here comes another aberration. Instead of improving services at home, the U.K is currently projecting to support ‘care in the community for elderly’ people in China stipulates the Telegraph.uk again. In Canada the state of affair isn’t better at all and care rationing begins to look much like that in the UK.

Capitalism and Socialism Banding Together

By now the trend should rather be obvious: socialized healthcare wouldn’t go anywhere without capitalism and otherwise. Both are putting the Gift Of Life on life support. It all becomes crystal clear when probing the overbilling disaster. Capitalism is antagonistic to efficient treatments. And socialism seeks to further regulate, all of which gives the industry and big-pharma alike more power. According to Malcolm Sparrowd, a mathematician at Harvard, the overbilling fraud estimate adds up to a minimum sum of $ 270 billion a year or at least ten percent of all health care expenses. Regulations never work because there’re drafted by the one-sided profits hunters themselves and a bunch of aggressive lobbyists buying politics. Any genuine action to fix the mess will destroy healthcare as we know it. Meanwhile corruption continues unabated.

To read this long investigation into the monetization of the Gift Of Life further and learn about  The Earth Custodians Movement, please go to:

earthcustodians.net/blog/2017/02/08/healthcare-profits-put-us-all-on-life-support/

Some of the sources (and many more at the original link)

The Crime of Overbilling Healthcare https://blog.nader.org/2014/08/29/the-crime-of-overbilling-healthcare/

How doctors and hospitals have collected billions in questionable Medicare fee https://www.publicintegrity.org/2012/09/15/10810/how-doctors-and-hospitals-have-collected-billions-questionable-medicare-fees

Healthcare Fraudulent Profits Put The ‘Gift Of Life’… On Life Support!

Patients forced to make appointments to boost profits, says Labour MP

Healthcare provider Virgin Care has been forcing patients to attend extra appointments to boost profits, says former employee and the Labour MP for Dewsbury, Paula Sherriff.

Speaking in the House of Commons, where she had been granted the first question to the prime minister, and where her words were protected by parliamentary privilege, Sherriff accused Virgin Care of insisting on, “extra consultations before surgery, boosting their profits at the expense of the taxpayer, and patient safety”.

Before she stood for parliament, Sherriff worked in Virgin Care’s dermatology service, in West Yorkshire. She claims patients were obliged to book a second, follow-up appointment before receiving treatment – for a suspect mole, for example – when the NHS would previously have carried out the same work in a single booking.

She told the prime minister this was “amongst many unethical practices” she had witnessed. The process of “double appointments” allows Virgin Care to levy the £100 to £150 appointment fee from the NHS twice, Sherriff said.

The MP, who has made a name for herself in her short time in parliament by campaigning against the so-called “tampon tax” on sanitary products, believes the outsourcing of NHS work increases costs, and produces worse outcomes for patients.

Virgin Care, which is part of the Virgin Group, has the contracts to carry out over 230 NHS and social care services, from running GPs’ surgeries to providing healthcare in prisons. Virgin bought up private healthcare provider Assura Medical in 2010 to capitalise on the fast-growing market in healthcare.

The prime minister replied that it was the last Labour government, not the Conservatives, that had significantly increased privatisation in the NHS.

Patients forced to make appointments to boost profits, says Labour MP

As Profits Roll In, Aetna To Broaden On Obamacare Exchange In 2015

Aetna said this morning it will increase its private overall health insurance coverage items on government exchanges beneath the Inexpensive Care Act following yr to the added marketplace of Georgia based mostly on the company’s first-yr successes.

The Hartford-based health insurance giant, which raised its earnings guidance for the 12 months to $ 6.45 to $ 6.60 per share from $ .6.35 to $ 6.fifty five, mentioned throughout its 2nd-quarter earnings contact that its complete yr 2014 revenue will be greater thanks to development in lines of business across the business.

Though new membership from government run, so-referred to as “public,” exchanges below  the well being law is just two percent of company company, Aetna is seeing a boom in Americans signing up to the expanded Medicaid system for the bad, which is yet another important portion of the Reasonably priced Care Act.

In the course of a 70-minute conference contact with analysts and traders, Aetna chairman and chief executive Mark Bertolini explained 45,000 of the company’s 79,000 new Medicaid wellness plan members in the quarter have been related to “ACA growth.”

“Our results communicate to the power of our diversified portfolio of businesses and our capability to realize success across several fronts,” Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini said.

Aetna mentioned its 2nd-quarter earnings rose two % to $ 548.8 million, or $ one.52 per share, in contrast to $ 536 million, or $ 1.49 per share in the 2nd quarter of 2013.

