Commentary
Singing satirist Tom Lehrer got it right: Satire died that day Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. (See below.)
These days, we are forced to live within the cocoon of an endless cartoon loop that would dizzy even the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote.
Instance in point: Health care is now dangerous to your health, physically and financially, not necessarily in that order.
The cartoon script mandates that our Madison Avenue-named “Medicare Advantage” (aka MA) health insurance sign-up deadline comes every Dec. 7. Pearl Harbor Day.
As with later debacles like 9/11 and Oct. 7, high officials ignored warning signs hiding in plain sight resulting in that infamous 1941 Sunday.
Unintentional and brutally accurate self-satire, eh wot? Every Dec. 7 for many years, I have knowingly (or ignorantly) become a victim of Medicare Advantage “insurance.” As I’ve noted before, it appears beneficial if you don’t get seriously ill, require major hospitalization or long-term care. But it gets worse.
Last week, I reported on a new group comprised of thousands of doctors called Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP). They turned up the heat just in time for the annual Pearl Harbor Day insurance danse macabre.
PNHP just began circulating a national petition “demanding that the Biden administration and Congress take immediate action to protect Medicare from corporate greed.”
I don’t wanna hear any dinosaur complain that this is just another attempt by closet Commies to impose socialized medicine. That ship sailed in 2009, according to the former head of the Nevada State Medical Assn. That was the year the U.S. government became the single payer of more than half the medical expenses in the country.
“Over 50 percent of Medicare beneficiaries now have for-profit corporations in charge of their care through MA. Insurance companies are paid handsomely for these plans, and much of that money goes to corporate profits instead of care,” PNHP asserts.
“Investigations into claim denials in MA found that insurers were inappropriately denying treatments and tests that should be covered under Medicare,” the docs denounce.
NBC News was not as gentle: “ ‘Deny, deny, deny’: By rejecting claims, Medicare Advantage plans threaten rural hospitals and patients, say CEOs.”
The full NBC story, which ironically aired last Hallowe’en, may be accessed with the web edition of this column at NevadaLabor.com/
In a Nov. 17 guest column in The Hill, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and PNHP Vice-President Dr. Diljeet Singh wrote the following: “MA as it exists today is a threat to patient care, to health equity and indeed to the integrity of our public health infrastructure. A new report from Physicians for a National Health Program, an organization of doctors working to reform the health care system, shows that for-profit, corporate MA insurers are overpaid anywhere from $88 to $140 billion a year. That’s money coming out of patients’ and taxpayers’ pockets.”
That’s also more than enough money to add dental and vision care. While new sign-ups face Pearl Harbor Day, current MA clients can opt out at any time. So go shopping for supplemental plans based on your needs.
As I wrote last week, Social Security is the gold standard of good administration. Its operating costs are only three percent. All the rest goes to the people. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., campaigned for “Medicare for All” and was swatted down for his trouble.
Fully one-third of American health care cost is swallowed up by administration of a labyrinthinesystem and privatized profit — while millions of people remain underinsured (and undernourished).
Contact your congresscritters. Sign the petition at PNHP.salsalabs.org/ People are dying.
All we can do is all we can do. And we must, dammit!
HENRY KISSINGER WAS DR. STRANGELOVE. That’s not a joke. It was a Jeopardy answer many years ago, which is how I found out.
Director Stanley Kubrick’s greatest film was among the first 25 selected for preservation by the Library of Congress. That’s pretty elite company with the likes of “Citizen Kane”, “Casablanca”, “High Noon”, “The Wizard of Oz”, “Star Wars” and “Gone with the Wind.”
Released in 1964, the late great Peter Sellers played three roles in the nuclear doomsday satire based on a bestseller. (Read the book or view the resulting movie “Fail Safe.” The fine film starring Henry Fonda did not make the first 25.)
In Kubrick’s magnum opus, Dr. Strangelove is national security advisor to the U.S. president, also played by Sellers. (Believe me, it works.)
He speaks with a thick German accent and is possessed of, or maybe by, a left arm with a mind of its own — which constantly tries to strangle him.
The point, of course, is that a man unable to control even himself impels the world toward nuclear destruction. And succeeds.
But wait, you might say. Kissinger only rose to prominence several years later with Richard the Rotten’s presidential campaign, right? Yes.
But in the early 60s, he was national security advisor to New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller where Kubrick became aware of him and thus became the model for Dr. Strangelove.
How strange? For all his media hotdogging as a gray eminence, there were many countries to which Kissinger could never travel. Doing so, he would have been immediately and deservedly arrested as a war criminal.
Life imitates art.
CAUSE & EFFECT (?) DEPT. Headlines from the Dec. 6 Reno Gazette-Journal front page:
“Washoe County graduation rate falls — down to lowest level in five years”
AND “Regents vote to hike higher education tuition”
Apparently, more and more disaffected young people are singing Pink Floyd’s youth anthem “We Don’t Need No Education.”
WE DON’T NEED NO STINKING HEALTH CARE. Concluding with one final classic, please pardon the preceding parody from “Treasure of Sierra Madre.”
Alas and alack, the Renown Health octopus just cut ties with the UNR med school. UNR patients who have bought into Renown’s Hometown Health Medicare Advantage Plan must seek new providers by Dec. 7.
NevadaLabor.com remains the only place online where you can access the Washoe Grand Jury report documenting how Renown stole our low-cost county hospital, Washoe Medical Center, and turned into a money monster.
Stay safe, get vaxxed and pray for those cruelly afflicted by the criminally small minds on this tiny planet, especially victims of our perpetual wars.
Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno.
Andrew Quarantino Barbáno is a 54-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com and DoctorLawyerWatch.com/ Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us
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