The NRA, GOP and SCOTUS have made the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights into such a suicide pact, drenching our nation with our own children’s blood.
And it's not just "drenching our nation with our own children’s blood." As others have pointed out, but are rarely heard, the flow of arms across our borders to places where they are used to intimidate and murder innocent people must also be acknowledged. That clearly has not been "well regulated."Your summary of the issues and the positions held by responsible jurists is outstanding!!
"Frankly, it’s surprising it didn’t get national news coverage."... is it?... surprising?... not with the big time money grabbers who own the news... disgustingly!!!
While the reporting on SCOTUS has focused heavily on the corruption of Clarence Thomas and his wife and cohort, Ginni, Scalia's rhetoric and votes often get little attention. In my opinion, Alito is far more dangerous and corrupt with Thomas coming in second. These two men have been responsible for most of the heinous votes of the current SCOTUS, abetted by the 🟠💩 appointees Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Coney Barrett. Lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court have destroyed any chance of a fair SCOTUS, a court that rules by law instead of ideology.
Scalia is dead, and McConnell kept President Obama from having the Senate consider and approve Merrick Garland as a justice. McConnell should be remembered in infamy for this.
Lovely but futile column. This SCOTUS long ago ceased to be about law. The rule of law is dead in this country. We are governed by the rule of money. The biggest money. As a retired lawyer and graduate of Harvard Law, like several of the Justices, it sickens me. While I cheer what the Hawai’i Supreme Court did, it is just a birthday candle in a typhoon wind. Guns will be with us until enough children of enough MAGAt judges and Congresscritters fall to bullets,if even then.
The key reason is that the Second Amendment extremists hate and fear government, except for the welfare checks they receive, individual, corporate and red state. Guns are their election result deniers of last resort, as we may sadly see in a few months.
Sadly, I see no solution. Someone close to me just started substitute teaching again two weeks ago. There was a shooting incident in the school parking lot where she was escorting her class on her second day. To her credit, she was calm, controlled, unflappable. She herded her students into the high school gym and locked the door, keeping them away from it. Fortunately, the shooter a freshman, wounded only one other student in the arm before he was grabbed and disarmed, by pure luck. It could have been so much worse. But teachers shouldn’t have to do that as part of their jobs. Nor should people at a Super Bowl parade have to assume they may well be shot as the price of attending.
But that is what we have become as a nation. It is clearer to me every day that TFG and all his cultists, rich, poor, in between must be suffocated at the polls. If we fail to do that, we deserve our fate. No excuses. No “Biden is too old, Harris is too weak a VP, I can’t have a perfect life for my trans kid”. Because there is only a horribly worse alternative. If you want any hope of gun control or even a modestly decent life, vote blue everywhere, for everyone and everything. Do all you can to get others to do the same, with donations, helping at polls, taking voters needing rides to polling places in states not allowing votes by mail. If our country is to survive, much less progress, WE have to make that happen.
Like, no doubt, many other people I immediately contacted my Chief fan family members living in K.C. to reassure myself they weren’t there, weren’t shot or injured. That fear shouldn’t be necessary. We should be better than this.
Gloria. I am a major Keith Olbermann fan and still pissed at corporate NBCUniversal for firing him. Do you know of any way to get Olbermann, other than podcasts. I don't do podcasts, and don't understand how anyone other than a truck driver or commuter stuck in car can.
"The NRA, GOP and SCOTUS have made the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights into such a suicide pact, drenching our nation with our own children’s blood."... let's all; send our thoughts and prayers to these increasingly greedy "people"
The NRA and GOP are vulnerable. In January SCOTUS refused to review the Illinois AR -15 restriction case. Heller does not completely restrict all regulations.
In 2021, Illinois Governor Pritzker signed legislation expanding background checks on all gun sales in Illinois and modernizing and strengthening the Firearm Owners Identification Card System (HB 562). Under the Firearm Industry Responsibility Act (HB 218), gun manufacturers that engage in unsafe and unlawful marketing and sale will be held accountable for actions contributing to gun violence in Illinois. Illinois passed the ban on assault weapons after the 2022 Independence Day parade shooting that left seven people dead and 48 wounded. The gunmen in the July 4th shooting fired 83 rounds in under a minute using an AR-15. The ban prevents people from owning semiautomatic weapons, such as the one used in that shooting, as well as magazines that enable handguns and rifles to fire off many rounds without reloading. The Illinois Supreme Court separately upheld the law on a 4-3 decision in August.
