I signed up for Obamacare via the Covered CA plan in 2014. Went to my new doctors at a clinic in Grass Valley. Immediately I got stuff happening and taken care of. (Cancerous growth, diabetes and started on the path to treating the CT) then took a test, an EMG (?) (the single most uncomfortable thing ever), to determine the extent of the CT....Then went to a specialist to determine my injuries. Both hands and elbows and shoulders all suffered serious injury via carpal T.

That doctor did not advise to the surgery but instead proscribed physical therapy. BUT, the only place to do that was 40 miles and an hour on a winding road away, so I went once, because driving, (and typing), aggravate it so (I am using a voice on my tablet right now).

So I moved back to the Sacramento area to be closer to PT, and that is where my nightmare began.

In November, on the 15th I started to change my insurance to a Sac doctor under the same HMO (Anthem) that I had before. (via MediCal) Anthem did not do this timely, at all. Then they got confused totally and dropped me all together. Then, after reinstatement, they did not transfer me to a Sac doctor of my choosing but kept my doctor as the one in Grass Valley, who I was no longer an official patient of.

then came the re enrollment period and Anthem again cancelled me and MediCal started for me. For one month. (Which I knew nothing about). I didn't even know I was back on Anthem until I had a medical emergency in May and spent 6 days in the hospital.
Finally I get back on Anthem, and I am still listed with my former Grass Valley doctor, even though via all the forms etc I filled out I tried to make a change.

Hundreds of phone calls, hours of wasted time trying to get all this straight with Anthem. HOURS AND HOURS.

So I finally get to choose a Sac area doctor, but all the ones I want are not available (Because I was late in the sign up game) so I settled with one that was close. On that day that I made my appointment, I also sent a form to my past doctors allowing them to share my info...

And oh my God. Bulletproof glass in the reception area. Big signs warning against scamming for pain meds. Seriously it was like walking into an inner city KFC instead of doctor's office.

The doctor had not received my medical history. So the appointment (Which took a month to get) was wasted at least as far as my CT was concerned (and pain relief too).

Finally I got the record sent over and we had a second appointment, but my CT tests were not there......

That doctor (From Ukraine as were all the staff, many of whom only spoke broken English) referre me to a pain doctor as he called it.

And it was like a cartoon. Torn exam table. mismatched drawers. Dirty.....Staff that took blood that were incredibly horrible at doing that. Like a Tijuana doctors office if you can imagine. Or worse. That doc told me I had to take the test again. (and really not again?) because my records still had not followed me (Phone call after phone call and still nothing) to that doctor.

Well today I got it all straightened out. I went to my former GV Doctor and talked to them. they told me they sent the records, the complete records and that something must have happened to them at the other doctors end (they "lost" them surely)

So here I am 8 months later. BUT, I got the results to him today and the doctor still wants me to take the test again. (Which was so horrible I dread even thinking about it). "Things may have changed in the past year" (as if severe carpal T in left and right wrists, shoulders and elbows is going to get better with time or maybe more severe?). Of course, this doctor will be the one giving the test.....

And wont be until late September. So that is one year, completely wasted, to get to where I was in November of last year, actually not even close really because I won't have diagnosis or a report for another few weeks after that.

So why don't I (meaning everyone in the US) have a flash drive with my medical history on it? I could be well on my way to being pain free if so. Now I won't even get pain meds until late September ("I can't give them out until I make diagnosis"....

This is all about Anthem not giving me service, losing me, cancelling me accidentally etc. And about the doctors seeing a healthy charge at the ready, Losing my medical records in order to bill for the testing etc.

The Obamacare part of this worked perfectly and when I had a doctor that was caring (At the clinic) they were great. When I changed to a doctor who was not a clinic, things changed and it all seemed a scam.

There is an epic battle being fought in the Democratic Party. While it is getting coverage, the context of the coverage is all wrong. The battle is not about who best serves Democrats. It is about the soul of the Democratic Party. It is about what it will mean to be a Democrat going forward. First a bit of background.

Democrats sold out their values over the last 30 years. Ronald Reagan successfully gave the country a semblance of supply side economics success.Reagan used Keynesian economics with a supply side facade. He slashed taxes mostly for the wealthy and supplemented the shortfall with deficit spending. When the economy recovered taxes were never raised to the appropriate levels and the country was served with deficits ad infinitum. The double injection of money into the economy from deficit spending and tax cuts gave America the semblance of prosperity.

