Role of Government in Healthcare, Our Financial Economy, and National Security Krugman NYT

President Obama needs to start playing hardball and hit hard at both Republicans and Healthcare corporations who paid as high as $1.7 billion dollars in fines for stealing money from seniors on Medicare. They are essentially running the campaign to prevent Democrats from explaining the goals of the Healthcare plan with considerable help from our Republican leaders.

If Obama read John W. Dean's book "Conservatives Without Conscience," he would be aware that no logic and facts will persuade them to change their mind. Don't let them takeover our country again.

In Chapter Two Conservatives Without Conscience pp. 39, scientists such as Milgram at University of California, Berkeley and Altemeyer found earlier "that conservative authoritarian personalities can commit atrocious acts by ignoring their consciences such as those working for the CIA or armed forces ignore their consciences to carry out orders that defy well-known international laws?

Radical authoritarian conservatives just follow orders as Eichmann did according to study in "Hannah Arendt'sbook Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963) which Milgram agrees with. Milgram observed that the lesson of his work was that ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terribly destructive process. ... Milgram revealed that for a remarkable number of people, it is very difficult to disobey authority figures, but quite easy for them to set aside their conscience."

Seniors who voted for McCain by 53% tend to be quite insecure and easier to scare so they react badly to any news that threaten them such as any change in Healthcare provisions for Medicare. Now it is worse because of the financial collapse and the lies and scare tactics put out there by healthcare corporations and Republicans are effective with now two-thirds of seniors opposing reform. If they succeed in preventing an education discussion about healthcare, President Obama will lose.

In the book "OverTreated: Why Too Much Medicine is Making Us Sicker and Poorer," by Shannon Brownlee, a 30 year journalist covering healthcare, she gives a huge number of examples about why overtreatment leads to poorer outcomes because each procedure is a potential risk including infections and death and the good appropriate treatment does for their patients. When there is an over abundance of doctors with the same specialty, operations and treatments mushroom indicating that many of the operations such as unneeded hysterectomies do irreparable harm to their patients for their lifetime.

We can fault our Democratic Blue Dogs, especially Senator Baucus from delaying the bill so opponents could campaign to kill healthcare reform during the August recess by using outright lies by quoting things not in the bill. Senator Baucus is the 4th highest recipient of Contributions from Healthcare related corporations of four million dollars. http://www.opensecrets.org/ Since he comes from a sparsely populated state of Montana with mostly poor residents, his support or bribes can go a long way to keep him in office.

The Mayo Clinic is the #1 healthcare provider according to US & News Reports with costs lower than the Medicare average. Primary care doctors and specialists are in one organization and the doctors are on salary so they do not carryout unnecessary procedures to make more money. The same occurs in dozen similarly structured smaller healthcare operations throughout the country.

Not enough effort was carried out well before allowing congress to submit proposed bills from various committees. President Obama should talk about McAllen, Texas which costs twice the average for Medicare with worst and certainly not better outcomes than a comparable city, El Paso with similar demographics which charged Medicare half the cost of McAllen, Texas. These physicians have become very rich and talk about their expensive boats or their investment successes, but not what they do for their high living. In Texas it is very difficult to sue doctors so lawsuits is not the too often given for doctor's and hospital's greed to live the high life.

Medicare is now spending more money than it is taking in and the current estimate is that by 2017 or so, Medicare would be bankrupt. If costs keep increasing at the same rate in healthcare, we would have nothing left for what government does best such as Social Security, Medicare, Veterans Hospitals, FEMA now, National Defense, and other supporting programs.

We have no choice. We must reform healthcare so the Baby Boom seniors and future generations will continue to have the benefits only government will provide. Even now the best healthcare is provided with government involvement with Medicare, Veterans Care, and Congressional Care. See NYTimes Paul Krugman Aug 10, 2009 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/10/opinion/10krugman.html?em

As we all should know, the goal of Healthcare Corporations is to deny us healthcare to make their excess greedy profits. As I said before Wall Street including Hedge Funds make it hard for CEOs from trying to do the right thing if they are so inclined because as soon as they don't make the Wall Street estimate of earnings, even if it drops by one percent, their stock goes down at least ten percent in one day! We need to also reform Wall Street with more helpful regulations to keep us safe.