In September, a three-judge panel of the 7th District U.S. Court of Appeals voted 2-1 in favor of the law, refusing a request by gun rights groups to block it.
At least eight other states and the District of Columbia have some sort of prohibition on semiautomatic weapons, and several cases challenging those laws are making their way through the federal courts, relying at least in part on the Supreme Court’s decision in 2022 that expanded gun rights.
"Nonetheless, the NRA was committed to promoting the idea that the Founders actually wanted Americans to view their government with a jaundiced eye, ever-ready to rise up in armed revolt."... that NRA which is made up of so many ignorant and selfish republicans, who for monetary reasons only inhibit this nation's fight against insanity...
I have on my long "to read" list the challenge of studying the history leading up to the founding fathers' (a rather fractious bunch) addition of the Second Amendment. The earliest mention I have found so far is from Andrew Fletcher (1653-1716), one of the famed (albeit less well known) and highly influential (also a quarrelsome bunch) Scottish philosophers: "We also know that a good and well regulated militia is of so great importance to a nation, as to be the principal part of the constitution of any free government. p. 346 [4]." "well regulated"!!
From what little I've had a chance to read, the "militia vs standing army" debates, and all things related to them, continued among them vigorously for hundreds of years afterwards.
As a general comment on Scalia's influence and the right wingers on SCOTUS today, I'm regularly shocked by their seemingly willful ignorance of history and science related to many of the issues that come before them.
There are problems with the Constitution, that the right has been able to exploit.
1. It is situational. Meaning that it was written in a pre industrial, agrarian era.
2. It does not account for change, cultural, social, financial, technological, industrial. In other words the framers wrote the constitution as though the world was and would be in stasis.
An example: There were no such things as corporations, not as we know them, there were
joint stock ventures, Chartered by the sovereign, such as the East India Company, the first global company of it's kind, the Virginia Company of London, which sought to extract gold and silver from the Eastern seaboard of America, which was named, at the time, Virginia in honor of the Queen Elizabeth.
These Joint Stock Companies existed at the pleasure of the Sovereign, and in fact the royal charter of the Virginia Company of London, was dissolved by the King in May of 1624, and assumed direct control of the colony. which prior to 1624 was not a colony but a business adventure, under royal charter.
3. It was put together by propertied men, whose only concern was to protect themselves and their property. It did not consider men without an investment in property to be trusted with decision making,like the vote,only those who had something to lose (property) would have a say in the governance, it did not consider women as citizens, because at the time, women were basically the property of men.
A female was expected to bring to marriage a dowery, and she had dower rights to property, and when property was sold she had to relinquish her dower rights to her husband. However if left a widow she had rights of inheritance, but lost the right of ownership to her husband if she remarried.
There were free blacks, former indentured servants, manumitted slaves, and chattel slaves.
All free property owning males that were citizens could vote, indentured servants, slaves and males that did not own property could not..not at first. That changed with Amendment Ten to the Constitution which was ratified on December 15, 1791. It makes clear that any powers that are not specifically given to the federal government, nor withheld from the states, are reserved to those respective states, or to the people at large.
It took four amendments, the 15th, 17th, 19th, and 26th to achieve Universal suffrage
The constitution is riddled with artifacts that have enabled the Supreme Court to play fast and loose with whatever ideology dominates at the time.
SCOTUS was able to overturn Roe with Dobbs because Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States generally protected a right to have an abortion. However it was decided by a court that used Judicial Review to decide that the right to privacy implied in the 14th Amendment protected abortion as a fundamental right.
AS Thom points out Judicial Review was a power assumed, and never challenged by Congress, by Chief Justice John Marshall.
And it is the mainstay of the court since Rehnquist (appointed by Reagan) was Chief Justice.
