Now 25 million have Type II Adult Onset Diabetes which is now spreading to children and 60 million now on the Brink as explained by Dr. Oz on Wednesday, December 2, 2009. About 57 million are pre-diabetic. But our Insurance healthcare companies refuse to fund money to stop pre-diabetic patient monitoring and care to prevent diabetes! Profits now and let others take care of the future problem! About 6 million don't know they have diabetes.
One man, Gerald, on the show who was grossly overweight at 277 pounds believed his waist size was much smaller than he thought by dropping his pants to his lower abdomen. He measured 38 inches while his actually waist over the maximum point was 53 inches! He had a sugar level of 238 or so as I recall.
Now there is a device that can determine diabetes better than just the sugar test. A prick on the finger to get blood which is mixed in a solution and tested with a small device is a much better determination of diabetes. His reading was 12.8 and should be under 6.0!
Gerald was sent immediately to the Emergency Room because he could die at any moment, but he did not even know it. He drank gallons (3) of water to satisfy his thirst! My doctor on Tuesday said I should cut down my water I drink by a third which included coffee. Coffee irritates the bladder to make us urinate more.
Doctor Oz has a 12 Week Diet and exercise program and palatable diet which requires his patients to never go hungry. Always eat something for breakfast and lunch and when you are hungry with the "right" foods so you won't gorge at dinner.
Things to Do to Keep Your Blood Sugar Level Lower: Fiber such as oatmeal binds to sugar so it does not get into your blood stream as much. Lots of fiber helps keep blood sugar lower! My blood sugar is 80. Cinnamon and vinegar lowers our glycemic blood sugar index too!
Symptoms of Diabetes:
1. Increased Thirst.
2. Unexpected weight loss
3. Always Tired.
4. Get more sick than in the past.
Some Hints on Diet and Exercise:
1. Avoid white flower, bread, and the like.
2. Whole grain Pasta is available. Remember fiber binds sugar!
3. Exercise: Use thread-mill instead of just walking if possible. Uphill slant on thread-mill really helps. Believe me it really makes a difference. It keeps you going at a faster paste and just a slight degree or more really increases the sweat!
4. Do bent leg sit-ups.
5. Do Strength training with weights.
6. Read books such as
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7. Improve Outlook at Life by Trying New Technique of Moving own fat from stomach to face to remove wrinkles and increase breast size. As always really do serious research instead of just asking friends. Unless done correctly, the fat dies. Does not interfere with mammograms. (NY Times)
8. Really determine whether you are lactose product intolerant as are 75 percent of African Americans and a high percentage of Asians and many lose tolerance as adults. See if gas forms in your intestines with can come out on both ends. Feeling uncomfortable due to bloating of your stomach is a common symptom. Without lactase to eat up lactose in milk, it leaves it up to bacteria in your colon which produces gas. There are pills and lactose free milk. Cheese and butter lose lactose during the processing to form these products. Yes, ice cream contains lactose! Soy based organic milk does not contain lactose and many go this route.
GO LACTOSE FREE FOR FIVE DAYS TO SEE HOW YOU FEEL after a meal!
9. Weight loss programs that work have to satisfy your hunger and eating when hungry, but the right foods such as the Mediterranean Diet which both tastes good, is filling, and is good for you. http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/search/search Former PR Chief at CIGNA Healthcare Reveals How Aetna Scares Americans. DoctorOz.com DIABETES
Aetna Health Insurance company well known for firing employees to boost profits and getting rid of sicker Americans who need healthcare more by increasing rates so much that employers could no longer afford the cost.
"... This relates to our second point: profitability. We have heard repeated claims that insurance companies are barely making a profit, with the figure of just 3% in profits being bandied about. But, the reliance on percentages is very misleading given the amount of real money the percentage is based upon. In Aetna’s case, the company’s net income in 2008 was about 4 percent of $31.6 billion or $1.38 billion dollars after taxes. That amounts to almost $4 million in profit per day, or almost $400,000 an hour, on average.
And those are profits from premiums paid by hard-working Americans, many of whom risk personal bankruptcy if their insurance company uses some loophole to refuse to pay for their health costs in order to appease Wall Street. But an even better measure of profitability is return on equity (ROE), which asks how much did you have to invest to obtain that return. In Aetna’s case, shareholder equity is almost $8.2 billion, so their ROE is 17 percent after tax, which is a very solid return by Wall Street’s standards, far better than the interest rate for consumer savings. ... "
Not well publicized is that the Bush administration cut real money for Medicare each of eight years and went from paying out 95% of premiums during the Clinton earlier years to a greatly reduced amount reaching 80%. The best thing to do is assume everything you hear against the healthcare Public Option and other Reforms is based largely on lies!
