What if Health Care Reform is Defeated?
By Samuel Lipari (about the author) Page
1 of 2 page(s)
http://www.medicalsupplychain.com
For OpEdNews: Samuel Lipari – Writer
http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/What-if-Health-Care-Reform-by-Samuel-Lipari-091116-774.html
When Speaker of the
House Nancy Pelosi led the heroic majority in passing a healthcare reform bill
that would begin taking America's vast uninsured population toward eligibility
for treatment by doctors and medical facilities, she could lose up to 39 of her
democratic party members and still have the votes to
win.
Pelosi's
victory for the American people was worth the enormous political risk to House
of Representatives members in her party. On Veteran's Day we were sadly
reminded that the lack of health insurance contributed to the
deaths of 2,266 American veterans last year alone. Harvard
Medical School researchers estimate that deaths of Americans in general
associated with the lack of healthcare insurance have now climbed to 45,000 a
year.
When
I first began my legal fight in 2002 against the healthcare industry
stakeholders under our nation's antitrust laws, my former attorney Bret Landrith
alleged from the best current data that 20,603
deaths a year would result from the increasing loss of healthcare coverage
as unemployment rose.
Senator Harry Reid cannot afford to lose one senator in the Democratic Party
majority. Senate rules also make Reid's job more difficult than Speaker
Pelosi's. Reid will not have Ms. Pelosi's forewarning of amendments being
brought to the floor, or even the Speaker of the House's power to limit the
duration of the debate. The
New York Times on November 8th,
pointed out that the familiar divisive political issues of abortion,
immigration, and even gun rights will appear in proposed amendments to the
healthcare reform legislation. The debate can easily postpone the vote on the
bill till Christmas Eve.
While
the Senate leader is attempting to build the 60 unanimous votes to overcome a
Republican filibuster, the healthcare industry stakeholders benefitting from
the existing system of artificially inflated healthcare costs resulting from a
complete lack of competition in both the $2.1 Dollar hospital supply market
controlled by the hospital group purchasing organization or “GPO”
duopoly of Novation LLC and Premier Purchasing
Partners and the insurance industry which benefits in the similar absence
of competition in health insurance will take all those billions of dollars
looted from Medicare and Medicaid and use them as a bottomless war chest to
pick off Harry Reid's Senators.
Senator Reid knows
this because this same money has whipped up fear and resentment of taxes and of
an increased federal government role in healthcare even in Reid's state of Nevada
where the Service
Employees International Union (SEIU), long on the front lines of healthcare
reform had previously been representative of Nevada's majority of citizens
seeking increased access to medical care. As the key target of the healthcare
industry stakeholders, Senator Harry Reid can see he is now trailing in polls
behind two Republican opponents, one of whom is a physician jockeying for
Reid's seat as reported in the
Las Vegas Review-Journal. And of course, Reid's predecessor as Senate
Leader, South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle who in many ways is the architect of
the new healthcare reform was targeted in the same manner.
Despite
having the strong force of healthcare industry stakeholders in reach of voting
the Senate Leader out of office in next year's elections, Senator Harry Reid is
valiantly trying to craft a bill that will hold the Democratic Party together
and not suffer the defections of Progressive senators in red leaning states.
These senators are already feeling the heat of healthcare
industry stakeholder funded Astroturf grassroots campaigns and town hall
meeting mass protests coupled with over a quarter of a
billion dollars spent lobbying in just the first six months of this year.
The US Senate is historically the strongest rampart to storm for coalitions
seeking to legislate democratic and populist inspired
social programs.
Hard
wired into our bicameral system is the Senate's resistance to change including
the identification of Senators over their longer careers and far more expensive
to campaign for seats with the established big business interests that have
supported them over the years. And no businesses have been bigger or bigger
political contributors in the history of the world than the hospital industry
stake holders-Big Pharma, Big Insurance and the Novation LLC hospital supply cartel.
As
the forces of healthcare reform have been arrayed on the field of battle in
preparation to overcome this one last obstacle and help President Obama
complete the great social safety net envisioned by the most celebrated
Democratic Presidents Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Johnson; Senate Leader Harry Reid
has had the help of Missouri's Senator Claire McCaskill,
once known nationally as then Senator Obama's Presidential Campaign Chair, she
was forced to distance herself from the president elect to remain viable in her
otherwise red state.
McCaskill came to office
after having only
narrowly defeated her social conservative Republican predecessor on the
issue of healthcare insurance in the aftermath of the tragic “Insure
Missouri”-the real GOP plan for healthcare reform, the elimination of Medicaid
and diverting the federal tax dollars to the usual healthcare industry
stakeholders including the state's Novation LLC
cartel hospitals and the healthcare billing software cost concealment giant
Cerner.