Visiting Swiss acquaintances in 1963, the husband showed off to us his rifle, required of every adult male as national militia. I think that is still the case in Switzerland. In service of country, hardly the same thing as the "boys toys" culture here.
Don't get Medicare Advantage. I know this is off topic, but my husband switched us from Medicare to Quartz Medicare Advantage over a year ago. I fell backwards on January 13, 2023, hit the back of my head and was unconscious. Paramedics took me to the ER in Rockford, Il. where according to my doctor they said I had a goose egg and did a CT scan. They sent instructions that I didn't see for a month because I had a concussion and couldn't think straight for at least three. weeks.
By the time I was seen in the ER a scab had formed on the back of my head. When the scab fell off, there is a hole about one inch round and 1/4 inch deep, a depression in my skull. I saw my doctor yesterday who said it must be the goose egg that flattened out. Two nurses felt that it is a depression and not flat. The doctor ordered a CT scan for me to make an appointment in 48 hours. I called today because I still have achy pain and "fogginess." I was told the UW Health insurance has not yet approved another CT scan.
From my experience working in ER and Intensive Care, I know that especially in seniors, a chronic subdural hemorrhage can occur several weeks later. My blood pressure is through the roof. At least I can think again. I am afraid. I don't feel like myself and know I should have a scan or an MRI.
Even when you have Medicare, your co-pay insurance will call you in the hospital to threaten that you may end up with the whole bill. I know because United Healthcare did that to me two years ago.
Doctors should quit paying for their malpractice insurance because the caps have been put on awards that make it unprofitable for lawyers to sue on behalf of patients. I'm waiting for the tipping point where the population refuses to tolerate this treatment. Thank you Thom Hartmann for this format.
Gloria you said: "Even when you have Medicare, your co-pay insurance will call you in the hospital to threaten that you may end up with the whole bill. I know because United Healthcare did that to me two years ago."
I find that not to be true, perhaps for you and your co insurance company (United Health Care)
I have co insurance and never had a bill questioned, in fact I have notified Medicare of Fraud, when I got Medicare EOB's for service and products not ordered, and a new Medicare number as a result.
They called me at Beloit Memorial Hospital and told me that if I didn't leave by the next day I would have to pay the entire bill. I didn't want to leave without a diagnosis because I had a cardiac arrhythmia that was erratic. It was probably myocarditis or pericarditis, but they wouldn't tell me. It happened after they gave me Losartan for a couple of months and increased the dose. I won't bore you. Just believe me.
Gloria, losartan probably losartan potassium? I got a fib once and they kept giving me more losartan potassium and I kept telling them I wanted less and a different BP medicine. Year and a half later I quit taking the losartan potassium on my own. Afib finally stopped.
What kind of medicine do we have in this country when it's every patient on his/her own to try to figure out side effects? And then the "doctors" are in Pharma straightjackets and psychologically in denial so they disrespect the patient? (Whew! Got that off my chest!) On the other hand, reluctantly, I had one aunt who I called The Bionic Woman: all the replacement parts: both knees, both hips, pig's valve in her heart and all that was after six - not four, but six - bypasses along the way. Setting up her pillbox was an excursion through Dr. Frankenstein's chemistry set. Yet she survived (in very poor state last couple of years) to age 92, and her kidneys were failing more from resistant-strain bladder infection than from the amazing pharmaceutical stew. So some of these laboratory concoctions work for some patients. Good for you figuring out something not working.
One of the great snow-jobs in politics history is the talking point that "Obamacare" was going to institute "death panels," when most everybody who paused to take a breath knew somebody denied or cut-off by commercial insurance. I was caregiver to my Mother and two aunts, all "managed," and it happened in every single case at the SNIF (post-acute) stage. I was able to get just a few more days for my Mom once with burdensome written appeal. So, yeah, so sympathetic Gloria. (My Mom's name was Gloria.) And pulling for you.
Indeed Medicare Advantage is the worst thing that could happen to someone with Medicare. These programs are all a scam and a big one. Sometimes major surgeries get turned down by the Medicare Advantage plans were as Medicare pays for them. why is that? well when you get Medicare Advantage you pay less. So for the advantage people getting less for paying less is totally logical to the plan and totally a potential killer to the Medicare Advantage patient. But private Medicare insurance such as Medicare Advantage they don't care. They are there to make money off of people who think they can do better with them. Don't fall for the scam.