George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton continued Reagan’s supply side economics with a bit more common sense as taxes were raised and the top line budget was brought into balance. Clinton believed in triangulating to win and triangulating to govern. In the process he gave a huge gift to Wall Street. He allowed the repeal of Glass Steagall which along with George W. Bush’s fiscal ineptitude virtually destroyed the world’s economy in 2008.

The election of President Obama decidedly provided a progressive path with not enough progressivism for most. But it was in effect a progressive turn. If one listened to Obama, in 2008 he always spoke about turning the juggernaut slowly or nudging the juggernaut. .

MORE: http://egbertowillies.com/2015/07/30/hillary-clinton-vs-bernie-sanders-a-fight-for-the-soul-of-the-democratic-party/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=facebook_page&utm_medium=EgbertoWillies.com&utm_content=Hillary%20Clinton%20vs%20Bernie%20Sanders,%20a%20fight%20for%20the%20soul%20of%20the%20Democratic%20Party

There is an epic battle being fought in the Democratic Party. While it is getting coverage, the context of the coverage is all wrong. The battle is not about who best serves Democrats. It is about the soul of the Democratic Party. It is about what it will mean to be a Democrat going forward. First a bit of background.

Democrats sold out their values over the last 30 years. Ronald Reagan successfully gave the country a semblance of supply side economics success.Reagan used Keynesian economics with a supply side facade. He slashed taxes mostly for the wealthy and supplemented the shortfall with deficit spending. When the economy recovered taxes were never raised to the appropriate levels and the country was served with deficits ad infinitum. The double injection of money into the economy from deficit spending and tax cuts gave America the semblance of prosperity.

George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton continued Reagan’s supply side economics with a bit more common sense as taxes were raised and the top line budget was brought into balance. Clinton believed in triangulating to win and triangulating to govern. In the process he gave a huge gift to Wall Street. He allowed the repeal of Glass Steagall which along with George W. Bush’s fiscal ineptitude virtually destroyed the world’s economy in 2008.

The election of President Obama decidedly provided a progressive path with not enough progressivism for most. But it was in effect a progressive turn. If one listened to Obama, in 2008 he always spoke about turning the juggernaut slowly or nudging the juggernaut. .

MORE: http://egbertowillies.com/2015/07/30/hillary-clinton-vs-bernie-sanders-a-fight-for-the-soul-of-the-democratic-party/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=facebook_page&utm_medium=EgbertoWillies.com&utm_content=Hillary%20Clinton%20vs%20Bernie%20Sanders,%20a%20fight%20for%20the%20soul%20of%20the%20Democratic%20Party

not bad for the first one.....

Five years before University of Cincinnati officers Eric Weibel and Phillip Kidd corroborated the seemingly false account of an officer now charged with murder, they helped as Kelly Brinson was shocked and shackled

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/30/samuel-dubose-officers-kelly-brinson#img-1


Two police officers who corroborated a seemingly false account of the fatal shooting of Samuel DuBose in Cincinnati were previously implicated in the death of an unarmed, hospitalised and mentally ill black man who died after he was “rushed” by a group of seven University of Cincinnati police officers.

Kelly Brinson, a 45-year-old mental health patient at Cincinnati’s University hospital, suffered a psychotic episode on 20 January 2010 and was placed inside a seclusion room at the hospital by UC officers. He was then shocked with a Taser three times by an officer and placed in restraints. The father of one – son Kelly Jr – then suffered a respiratory cardiac arrest and died three days later.

In court documents obtained by the Guardian and filed by Brinson’s family in a civil suit against UC police and the hospital, all seven officers are accused of using excessive force and “acted with deliberate indifference to the serious medical and security needs of Mr Brinson”.
MORE HERE: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/30/samuel-dubose-officers-kelly-brinson?CMP=fb_tc

A BLAST FROM THE PAST (12-12-14) but relevant even more:

As a presidential contest between Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush in 2016 appears ever more likely, it’s a good moment to ask what alternative exists to lying down and letting such a campaign drown the body politic.

Time is short. The queen of cynics, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, already has pronounced her gorgon’s judgment on the inevitability of Hillary versus Jeb. “The looming prospect of another Clinton – Bush race makes us feel fatigued,” yawns the perpetually bored Dowd, who, on the contrary, relishes a future of easy columns mocking America’s two leading political dynasties.