Jim Kawakami, Aug 10, 2009, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com Health, Financials, and Other Germane Topics

Howard Dean Tramples Newt Gingrich in Healthcare Debate

ABC's This Week - George Stephanopoulos: 8/9/09: Howard Dean, Newt Gingrich Debate Health Care, Pt. 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2n_68J6OYc 7 Minutes

I watched my DVR recording of the Howard Dean vs Newt Gingrich debating Healthcare this morning. Dr. Dean did not try to refute every lie Gingrich told, but when he said that government control of Healthcare will deny many more procedures than the current Corporate Healthcare system, Dr. Howard Dean pounced!

The comments that killed everything Gingrich was lying about healthcare:

Dr. Howard Dean "When I was practicing medicine in Vermont, Medicare never questioned how I treated my patients. But I got many calls from corporate Healthcare where they denied many procedures and treatments by refusing to pay for it."

President Nixon introduced HMOs only when he was told that Corporate healthcare will make money by excluding sicker people from joining.

They also excluded even people who had medication treated high blood pressure as my cousin discovered who is a staunch Republican. My cousin Jane lost her healthcare from Disney when she was fired after a management change.

Because Obesity and corresponding Metabolic Syndrome is so high in our system diabetes and kidney loss has mushroomed, more and more people will be denied care for Corporations because these patients are so expensive.

If a person loses a job either through changing jobs, illness or layoffs, they might not be able to get corporate healthcare again. A government option is crucial for Americans to have medical security.

Obama Care will allow you to change jobs because corporate healthcare will not be able to deny a job and healthcare due to pre-existing medical problems. That is why the Government Option like Medicare, Congressional Care, and the Veterans Hospital are examples of the best medical care available.

The #1 healthcare provider, The Mayo Clinic, has been compared favorable with the Veterans Hospital which eventually we will need to get to provide the best care at a lower price. Primary Care and Specialists are all in one place so a patient does not have to make another appointment to get an evaluation immediately if necessary. Instead of the doctor seeing you for 5-10 minutes, the doctors take all the time necessary to make a diagnosis. For example one patient spent one hour to get a proper evaluation.

Heaven forbid that you have to treat cancer or get an organ transplant. They will try to find something in your application that was left out such as acne treatments by a doctor to drop you saying you committed fraud!

In the movie SICKO by Michael Moore and in the news when it is not suppressed, one woman and a man who needed cancer treatments to keep her alive were dropped. Even one teenager who needed a liver transplant to stay alive died because CIGNA denied treatment saying it was experimental. The girl got the nurses and others behind her, but CIGNA delayed granting the operation until they knew she was going to die at any time.

Wendell Potter was Head of Communications at CIGNA and developed a strategy to keep this out of the news. He must have been very successful because I don't recall this happening, but it is fairly frequent. It was very hard to get approval for a kidney transplant for myself. They use such tricks as not approving the hospital or even doctors.

Potter changed his attitude only when he saw thousands of White Southerners at a Virginia Health Fair coming from Southern States who were teated in horse stalls and gurneys without privacy treated an overflowing crowd of people without health insurance or a Dentist.

He decided to retire early and start talking about corporate profit maximizers Health Care (?). Corporate Healthcare increased your portion of the cost FOUR TIMES HIGHER THAN INFLATION.

Senator Rockefeller's committee interviewed Potter on Healthcare, but the only place I was able to see a video was on C-SPAN! CORPORATE TELEVISION DEPENDS ON ADVERTISERS SO THEY DON'T WANT TO OFFEND THEM.

Dr. Howard Dean, MD, substituted for Keith Olbermann for two nights on MSNBC, http://www.olbermannwatch.com/archives/2009/03/john_dean_says.php

Also see Moyers Interview Wendell Potter. He knows all the Corporate Healthcare secrets and he is talking! See video, transcript, or audio. http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07312009/watch.html

Jim Kawakami

August 9, 2009

http://jimboguy.blogspot.com Health, Financials

Books That Counter Our "Training" To Make War by John Pilger

Prior to the 1920s there were dozens of newspapers in a city catering to the needs and prejudices of various groups of people. But the wealthy and powerful class did not want newspapers exposing what they actually did to exploit other Americans. So they decided to start "professional" Journalism Schools so that only people with these degrees can practice journalism.