A ct scan was approved for Sunday. Pain in my head woke me a while ago. An MRI might be the better test but more expensive. People's lives used to be precious. Not anymore.
I think your idea to follow in Hawaii's footsteps and ask our state courts to challenge Heller is great! I have forwarded this to my friends and asked them to contact elected representatives to ask for this. I must also add that in Germany, where people have insurance for everything, making life here much safer than in the USA, people who own guns are required to have 1.1 Mil Euros of Personal gun liability insurance. I recommend that this be included in everyone's requests of their local governments as well. Let the insurance industry decide who is too risky to allow to have a gun. It could be like driving and lower the risk to everyone.
If not a single new firearm were to be sold after today, (a nation already awash in over 400 million of them,) and were 50,000 guns to be destroyed daily, it would take nearly 22 years for America to be gun-free. Firearms may tragically take a prominent role in 2024 politics.
Simply: If the "originalists" are interpreting the 2nd Amendment as Scalia did, then they should agree that "arms" be limited to those available "originally" at the time of the Amendment's passage, notably single shot ball-and-powder muskets, flintlock pistols, and bows and arrows, I suppose. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/13/the-men-who-wrote-the-2nd-amendment-would-never-recognize-an-ar-15/
And it's not just "drenching our nation with our own children’s blood." As others have pointed out, but are rarely heard, the flow of arms across our borders to places where they are used to intimidate and murder innocent people must also be acknowledged. That clearly has not been "well regulated."Your summary of the issues and the positions held by responsible jurists is outstanding!!
"Frankly, it’s surprising it didn’t get national news coverage."... is it?... surprising?... not with the big time money grabbers who own the news... disgustingly!!!
While the reporting on SCOTUS has focused heavily on the corruption of Clarence Thomas and his wife and cohort, Ginni, Scalia's rhetoric and votes often get little attention. In my opinion, Alito is far more dangerous and corrupt with Thomas coming in second. These two men have been responsible for most of the heinous votes of the current SCOTUS, abetted by the 🟠💩 appointees Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Coney Barrett. Lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court have destroyed any chance of a fair SCOTUS, a court that rules by law instead of ideology.
Scalia is dead, and McConnell kept President Obama from having the Senate consider and approve Merrick Garland as a justice. McConnell should be remembered in infamy for this.
Scalia died on a hunting trip. Ironic, isn't it?
Yes, he died sleeping in his room.
I know. I just edited my comment to Alito, which is whom I meant to refer to.
Shoot...forgot to change Scalia to Alito in the first sentence and now can't do that. I meant to type Alito throughout my comment....🤷🏻♀️
Ok, thanks for clearing this up. The one thing I’ll note is that even though Scalia is dead, some of his dubious ideas survive.
Lovely but futile column. This SCOTUS long ago ceased to be about law. The rule of law is dead in this country. We are governed by the rule of money. The biggest money. As a retired lawyer and graduate of Harvard Law, like several of the Justices, it sickens me. While I cheer what the Hawai’i Supreme Court did, it is just a birthday candle in a typhoon wind. Guns will be with us until enough children of enough MAGAt judges and Congresscritters fall to bullets,if even then.
The key reason is that the Second Amendment extremists hate and fear government, except for the welfare checks they receive, individual, corporate and red state. Guns are their election result deniers of last resort, as we may sadly see in a few months.
Sadly, I see no solution. Someone close to me just started substitute teaching again two weeks ago. There was a shooting incident in the school parking lot where she was escorting her class on her second day. To her credit, she was calm, controlled, unflappable. She herded her students into the high school gym and locked the door, keeping them away from it. Fortunately, the shooter a freshman, wounded only one other student in the arm before he was grabbed and disarmed, by pure luck. It could have been so much worse. But teachers shouldn’t have to do that as part of their jobs. Nor should people at a Super Bowl parade have to assume they may well be shot as the price of attending.
