Brief Fact Summary. Appellee challenged the constitutionality of an Act which allowed a court to order separated, divorced, or unmarried parents to provide equitably for educational costs of a child, even after the child has reached 18.
Synopsis of Rule of Law. The Act violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because it is not rationally related to a legitimate state interest. Facts. Appellee filed a petition to terminate his child support obligations two his two children who were attending college. Act 62 was promulgated, which allowed a court to order separated, divorced, or unmarried parents to provide equitably for educational costs of a child, even after the child has reached 18. After inaction of Act 62, appellee was granted leave to include a constitutional challenge to the Act as a basis for seeking relief from post-secondary educational support.
Issue. Does Act 62 violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution
Held. The Act violates the Constitution because there is no rational basis for applying the authority of the state selectively to empower only those from non-intact families to compel support for post-secondary educational support. The Act neither implicates a suspect class nor infringes upon a fundamental right, therefore it must be upheld if there exists any rational basis for the prescribed classification. The Act classifies young adults according to the marital status of their parents.
Under the Act a parent with a child born to a second marriage would be required to provide such support for the first child but not the second. This demonstrates the arbitrariness of the Act. Other States have found the underlying premise is to address the unique problems of divorced families. However, this Court rejects such analysis because the Act is focused not on the parents but the children.
Dissent. The Act operates on an assumption that divorce involves a disadvantage to the children of broken families, and assures that such children are not deprived, but are put in the same position as if the marriage had remained intact. Divorced parents too frequently become reluctant to provide financial support for any purpose, and the Act is rationally related to equalizing the disparate situation faced by children of divorce.
Discussion. The majority found that the Act had no rational relation to a legitimate state interest because it benefited children of divorce while not providing for other children. The dissent and other states have found such Acts rational in that children of divorce are disproportionately disadvantaged.
I just returned from my monthly visit to the doctor, and subsequently a visit to the pharmacy. Nothing unusual with my medications—they have been stabilized for several months. Yet this time the pharmacy could not provide my customary refills. My Medicaid will not pay for them. Not this time.
Together the whole lot of medications costs just less than $900. Nine hundred dollars that I don't have, and nine hundred dollars that I have no way of getting. I have no other benefits, no Social Security checks to count on; no disability payments to pull together; no Medicare to meet me when the bottom falls out, again.
This surely is not the first time my Medicaid has not come through as a reliable source of payment. It is not even the second or third time. It's more like the eight or ninth, maybe more often than that. I only recently qualified for Medicaid some eight months ago! Since then, I have already acquired several thousand dollars in unpaid medical expenses that have made their way to collection agencies.
I constantly ask myself why does this happen to me? Am I part of some diabolical scheme to do away with public health efforts? Silence the noisemaker! Or is it just a coincidence that I spent three years in a doctoral program studying health law and policy specific to mental health and Medicaid. Don't they know how much more it hurts me to know exactly which systemic cracks I am falling through? Why have I encountered so many random barriers to health care in addition to those obstacles strategically placed in the system? We all know them: the endless forms, the incompetent employees, the negligence that already works to deter consumers such as myself from using the public health programs to which we are entitled. Yes, entitled. Medicaid is in fact an entitlement program no matter what they would have us believe.
Don't they know who I am? Who I could be? Who I might be if only my mental health and medications would remain stable? If only my health could be stabilized, I could live the rest of my life in rhythm without having my peace of mind tampered with by bureaucratic negligence and oversight. Without having my benefits tampered with by bureaucratic negligence and oversight! I could be a real noisemaker, if only…
Unfortunately, no one in the Medicaid office knows who I am. I remain a faceless, quantifiable case number who means nothing to them. And I am not alone. But I need your help. Together we can fight to change Medicaid prescription limits and managed care formularies. I am not alone. Let your voice be heard.
"Information control is mind control."--Dick Sutphen
[The methods used by the Allopathic Medical Monopoly to suppress the truth and get away with covert-medical Fascism. The key is to have all information come out through pseudo-Authorities via the Media, but to hide the fact that they are all pharma Shills. This consists mostly of Lies and Fear mongering. The propaganda is then easily embedded with the strength of a Hypnotic command, with a second groupthink ring fence, based on the religious mind control programme, known as The Church ofAllopathy, made easy by the fact most people are atheists and in chronic fear i.e. stage 1 & 2 spiritual, (where most of the Pyjama people are) with the stage 3 academic types being very easy to hypnotise (1), and with the most to lose if the system crashed: 'You have to understand that most of these people are not ready to be unplugged and many are so hopelessly dependent on the system, they will fight to protect it.' (see). The system itself (Fascism) is run by psychopaths, so it is no surprise there is an even more covert agenda going on suppressing alternative doctors and medicine, easily shown with cancer and vitamin C.]
