Receivers Interim Report On The State Of Affairs Of: Fill & Download for Free

As everything appears a nail to a hammer, so everything bends to market principles to a free marketer. However, healthcare isn't amenable to the free market.After all, we need healthcare the most when we are least in charge of ourselves and therefore least capable of negotiating a fair bargain on our own behalf. Loved ones would also be negotiating on our behalf with the proverbial gun to their heads. This is why a pure healthcare free market could only ever be a shakedown of a captive buyer by a seller engaged in a profiteering racket.Other developed countries have somehow understood this unalterable fundamental and accordingly arranged their healthcare systems to sustain some form of universal coverage while the US has unfortunately got its head stubbornly stuck up Ayn Rand's ass.November 19, 1945 was the closest the US came to a having a sensible healthcare policy when then-President Harry S. Truman proposed creating a federally run, universal health care plan, the national health insurance (NHI).Obviously that never came to pass and since then the US healthcare system has evolved to consist of an unnecessarily complex patchwork of private and public services, with most Americans reliant on employment-based private insurance (below from 1). Why are US employers involved in an individual's healthcare decisions anyway? How could a practice that so reeks of paternalism take root in the land of the free, home of the brave? Questions for sages of the ages to ponder.Implicitly assuming the current US healthcare system operates on free market principles is also inaccurate since it in fact doesn't. On the contrary, the evidence clearly suggests that the free market in the current US healthcare system is thumbs on the scale all the way. All too often free markets deviate wildly in practice from how they're supposed to operate in theory. Regulatory capture is usually the reason why.The current US healthcare system is best described as the monster child of singularly comprehensive regulatory capture and the population's learned helplessness, with hopelessly compromised US legislators serving as apparently hapless midwives; a system where patients, the people who should have the most say in what the system should be and how it should operate, instead turn out to have the least.The tyrannical hold of practices such as the Chargemaster - Wikipedia, fee-for-service and regulation-free drug pricing offer many unmistakable signs of deathly regulatory capture of the US healthcare system, which has thus become one that vainly attempts but fails to provide comprehensive yet affordable healthcare to all too many while those with deep pockets or in the US Congress avail of the best healthcare anywhere in the world.News reports on the US healthcare system are routinely replete with details of runaway costs that violate common sense, an unmistakable sign of thorough regulatory capture.A baby cost her mother's employer US $1 million (2).A US hospital charged $1877 to pierce a 5 year old's ears (3).Three stitches on a skinned knee cost $2299.11 while a child's forehead gash sealed with a dab of skin glue cost $1696 (4).Average pregnancy in the US costs $32093 (5) to $37341 on average (6), making US births the costliest in the worldA mother was bankrupted after giving birth to premature twins (7).The high price of insulin cost a diabetes patient his life from being compelled to engage in dangerous rationing (8).The Nobel Prize-winning physicist Leon Lederman auctioned his award for $756000 in 2015 to help pay for medical bills and care (9).Apparently no one knows how much anything can cost in a US hospital, from a knee surgery (10) to neck surgery (11) to ER visits (12).The normal laws of supply and demand don't work in the US drug market.For example, Novartis first marketed the anti-cancer drug, Gleevec (Imatinib), in 2001 with the price tag of $30000 per year and yet 11 years later in 2012, they priced it at $92000 per year, even as competitors had come up with comparable drugs in the interim. Instead of driving down cost as competition is supposed to do in a free market, Gleevec's price skyrocketed instead.More below on the extent to which drugs cost way more in the US than in other countries from 13.The gruesome irony is that, from the unlucky many at the bottom of the economic pyramid to the lucky few perched at its rarefied heights, all pay through their noses for the privilege of access to healthcare services in the US. Did I write all? My bad. US legislators avail themselves of the best healthcare at insultingly reasonable costs, thank you very much.Regardless how most of those at the receiving end fare, the sellers in this patchwork quilt are certainly making out like bandits, all at the expense of the US government, which gets bilked through its nose, as we see from the figure from 1. This means the US taxpayer gets bilked in turn, making US healthcare system a poster child for socialized cost-privatized profit.What else could happen after self-dealing lawmakers single-mindedly keep enacting legislations that prioritize healthcare product and service sellers at the expense of buyers/payers (public and private coverage) and consumers. This process has been in place for decades. A couple of salient examples,One of most consequential shots across the bow was the 1995 decision when the US NIH (14)“relinquished its right to require "reasonable pricing" on drugs and other products developed in cooperation between the Government and industry. The pricing policy had been opposed by business