Similar to all schools of higher learning, those individuals with untrainable non-conventional thinking or independence can be weeded out during the secretive qualifying exams for the higher degrees. Most learn what not to talk or write about so they do these things automatically today.

In the 1920s and 1930s brute force was used to control labor and other malcontents, but corporations and governments found that at some point they became difficult to control. So a plan called Operation Phoenix (?) was initiated in 1937 to control the thinking of the American people, but was not started until 1945.

They decided to make use of powerful propaganda techniques developed by the nephew of Sigmund Freud, Edward Bernays of Cambridge, "The Father of Public Relations" who already had success in getting Americans to start eating hearty breakfasts in 1907, propagandizing our elites to believe that World War I was necessary to help Britain, getting woman to smoke in the 1930s to "gain their independence" from men and perversely Jewish Bernays also ironically helped Hitler who read his 1928 book "Propaganda" in prison to help him convert Germans into raving war-minded and anti-Semitic maniacs.

Elizabeth A. Fones-Wolf in an obscure book published in 1994, "Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism--1945-60--" wrote a factual, non-ideological, description of actually what happened. Big Business spent an enormous amount of money to squeeze out any independent thinking and becoming obedient to authority during business hours, at elementary high schools, and colleges with appropriately placed money and teaching plans, TV and radio ads and in program propaganda pieces to make unions into a pariah organization successfully.

Wendell Potter who is now speaking out against Corporate Healthcare Policies use to be the top Public Relations person to CIGNA Healthcare, is a good example of obedience to power. He designed the propaganda campaign to stop the spread of their act of denying a dying liver transplant teenager calling it experimental which is ridiculous and led to her early death two days after they were forced to rescind their death order because of a huge public outcry.

But he retired early because his individual morality came back a year before when he visited a Virginia health fair where White southerners were lining up by the thousands from nearby and distant states to get free healthcare in horse stalls and gurneys with no privacy. Now he is speaking out. http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07312009/profile.html

To get another slant on what is happening in this world, go to http://www.zcommunications.org/znet, and select one article you might be interested in reading. Normally they are longer than Krugman's Op-Ed column which is limited to about 700 words, but just like him, the articles in Z-Net informs you about facts and mainstream journalist's slant on the facts. Even if you disagree with what they write which I do from time to time, you will gain facts that may help your thinking about what matters to you.

Jim Kawakami

August 7, 2009

http://jimboguy.blogspot.com Health, Finance, and other topics of interest and analysis

Aug 06, 2009 by John Pilger "Books that Counter Our "Training" to Make War""

http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/3945 (Pilger is banned from any USA media outlet now because he so effectively films and writes about what the Establishment is actually doing. www.johnpilger.com

1.0 Manufacturing Consent: the Political Economy of the Mass Media, Edward S Herman and Noam Chomsky describe how war propaganda in free societies is "filtered" by media organisations, not as conscious "crude intervention, but by the selection of right-thinking personnel and by the editors' and working journalists' internalisation of [elite] priorities and definitions of newsworthiness".

2.0 A Century of Spin by David Miller and William Dinan, who describe the rise of an "invisible government" invented by Sigmund Freud's nephew Edward Bernays. "Propaganda," said Bernays, "got to be a bad word because of the Germans, so what I did was to try and find some other words." The other words were "public relations", which now consumes much of journalism.

3.0 The latest achievement of PR is the "Obama phenomenon". In Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics (published in the US by Paradigm), Paul Street peels away the mask in perhaps the only book that tells the truth about the 44th president of the United States.

4.0 My contribution. Jim General Smedley D. Butler wrote a book "War is a Racket," 1935, where he writes "I spent 33 years in the Marines, most of my time being a high-class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for Capitalism." Note that the Standing armies, CIA and NSA spy agencies were also established by Wall Street and Bankers. The framers of the Constitution and others know about the dangers of a Standing Army. Washington, Madison, Jefferson, and Eisenhower spoke often about these dangers.

