Senator Levin Votes "No" on Cheaper Drugs

Here's the email I got today:

Linda --
If we don't pass health reform, millions of Americans will be trapped in a broken status quo, unable to pay their bills or see a doctor when they need one. More and more employers will drop coverage for employees. And Medicare and Medicaid will blow a hole through our budget. There's too much at stake to not get this done. That's why OFA supporters have made 849,856 calls to Congress in support of health reform since August. And that's why today, with the Senate locked in last-minute negotiations, our goal is to hit one million calls.

Can you help? Please call your senators now and help us "ring in reform." Then click here to let us know you called.
According to our records, you live in Michigan. Please call:
Sen. Carl Levin's Detroit office at (313) 226-6020
Sen. Debbie Stabenow's Flint office at (810) 720-4172

This holiday season, millions of Americans will go without desperately needed care simply because they can't afford insurance. But insurance lobbyists are desperate to pull apart the bill and derail reform, so your voice is needed now.
Your senators are fighting hard for health reform. Please call today, thank them for their work, and let them know we need them to keep fighting. Just dial the numbers above, then tell the staffers who answer where you live -- so that they know you are a constituent -- and that you support reform. Then click here to make sure you call is counted in the race to a million: http://my.barackobama.com/RingInReform
Thanks for standing up,
Mitch
Mitch Stewart
Director
Organizing for America

Why would I call Senator Levin in Detroit? He's busy in Washington voting "no" on what he's supported for years. I just wrote Senator Levin instead. To thank him for voting against an amendment to allow cheaper drugs imported from Canada - the very bill he introduced to the Senate in 2003. Because he doesn't want to jeopardize the back office deal with Big Pharma. Check firedoglake here.

John Kerry voted "no" too. Christopher Dodd. Find out who else did here.

The broken status quo: so far I still don't have healthcare, an affordable way to get it, but with this "reform" I can be fined for not having it. Ring in Reform indeed.

BCBS Michigan Fans the Fear

With a redesigned invoice, BCBS Michigan has taken the opportunity to add a couple of announcements.

BCBS will only send one bill a month. (They do that already unless you're late and sent a reminder.) But to be more "environmentally friendly and reduce administrative costs" - no more reminders.

"Please pay your bill by the due date. If your coverage cancels, you may have to wait 12 months to reapply."

BCBSM bills a month in advance, so my Dad's bill, which is due this month, is for January's insurance premium. While BCBSM has the luxury of being paid a month ahead of due date, their customers have no grace whatsoever.

Dad's BSBSM premium went up 30% since last year. Dad is 82. BCBS does offer a way to make sure they don't cancel you and make you wait 12 months to reapply - sign up for the automatic payment plan. Apparently there are fewer "administrative" costs involved in snagging their premium right out of your bank account.

This is health care insurance in Michigan. In the middle of an attempt to be more reasonable about health care coverage and medical costs in America, BCBSM shows us why health care reform is necessary.

Dad and I are enjoying the new sales message at the top of the invoice, too. "My Blue. My life. My health plan."

Healthcare Hijacked

I'm sick and scared of health care reform. What we're experiencing so far is not reform. It is a surreal game of Hide the Checkbook. And big entities are playing for high stakes with the health of the American people.

The state of Montana has 976,400 Americans in it: roughly as many residents as Detroit, Michigan. As a percentage of the US population at 304,059,724, Max Baucus's constituency represents half of 3.21% of Americans. Why is he able to hold the Senate Finance Committee hostage? Whose government is this?

How in hell did we get to this place? Which individual with power is going to step up? What media can we trust to speak for the people?

I was scared by a trailer for "The Amazing Colossal Man" back in 1958, while at the movies to see the harmless "Pocketful of Miracles." There is a scene in which the 60-foot Lt. Col. Manning grabs a huge syringe intended to cure him, and impales a man on the ground.

Are we being skewered, too?

Target: Women and Seniors

Health care reform is getting interesting. If this was a movie, over the titles we'd hear the sound of thousands of boots marching, swords clanging on shields in the darkness. It's war, baby! Foley editors to your drums and weaponry!

Today's posts include more reports of ramped-up lobbying efforts, closeted and outed; "centrist" Senators' delay tactics; the closed-door committee wrangling to get stuff stuffed into the House and Senate versions of this screenplay.

Will health care reform be derailed by delaying a vote? No. Government hurried to bail out the "too big to fail" banks. Goldman Sachs did OK with the rush, but did we?

Jason Linkins reports that AP made up the $1.5 trillion price tag tied to the cost of health care reform. It's a fake number. It's a scary fake number. Salon.com grabbed the same fake number. How far will it spread? The plot thickens!

We can't get the right information to find out who the players are, and who's being paid to play, and who has taken their balls and left the building.

And we're counting on Congress to get it right?

Big Pharma is battling to make the 5-year moratorium for generics on patented pharmaceuticals become a 12-year grace period. Big Pharma is the only actor in this drama that I know is absolutely not on the side of the American people. Big Pharma is in its own pocket, jiggling its pieces of silver.

Big Pharma is undoubtedly fond of a man named Dr. Robert Spitzer, who, after applying the same

"camel = race car designed by committee"

mindset that is overtaking health care debate, added "disorder" to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Thus was created the obscenely profitable realm of new medications for new disorders, at an enormous price to the American people - both in the costs of medications for undiagnosed, but medicated disorders - and to the women and seniors who have undiagnosed complaints that are prescribed one medication after another, and then the resultant side effects drugged as well. We're not curing diseases with all this pharmacology. We're lining the pockets of the firms who are treating restless legs, bladder issues, flaccidus, stomach upsets, and allergies.

Hey AP: got any numbers of women over 55 who are being medicated for bipolar disorder?

In our health care reform movie, Big Pharma is the villain.

Any idea who the heroes are?