interests since it was imposed six years ago.Dr. Harold Varmus, director of the institutes, said the research agency would give up the option to review the introductory price of products developed from basic research sponsored by the Government. The policy was adopted in 1989 in response to criticism that drugs developed with substantial Government help were being marketed at excessive prices.”The Medicare part D expansion in 2003 deliberately hobbles Medicare from negotiating drug prices. If Medicare with its mammoth size can't negotiate drug prices, what chances the thousands of much smaller players in the US health insurance scene can do better?No surprise then that the US has the highest per capita prescription drug prices (below from 15).Innovations of the US healthcare system currently include such grotesqueries asPeople desperately soliciting funds from strangers on Go Fund Me to help pay for medical bills.Being able to declare personal bankruptcy to get medical debt forgiven.Job lock - Wikipedia, where millions of US workers toil in jobs they likely hate only so they can hang on to their employment-based healthcare coverage. This has all sorts of pernicious cascading effects, from poor morale and poor productivity at the individual level to lack of innovation and dwindling rates of entrepreneurship at the societal level.Adequate healthcare services fast evaporating in rural areas in lock-step with escalating costs that make operating them in such areas unsustainable.Patient dumping of indigents treated in ERs becoming ever more the norm as we see from viral videos of such malpractice.Popularity of medical NGOs like Remote Area Medical - Wikipedia who are greeted like rock stars when they swing through a town. This is literally true because RAM doles out free medical care at its pop-up clinics, which are usually held at local sports arenas, where people drive from even hundreds of miles away to camp out and stand in long queues to get access to even the most basic of medical services such as new eyeglasses or dental work.As costs soar to astronomical levels,US health insurance companies have taken to transferring more of the cost burden directly onto consumers through high-deductible plans and cost sharingUS employers, already stretched to breaking point from offering blindingly expensive health insurance plans to employees, are wholesale moving away from having employees altogether and instead opting for contractors sourced from staffing companies. When even global giants like Google have 1 contractor or more for every single full-time employee, it's obvious healthcare costs are literally breaking US companies' backs.Medical tourism where US patients access health services in poorer countries like India, which only deprives citizens of such countries even more of the already sub-optimal healthcare that already exists there.Such abominations have not only become the norm for many in the US, Americans themselves are so inured to this, they accept it as normal, quite a pathetic state of affairs indeed in the wealthiest country in the world.In a nutshell, US policy since the 1980s has systematically institutionalized price gouging and opacity on the part of service providers (sellers) even as it has hobbled the negotiating power of healthcare service payers, i.e., public and private coverage. Nothing in this process was inevitable or unavoidable. The public is largely apathetic, having been acculturated to the status quo through the process of learned helplessness. After all, how many Americans routinely live in other countries long enough to understand just how different and even equitable healthcare services could or indeed should be?The US is today thus ideal for those who are healthy and childless, a fool's paradise if ever there was one since even they are only a chance away from a catastrophic accident.Bibliography1. Dickman, Samuel L., David U. Himmelstein, and Steffie Woolhandler. "Inequality and the health-care system in the USA." The Lancet 389.10077 (2017): 1431-1441. http://www.rootcausecoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Inequality-and-the-health-care-system-in-the-USA.pdf2. 'We blame the sick for being expensive': the mother whose baby cost AOL $1m3. A Hospital Charged $1,877 to Pierce a 5-Year-Old’s Ears. This Is Why Health Care Costs So Much. — ProPublica4. As Hospital Prices Soar, a Stitch Tops $5005. Why does it cost $32,093 just to give birth in America?6. American Way of Birth, Costliest in the World7. Bankrupted by giving birth: having premature twins cost me everything | Jen Sinconis8. Insulin's High Cost Leads To Lethal Rationing9. Nobel Prize-winning physicist Leon Lederman dies at 9610. What Does Knee Surgery Cost? Few Know, and That’s a Problem11. After Surgery, Surprise $117,000 Medical Bill From Doctor He Didn’t Know12. Sarah Kliff brings transparency to ER prices, one hospital bill at a time13. Why the U.S. Pays More Than Other Countries for Drugs14. U.S. Gives Up Right to Control Drug Prices15. Kesselheim, Aaron S., Jerry Avorn, and Ameet Sarpatwari. "The high cost of prescription drugs in the United States: origins and prospects for reform." Jama 316.8 (2016): 858-871. https://preview.thenewsmarket.com/Previews/JOUR/DocumentAssets/446118.pdf

