-Caveat Lector-
------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
From: "Michael Albert" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
DON'T DIAL 9-1-1 . . . DIAL H-M-O
Let's say you're at home one evening, sitting there in your La-Z-Boy,
maybe with a cool one in your hand, when suddenly you feel a sharp pain in
your chest, your left arm is tingly and sort of numb. Heart attack! Or it
least it could be one. You go for the phone to get emergency help . . .
but you don't call 9-1-1 . . . instead you call H-M-O.
What?! Yes, it's the latest "advance" in the wonderful world of managed
health care-instead of calling 911, you've got to call your HMO, and its
corporate bureaucrats will decide whether you get an EMS to come help you.
USA Today reports that Kaiser Permanente, one of the largest HMOs in the
country, is the first to impose this new layer of corporate bureaucracy
between you and the medical service you need-a bureaucratic step that
could waste precious minutes as you explain to some Kaiser clerk sitting
in a cubicle way out in Wisconsin what your symptoms are and why you think
you need an ambulance pronto, PDQ, post haste, and, like, right now!
You'll be pleased to know that the HMO clerk at the other end of the phone
has received a good four weeks of training for the job, so of course he or
she is perfectly qualified to diagnose you from afar. If the clerk decides
you need an ambulance, one is then dispatched to you. But-get this-the HMO
will send an ambulance from a firm that it contracts with, even though
another company's ambulance is closer to you.
Kaiser says it's doing a favor for the whole society because, according to
its emergency medical services director, "there's a finite number of
ambulances. We want to reserve them for those who really need them."
Great. A corporation with a bottom-line incentive NOT to send an ambulance
is going to be the arbiter of whether you get one. And if the HMO makes a
boo-boo, leaving you dead at the other end of the phone, remember-the
Republicans in congress continue to give HMOs immunity from lawsuits.
This is Jim Hightower saying . . .
Welcome to the cold world of corporatized medicine.
"Who do you call: 911 or your HMO?" by Julie Appleby.
USA Today: August 24, 1999.
SEN. MURRAY'S AMAZING LETTER
An astonishing letter has come into my hands, and I want to share it with
you. It's a letter that Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington
State, wrote to President Clinton, and it's filled with a breathtaking
level of ignorance and arrogance.
Her subject is the big meeting of the World Trade Organization to be held
in Seattle this November. Clinton, other heads of state, WTO officials,
and corporate executives are gathering to prepare a whole new round of
globaloney to shove down our throats. But some uninvited guests are going
to show up, too. Churches, consumer groups, unions, farmers, citizen
activists, environmentalists, and other citizens are coming to protest the
WTO's anti-democratic agenda of corporate supremacy.
This upsets Sen. Murray, who tells Clinton in her letter that "The Seattle
Host Organization is reporting that many companies . . . are hesitant to
become active supporters because they are concerned about security and
confrontations with various demonstrators." Well my my, we sure can't let
the people's First Amendment rights ruffle the feathers of these
distinguished corporate executives.
So she wants Clinton to do two things: First, give a national speech
explaining that [quote] "The WTO is the indispensable rule making,
enforcement body . . . for all countries." Hello . . . Patty . . .
remember the Constitution? When did we replace our own self-government
with the WTO? Second, she wants Clinton to call-in those pesky protesting
groups and tell them [quote] "that you do not want disruptive and damaging
actions distracting the media and the public from your important goals."
Right on! We can't have just plain citizens assembling in the streets and
speaking out like this was some kind of a democracy-and we certainly can't
allow the people's voices to distract the media from Bill Clinton's
"important goals."
This is Jim Hightower saying . . .
She's a U.S. Senator? Let's send Sen. Murray back to a high school civics
class. To read her whole letter, go to my website: www.jimhightower.com.
THE NAFTA RIPOFF
The use of statistics has been called the art of drawing a straight line
from a wrong assumption to a foregone conclusion.
Well, the Picasso of Statistics is the U.S. Commerce Department, which
keeps telling us how good NAFTA is for our country. For example, we're
told that our exports to Mexico are up! Never mind that our imports from
Mexico are waaaay up, creating the third worst trade deficit that we have
with any country in the world. But let's peek into that export number that
officials are so proud of. It turns out that four out of every ten
products that we ship to Mexico are not sold to the people there, but are
parts sold to U.S. factories located in Mexico. We're "exporting" to
ourselves. Then, General Electric and the rest use these parts in their
Mexican factories to make appliances, and what not, shipping the finished
product back here to sell to us. So the "export" becomes an import.
If that's too confusing, don't worry, because corporations like GE are
going to simplify the process, by getting the suppliers of parts to move
to Mexico, too! The Wall Street Journal reports that forty percent of the
electric ranges that GE sells in the U.S. are coming from Mexico, and now
a U.S. company that makes glass doors and tops for the stoves has moved
there, as has a maker of burners, and regulators. U.S. Steel, which sells
100 tons of sheet metal every day to GE's Mexico factory, also has built a
steel plant, just 50 yards from the GE factory.
The bottom line is that America's chief export is jobs. Thanks to NAFTA,
U.S. corporations can eliminate middle-class jobs here, move the factory
to Mexico, pay subsistence wages to people there, then send their stoves
and other products back to the U.S. without paying a dime in tariffs,
selling the products for the same high price they've always charged. The
wage difference is pocketed by the corporation.
This is Jim Hightower saying . . .
What a ripoff! I say it's time to repeal NAFTA.
"Mexico builds" by Joel Millman. Wall Street Journal: August 23, 1999.
"That giant sucking sound." UTNE Reader: August 23, 1999.
A<>E<>R
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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