What Jane Mayer’s “Dark Money” is to the Kochtopus and follytix, Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal’s new “An American Sickness” is to the health care debacle. Subtitled “how healthcare became a business and how you can take it back,” the book is loaded with outrageous inside baseball about how the rich get richer by gaming the system and exploiting human misery for fun and profit.
For instance, the feds allow an American Medical Association committee to fix prices of services. The committee “is actually asking (doctors) whether or not they want to be paid more,” she writes.
One former member termed it “26 sharks in a tank with nothing to eat but each other.”
NevadaLabor.com is the sole source of the Washoe grand jury report on how Washoe’s county hospital was stolen through political corruption in 1985, birthing the rapacious Renown conglomerate.
The most recent local scam came last month when for-profit St. Mary’s sold its adjacent “health care and fitness” complex for $66 million to a real estate investment trust. The crusading news media failed to note that REITs pay no income tax.
The Koch Brothers have perverted the system of non-profit charity to accomplish something liberals have failed to implement for decades: taxpayer financing of political campaigns, albeit for their twisted royalist vision of plutocracy. Likewise, the healthcare system fattens the few to the jeopardy of the many.
St. Mary’s will now launder your health care dollars into a tax-free corporate front.
Bucking hard for a Trump cabinet appointment, Gov. Veto El Obtúsè just killed Senate Bill 265, an attempt to dampen price gouging for insulin. What a guy.
I strongly suggest that you read all about it. The research is available cheap at locally-owned Grassroots Books.
GREAT SCOTT. Rev. William C. Webb will come out of retirement to conduct the memorial service for Nevada civil rights legend Eddie Scott. It’s scheduled for 11 a.m. on Friday, June 30, at Reno’s Second Baptist Church, 1265 Montello Street. Arrive early.
Nevada’s best journalist, former Tribunite Dennis Myers, published an outstanding and touching obituary of my friend Eddie in the current Reno News & Review. See RenoSparksNAACP.org/
Please read the very hopeful story of the grand accomplishments of a very humble man.
WONDER WHERE THE YELLOW WENT? Years ago, Ma Bell made the phone book almost useless without a magnifying glass. As of 2017, phone books are no longer delivered in these parts. To get business white and yellow pages, you have to call India or the Philippines. Residential numbers are no longer available except on the internet. That eliminates roughly one in four Washoe County residents without web access.
COW COUNTIES BEWARE. Nevada made international news last week in a BBC story about AT&T phasing out dependable landlines. Ma Bell got a law passed in the 2013 Nevada Legislature opening the door to dropping service altogether in many communities. (Barbwire 31 May 2016).
JUNE 6, 1944. When will they ever learn?
Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno.
Andrew Barbano is a 48-year Nevadan, editor of NevadaLabor.com, first vice-president of the Reno-Sparks NAACP and a member of Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO. As always, his opinions are strictly his own. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us> Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988.
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