Obscene Profits Hike by Hospitals Marking Up Treatments by 1,000 Percent to the Sick and Dying

""Many people today are leery of hospitals, often hesitant even to receive care for something as minor as a common cold. With constantly changing insurance hassles, record mix-ups and patients sometimes left feeling worse than when they arrived, it's understandable. Then there's the issue of your finances. According to a recent study published in the journal Health Affairs, if you were financially stable before heading to the hospital, chances are, you won't be after leaving.

The study, conducted by experts from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and from Washington & Lee University who analyzed Medicare cost reports, found that many hospitals in the United States are charging unbelievably exorbitant fees. This isn't anything minor, either. They noted that 50 hospitals in the country are marking up their medical services to the tune of over 1,000 percent above and beyond actual costs. It's hitting the uninsured and out-of-network people the most, along with those covered by auto and worker's compensation insurance.⁽¹⁾

Try to get healthy, and it's nearly impossible to stay that way before running out of money (if you can even afford it in the first place). And so the cycle continues, which the study attributes to the fact that many hospitals can charge as they wish. So they do, and it's ludicrous.

The reason for outrageous hospital fees: experts say it's "because they can"

"There is no justification for these outrageous rates, but no one tells hospitals they can't charge them," said Gerard F. Anderson, a professor in the Bloomberg School's Department of Health Policy and Management who was involved in the study. "For the most part, there is no regulation of hospital rates and there are no market forces that force hospitals to lower their rates. They charge these prices simply because they can."⁽¹⁾

Hospitals with such a "because I can" mentality run the gamut; they're not just found in one region in the United States. The study's rundown of such places are outlined in the study, "Extreme Markup: The Fifty US Hospitals With The Highest Charge-To-Cost Ratios," and include Carepoint Health-Bayonne Hospital in New Jersey, Lawnwood Regional Medical Center & Heart Institute in Florida, Western Arizona Regional Medical Center in Arizona and Lake Granbury Medical Center in Texas. Such a variety demonstrates how widespread this unfair issue is. People all across the country are suffering from health issues, and sadly, going in for treatment may mean they'll suffer from serious financial setbacks as well.⁽¹⁾

The study presents the following suggestion to help remedy these insane fees:

Federal and state governments may want to consider limitations on the charge-to-cost ratio, some form of all-payer rate setting, or mandated price disclosure to regulate hospital markups.⁽²⁾

Hospitals maintain they're the ones losing money, justify markups

Still, many hospital executives attempt to justify such markups, saying that Medicare and Medicaid haven't raised their reimbursement rates to match inflation. Therefore, they maintain that they lose out financially on such patients.

"Clearly, hospitals need to receive sufficient revenue to remain in business, and having revenues that are above costs is necessary," Anderson and Washington & Lee University's Ge Bai noted. "This argument, however, cannot completely explain the wide variation in the charge-to-cost ratio... or why some hospitals are charging 10 times their own costs.""

http://www.naturalnews.com/050083_hospital_prices_treatment_costs_medical_profiteering.html

Farmers Resist and Fight Back Against Criminalization in Seed Laws

""Peasant seeds – the pillar of food production – are under attack everywhere. Under corporate pressure, laws in many countries increasingly limit what farmers can do with their seeds. Seed saving, which has been the basis of farming for thousands of years, is quickly being criminalised.

What can we do? A new booklet and poster from La Via Campesina and GRAIN documents how big business and governments are moving to stop farmers from saving and exchanging their seeds, and shows how farmers are fighting back.

Control over seeds must remain in peasants’ hands. This is the principle, based in the production process, that guarantees the food sovereignty of rural communities and urban populations against multinationals and their enormous profits. Over centuries, peasant farmers have created the thousands of varieties of crops that are the basis of the world’s food supply and diversified diets, says La Via Campesina’s Guy Kastler.

But for corporations who want to impose laws that will give them complete control of land, farming, food and the profits that could be made from this sector, these time-tested practices around seeds are an obstacle. For La Via Campesina, the law should instead guarantee the rights of peasants to conserve, use, exchange, use and sell their seeds and protect them from biopiracy.

Big business is carrying out, with the support of governments, a global legal offensive to gain complete control over seeds. This includes not only privatising seeds through new laws, but giving themselves new rights to physically search farmers’ homes and destroy their seeds, says Camila Montecinos of GRAIN.

Seed laws are evolving and becoming more aggressive in response to new demands from the seed and biotechnology industry. So-called free trade agreements, bilateral investment treaties and regional integration initiatives are hardening ‘soft’ forms of ownership rights over seeds. And laws strengthening intellectual property rights over seeds are being reinforced by other regulations that are supposed to ensure seed quality, market transparency, prevention of counterfeits, and the like.

What is at stake is the very basis of peasant farmers’ existence. Social movements worldwide, especially peasant farmers organisations, have resisted and mobilised to prevent such laws being passed.

Corporations and governments rely on secrecy and lack of transparency because they know that an informed citizenry will reject the privatisation of seeds.""

http://www.globalresearch.ca/seed-laws-that-criminalise-farmers-resistance-and-fightback/5441681