What about the rest of us? Is it inevitable that we swallow the nomination of the neo-liberal Clinton, whose support of Bush’s Iraq madness (not to mention Obama’s Afghan and Libyan stupidity) and her husband’s recklessly pro-“free trade,” pro-banker, pro-deregulation politics ought to send reasonable liberals fleeing? Is it predestined that principled conservatives accept the anointment of the thoroughly fraudulent Jeb, whose support of his brother’s interventionist folly, along with his own outrageous meddling as governor of Florida to “rescue” brain-dead Terri Schiavo, should give pause to even the greediest oil baron seeking patronage from a Republican administration?

http://billmoyers.com/2014/12/12/left-must-derail-hillary-clinton-primaries/

Straight pride activist Anthony Rebello organized a Straight Pride Parade in Seattle last weekend and it didn't go as well as planned.

Despite inviting more than 2,400 people via his event page on Facebook, the parade organizer—Anthony Rebello—was the sole parade attendee. No word on where his girlfriend was during the parade. Even with zero support, Anthony say this year's parade was a "warm up" and he's planning to do it again next year.

We all have the right to celebrate the way of life we have chosen for ourselves. In the name of equality & equal rights, I have created this event to celebrate our right to be heterosexual, and to encourage younger heterosexuals that they should be proud of their heterosexuality.

This event is not a protest. It is a celebration for all to enjoy (:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/07/29/1406853/--Straight-Pride-parade-in-Seattle-didn-t-go-as-well-as-the-organizer-had-hoped?detail=facebook

A beer brewer in Vermont has given a very subtle endorsement to Bernie Sanders. Joe Lemnah has been printing #FeelTheBern on the bottom of the beer that he brews.

Campaign slogans are probably one of the most powerful tools that politicians and their supporters can use to win an election. In the age of social media, where every moment becomes summarized in a hashtag, that goes double. In that regard, #FeelTheBern has been a blessing to the Bernie Sanders campaign. First, the hashtag went viral and now it is going analog.

It would appear that the energy that the Sanders campaign has created is powerful enough for people to come out of their progressive closet.

Lemnah told NECN:


http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/07/29/bernie-beer/

MINNEAPOLIS (The Borowitz Report) – Scientists have discovered a powerful new strain of fact-resistant humans who are threatening the ability of Earth to sustain life, a sobering new study reports.

The research, conducted by the University of Minnesota, identifies a virulent strain of humans who are virtually immune to any form of verifiable knowledge, leaving scientists at a loss as to how to combat them.

“These humans appear to have all the faculties necessary to receive and process information,” Davis Logsdon, one of the scientists who contributed to the study, said. “And yet, somehow, they have developed defenses that, for all intents and purposes, have rendered those faculties totally inactive.”

More worryingly, Logsdon said, “As facts have multiplied, their defenses against those facts have only grown more powerful.”

More Satire here: http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/scientists-earth-endangered-by-new-strain-of-fact-resistant-humans

On Monday morning, police in Mount Vernon, New York discovered a 44-year-old woman dead in her cell. She is the fifth black woman, at least, to die behind bars this month.

According to Mayor Earnest Davis, Raynetta Turner was arrested and locked in a holding cell Saturday afternoon on shoplifting charges. Some time after her arrest, Turner informed Westchester County police that she had numerous medical problems, and was eventually brought to Montefiore-Mount Vernon Hospital Sunday evening. She returned to the holding cell briefly that night, before she was taken for fingerprinting at 2 a.m. She was found dead 12 hours later.

The mayor has since explained that Turner’s medical history included hypertension and bariatric surgery. No official cause of death has been determined.

But her death follows at least four other deaths of black women in police custody since July 13, shining an even brighter spotlight on the plight of black women in the criminal justice system and fueling the Black Lives Matter movement. On that date, Sandra Bland was found hanging in her cell, three days after she was violently stopped for failing to signal a lane change in Waller County, Texas. The next day, 18-year-old Kindra Chapman committed suicide in an Alabama prison. She was arrested for stealing a cell phone. Joyce Curnell was arrested on shoplifting charges and found dead in her cell on July 24. On July 26, officers found Ralkina Jones dead in the Cleveland Heights City Jail, two days after she was arrested for a physical dispute with her husband. Like Turner, she was brought to a medical facility after a staff member observed Jones was lethargic — then returned to the jail. Prison officials say they conducted several check ups on the night she returned, but found her unresponsive around 7:30 the next morning. An investigation is currently under way.


http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/07/28/3685435/fourth-black-woman-found-dead-jail-cell-since-mid-july/