Debbie April 3, 2008

Walmart is the country’s largest non-governmental employer (>1.3 million employees). Last year they made over 11 billion dollars in profit. After suing Debbie for 400,000 dollars for medical care she received, they finally came to their senses.

Debbie Shank was a Walmart employee when she had the car accident. Her car crashed into a semi-track causing her brain damage so severe that she can’t feed herself and lost her short-term memory. For some time, she received medical attention from the insurance associated with her job at Walmart. Then, she successfully sued the trucking company, getting some 400,000 dollars to help pay her medical bills. But a clause in Walmart’s contract allowed Walmart to sue Debbie for the fees and expenses paid to her before she got the trust money from the trucking company. And Walmart won! The Shank family appealed but they lost. They took the case to the Supreme Court, but the court decided to not to hear the case. So the funds were frozen, and Debbie’s husband could not use it to pay the sky-rocketing nursing prices.

Jim Shank, Debbie’s husband had to divorce her so that she could receive more money from Medicare.

And then, as if this wasn’t enough, his 18 year old son died in Iraq. Sometimes she remembers. When she asks for him, they have to tell her the story all over again, and she cries again.

Finally Walmart released a statement dropping the suit, so the money for her care can be unfrozen.

Yet another Walmart horror story (though they finally changed their minds). And yet another health insurance horror story.

For more information on this story, listen to the first half of today’s Democracy Now!

Hillary and the Health Care Issue January 24, 2008

Please Hill, we all saw Sicko.

Hillary knows very well that the health care system in the US cannot be solved by “talking to the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies so that we can an agreement that will make health insurance affordable to everybody.” She knows this because she was part of the board of directors of Walmart, and at the time I’m sure no one could have talked her into making less money!

On the other hand, she wants everyone to be insured by these companies, which of course works wonders for their shareholders. Note the difference between universal health care system and FREE universal health care system. In the former, you will have insurance coverage (as bad or maybe worse as the one you have now) but if you don’t, you will be forced to get one because the government will make it affordable, i.e. will make the insurance companies even richer by helping you pay them if you are too poor to pay it yourself. No, this is not what I want. If I have an accident, I don’t want to worry about the ambulance bill. I want a god damned socialist free health care system.

The Constitution Argument December 6, 2007

Who doesn’t love law makers that work for the people. The following argument was made by Justice Stephen Breyer against the illegal inability of people to challenge their imprisonment in Guantanamo:

JUSTICE STEPHEN BREYER: Suppose that you are from Bosnia, and you are held for six years in Guantanamo, and the charge is that you helped al-Qaeda, and you’ve had your hearing before the CSRT. And now you go to the D.C. circuit, and here’s what you say: “The CSRT is all wrong. Their procedures are terrible. But, Judge, for purposes of argument, I concede their procedures are wonderful, and I also can conclude it reached a perfectly good result.” OK? So you concede it, for argument’s sake. But what you want to say is: “Judge, I don’t care how good those procedures are. I’m from Bosnia. I’ve been here six years. The Constitution of the United States does not give anyone the right to hold me six years in Guantanamo without either charging me or releasing me, in the absence of some special procedure in Congress for preventive detention.” That’s the argument I want to make. I don’t see anything in this CSRT provision that permits me to make that argument. So I’m asking you: Where can you make that argument?

PAUL CLEMENT: I’m not sure that he can make that argument, Justice Breyer.
JUSTICE STEPHEN BREYER: Exactly.
PAUL CLEMENT: I’m not sure he can make—
JUSTICE STEPHEN BREYER: If he cannot make that argument, how does this become an equivalent to habeas, since that happens to be the argument that a large number of these 305 people would like to make?

For the full discussion, go to the democracy now website.