Stephan: In this report, you can see clearly what the American illness profit system is really about. Sick kids? Who cares. We don't treat them because they don't produce enough profit.
Baby was sick as Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) in kid hospital (Getty / graphixchon)
The dire shortage of pediatric hospital beds plaguing the nation this fall is a byproduct of financial decisions made by hospitals over the past decade, as they shuttered children’s wards, which often operate in the red, and expanded the number of beds available for more profitable endeavors like joint replacements and cancer care.
To cope with the flood of young patients sickened by a sweeping convergence of nasty bugs — especially respiratory syncytial virus, influenza, and coronavirus — medical centers nationwide have deployed triage tents, delayed elective surgeries, and transferred critically ill children out of state.
A major factor in the bed shortage is a years-long trend among hospitals of eliminating pediatric units, which tend to be less profitable than adult units, said Mark Wietecha, CEO of the Children’s Hospital Association. Hospitals optimize revenue by striving to keep their beds 100% full — and filled with patients whose conditions command generous insurance reimbursements.
“It really has to do with dollars,” said Dr. Scott Krugman, vice chair […]
Lily Meyersohn , Researcher - Institute for Public Accuracy - truthout
Stephan: The previous story was about how the American illness profit system fails to care for the very young. This report is about how this deeply inferior system fails to care properly for the very old. We need to create a universal birthright single-payer healthcare system -- the kind of healthcare you get in France, or Sweden -- before another pandemic strikes. For me the two biggest takeaways from the Covid pandemic are: First, the glaring inadequacy, particularly in rural areas, of the illness profit system. Second, the fact that millions of Republican Americans were so manipulated by disinformation operations, and political leaders like Ron DeSantis that they chose to risk death rather than get vaccinated, and hundreds of thousands did die. Covid, I think, will be seen historically as a story of how a group of Lemmings chose to commit suicide rather than act on fact-based science.
Nursing home Credit: Maskot / Getty
New York Attorney General Letitia James recently filed a lawsuit against The Villages, a nursing home in Albion, New York, for years of financial fraud that resulted in the abandonment of the “most basic functions of care” for the nursing home’s residents. An investigation conducted by the Office of the Attorney General found that from 2015 to 2021, the facility’s owners received $86.4 million in funding, “including millions in taxpayer dollars from Medicare and Medicaid, intended to provide quality healthcare.” Instead, the owners used those funds to cut staffing and to divert more than $18.6 million in payments to themselves — in all, more than 20 percent of the facility’s entire operating budget.
A press release from the Office of the Attorney General states that the facility’s financial scheme can be directly tied to its “reprehensible history of insufficient staffing.” It describes how residents of The Villages were forced to sit in their own urine and feces, recklessly medicated with psychotropics, and left malnourished and dehydrated. Residents developed sepsis, gangrene […]
Stephan: I have a number of problems with corporate media. For instance, treating politics like a horse race instead of getting into the substance of various candidates; having a programming formula with so many blocks so that a large number of important stories get little or no coverage; increasingly conservative media like Fox isn't really journalism at all, it is propaganda disinformation operation masquerading as journalism. That said a free press is essential to a functioning democracy. So, of course, the MAGAt Republicans in Congress are doing what they can to end fact-based journalism because they don't want a free press. Here is the latest move in that regard by MAGAT Tom Cotton of Arkansas. It tells you a lot about the people of Arkansas that they chose a man like Cotton as one of their senators, but that is another problem.
MAGAt Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas
Republican Sen. Tom Cotton on Wednesday blocked the passage of a House-approved bipartisan bill that’s been heralded by advocates as “the most important free press legislation in modern times.”
The Senate had in recent days faced mounting pressure from journalists, press freedom groups, and others to follow the House’s lead and approve the Protect Reporters From Exploitative State Spying (PRESS) Act, spearheaded by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.).
After Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Tuesday revealed in the Chicago Sun-Times that he supported fast-tracking the PRESS Act (S. 2457/H.R. 4330), Wyden took to the floor early Wednesday to try to pass the bill by unanimous consent and send it to President Joe Biden’s desk.
Cotton (R-Ark.) objected, claiming that “the PRESS Act would immunize journalists and leakers alike from scrutiny and consequences for their actions.”
“This bill would prohibit the government from compelling any individual who calls himself a ‘journalist,’” […]
Stephan: Further proof, if such were needed, showing that the U.S. Supreme Court is now controlled by a group of christofascist ideologues, which explains why the Court is held by Americans in the lowest esteem in over a hundred years. This is all the work of the Republican Party, particularly Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump, and the fascist Federalist Society
U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh with Donald Trump in 2018 Credit: Wikimedia Commons
On Friday night, November 9, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, according to Politico, attended a “private holiday party” in the home of Conservative Political Action Conference Chairman Matt Schlapp. Kavanaugh’s decision to attend, reporter Lydia Wheeler writes in Bloomberg Law on December 12, “raises questions about when a justice’s personal relationships cross a line and become problematic.”’
One of the other people who attended Schlapp’s party, according to Politico, was MAGA Republican Stephen Miller, who was a policy adviser for the Trump Administration. Miller heads the America First Legal Foundation, a group that, Wheeler notes, “has interests in cases now pending before the Court.”
Kavanaugh’s decision to attend Schlapp’s party comes at a time when the High Court is suffering from historically low approval ratings. The Court’s unpopularity to a variety of things, including its decision to overturn Roe v. Wade after 49 years in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
Stephan: A reader in Sweden wrote me today saying that he had been reading about what American culture was like and found it very off-putting, which surprised him. I wrote him back asking him to send me something that accurately presented what Swedish culture was like. This is what he sent me, and I must say it reflects my own experiences in Sweden. What really stands out is that Sweden is a culture that fosters wellbeing in a way that the American culture does not. Look at the support for childcare, the vacation time, the recognition of the matrix of life, and the emphasis on integrity.
Moral Values Are Prioritized in Sweden
Sweden Is No. 1 for Patents
While Sweden is only the 15th biggest country in the European Union (by population size), it leads the way with the number of given patents, as it’s a nation that places a lot of emphasis on digital technology (did you know Spotify was founded in Sweden?)
Other inventions that can be attributed to the Swedes include the three-point-seat belt, the pacemaker, oat milk, the pipe wrench, the walking frame, and more.
Green Nation
Sweden is one of the greenest countries on the planet, with its citizens incredibly environmentally conscious. In fact, Sweden is currently fifth in the world on the Environmental Performance Index.
Check out some of these numbers — just 1% of the trash in the country is sent to landfills, 52% of it is used to produce energy, and 47% is recycled. The Swedes are so good at converting waste to energy that they actually import trash from other nations in order to support the work of its companies producing energy!