The propaganda dispensed by Public health care and vaccine apologists is, at best, a weak attempt to rationalize the healthcare establishmentspositions using all the tools of doublespeak or, as George Orwells called it in his book 1984, newspeak, to: (a) mislead, (b) distort reality, (c) pretendto communicate, (d) make the bad seem good, (e) avoid and/or shift responsibility, (f) make the negative appear positive, (g) create a false verbalmap of the world, and (h) create dissonance between reality and what their narrative said or did not say. Such propaganda often relies on half-truths and/or superficially logical, but foundationally flawed, phrasing. However, this propaganda is fundamentallyflawed and based on pseudo-science or non-reviewable statistical studies of medical records, where, contrary to ethical science, the studydesign, data selection/rejection criteria, exact approach used to evaluate the data, and/or the original data itself are kept confidential making independentevaluation/verification of the published findings impossible. [2008] Key realities about autism, vaccines, vaccine-injury compensation, Thimerosal, and autism-related research----Gary S. Goldman, Ph.D & P.G. King PhD.
"It is difficult to conceive what will be the excuse made for a century of cowpoxing; but it cannot be doubted that the practice will appear in as absurd a light to the common sense of the twentieth century as blood-letting now does to us. Vaccination differs, however, from all previous errors of the faculty, in being maintained as the law of the land on the warrant of medical authority. That is the reason why the blow to professional credit can hardly help being severe, and why the efforts to ward it off have been, and will continue to be so ingenious." Charles Creighton M.D.
"The beginning of wisdom is to call things by the right names." Chinese Proverb
"In Medicine, as in statecraft and propaganda, words are sometimes the most powerful drugs we can use." -----Sara Murray Jordan
You can see the Allopaths suppressing vaccine criticism right before your eyes on Wikipedia
"Doctors essentially believe the pro-vaccine propaganda and just keep repeating it like a mantra without looking at the facts."Peter Morrell
In the entire history of man, no one has ever been brainwashed and realized, or believed, that he had been brainwashed. Those who have been brainwashed will usually passionately defend their manipulators, claiming they have simply been "shown the light" . . . or have been transformed in miraculous ways. The Battle for Your Mind: Brainwashing Techniques Being Used On The Public By Dick Sutphen
in my view the cover-up of vaccine damage that has entailed the denigration of thousands of parents and the complete, almost Romanian-style lack of medical care of hundreds of damaged children, encouraged by the government, the medical establishment and the multinational pharmaceutical industry together with a number of journalists, is one of the most disgraceful incidents in British medical politics over the last century. To my mind it ranks in a degree of obscenity with the cover up over the advancing number of environmentally induced cases of cancer in our society and the decades-long attempts by industry to conceal the health damage caused by asbestos. In the case of MMR, there is a government still in power that indemnified the world's biggest pharmaceutical company, GSK, against all claims made by the parents or relatives of vaccine damaged children. When the adverse reactions occurred in their thousands, in the form of inflammatory bowel disease and regressive autism, seizures and brain damage, the government battened down the hatches and began one of the biggest propaganda campaigns ever mounted in Britain. [2008 Oct] An Open Letter to Brian Deer Rebutting His Article'Families duped by a sad smearmaster of MMRfabrication and hatred' by Martin J Walker MA
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism since it is the merger of state and corporate power."--Benito Mussolini
The key is invisibility. Once propaganda becomes visible, it's less effective. Public relations is effective in manipulating opinion - and thus public policy - only if people believe that the message covertly delivered by the PR campaign is not propaganda at all but simply common sense or accepted reality.WAR ON TRUTH The Secret Battle for the American Mind An Interview with John Stauber
Believing that democracy needed wise and hidden manipulators, Bernays was proud to be a propagandist and wrote in his book Propaganda: "If we understand the mechanisms and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without them knowing it." He called this the "engineering of consent" and proposed that "those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. . . . In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons . . . who pull the wires which control the public mind." It appears not to have dawned on Bernays until the 1930s that his science of propaganda could also be used to subvert democracy and promote fascism. That was when journalist Karl von Weigand told Bernays that Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels had read all of his books, and possessed an even better library on propaganda than Bernays did. WAR ON TRUTH The Secret Battle for the American Mind An Interview with John Stauber
"We were using niacin and niacinamide before the new psychiatric drugs entered the North American market. Our results were better and safer but wehad no one to support us. While drug results were more often more dramatic, they were also much more dangerous. Eventually, it turned out that drugs,while helping in the short run and used in small doses, in the long run stopped the process of recovery long before the patients became well, and froze them into a chronic semi-invalid state from which they can not recoveras long as they remain on the medication. "Today, 47 years later, orthomolecular vitamin treatment is still relatively unknown. The use of drugs is world wide and sanctioned by powerful druginterests, the professional associations and governments. It seems not to matter that huge numbers of patients are being denied their chance for full recovery...... niacin has not been fenced in and the treatment has indeed been trampled on for the past 40 years by the galloping hordes of professional establishments, the American Psychiatric Association, governments, the FDA , the National Institutes of Mental Health, and by nearly every health-professional organization. It is a wonder that there are any orthomolecular doctors at all. ---Abram Hoffer, M.D., Ph.D.
