Marx predicted that this mechanism would eventually lead to the collapse of capitalism in an event not unlike the great depression. This has not happened for precisely one reason: Bankruptcy.

Bankruptcy allows the indebted to go free. The pain of this process to be shared by the lenders who erred in extending the credit. Bankruptcy allows inventories to be sold at auction for far below their actual value, and actually streamlines the economy through the liquidation of organizations which are no longer competitive, and thus no longer have a meaningful contribution to society. The resources tied up in these obsolete firms are better used elsewhere, and bankruptcy makes that happen.

Bankruptcy is a central process which redistributes wealth until balance is restored in the economy and is as essential to the survival of capitalism as is air to people. Capitalism simply cannot exist without it.

This law has only been in place for a short time now, but one has to wonder how many debts are on the books that are counted as assets, that can never be cleared without bankruptcy, and will never ever ever be repaid? These bad debts are a fictitious value, and every day their volume grows. Ask the Japanese what that means. Sooner or later, the entire banking system becomes unstable, and unless severe austerity measures are introduced, the entire system collapses. It has happened before.

80% of what goes wrong should be addressable at the GP level – given the table technology available today. You can do an EKG now with a device the size of a record player.

Now docs spend 50% of their time fighting for uncertain payment from gangland insurers.

No wonder the system is out of whack. It’s all based on mutually assured fraud: MAF.

Hardinger

Health Insurance has NO PLACE IN MEDICINE. There is the patient, the health care people (doctors, nurses, etc) — that’s it.

Get rid of the middle-man insurance companies — and by the way, the workers at such places should have known YEARS ago that they were whores. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist.

Endurance wins the day. You have been thru a lot. I think a lot of people have gone up to the next thread but others will come by later to read this. Just wanted to let you know in case you are wondering why so few responses to your long and heartbreaking comment.

Hope your health continues to be ok, bless you and your family.

————–egregious

Hope you have some support, some medicine, some sunshine, some healthy kind of escape, or at least some hope. Keep going, one foot in front of the other, talk 2 you soon.

((((HotFlash))))

What a jerk that counselor was. Once I scraped myself together to get to an appointment and the new person said, oh you aren’t depressed because if you were you wouldn’t have made it here. Thereby followed a long stream of unegregious-like curses.

Come on over any time, to read, to comment, to vent, whatever. I just want to have an open door for people like myself who are mentally ill. It’s a sorry world out there, and it’s even harder for those of us with bipolar, depression, OCD, ADHD, etc. [or all of these in my case].

Credentials:
57 year old white male, diagnosed with renal failure secondary to strep throat in 1951. Sorry ass saved by healthcare provided by major-name teaching hospital, but damage was done. Father’s Union health insurance paid the bills.
After 17 years of relatively normal life, kidneys finally gave up the ghost and I was put on a dialysis waiting list. Insurance did not pay ofr dialysis at the time, despite father’s continued Union insurance coverage and Mother’s federal employee family coverage. State public aid picked up the tab after Republican senator pushed through bill to add dialysis to state medicaid coverage.
1969 – First kidney transplant, paid for by Medicare (which even now pays for everyone to receive dialysis and 2 years of transplant care).
1971 -Get married, have a daughter, go to college, work in several jobs – living on precious, borrowed time.
1977, transplant rejects, back on dialysis, again, medicare.
1978, second transplant.
I graduate from college, have a son in addition to daughter and stepdaughter. During this time, I work, among other positions, as a dialysis technician, caring for acute patients.
1982, begin Master’s program in statistics, and land job at a medical school (associated with the hospital that had saved my life so many times) as a biostatistician working in clinical research. I now have great health insurance for my family, better than my wife (who taught nursing. Nope, didn’t meet her in the hospital. I did it the old-fashioned way, we met in a bar).
1986, 2nd transplant rejects, go on dialysis for 4 and a half years. This time, Medicare still pays the bill, but my insurance pays everything else. I not only kept my job but transferred into a better, position with more responsibilities, more challenges and better salary, same institution.
1990 – very good year. Got third (and current) transplant, bought my first house, began a program of physical health, got into shape and hence didn’t need BP meds, anti-cholesterol drugs and even minimal anti-rejection drugs. Job is fine, son growing up, daughters moving into their own independent lives, healthy and happy.
Since then, unions are all but gone, along with their health benefits, health insurance gets more and more expensive for both employees and employers. You know the story about the uninsured already. Hospitals begin shifting ER patients to other hospitals like hot potatos. Clinics and doctors begin demanding payment prior to visit, forms for medical loans at usurious intreest rates are placed in the waiting room. No pay, no visit, no payment plans. Visits to a physical therapist are now considered to be ’specialists’, at specialist co-pay price.
Drugs get more and more expensive, and generate more and more side-effects which have to be covered by other drugs.
I’m covered, and I can afford it. My colleagues at the University and Hospital are as dedicatred as I’ve ever seen these last 57 years. They got into medicine to heal, they take these difficult long-houred exhausting jobs because they *know* they are doing something ‘good’.
Everytime I leave my office to an appt in another building, I make sure I have enough time to steer the bewildered, exhausted, frightened patients holding a xeroxed *MAP* of this futuristic mega-health complex, trying to figure out where to get their x-ray done, or where their husband, who had cardiac surgery is, or scared to be late for the clinic appt that is, I see, 2 blocks from where they are.
I escort them to their destination or buttonhole someone who can take them there.
Our new clinic building looks like a bank with marble floors and an 11-story atrium, complete with robo-grand piano playing MP3 MUZAK next to the fountains.
The health system I grew up with kept me and many others like me alive. I’m nothing special. I wwas lucky enough to be born to a Dad who had a union job, had a major hospital nearby and in a country that, post New Deal, gave a damn for the working people of this country, as well as the poor. *I* diddn’t *deserve* such a highlevel of medical care – we all do, because none of us can afford it out of pocket and the kinds of things that happened to me could happen to anyone – it’s a crap shoot and we’re *all* vulnerable.
I am honored to work where I work, because I know we’re doing something good. But we left the financial affairs to the moneymen, and they’re killing it. There aren’t enough millionaires to support the profit margins of this extravagant *industry*.
Well, that’s enough

I can pay my medical bills and that of my family – I know how the system works and I know how to stand in the door and not let the doctor out until he answers *all* of my questions. I know how to read up on drugs and side effects and how to fight insurance companies – and sometimes I win. I am not intimidated by collection agencies who will harrass you mercilessly even if the hospital erred in a billing (always read your bills!!!!).
It’s wonderful to still be alive, in a good job and in very good health, but it’s wrong that the door that got me here is closing for more and more people.

Good luck, and good health to all of you. Let’s see if we can get good health for everyone.
2007 – we’ve got the ball…
Milo

Just so you know, I visited your site several times NYE but was so depressed I couldn’t bring myself to leave a message. Hey, that’s typical me. The only time I ever commited suicide (obviously not successful (what a klutz!), but that was not my fault) I didn’t leave a note. Aferwards the appointed counselor person implied that I couldn’t have been serious since I hadn’t left a note. I was baffled. What could I have said that wasn’t illmannered by reason of being either tooooo depressing or boringly whiny?

Not, I hasten to add, that I am feeling suicidal, but I did not like 2006 much, and I have a bad feeling about 2007. And aren’t you glad you didn’t get *that* bit of cheer on NYEve? Gotta check with witchywoman and spiderpaws to see what omens they are seeing.

But best, best wishes for boring trip (sleeping on the plane is the best, Black Russians are also good)and a *wonderful* visit with your daughter.