Many Hospitals, Doctors Offer Cash Discount for Medical Bills

Stephan:  This is the Illness Profit System in all its glory -- a system perverse, corrupt, and interested in only one thing: profit. As its extraordinarily poor health outcomes prove, actual wellness is hardly a consideration.

A Long Beach hospital charged Jo Ann Snyder $6,707 for a CT scan of her abdomen and pelvis after colon surgery. But because she had health insurance with Blue Shield of California, her share was much less: $2,336.

Then Snyder tripped across one of the little-known secrets of healthcare: If she hadn’t used her insurance, her bill would have been even lower, just $1,054.

‘I couldn’t believe it,’ said Snyder, a 57-year-old hair salon manager. ‘I was really upset that I got charged so much and Blue Shield allowed that. You expect them to work harder for you and negotiate a better deal.’

Unknown to most consumers, many hospitals and physicians offer steep discounts for cash-paying patients regardless of income. But there’s a catch: Typically you can get the lowest price only if you don’t use your health insurance.

That disparity in pricing is coming under fire from people like Snyder, who say it’s unfair for patients who pay hefty insurance premiums and deductibles to be penalized with higher rates for treatment.

The difference in price can be stunning. Los Alamitos Medical Center, for instance, lists a CT scan of the abdomen on a state website for $4,423. Blue Shield says its negotiated rate at […]

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Kansas Pastor Calls on U.S. Government to Kill LGBT People

Stephan:  The most dangerous social movement in the U.S. today is the rising power of the Theocratic Right. Not least because such a large part of its energy comes from judgment and hate. I see these stories almost every day now, there is nothing special about this one, and this pastor is by no means unique in his views. I chose to publish this report as an example. Because each of these stories seems unconnected to the others, it seems to be hard for people to see the overall pattern, but when placed in the context of the anti-choice, anti-contraception, pro-creationist, anti-climate change, pro-dominionist web it is one piece of a larger whole.

The pastor of New Hope Baptist Church in Seneca, Kansas says President Barack Obama has gone too far in supporting same sex marriage and it’s time for the U.S. government to begin killing gay men and lesbians.

‘Terrorists are dangerous, the economy is a real and present danger,

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Energy Companies Say One Thing, Do the Opposite on Climate Change

Stephan:  There is nothing really surprising in any of this, or at least there shouldn't be. But it is nice to have one's suspicions confirmed. Source URL: http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/05/corporate-hypocrisy-climate-change Links: [1] http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/scientific_integrity/a-climate-of-corporate-control-summary.pdf [2] http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/scientific_integrity/a-climate-of-corporate-control-report.pdf

Many large corporations are saying one thing and doing another on climate change, the Union of Concerned Scientists found in a study released Wednesday.

The group examined the role that 28 publicly-traded companies played in two significant efforts to address climate change: the EPA’s finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health, and the 2010 ballot initiative in California to suspend the state’s own climate law. (Here are links to the executive summary [1] and the full report [2]).

UCS found that many oil and electric companies were actively engaged in efforts to obstruct climate policy. Chesapeake Energy, Tesoro, Murphy Oil, Occidental Petroleum, Valero Energy, and Peabody Energy were consistently opposed to dealing with climate change: both their PR and their actions worked against new, science-based laws to cut greenhouse gases.

Other companies were less straightforward about their positions. ExxonMobil put out corporate PR that was positive about climate policy while engaging in actions that undermined efforts to deal with climate change. For example, its contributions to anti-climate-action lawmakers outweighed contributions to pro-climate-action lawmakers by a ratio of 10 to 1.

ConocoPhillips, another oil giant, touted on its website that it ‘recognizes that human activity

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Right-Wing Billionaires Behind Mitt Romney

Stephan:  The conservative uber-rich, thanks to Citizens United, are planning to buy this election to get the kind of government they want, so they can make billions more. The Koch Brothers alone are reported to be planning to put in more money than the entire McCain campaign cost in 2008, and the overall total will be well north of a billion. Frankly, I think they have a pretty good chance of pulling it off. Thanks to a massive disinformation campaign Romney's already looking better to women in spite of his anti-choice positions and commitment to eliminate all manner of family support programs. I thought you might like to meet your likely new overlords.

Presidential politics has always been a rich man’s game. But now, thanks to the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United that upended decades of limits on campaign donations, financing a presidential race is the exclusive domain of the kind of megadonor whose portfolios make Mitt Romney look middle-class. ‘I have lots of money, and can give it legally now,’ Texas billionaire and top GOP moneyman Harold Simmons recently bragged to The Wall Street Journal. ‘Just never to Democrats.’

In past elections, big donors like Simmons gave millions for advocacy groups like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. By law, such groups were only allowed to run issue ads – but instead they directly targeted John Kerry, drawing big fines from the Federal Elections Commission. Now, with the blessing of the Supreme Court, the wealthy can legally hand out unlimited sums to groups that openly campaign for a candidate, knowing that their ‘dark money’ donations will be kept entirely secret. The billionaire Koch brothers, for instance, have reportedly pledged $60 million to defeat President Obama this year – but their off-the-book contributions don’t appear in any FEC filings.

Even more money from megadonors is flowing into newly created Super PACs, which, unlike advocacy groups, […]

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Ancient Tree-ring Records From Southwest US Suggest Today’s Megafires Are Truly Unusual

Stephan:  Here is the latest research on the historical precedence for extreme weather events such as the Megafires consuming the Southwest. Once again it warns us about what is coming with climate change, and why these changes are human mediated.

Today’s mega forest fires of the southwestern U.S. are truly unusual and exceptional in the long-term record, suggests a new study that examined hundreds of years of ancient tree ring and fire data from two distinct climate periods.

Researchers constructed and analyzed a statistical model that encompassed 1,500 years of climate and fire patterns to test, in part, whether today’s dry, hot climate alone is causing the megafires that routinely destroy millions of acres of forest, according to study co-author and fire anthropologist Christopher I. Roos, Southern Methodist University, Dallas.

The researchers found that even when ancient climates varied from each other - one hotter and drier and the other cooler and wetter - the frequencies of year-to-year weather patterns that drive fire activity were similar.

The findings suggest that today’s megafires, at least in the southwestern U.S., are atypical, according to Roos and co-author Thomas W. Swetnam, the University of Arizona. Furthermore, the findings implicate as the cause not only modern climate change, but also human activity over the last century, the researchers said.

‘The U.S. would not be experiencing massive large-canopy-killing crown fires today if human activities had not begun to suppress the low-severity surface fires that were so common more than […]

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