snip:
LARRY CHURCHILL: For Americans right now I think the primary question is, "How vulnerable am I in terms of the current system? Am I just a pink slip away from being uninsured and potentially uninsurable?" And I think there's a very profound question about whether we are creating a health care system that is sustainable over time. Some people have suggested, and I agree with them, that, actually, the end product of all of this mess and confusion in technological innovation, is going to be a system that cannot be sustained, because it will be so expensive that only the extremely well to do, the elite, will have access to it.
DR. ANDREY ESPINOZA: When you have a system that's built around generation of revenue, when that revenue is going somewhere, and that money is not being put back into the system to help people, you've really kind of lost, you know, we've lost our way.
DR. DONALD BERWICK: I think that health care improvement at the systemic level has some of the properties of major social movements in this country: civil rights, environment. So many oxes to be gored, and a lot of people with oxen that won't get gored but think they will. And this, you know, the coalition of the people who would be better off and the people who are needlessly afraid of change, that is, they don't need to be afraid of change but they are, that's an immense coalition. That's eighty percent of America.
DR. JAMES WEINSTEIN: In my life my daughter caused me to change my life. And I said, "I don't want other people to have to do what she had to do." We have the compassion. We have some knowledge. We have technology, but we let so many things get in the way of the real ideals, the hippocratic principles, that we get lost in that system that Brieanna shouldn't have had to face and so many millions of other people shouldn't have to face.
DR. DONALD BERWICK: I think health care is more about love than about most other things. If there isn't at the core of this two human beings who have agreed to be in a relationship where one is trying to help relieve the suffering of another, which is love, you can't get to the right answer here. It begins so much for me in that relationship that everything that's built around that had better make damn sure that it's supporting them and not hurting it. And a lot of the structures that I am talking about-fragmented structures, transaction-oriented structures, competitive structures, forget that- forget that this is about two people meeting and that's all it's about.
BILL MOYERS: MONEY-DRIVEN MEDICINE, a film produced by Alex Gibney, Peter Bull and Chris Matonti; directed by Andy Fredericks; and based on Maggie Mahar's book of the same name.
Log on to pbs.org and click on BILL MOYERS JOURNAL - Maggie Mahar will be there to answer your questions online. We'll link you to the Money-Driven Medicine website where there's more info about the book and the film. We'll also link you to some analysis of what advocates of reform are up against in taking on the health insurance industry, the drug lobby, and the Wall Street equity firms.
Take a look at this recent cover of BUSINESS WEEK. Reporters Chad Terhune and Keith Epstein write that the CEO's of the giant insurance companies should be smiling - their lobbyists have already won. Quote: "no matter what specifics emerge in the voluminous bill Congress may send to President Obama this fall, the insurance industry will emerge more profitable."
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/08282009/transcript1.htmlAnd remember that television ad Barack Obama made as a candidate for president?
BARACK OBAMA: The pharmaceutical industry wrote into the prescription drug plan that Medicare could not negotiate with drug companies. And you know what, the chairman of the committee who pushed the law through went to work for the pharmaceutical industry making $2 million a year. Imagine that. That's an example of the same old game-playing in Washington. I don't want to learn how to play the game better. I want to put an end to the game-playing.
BILL MOYERS: Now look at this recent story in the LOS ANGELES TIMES.http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-health-pharma14-2009aug14,0,5896090.story Lo and behold, since the election, the pharmaceutical industry's $2 million dollars a year superstar lobbyist Billy Tauzin has morphed into President Obama's pal. Tauzin says the President has promised not to pressure the drug companies to negotiate with the government for lower drug prices and has agreed not to allow cheaper drugs to be imported from Canada or Europe - contrary to the position taken by candidate Obama…
Each of these stories illuminates the scarlet thread that runs through Maggie Mahar's book - the story of how today's market-driven medical system gives Wall Street investors life and death control over our health care, turning medicine into a profit machine instead of a social service to meet human need. That's the conflict at the heart of next month's showdown in Washington.
I'm Bill Moyers. See you next time. 
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