Proper words in proper places, makes the true definition of style.---Jonathan Swift
But they were attempting to do medical research ... and that's one of those hypnotic phrases, "medical research". I could probably put everybody to sleep just by saying "medical research, medical research ..." (laughter) And people would reach into their pockets and come out with money, man ... well hey, cancer and infantile paralysis and m.s. ... whatever you want ... I'll give you money ... medical research, medical research. Politicians know that's the key they turn all the time ... when they can't figure out what to say, they say we need more money for research ... and that means tax money and it means things you don't want to be subjected to most of the time ... The CIA, Mind Control & Children: A Talk by John Rappoport
While identity theft is a global issue that garners much media attention, most do not realize that medical identity theft is a serious and growing threat. Many authorities consider medical identity theft one of the fastest growing crimes in America. With the digital age of healthcare upon us, the risks are expected to increase as electronic medical records become more prevalent and the exchange of this data over expanding networks becomes more pervasive. Heightened concern over personal data security and privacy highlight the importance of having secure electronic medical identities.
According to a recent Ponemon Institute study, nearly 1.5 million Americans have been victims of medical identity theft with an estimated total cost of $28.6 billion–or approximately $20,000 per victim. [1] Further evidence of the significance of the medical fraud problem is the allocation of $1.7 billion for fraud detection in the 2011 U.S. Health and Human Services Department budget. [2] In 2009, 68 reported healthcare data breaches in the U.S. put over 11.3 million patient records at risk of exposure.
Patients whose medical identities are stolen face serious lingering effects. Fraudulent healthcare events can leave erroneous data in medical records. This erroneous information–like information about tests, diagnoses and procedures–can greatly affect future healthcare and insurance coverage and costs. Patients are often unaware of medical identity theft until a curious bill or a surprising line of questioning by a doctor exposes the issue. Then, the burden of proof is often with the patient and it can be difficult to get the patient’s legitimate medical records cleaned up. The consequences can also be life threatening and can lead to serious medical errors and fatalities.
Identity theft prevention services generally will not protect you from medical identity theft. However, if your information is out there on the Net and being scanned constantly by the identity theft protection service, then your risk is lowered. Furthermore, I’m all about layers of protection. If your identity is protected from new account fraud via credit monitoring or credit freezes then the thief may use another identity that has less restrictions.
1. Get acreditfreeze and follow the steps for your particular state. This is an absolutely necessary tool to secure your credit. In most cases, it prevents new accounts from being opened in your name. This makes your Social Security number useless to a potential identity thief.
I have a serious problem with the most recent health reform effort. Asking or expecting the health industry to reduce costs through self-regulation without accountability is simply ridiculous.
Health care is already completely self-regulated and controlled. A person does not have free choice when choosing a provider. Due to an unholy alliance of provider networks, insurance underwriters, pharmaceutical conglomerates and private for profit hospital corporations such as HCA.
By negotiating with providers and developing one-size-fits-all prescription formularies and treatment protocols, we remove the ability for the consumer to make independent informed decisions about the value of various treatment options.
We rely upon one the ratings of physicians who have self-interest in controlling access and information to accurate information through their reliance upon Certification and Licensing Boards. By limiting access into the profession, health care costs are inflated and it is near impossible for the consumer to determine the fair value of a health care service.
Second, the consumer is far removed from the negotiating process, so we do not have a good sense of the fair, free market value of one particular service in comparison to another. All you need to do is look at any EOB (explanation of benefits) report for your last trip to the hospital.
Billing codes are used and assigned through various service departments and the insurance carrier then decides which services are covered and at what rate. They use the terms like “Reasonable and Customary Rates” and then choose to pay 80% of that. Therefore, by definition, that 20% must be built in to the billing rates to adjust for the actual (and expected) rate of reimbursement.
Such complicated billing procedures and methods are so complicated and technical that the end recipient of services (the consumer) really has no idea if an X-ray costs $90 or $73. Add into that a separate fee for the radiologist, and sometimes a charge just to use the facility, and even smart people find it difficult to understand.
The bills are then processed by an insurance adjuster who must determine primary and secondary (supplemental) plans and determine who is responsible for what, the end cost and intricate design is truly “priceless.”
Good luck to those people who actually purchased supplemental plans they saw advertised on TV, you have been duped. Giving people (especially the infirm and the elderly) a false sense of security is unfair and unjust.
Without regulation, intervention and enforcement, many people will continue to believe they are prepared and protected from that ultimate for “just in case” scenario that results in major, catastrophic medical loss.
The administrative cost alone on the part of the “Responsible Party” is probably more costly than the initial service they received at whatever hospital for whatever condition.
You cannot apply basic economic theory and free market principles to health care. Health care is fundamentally different and should be considered a public good.
2 comments:
Right on. It just never stops.
Great post - very disturbing what passes for "reform" these days.