But that is what we have become as a nation. It is clearer to me every day that TFG and all his cultists, rich, poor, in between must be suffocated at the polls. If we fail to do that, we deserve our fate. No excuses. No “Biden is too old, Harris is too weak a VP, I can’t have a perfect life for my trans kid”. Because there is only a horribly worse alternative. If you want any hope of gun control or even a modestly decent life, vote blue everywhere, for everyone and everything. Do all you can to get others to do the same, with donations, helping at polls, taking voters needing rides to polling places in states not allowing votes by mail. If our country is to survive, much less progress, WE have to make that happen.
.
Like, no doubt, many other people I immediately contacted my Chief fan family members living in K.C. to reassure myself they weren’t there, weren’t shot or injured. That fear shouldn’t be necessary. We should be better than this.
Keith Olbermann has an excellent podcast today on Youtube with suggestions about what we should do.
Thank you Thom Hartmann.
Gloria. I am a major Keith Olbermann fan and still pissed at corporate NBCUniversal for firing him. Do you know of any way to get Olbermann, other than podcasts. I don't do podcasts, and don't understand how anyone other than a truck driver or commuter stuck in car can.
He is on I Heart radio and Youtube.
Thanks
A very needed dissertation on the 2nd Amendment Thom.
Question is now, how to get the news of the Hawaii Supreme Courts rebuttal of Heller to the feckless news media. This should be a lede at WAPO and NYT
"The NRA, GOP and SCOTUS have made the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights into such a suicide pact, drenching our nation with our own children’s blood."... let's all; send our thoughts and prayers to these increasingly greedy "people"
The NRA and GOP are vulnerable. In January SCOTUS refused to review the Illinois AR -15 restriction case. Heller does not completely restrict all regulations.
In 2021, Illinois Governor Pritzker signed legislation expanding background checks on all gun sales in Illinois and modernizing and strengthening the Firearm Owners Identification Card System (HB 562). Under the Firearm Industry Responsibility Act (HB 218), gun manufacturers that engage in unsafe and unlawful marketing and sale will be held accountable for actions contributing to gun violence in Illinois. Illinois passed the ban on assault weapons after the 2022 Independence Day parade shooting that left seven people dead and 48 wounded. The gunmen in the July 4th shooting fired 83 rounds in under a minute using an AR-15. The ban prevents people from owning semiautomatic weapons, such as the one used in that shooting, as well as magazines that enable handguns and rifles to fire off many rounds without reloading. The Illinois Supreme Court separately upheld the law on a 4-3 decision in August.
In September, a three-judge panel of the 7th District U.S. Court of Appeals voted 2-1 in favor of the law, refusing a request by gun rights groups to block it.
“Gun rights groups continue to try to block the new law, even after repeated failures. And they continue to get nowhere,” Gun Violence Prevention PAC board member John Schmidt said. “No amount of flailing around by losing lawyers alters the basic fact that sale in Illinois of these destructive weapons continues to be blocked completely.”https://lawreview.syr.edu/grappling-with-guns-u-s-supreme-court-leaves-in-place-an-illinois-gun-regulation-for-now/
At least eight other states and the District of Columbia have some sort of prohibition on semiautomatic weapons, and several cases challenging those laws are making their way through the federal courts, relying at least in part on the Supreme Court’s decision in 2022 that expanded gun rights.
This was due to the Harlan Carter led hostile takeover of the NRA
In the late 1970s.
Russia supports the NRA but doesn't want in Russia???
"Nonetheless, the NRA was committed to promoting the idea that the Founders actually wanted Americans to view their government with a jaundiced eye, ever-ready to rise up in armed revolt."... that NRA which is made up of so many ignorant and selfish republicans, who for monetary reasons only inhibit this nation's fight against insanity...
I have on my long "to read" list the challenge of studying the history leading up to the founding fathers' (a rather fractious bunch) addition of the Second Amendment. The earliest mention I have found so far is from Andrew Fletcher (1653-1716), one of the famed (albeit less well known) and highly influential (also a quarrelsome bunch) Scottish philosophers: "We also know that a good and well regulated militia is of so great importance to a nation, as to be the principal part of the constitution of any free government. p. 346 [4]." "well regulated"!!