Revenues soared much more than 25 percent to $ 14.five billion in contrast to $ eleven.5 billion in the year-in the past on across-the-board gains in newly insured customers under the health law via exchanges, expanded Medicaid overall health applications for the bad and its Medicare Advantage business, which gives well being positive aspects to seniors in contracts with the federal government.

Bertolini mentioned the company’s determination to expand into Georgia comes right after closely examining markets across the country and Aetna’s expertise thus far. Aetna rivals like UnitedHealth Group (UNH) have currently announced expansions for 2015 as effectively.

Aetna is previously a huge player on the government-run exchanges, providing well being programs in 17 states.

Aetna president, CEO and chairman Mark Bertolini

As Profits Roll In, Aetna To Broaden On Obamacare Exchange In 2015

Legalization of Recreational Marijuana: Profits Before Safety?

As recreational use of marijuana not too long ago became legal in Washington state, many concerned dad and mom and educators feel this determination is sending the incorrect message to our youth and teens.  While product sales carry on to be brisk in Colorado, a single expert voices concern about the drug serving as a gateway for youth and teenagers browsing for tougher drugs.

“It’s actually a shame that however yet another state has permitted and is now peddling recreational marijuana,” mentioned Janina Kean, substance abuse and addiction specialist and President and CEO of Large Observe Recovery Center.  “Allowing the sale of recreational marijuana in Washington will only perpetuate drug use in the state and offer a gateway for our youth for undertaking more hardcore, illicit drugs this kind of as heroin, which is presently plaguing the nation.”

Logo of the United States National Institute on Drug Abuse, element of the National Institutes of Well being. (Photo credit score: Wikipedia)

Kean is on the front lines in the war towards substance abuse. Her interaction with youth, teens and mothers and fathers in excess of the previous 16 many years in her treatment method facility has shaped her views about the recently approved legislation legalizing recreational use of marijuana in Washington State. As an internationally recognized specialist and spokesperson in the field of substance abuse, Kean led the initial AA meeting to ever take spot in the Opiate Triangle of the Globe, the Yunnan Province of China, exactly where she was invited to teach doctors how to appropriately care for individuals with heroin addiction.

Keen has firsthand knowledge that marijuana is not as benign a drug as most folks feel, and contrary to well-known belief, marijuana is addictive.

She explains that many of her present opiate addicts she treats, who began using marijuana only a decade earlier, often stated “Marijuana is safe, it’s not addictive, it can’t hurt you.”

“Well, the recent legalization of recreational marijuana has only reinforced the belief of adolescents—that this is a safe drug,” explains Kean.

“If it employed for medicine or medicinal purposes”, her sufferers argue, and is legal, “it can not harm me.”

Estimates from the Nationwide Institute on Drug Abuse indicate that about 9 % of consumers turn out to be addicted. The number increases to 1 in six, or 17 percent, in end users who start off in their teenagers, and to 25-50 percent in day-to-day end users.

Kean explains that numerous sufferers she taken care of, whom only “casually” utilised  marijuana, have given that gone on to use more difficult drugs such as cocaine, heroin, and MDMA or Molly following reaching a plateau, and finish up back at her therapy facility.

In truth, in accordance to a 2010 Nationwide Survey on Drug Use and Wellness (NSDUH), marijuana accounted for 4.5 million of the estimated 7.one million Americans who had been addicted to, or abusing illicit medication. Data from 2009 in a related examine signifies that marijuana was the primary drug of abuse in these 12 many years and older entering drug therapy plans. And 61 % of individuals under the age of 15 also reported marijuana as their principal drug of abuse.

In response to permitting recreational use of the drug, Kean feels that states such as Washington and Colorado that want to make money off the sale of recreational marijuana want to incorporate statutes in their legislation which dictate that a specified fixed percentage of recreational marijuana profits be directed toward treatment method beds and study on the use and misuse of marijuana in every single state.

In truth, in accordance to an report in USA Right now, Colorado has previously collected practically 24 million in marijuana taxes from state licensed shops, and Washington State seems forward to collecting up to 190 million dollars in the up coming 4 many years based mostly on government projections.

“These states are only allowing use and revenue of marijuana because there is funds to be made and as such, they need to have to pay out for the consequences of their revenue, improved drug abuse and addiction amid the youth,” added Kean.

As of now, there is no allocation of funds as element of legislation in Washington or Colorado which dictates (or mandates) care or study to examine and measure abuse and addiction that may stick to from marijuana use.  Kean feels this is the moral thing to do if these states will be allowed to carry on to sell the drug for recreational functions.

With two deaths straight stemming from marijuana edibles (1 suicide and 1 murder case) in the past 12 months, along with the ever-present query regarding “legal” or “allowable” quantities of marijuana in drivers, defining the potential of recreational marijuana use in the US continues.

Legalization of Recreational Marijuana: Profits Before Safety?