In response to high morbidity and mortality rates caused by an environmental health disaster due to asbestos mining in Libby and northwest Montana, Sen. Max Baucus added a section, Amendment 1881 A to the Social Security Act as a provision to the Affordable Care Act as it was drafted in 2009-10. The intent was to enroll everyone in the affected areas of Libby, Montana and the northwest area of the state in the national Medicare program - without qualifications.The model of provision of Medicare for All to Libby, Montana provides a roadmap to the extension of healthcare to all who are subject to COVID-19 virus and other health threats.Support the show (https://www.denveropenmedia.org/podcast/library#truthseekers)

Truthseekers - Health Justice Podcast

Libby, Montana: Roadmap to Medicare for All

Since the 1970s when the neoliberal economy began to take hold, the cost of healthcare has continually risen. Placing profit at the center of healthcare, private equity firms began to purchase large sectors of U.S. health care to milk large profits. As costs have soared, U.S. health outcomes have precipitously declined.Yale history professor Timothy Snyder has related his near-death experience while seeking U.S. healthcare in 2019.  Snyder writes in his book "Our Malady: Lessons in Liberty from a Hospital Diary" that U.S. commodification of human health prioritizes profiteering over provision of health care or prevention of disease, resulting in 'wealthcare over healthcare.' Reducing U.S. healthcare to a privilege instead of a human right tends to undermine democracy as well as health.Support the show (https://www.denveropenmedia.org/podcast/library#truthseekers)

Neoliberalism yields Wealthcare, not healthcare

 Our guest is Dr. Vincent Markovchick, emergency room doctor for 40 years, 20 years as director of Denver Health Emergency Services. The podcast begins with clips of candidate and media comments echoing industry talking points regarding health care reform. Represented are presidential Candidates John Delaney, Pete Buttigieg, Michael Bennet, Michael Bloomberg and Joe Biden; and 2 Colorado U.S. Senate candidates, Cory Gardner and John Hickenlooper. Also captured are remarks of 2 NPR reporters, Steve Inskeep and Mara Liasson.  Most candidates promote some form of "Faux Medicare," "public option" plans that maintain administratively complex and costly private insurance plans at their center. The health care reform debate in 2020, driven by corporate media and candidates, is based on many false pretenses, including the notion that people have a "choice" of private insurance. Any "choice" is in fact exercised by private insurance companies, who can at will drop the insured, drop their plans, medicines, as well as doctors and hospitals from their narrow networks, leaving people high and dry, subject to high medical bills and medical bankruptcy. Truthseekers - Health Justice Podcast is permanently housed in the Denver Open Media Podcast Library.Support the show (https://www.denveropenmedia.org/podcast/library#truthseekers)

False 'Choice' of Private Health Insurance

 The U.S. is the only advanced country that prioritizes profit over healthcare access. Retired Emergency Medicine Specialist Dr. Vincent Markovchick remarks that the U.S. has the costliest health insurance model, with numerous segments of the economy milking large profits. Ever larger shareholder profits are sought by venture capitalist investor-owned health groups. Those seeking healthcare run the risk of out-of-network "surprise billing" by investor-owned free-standing emergency rooms, doctor groups, hospice centers, emergency air rescue groups, etc. Even media took in $5.2 billion in a single year for pharmaceutical ads, motivation to defend the status quo. Groups making large profits from healthcare are lining up against Medicare-for-All in order to protect their profits.Truthseekers - Health Justice Podcast is permanently housed in the Podcast Library of Denver Open Media.Support the show (https://www.denveropenmedia.org/podcast/library#truthseekers)

U.S. Profit-Driven Healthcare

Our guest is Dr. Vincent Markovchick, emergency room doctor for 40 years, 20 years as director of Denver Health Emergency Services. The podcast begins with clips of candidate and media comments echoing industry talking points regarding health care reform. Represented are presidential Candidates John Delaney, Pete Buttigieg, Michael Bennet, Michael Bloomberg and Joe Biden; and 2 Colorado U.S. Senate candidates, Cory Gardner and John Hickenlooper. Also captured are remarks of 2 NPR reporters, Steve Inskeep and Mara Liasson.  Most candidates promote some form of "Faux Medicare," a "public option" that maintains administratively complex and costly private insurance plans at their center. The health care reform debate in 2020, driven by corporate media and candidates, is based on many false pretenses, including the notion that people have a meaningful "choice" of private insurance. Any "choice" is in fact exercised by private insurance companies, who can at will drop the insured, drop their plans, medicines, as well as doctors and hospitals from their narrow networks, leaving people high and dry, subject to high medical bills and medical bankruptcy.View permanent library of other Truthseekers - Health Justice Podcasts Support the show (https://www.denveropenmedia.org/podcast/library#truthseekers)

 North Denver Zip Code 80216 was named the most toxic Zip Code in 2017. Intersected by two highways built in the 1950s and 1960s, the North Denver communities of Globeville, Elyria and Swansea also encompass the 4-1/2 square mile Vasquez Blvd/I-70 Superfund Site, placed on the Superfund Site Priority List in 1999. In the wake of superficial remediation of the Superfund Site, many have questioned plans by the City and the Colorado Department of Transportation to triple the footprint of I-70 and lower the highway 40 feet in a flood plain, through the Superfund Site.Mary Hernandez grew up in Swansea, and remembers the effects of the initial I-70 highway build, as it divided her neighborhood. Having lived in the Superfund Site for 30 years, she relates the health effects of exposure to contaminants of the Vasquez Blvd/I-70 Superfund Site on three generations of her family. Other community members express their concerns about living at ground zero in what the EPA formerly named an Environmental Justice Community - predominantly minority, "suffering an undue burden of environmental pollution."Truthseekers - Health Justice Podcasts are permanently housed at denveropenmedia.org in the "Podcast" Library at Truthseekers - Health Justice.Support the show

North Denver: Human & Environmental Sacrifice Zone

Truthseekers - Health Justice is a Podcast that challenges the false corporate narrative underlying social injustice and the erosion of U.S. democracy. Truthseekers - Health Justice addresses the flawed concepts and the corporate power structure underlying the failed U.S. commercial health insurance model, as well as the sacrifice of human and environmental health to the corporate bottom line.

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Truthseekers - Health Justice Podcast

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