Wall Street and Hedge Funds Profits Makes All of Us Poorer: High Oil and Healthcare Prices

Why Were Oil Prices So High? I watched a Democratic congressional hearing on C-SPAN of non-corporate experts on the reason for such high oil prices even with a decrease in demand. They all concluded during the time when oil prices of a barrel of oil was close to $150 that if the speculators were prevented from speculating with Naked Future Options (without owning any of the stock), the price for oil now would be only $1.70/barrel. We saw a very sharp drop in price once the rule was put in place going towards $1.70 per barrel and below as demand drops due to our irresponsible Big Investment Banks and everyone else.

Why are Healthcare premiums so high with an increasing out of pocket amount paid by patients? A recently retired Public Relation Propagandist for CIGNA Healthcare was interviewed by a highly perceptive Bill Moyers on Bill Moyers Journal on every Friday on PBS http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07312009/profile.html

Wendell Potter was straight forward and clear with his answers which were devastating to know by those average Americans who do not have time to analyze what is happening to them and all Americans. He gave an example of AETNA HEALTHCARE run by a ruthless CEO Mr. Williams.

When Aetna did not meet expected earnings the Hedge Funds sold off in mass and the stock price dropped by 20 percent! Williams was hired to fix Aetna by removing mass numbers of “unprofitable patients” from his plan either by eliminating that part of the company or by raising premiums so high so truly sick members that they were forced to leave the plan. The stock price went up sharply and Williams made hundreds of million dollars in bonuses. Williams is handsome and very smooth talking and I nearly up chucked when he made the lying comments about reducing healthcare costs to President Obama.

The facts are is that we are Denying that Wall Street is now structured so that the most ruthless CEOs have been put in place. Unless we change Wall Street and the role profits play in our Healthcare system, we are all doomed to escalating healthcare costs with the current plans put forth by the House and Senate.

Switzerland and Germany solved part of the problem by making Healthcare Companies Non-Profit. I think one suggestion from a Harvard Professor who is an expert on understanding the healthcare system is that we need to go gradually to a Medicare for All system. President Obama is trying to do that trying to including Medicare for those 55 and over. when 40 percent of Americans are now Obese which leads to diabetes, kidney failures, and more heart attacks and strokes, our healthcare costs will mushroom. Even now Obese members costs our system twice as much as a typical member. Since most of the obesity started with Reagan ruthless capitalistic policies, we can expect these costs to mushroom.

We must included a mandatory effort of doctors being knowledgeable enough to advise their patients to change their diet, and not use the diet plan tricks which never work for long.

Jim Kawakami

August 2, 2009

http://jimboguy.bloodspot.com Heathcare and Wall Street and Hedge Funds

Why are Oil Prices So High: Hedge Funds Responsible NY Times David Segal, August 1, 2009 ... That suggests that last summer, drivers paid more at the pump, at least in part, because of people like Andrew J. Hall. How do you hand $100 million to a guy who may have profited because gas hit $4 a gallon?

Whatever the answer, the case of Mr. Hall highlights the hazards of mixing the public interest with capitalism at its most unbridled, and it raises basic questions of fairness. There was outrage last week over a report by the New York attorney general that about 5,000 traders and bankers at bailed-out firms got more than $1 million each last year. So it could be politically untenable for a company like Citigroup to pay gargantuan sums even to those who generate gargantuan profits — the very people the company must retain if it is to recover. ... http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/business/02bonus.html?_r=1&hpw

Studies Now Show Vitamin D3 Reduces Many Cancers, Heart Disease, Improves Fertility, Diabetes, Weight Control, Memory

Up to 75 Percent of Americans are Deficient in Vitamin D. I feel strongly that the limits based on bone strength is much too low and most should try to attain the higher limits if not beyond what is recommended now.

When I learned just a few years ago that noon sunlight produces 22,000 International Units of vitamin D3 in just 15 minutes for Caucasians, I concluded immediately that vitamin D must serve purposes other than just give us good bones. Think Evolutionary forces. But I found relatively few studies in the USA except at Oregon State University, Australia, and Sweden. The latter two had research indicating that sunscreens may have inadvertently contributed to a sharp surge in melanoma by not screening UVA, the penetrating part of the sun rays but did a good job in stopping UVB, the burning rays. The Oregon State researchers made the alarming guess that the sharp increase in Autism in Oregon, the highest in the nation, may be due to a sharp drop in vitamin D provided to mothers and babies due to sharp increase in sunscreen use, high latitudes, and rainy states.

