Jesse Ventura on Health Care Former Independent MN Governor; possible Presidential Challenger

5,000 die yearly from preventable food-borne illness

The conditions by which our food is being supplied to us are very dangerous. Consider that more than half a billion eggs were recalled last year and a salmonella outbreak in August made about 1,700 people sick. Preventable food-borne illness hits about 76 million Americans every year--325,000 became hospitalized and 5,000 die from eating tainted food!

It all comes back to the same old thing: this is what happens when corporations, in this case agribusiness, take over. It simply becomes bottom line, money, and profits--everything else is damned.

You'd think that the federal regulators would want to keep tabs on this, but for years the FDA looked the other way.

1948: US tested VD antibiotics on Guatemalan citizens

We know about the horrifying Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment when the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) "observed" and experimented on 399 poor African-American men in the late stages of syphilis--basically watching them die over a forty-year period starting in 1932. This came to light in 1972.

Yet another study has been uncovered in 2010. The USPHS was also busy in Guatemala from 1946-1948, infecting nearly 1,000 Guatemalan citizens with venereal diseases. Why? To test antibiotics. Don't believe me--it was published as "Findings from a CDC Report on the 1946-1948 U.S. Public Health Service Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD) Inoculation Study."

Treat anyone: the doctor issue us a human right

Individual responsibility for unhealthy lifestyle choices

Focus on prevention, children, and results

We need a broad-based community dialogue in order to develop a common view of what we want out of our health system, and more consensus about how to get it. The health system must invest more heavily in and reward prevention, not just treatment. We must help refocus the system on producing better health status for all Minnesotans, not just on producing more and costlier services that fewer and fewer people can afford. We need a vision of a new health system built not for the last 50 years, but for the next 50 years.

Supports “Minnesota Care”; tax to pay for uninsured

But the more we as a society can do on the end of prevention, the less any of us will have to spend on medical care. We need to make better choices regarding our health.

No national care, but pure capitalism can’t work

By its very nature, medical care can’t be a purely capitalist venture. If it becomes only about making money, we get to the point where we’re messing with people’s lives and health just to make a buck. We do need to have some kind of regulation or watchdogging system in place to keep HMOs from getting out of hand.

Comment “suicides are weak” meant “don’t encourage them”

Government interference should be kept to a minimum

Minnesota Care has been good for the children in our state. We should make stronger efforts to identify the children who are eligible to be in the system, but are currently without healthcare. The State should also be paying for immunization shots for children to immunize them against communicable diseases such as chicken pox, whooping cough and the flu.

Premise of the tobacco lawsuit wrong; it punishes victims

In regard to the actual settlement, I believe the money should be spent on programs that will help prevent people from ever starting to smoke, some that will assist people to stop smoking and some that will provide healthcare assistance to those who are physically suffering from the effects of smoking.

No federal pre-emption of employee health plan regulation.

The Issue

NGA’s Position

The Governors support efforts designed to enable small employers to join together to participate more effectively in the health insurance market. In fact, Governors have taken the lead in facilitating the development of such partnerships and alliances. However, these partnerships must be carefully structured and regulated by state agencies in order to protect consumers and small businesses from fraud and abuse and underinsurance. NGA opposes attempts to expand federal authority under ERISA. The Governors have identified the prevention of such federal legislation in the 107th Congress as a top legislative priority.

States have the primary responsibility for health insurance regulation. Across the nation, Governors are working to protect consumers and patients and to properly regulate the complicated health insurance industry.

Maintain Medicare funding of HMO benefits.

• WHEREAS, Medicare premiums paid to Health Maintenance Organizations (HMO) are set at 95% of the current fee-for-service Medicare spending on residents of the county where the HMO is to be offered; and
• WHEREAS, The lack of readily accessible medical care in some areas results in lower utilization of medical services and lower Medicare spending; and
• WHEREAS, The combination of the Medicare HMO premium formula and differences in medical care service utilization results in fewer medical benefits for many Medicare HMO participants in rural, and other low medical care utilization areas; and
• WHEREAS, Medicaid will likely be used to fill the coverage gap in these areas, requiring additional state money; and
• WHEREAS, Language in the 1997 Balanced Budget Act was designed to address these inequities; now therefore be it,
• RESOLVED, That the Midwestern Governors’ Conference encourages Congress to continue its effort to address these inequities, and to resist efforts to reverse the changes made to Medicare HMO premiums in the Balanced Budget Act of 1997.

Protect state tobacco settlement funds from federal seizure.

As you know, preserving and protecting the state tobacco settlement funds is the nation’s Governors’ highest priority. We strongly urge you to reach final agreement and pass the conference report on the emergency supplemental appropriations bill soon, and to retain the Senate provision that protects our settlement funds from federal seizure.

Many of our state legislatures are currently in session, and some have already completed work on their budgets. Therefore, it is critical that conferees reach agreement quickly on this issue. Governors are unified in their commitment to ensuring that the funds remain in the states and that there be no restrictions on states’ ability to tailor spending to meet the needs of their citizens.

We offer our strongest support for conferees to recede to the Senate version of the bill containing the Hutchison/Graham bipartisan tobacco recoupment protection legislation.