From what little I've had a chance to read, the "militia vs standing army" debates, and all things related to them, continued among them vigorously for hundreds of years afterwards.
As a general comment on Scalia's influence and the right wingers on SCOTUS today, I'm regularly shocked by their seemingly willful ignorance of history and science related to many of the issues that come before them.
There are problems with the Constitution, that the right has been able to exploit.
1. It is situational. Meaning that it was written in a pre industrial, agrarian era.
2. It does not account for change, cultural, social, financial, technological, industrial. In other words the framers wrote the constitution as though the world was and would be in stasis.
An example: There were no such things as corporations, not as we know them, there were
joint stock ventures, Chartered by the sovereign, such as the East India Company, the first global company of it's kind, the Virginia Company of London, which sought to extract gold and silver from the Eastern seaboard of America, which was named, at the time, Virginia in honor of the Queen Elizabeth.
These Joint Stock Companies existed at the pleasure of the Sovereign, and in fact the royal charter of the Virginia Company of London, was dissolved by the King in May of 1624, and assumed direct control of the colony. which prior to 1624 was not a colony but a business adventure, under royal charter.
3. It was put together by propertied men, whose only concern was to protect themselves and their property. It did not consider men without an investment in property to be trusted with decision making,like the vote,only those who had something to lose (property) would have a say in the governance, it did not consider women as citizens, because at the time, women were basically the property of men.
A female was expected to bring to marriage a dowery, and she had dower rights to property, and when property was sold she had to relinquish her dower rights to her husband. However if left a widow she had rights of inheritance, but lost the right of ownership to her husband if she remarried.
There were free blacks, former indentured servants, manumitted slaves, and chattel slaves.
All free property owning males that were citizens could vote, indentured servants, slaves and males that did not own property could not..not at first. That changed with Amendment Ten to the Constitution which was ratified on December 15, 1791. It makes clear that any powers that are not specifically given to the federal government, nor withheld from the states, are reserved to those respective states, or to the people at large.
It took four amendments, the 15th, 17th, 19th, and 26th to achieve Universal suffrage
The constitution is riddled with artifacts that have enabled the Supreme Court to play fast and loose with whatever ideology dominates at the time.
SCOTUS was able to overturn Roe with Dobbs because Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States generally protected a right to have an abortion. However it was decided by a court that used Judicial Review to decide that the right to privacy implied in the 14th Amendment protected abortion as a fundamental right.
AS Thom points out Judicial Review was a power assumed, and never challenged by Congress, by Chief Justice John Marshall.
And it is the mainstay of the court since Rehnquist (appointed by Reagan) was Chief Justice.
Visiting Swiss acquaintances in 1963, the husband showed off to us his rifle, required of every adult male as national militia. I think that is still the case in Switzerland. In service of country, hardly the same thing as the "boys toys" culture here.
Don't get Medicare Advantage. I know this is off topic, but my husband switched us from Medicare to Quartz Medicare Advantage over a year ago. I fell backwards on January 13, 2023, hit the back of my head and was unconscious. Paramedics took me to the ER in Rockford, Il. where according to my doctor they said I had a goose egg and did a CT scan. They sent instructions that I didn't see for a month because I had a concussion and couldn't think straight for at least three. weeks.
By the time I was seen in the ER a scab had formed on the back of my head. When the scab fell off, there is a hole about one inch round and 1/4 inch deep, a depression in my skull. I saw my doctor yesterday who said it must be the goose egg that flattened out. Two nurses felt that it is a depression and not flat. The doctor ordered a CT scan for me to make an appointment in 48 hours. I called today because I still have achy pain and "fogginess." I was told the UW Health insurance has not yet approved another CT scan.
From my experience working in ER and Intensive Care, I know that especially in seniors, a chronic subdural hemorrhage can occur several weeks later. My blood pressure is through the roof. At least I can think again. I am afraid. I don't feel like myself and know I should have a scan or an MRI.
Even when you have Medicare, your co-pay insurance will call you in the hospital to threaten that you may end up with the whole bill. I know because United Healthcare did that to me two years ago.