Vitamin D provides an important contribution during brain growth and probably synaptic connections of neurons during the early life of babies first years. Now over 2,000 studies have been reported just in 2009.

I have found that increasing my dose to 2500 units daily has greatly reduced my skin autoimmune disease as it has for psoriasis where it has long been known that sunlight helps ameliorate psoriasis, an autoimmune disease.

Some doctors are massively increasing the dose of vitamin D to their deficient patients of up to 30,000 units each day and 50,000 once a month to prevent deficiencies. One woman I know has sharply decreased or eliminated the frequent colds she use to get.

Doctors who are very conservative for good reasons, but are not as versed in scientific studies so as President Obama said several months ago, it takes 17 years for published Best Practices to be implemented by 50 percent of the doctors and hospitals. That is why he wants to have a panel of experts make recommendations which are not mandatory, but should be much more coercive.

Jim Kawakami

Aug 2, 2009

http://jimboguy.blogspot.com

Many Studies Now Show Vitamin D Reduces Cancers, Heart Disease, Improves Fertility, Weight Control, and Memory LATimes.com Aug 1, 2009, Shari Roan Vitamin supplements have been both heralded and hyped over the years, only to ultimately fall from grace once research proves them to be little more than placebos in our quest for longer life or better health. But at least one substance may have true merit -- vitamin D.

Long considered just a supplement consumed with calcium for bone health, this humble vitamin may have untapped potential in fighting or preventing disease, suggests an explosion of new research. Not only has it shown promise in reducing the risk of, among other things, diabetes, pancreatic cancer, breast cancer and cardiovascular disease, but it also seems to improve infertility, weight control and memory. ...

Five studies on colorectal cancer and breast cancer, taken together, showed that people with levels higher than 34 to 52 ng/mL had a 50% reduced cancer risk, says Cindy D. Davis, a researcher at the National Cancer Institute's Nutritional Science Research Group. ... http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-sci-vitamind1-2009aug01,0,4706112.story?track=rss

The CDC Estimates Nearly 40 Percent of American Adults are Considered Obese!

The article http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09214/988131-114.stm is quite complete with tables and charts for various states. The South seems to have by far the most obese and seems to correlate with the income of its population. Fast Food is cheaper than store bought food and packs a huge calorie count. Its combination of fat, sugar, and salt results in the activation of our reward center to put out dopamine so it is extremely hard to resist. We are encouraged to eat at anytime.

The former FDA head, David Kessler, The End of Overeating goes into his findings that Fast Food and snack foods works on our reward center so it is similar to the craving for an illegal drug. Extremely hard to give up. It is similar to a problem alcoholics have giving up drinking. It is a very short Best Selling Books with lots of references and notes. By knowing whats in your food can help greatly is avoiding foods that will kill your ability to resist so support the bill to force fast food regular restaurants as a start to list fats, sugar, salt, and calories for the food you eat.

I found this out on my own so I never eat in a Fast Food joint and rarely buy snacks which contains all of the dopamine generators.

Jim

8/2/09

Americans Obedient Towards Authority so CIGNA Employees Amorally Deny Life-Saving Operations

Americans Obedient Towards Authority so CIGNA Employees Amorally Deny Life-Saving Operations

Even polls are used to control us. They just don't report widely the polls that go against what they want. For example, recently a second poll by the NY Times/Wall Street Journal showed that when Obama's Healthcare plans were explained to Americans, the favorability goes up to the seventies and some say even the eighties. It is no accident that the pollster from the conservative Free Enterprise organization reports both polls and interpretations on CNN. The Republican Party pollster and propagandist told all Republicans to appear to be humane, but attack the government healthcare plan.

Senator Baucus (D-MT) who gets 24% of all contributions www.opensecrets.org from the Healthcare system talks a lot with the Republicans and his two top advisors who are now lobbyists for healthcare has designed a bill that makes corporate Healthcare and Big Pharma very happy. Baucus deleted the government option and gave Big Pharma all they wanted. My Senator Wyden (D-OR) is in the top ten so he presented a more pro-Healthcare Bill which is horrible according to Howard Dean who gave a wonderful presentation on the Keith Olbermann Show on Healthcare.

