Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Supreme Court to Review State Officials' Refusing to Provide Records When Someone Dies in State Mental Hospital Facilities: Remember Steven Sabock

Where's Bob Dylan when we need him. Remember Steven Sabock:

Steven Sabock

Steven Sabock, age 50 and not a happy man,
sat in his chair unfed for 22 hours at Cherry Hospital in Goldsboro, North Carolina,
choked on his medicationand died.
A few feet awaythe staff watched TV and played cards.
It was not reported what programs they watched
or who won at cards,but maybe that was not important,and neither was Mr. Sabock.

Tom Greening, PhD

see earlier Defarge:
http://madame-defarge.blogspot.com/2008/08/steven-sabock-unimportant-man-who-died.html
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http://www.wbtv.com/global/story.asp?s=12681923

"...High court to review mental health advocacy suit

Posted: Jun 21, 2010 10:10 AM EDTUpdated: Jun 21, 2010 10:30 AM EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court says it will decide whether Virginia's advocate for the mentally ill can force state officials to provide records relating to deaths and injuries at state mental health facilities.

The justices agreed Monday to review a federal appeals court ruling dismissing the state advocate's lawsuit against Virginia's mental health commissioner and two other officials.

Backing the appeal, the Obama administration said the ruling by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond "threatens to undermine the enforcement of federal laws that Congress designed to protect especially vulnerable individuals from the abusive and neglectful practices that can result in injury and death."

The Virginia advocate's office, like those in the other 49 states, was created under two federal laws that give states federal money for monitoring the treatment of the mentally ill in state facilities. The first law grew out of public reports in the 1970s of crowded, filthy conditions and abusive treatment of mentally retarded children at the Willowbrook State School in New York.

The issue for the court is whether the Eleventh Amendment prohibits a state agency from going to federal court to sue officials of the same state. The state itself could not be sued in the same circumstances...."
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Bob Dylan writing about a man unjustly charged w/ murdering someone (while the evidence was undoubtedly shuffled under a bigger pile, where it would be hidden):

"All of Rubin's cards were marked in advance
The trial was a pig-circus, he never had a chance.
The judge made Rubin's witnesses drunkards from the slums
To the white folks who watched he was a revolutionary bum
And to the black folks he was just a crazy nigger.
No one doubted that he pulled the trigger.
And though they could not produce the gun,
The D.A. said he was the one who did the deed
And the all-white jury agreed."

http://www.chasingthefrog.com/reelfaces/thehurricane_lyrics.php

Younger People Blamed for Making Private Insurance Market Prices Soar by Industry's Trade Group

Sorry, Mr. Robert Zierkelbach, you have no evidence that younger people are dropping their health insurance leaving the older beached, whales to be washed up on shore.

This simply looks like a good time to drag out that excuse so that the industry can continue to make its massive profits prior to 2014 when pre-existing conditions will no longer be admissable evidence for denial of insurance.

Business
Costs soar for individual health coverage
Insurance premiums increase average of 20%, Kaiser Family Foundation report says
By Guy Boulton of the Journal Sentinel
Posted: June 22, 2010 (57) Comments

http://www.jsonline.com/business/96854979.html

".....The market for individual insurance has long been considered the most problematic in the industry, and it is the target of many of the most sweeping health care reforms recently enacted by Congress....

"Many people see the individual market as the most broken part of the insurance market," Drew Altman, president and chief executive of the Kaiser Family Foundation, said in a teleconference....

America's Health Insurance Plans, the industry's trade group, tracks premiums in the individual market and does not have information on how the recent increases compare with those of past years.

But Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for association, said the premium increases stem from higher medical costs and from younger and healthier people dropping their health insurance during the economic downturn.

People who are young and healthy basically subsidize the cost of health insurance for people who are older and sicker.

But Kaiser's Altman noted that there is not good data on whether younger and healthier people have actually dropped their coverage or on what is behind the sharp increases in premiums in the individual market....."