Doctors should quit paying for their malpractice insurance because the caps have been put on awards that make it unprofitable for lawyers to sue on behalf of patients. I'm waiting for the tipping point where the population refuses to tolerate this treatment. Thank you Thom Hartmann for this format.
Gloria you said: "Even when you have Medicare, your co-pay insurance will call you in the hospital to threaten that you may end up with the whole bill. I know because United Healthcare did that to me two years ago."
I find that not to be true, perhaps for you and your co insurance company (United Health Care)
I have co insurance and never had a bill questioned, in fact I have notified Medicare of Fraud, when I got Medicare EOB's for service and products not ordered, and a new Medicare number as a result.
They called me at Beloit Memorial Hospital and told me that if I didn't leave by the next day I would have to pay the entire bill. I didn't want to leave without a diagnosis because I had a cardiac arrhythmia that was erratic. It was probably myocarditis or pericarditis, but they wouldn't tell me. It happened after they gave me Losartan for a couple of months and increased the dose. I won't bore you. Just believe me.
I agree with both of you. Medicare Advantage is a scam.
The hospitals and physicians seem to be complicit. They force people into "observation" rather than treatment because they don't want Part A to cover.
Gloria, losartan probably losartan potassium? I got a fib once and they kept giving me more losartan potassium and I kept telling them I wanted less and a different BP medicine. Year and a half later I quit taking the losartan potassium on my own. Afib finally stopped.
What kind of medicine do we have in this country when it's every patient on his/her own to try to figure out side effects? And then the "doctors" are in Pharma straightjackets and psychologically in denial so they disrespect the patient? (Whew! Got that off my chest!) On the other hand, reluctantly, I had one aunt who I called The Bionic Woman: all the replacement parts: both knees, both hips, pig's valve in her heart and all that was after six - not four, but six - bypasses along the way. Setting up her pillbox was an excursion through Dr. Frankenstein's chemistry set. Yet she survived (in very poor state last couple of years) to age 92, and her kidneys were failing more from resistant-strain bladder infection than from the amazing pharmaceutical stew. So some of these laboratory concoctions work for some patients. Good for you figuring out something not working.
I am glad you're still with us. Like Hartmann said, they test after market in the U.S. unlike Europe. They use us for ginny pigs.
One of the great snow-jobs in politics history is the talking point that "Obamacare" was going to institute "death panels," when most everybody who paused to take a breath knew somebody denied or cut-off by commercial insurance. I was caregiver to my Mother and two aunts, all "managed," and it happened in every single case at the SNIF (post-acute) stage. I was able to get just a few more days for my Mom once with burdensome written appeal. So, yeah, so sympathetic Gloria. (My Mom's name was Gloria.) And pulling for you.
Indeed Medicare Advantage is the worst thing that could happen to someone with Medicare. These programs are all a scam and a big one. Sometimes major surgeries get turned down by the Medicare Advantage plans were as Medicare pays for them. why is that? well when you get Medicare Advantage you pay less. So for the advantage people getting less for paying less is totally logical to the plan and totally a potential killer to the Medicare Advantage patient. But private Medicare insurance such as Medicare Advantage they don't care. They are there to make money off of people who think they can do better with them. Don't fall for the scam.
A ct scan was approved for Sunday. Pain in my head woke me a while ago. An MRI might be the better test but more expensive. People's lives used to be precious. Not anymore.
I think your idea to follow in Hawaii's footsteps and ask our state courts to challenge Heller is great! I have forwarded this to my friends and asked them to contact elected representatives to ask for this. I must also add that in Germany, where people have insurance for everything, making life here much safer than in the USA, people who own guns are required to have 1.1 Mil Euros of Personal gun liability insurance. I recommend that this be included in everyone's requests of their local governments as well. Let the insurance industry decide who is too risky to allow to have a gun. It could be like driving and lower the risk to everyone.
If not a single new firearm were to be sold after today, (a nation already awash in over 400 million of them,) and were 50,000 guns to be destroyed daily, it would take nearly 22 years for America to be gun-free. Firearms may tragically take a prominent role in 2024 politics.
There is no excuse for this "Blair Witch" or "John Wayne Gacy" of a nation.
Just a lousy rationale: Greed.