The Pro-Choice
Democrat wonder woman who was able to take on an incumbent Pro-Life Republican
in a Red State and win was a good face for Senate Leader Harry Reid to put out
in front of his caucus. McCaskill did her part, often
appearing on the early morning network and cable news shows and in the same
evening appearing again to defend the administration and the Democratic Party
Senator Claire McCaskill was carefully maneuvered
into the ranks of the so called “Blue Dog Democrat” senators where Reid knew
the defections on the central and defining legislation of the modern
Progressive movement would come.
Senator
McCaskill endured the innuendos aimed at the Blue
Dogs by progressive journalists like MSNBC's
Rachel Maddow who had become frustrated with a
Democrat President and a Democrat controlled Congress seemingly unable to
implement Progressive or even Democratic policies, much less dismantle the
prior Republican administration's unconstitutional police state abuse of the
Justice Department, Court System, detainees and warrantless wiretapping
programs. However, it was on the issue of abortion where Senator Claire McCaskill played her foil to Senate Leader Harry Reid on
November 13th by attempting to model a compromise
strategy for the Blue Dogs. McCaskill was attempting
to describe a healthcare bill Blue Dogs could vote for without losing their
seats to Republican challengers in 2010 and 2012, when she inadvertently
exposed the tragic flaw of Reid's plan.
In
Missouri, Senator Claire McCaskill under the
direction of the Senate Leader Reid's grand maneuvers to position his
Democratic caucus was sacrificing the strength and accomplishments of the state
Democratic Party which had managed to recapture the governorship, hold on to
the Missouri State Attorney General's office (albeit with a recently convert
from the Republican party). The Missouri Democratic Party was
even poised to elect a second
progressive woman senator, Robin Carnahan, the current Secretary of State
and the daughter of former Governor Mel Carnahan and his
widow and successor into the Senate, Jean Carnahan.
Certainly
Senate Leader Harry Reid didn't make Senator Claire McCaskill
choose between the spoils of patronage in pork barrel spending for her state
and loyalty to her Missouri Democrat supporters. Despite its importance as a
necessary swing state for President Obama's coming reelection campaign, few
Missourians can point out a recent high profile federally funded project. McCaskill, a mature and wise political leader knows the
statesmanlike thing to do is to fully participate in Reid's only strategy to
secure healthcare reform.
Very
few realize how severely Senator Claire McCaskill, a
former prosecuting attorney and a former state auditor, has been tested. The
willingness to compromise on abortion as Reid's secret accomplice was visible.
It was as if Karl Rove himself had been directing McCaskill
and the Democratic Party to de-energize its base. The compromise on abortion
for Progressives was the last straw. Democrats were being inspired not to go
out to the polls in 2010. Similarly, Republican voters who have been excluded
from press coverage of the early shaping of the House and Senate bills, which
necessarily involved secret negotiations with healthcare industry stakeholders,
tend to be as receptive as they were to
Hillary Clinton's 1994 failed healthcare reform attempt.
The real
command decision of Senator Claire McCaskill was her
hidden sacrifice of elected officials in the lower tier of the Missouri
Democratic Party. The national media has effectively spun the Bush era “wrongful
attorney firings” into a non-event. McCaskill however
as the former Jackson County Prosecutor in Kansas City is at ground zero for
what Karl Rove and the Bush administration were really doing.
While
McCaskill's senate constituent office staffed by
Corey Dukes was in the basement of the Kansas City, Missouri Federal
Courthouse, the very capable and professional US Attorney Todd P. Graves
upstairs was being obstructed in his prosecution of Medicare fraud in a Novation LLC Springfield, Missouri hospital system, Cox
Health, for which Graves had convened a Kansas City Grand Jury. Carol Lam would
later also be targeted by Karl Rove for prosecuting Medicare fraud in a Tenet
Hospital in San Diego. The Republican leaning newspaper The Kansas City Star
which had the investigative journalism resources to uncover Graves being targeted, instead censored
its own parent McClatchy's breaking of the story when it came out years
later. Karl Rove has now admitted
a role in the firing of Todd Graves and in the voter fraud allegations used
to suppress inner city voters in Missouri and other key states Democrats needed
to win.
Later,
while Claire McCaskill's Senate Constituent Services
Office was still in the basement, Karl Rove installed an interim US attorney in
Kansas City, Bradley Schlozman of Kansas. Schlozman was attempting to hire Assistant US Attorneys on
the basis of their political allegiance to conservative Republican ideology.
This misconduct has been reported by the US Department of Justice Inspector
General but what has not been reported is the political targeting of Missouri
Democratic elected officials for federal criminal prosecution. Bonnie Sue
Lawson, the Public Administrator of Kansas City; Rev. Saundra Mc Fadden –
Weaver, a City Council Woman of Kansas City; Robert Young, also a City
Councilman; Carl W. Bussey of the Jackson County
Legislature; Bill Waris, a Jackson County Executive;
Kathryn Shields, also a Jackson County Executive along with her husband Phil Cardarella, a Kansas City attorney in private practice and
even Kansas City's former mayor and current Congressman Emanuel Cleaver were
all targeted as part of Karl Rove's use of the US Department of Justice to
destroy the lives of local level Democrat politicians in Missouri and other key
electoral states to ensure President George W. Bush's reelection in a way that
would not become national news.