"... Third, as I have testified before the Senate, these profits are built on an ever increasing “medical loss ratio,” which is another obscure term that means the difference between the premiums people pay and how much the company pays for medical care.
As PricewaterhouseCoopers noted last year, the collective medical loss ratios of the seven largest for-profit insurers fell from an average of 85.3 percent in 1998 to 81.6 percent in 2008. ... "
"... Fourth: These high profit margins, when considered in real dollars, mean that American consumers are subsidizing huge compensation packages for CEOs. Here are the 2008 total compensation figures for the biggest insurance companies: Aetna, Ronald A. Williams: $24,300,112; Cigna, H. Edward Hanway: $12,236,740; Coventry, Dale Wolf: $9,047,469; Health Net, Jay Gellert: $4,425,355; Humana, Michael McCallister: $4,764,309; United Health Group, Stephen J. Hemsley: $3,241,042; Wellpoint, Angela Braly: $9,844,212. See http://tinyurl.com/msbzkb. ... "
" ... Fifth, these profits have been made possible, in part, by anti-competitive monopolies and oligopolies that individual companies hold in major markets across the country. There has been a tremendous consolidation in the health insurance industry over the past 15 years. ...
Look at Philadelphia, where CIGNA, my former employer is based. The lion’s share of the insurance market in Philly is controlled by Independence Blue Cross and Aetna. CIGNA would love to be a big player in its own hometown, but it has never been able to scale up to be a serious competitor. It has some business there, but not much comparatively. If CIGNA cannot overcome the huge barriers to entering that market, what insurer can? That is just one of the reasons why the market cannot solve these problems on its own. The truth is that the market has no real interest in solving these problems, because there is no profit in covering all Americans as they age or get sick, which is simply part of the human condition. There is no financial incentive to opening the market to greater competition. The financial incentives actually run the opposite way. Fewer sick people equal greater profits.
That is why there is such determined resistance to the option of choosing a government insurance plan, like Medicare for all. The government would have incentives to reduce and manage costs, but it would not need to make billions in profits each year for investors. It would not need to rob premium dollars from consumers to buy high-priced lobbyists. It would not need to pay taxes on premiums. And, it would not have to pay a CEO $97,000 a day or even $10,000 a day. In this case, with Americans’ very lives at stake, it is emphatically not the case that the market is always right. The consequences for ordinary people are just too grave. Just ask yourself: How are these companies able to keep after-tax net earnings so high while everyone else’s costs of premiums and doctor’s bills are going up, up, up? It’s by leaving people out, and it’s time Congress fixed this.
Sincerely,
Wendell Potter and Andrew Kurz
New Letter from Wendell Potter to the Senate on Aetna and Corporate Spin
http://www.prwatch.org/node/8723 Here is a letter the Center for Media and Democracy's Wendell Potter recently sent to the Senate about the health care reform efforts and corporate spin:
My name is Wendell Potter, the former insurance industry insider speaking out about how insurance companies have hijacked our health care system in service of Wall Street’s relentless profit expectations. I am joined in this letter by Andrew Kurz, a former chief financial officer for Wisconsin Blue Cross and Blue Shield who shares these concerns.
We stand together for immediately reforming the plainly broken U.S. health care system with its spiraling premium costs and harmful loopholes. Business as usual is taking a terrible toll on Americans, on government budgets, and on our nation’s ability to compete in the global marketplace. This is unacceptable and unsustainable.
We are writing at this crucial moment in response to some of the regrettably misleading arguments being made against health care reform. As a former executive who used to be on the inside of the health insurers’ anti-reform efforts, I can assure you the industry and its staunch allies will leave no ploy behind. You need look no further than this week’s news about Aetna’s layoff.
Perhaps it is just a coincidence that Aetna made its layoff announcement at this key moment in this debate. As you have no doubt heard, the company said it would reduce its workforce by 1.75 percent in “preparation” for possible health reform legislation as well as to consolidate real estate holdings. Aetna said this resulted in a $44 million “severance and facility charge.” Leaving aside the suspect timing of this announcement, it is important to put this news in context. The need to consolidate real estate holdings has nothing to do with health reform bills, and most companies have reduced staff due to the financial crisis of 2008. To us, tying this to health reform seems like pure hype.
Also putting this announcement in context is the fact that, in 2008, Aetna trumpeted that its revenues “increased 14 percent over 2007 to $31.6 billion.” See http://tinyurl.com/y9hfvw3 (at page 3). According to its 10-K filing with the SEC for 2008, Aetna’s net income after expenses, including taxes, was $1.38 billion. ... http://www.prwatch.org/node/8723
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