Wendell Potter, the former propagandist for CIGNA healthcare, indict the policies of CIGNA and all corporate healthcare companies. I highly recommending looking at the Bill Moyers interview with Potter again or for the first time. He tells us a lot about how they control our minds and the minds of congress.

Jim Kawakami

Aug 01, 2009

http://jimboguy.blogspot.com health blog

BILL MOYERS JOURNAL has been focusing on perspectives not being heard on Capitol Hill or on the major news outlets — from popular plans left "off the table," like single payer, to the powerful influence of the health care industry on the process.

In the video player below you can find BILL MOYERS JOURNAL's complete and continuing coverage of the health care reform debate. Links below that will take you to the program pages that contain a wealth of resources and information about specific issues.

Additionally, you'll find resources for making sense of the debate, including tips for following the money and a detailed comparison of the plans currently under consideration. http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/healthcare/index.html

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07312009/profile.html (Wendell Potter, former Propagandist for CIGNA Healthcare)

Potter in Congressional Testimony Video http://commerce.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.LiveStream&Hearing_id=6f02dcc8-ad5b-445c-81ca-36c9b06ebdd5 Text: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07312009/potter_testimony.html

From http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/

For those who stubbornly seek freedom, there can be no more urgent task than to come to understand the mechanisms and practices of indoctrination. These are easy to perceive in the totalitarian societies, much less so in the system of 'brainwashing under freedom' to which we are subjected and in which all too often we serve as unwilling instruments." Noam Chomsky

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"With numbing regularity good people were seen to knuckle under the demands of authority and perform actions that were callous and severe. Men who are in everyday life responsible and decent were seduced by the trappings of authority, by the control of their perceptions, and by the uncritical acceptance of the experimenter's definition of the situation, into performing harsh acts. A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and without limitations of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority" Stanley Milgram, 1965

Milgram was a psychologist who performed a series of experiments that proved conclusively that obedience to authority was so ingrained in the average US citizen they were prepared to cause lethal harm to others when instructed by authority figures to do so. All those who took part were first asked if they would be capable of killing or inflicting severe pain on their fellow human beings. 100% replied categorically 'no'. http://tinyurl.com/2vf8j

Potter Testimony to the Senate: Last month, testimony in front of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation by a former health insurance insider named Wendell Potter made news even before it occurred: CBS NEWS headlined: "Cigna Whistleblower to Testify." After Potter's testimony the industry scrambled to do damage control: "Insurers defend rescissions, take heat for lack of transparency."

In his first extended television interview since leaving the health insurance industry, Wendell Potter tells Bill Moyers why he left his successful career as the head of Public Relations for CIGNA, one of the nation's largest insurers, and decided to speak out against the industry. "I didn't intend to [speak out], until it became really clear to me that the industry is resorting to the same tactics they've used over the years, and particularly back in the early '90s, when they were leading the effort to kill the Clinton plan."

Potter began his trip from health care spokesperson to reform advocate while back home in Tennessee. Potter attended a "health care expedition," a makeshift health clinic set up at a fairgrounds, and he tells Bill Moyers, "It was absolutely stunning. When I walked through the fairground gates, I saw hundreds of people lined up, in the rain. It was raining that day. Lined up, waiting to get care, in animal stalls. Animal stalls."

Looking back over his long career, Potter sees an industry corrupted by Wall Street expectations and greed. According to Potter, insurers have every incentive to deny coverage — every dollar they don't pay out to a claim is a dollar they can add to their profits, and Wall Street investors demand they pay out less every year. Under these conditions, Potter says, "You don't think about individual people. You think about the numbers, and whether or not you're going to meet Wall Street's expectations."

You can view Wendel Potter's congressional testimony online or read the text.

You can learn more about Remote Area Medical, the organization that put on the "health care expedition" here.

Washington is abuzz about health care reform. Both Congress and President Obama have made it a top priority, and there are a number of proposals making the rounds. But what will that bill look like, and who will shape it?