Bonnie
Sue Lawson; Rev. Saundra Mc Fadden; Robert Young; Carl W. Bussey;
Bill Waris; Kathryn Shields; Phil Cardarella;
and Emanuel Cleaver were all targeted because of their role in the Missouri
Democratic Party and their potential to obtain higher elected office as
democrats. In addition to being prosecuted by Republican Party loyal Assistant
US Attorneys, many had their cases steered in the same federal courthouse to
Republican appointed judges, despite random assignment protocols. Extrinsic
fraud was also used to procure plea bargains. Rev. Mc Fadden's attorney had his
son threatened to dampen his interest in vigorously defending McFadden.
Senator Claire McCaskill knew these terrible crimes
were being committed against her own constituents to take down viable leaders
of her party and to suppress the vote of minorities and socially disadvantaged
Missourians in inner city neighborhoods. And, unlike the general public, McCaskill knows that Karl Rove was able to use USDOJ prosecutors
to pursue and target over 600 Democratic Party office holders in key electoral
states around the nation. Most of Rove's victims when being
threatened with the targeting of their parents or children and with 20 year
prison sentences plea-bargained and consequently no appellate court can right
this tragic misuse of justice.
An excellent but
highly suppressed documentary The
Political Prosecutions of Karl Rove by Hollywood director John McTiernan (Die Hard, Predator, The Hunt for Red October) of
what was done to Democrats in Kansas City and around the country has been made
available on the web by politicalprosecutions.org. The director however was
subsequently indicted by a Grand Jury in the wiretapping case of Anthony Pellicano.
In
addition to the above constituents, Senator Claire McCaskill
had to turn her back on the destruction of a Missouri farmer and his family in
the same federal courthouse, despite Dustin Sherwood's desperate pleas for help
taken by McCaskill's assistant Corey Dukes for even
not being able to obtain Missouri counsel to prevent his farm and over 9
million dollars in assets from being taken by a big contributor to the
Republican Party in Trimble, Missouri. The USDOJ had Dustin Sherwood
taken away in a rendition like incarceration in a private prison to prevent him
from being able to raise the money needed to stop the sale of the farm. Like
the political targets, Dustin Sherwood a Democrat had to plead guilty while the
Assistant US Attorney was threatening to prosecute his wife and deprive their
children of being raised by their natural parents. The Assistant US Attorneys
in the Kansas City Courthouse also attempted to prosecute the author of a series
of articles on the Sherwood case published in the Milkweed, a national
agriculture weekly.
I
also went repeatedly to Claire McCaskill's Senate
Constituent Services Office to try and obtain relief from warrantless
wiretapping and interference with my business that I experienced increasing
intensity as I sought to vindicate the antitrust and later RICO laws against
the conduct of the Novation LLC healthcare industry
stakeholders. Federal government officials were clearly obstructing justice and
preventing me from even obtaining Freedom of Information Act requests.
Senator
McCaskill would not even inquire of the federal
courts administration why my attorney Bret Landrith
was reciprocally disbarred from representing me in federal court for
successfully bringing an African American's Civil Rights claim against the City
of Topeka. The two Assistant US Attorneys on the government case against Novation LLC were found dead days a part.
The second, the day before the US Senate Judiciary Committee
Antitrust Subcommittee Hearing on GPO restraint of trade in the hospital supply
market. My attempts to have replacement counsel resulted in the attorneys
being subsequently extorted into not representing me.
Senator
Claire McCaskill, Senate Leader Harry Reid, and
President Obama are not trying to right the wrongs done under the prior
administration or even openly trying to stop the continuing misconduct of
Assistant US Attorneys in the Western District of Missouri and by the FBI. A
senior FBI Agent even menaced me in the Kansas City Federal Courthouse earlier
this year for asking where the office's FOIA records custodian was and what
forms and information I needed to request records.
Despite Congress's
overhaul earlier this year of the federal Qui Tam or False Claims Act statute
to specifically include GPO's like Novation LLC
retaining kickbacks that belong to hospitals and Medicare, Attorney General Eric
Holder seems to be holding back Medicare fraud prosecutions of hospitals and
other stakeholders controlling the data that permits widespread hospital
skimming. No one is rocking the boat for fear that prosecutions of the Medicare
fraudsters like the too big to fail bank criminals may spook the public or a
few senators into deserting their constituents just before the biggest battle.
Everyone has their eyes on the prize-Healthcare reform. What if we sacrifice
all this and fail?
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