Nothing will happen quickly...and nothing will happen permanently. These revelations are very recent, but the specific programs have been building up for years. The philosophical outlook that advocates pervasive monitoring of a citizenry is ANCIENT.President Obama has received a lot of the focus and a lot of the anger on this one. He's the Commander-in-Chief and, to crib from the person who was preseident when our current national security state was born in 1947, the buck stops with him. (He also campaigned on civil liberties and was handed a Nobel Peace Prize, so the dissonance and irony make the anger all the more bitter.) Institutional Washington DC, however, has a long, long history and if we focus too much on the current President, we loose the larger view.I encourage everyone to read up on 1975's Church Committee. You can read their full reports at AARC Public Library - Church Committee Reports. Here are the volumes:Interim Report: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign LeadersVolume 1: Unauthorized Storage of Toxic AgentsVolume 2: Huston PlanVolume 3: Internal Revenue ServiceVolume 4: Mail OpeningVolume 5: The National Security Agency and Fourth Amendment RightsVolume 6: Federal Bureau of InvestigationVolume 7: Covert ActionBook I: Foreign and Military IntelligenceBook II: Intelligence Activities and the Rights of AmericansBook III: Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence Activities and the Rights of AmericansBook IV: Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Foreign and Military IntelligenceBook V: The Investigation of the Assassination of President J.F.K.: Performance of the Intelligence AgenciesBook VI: Supplementary Reports on Intelligence ActivitiesHmmmm...based on the titles alone, it looks like a few of these things have relevance today.Also, here are some highlights from the Wikipedia article on the Church Committee:Opening mailThe Church Committee learned that beginning in the 1950s, the CIA and Federal Bureau of Investigation intercepted, opened and photographed more than 215,000 pieces of mail by the time the program called "HTLINGUAL" was shut down in 1973. This program was all done under the "mail covers" program. A mail cover is when the government records without a warrant or notification all information on the outside of an envelope or package, including the name of the sender and the recipient. The Church report found that the CIA was zealous about keeping the United States Postal Service from learning that mail was being opened by government agents. CIA agents moved mail to a private room to open the mail or in some cases opened envelopes at night after stuffing them in briefcases or coat pockets to deceive postal officials.[5]The Ford administration and the Church CommitteeOn May 9 1975, the Church Committee decided to call acting CIA director William Colby. That same day Ford's top advisers (Henry Kissinger, Donald Rumsfeld, Philip W. Buchen, and John Marsh) drafted a recommendation that Colby be authorized to brief only rather than testify, and that he would be told to discuss only the general subject, with details of specific covert actions to be avoided except for realistic hypotheticals. But the Church Committee had full authority to call a hearing and require Colby's testimony. Ford and his top advisers met with Colby to prepare him for the hearing.[6] Colby testified, "These last two months have placed American intelligence in danger. The almost hysterical excitement surrounding any news story mentioning CIA or referring even to a perfectly legitimate activity of CIA has raised a question whether secret intelligence operations can be conducted by the United States."[7]The Ford administration, particularly Rumsfeld, was concerned about the effort by members of the Church Committee in the Senate and the Pike Committee in the House to curtail the power of U.S. intelligence agencies. Frontlinequoted U.S. diplomat and Nixon assistant Robert Ellsworth, who stated: "They were very specific about their effort to destroy American intelligence [capabilities]. It was Senator Church who said our intelligence agencies were 'rogue elephants.' They were supposedly out there assassinating people and playing dirty tricks and so forth... Well, that just wasn't true." Rumsfeld and Ellsworth prevented the committees from dismantling the CIA and other intelligence organizations.[8]Results of the investigationThe Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) were inspired by the recommendations of the Church Committee.[9] Today, the FISC oversees requests for surveillance warrants of suspected foreign intelligence agents inside the United States by federal police agencies. Also as a result, Colby was replaced by George Bush as CIA director.Again, hmmm.... one or two of those names look awfully familiar.Getting down to likely consequences:On the foreign affairs front, there is no foreign government who is at all shocked to know what the NSA has been up to. However, it doesn't matter what you know in either law or politics; it matters what you can prove. For better and (yes - in certain respects) for worse, Snowden's disclosures have reduced the ability of the the US to apply political and diplomatic pressure to other nations. The appearance of "moral authority" (which was already a pretty thin veil to begin with) has been ripped down so the support of the American public and International public will be even harder to rally.I think we probably have another 13 to 19 years before there's a truly serious Congressional inquiry and potential legislative action. Why 13 to 19 years? Senators have a six year term and we have elections next year (remember to vote in those!!!). If we're lucky, we may get something in 7 - 12 years, but we definitely need more turnover in Congress through electoral defeat and – given the ages of sitting Senators – "natural causes." I'm sure will have some angry hearings with lots of dramatic shouting in the meantime, though.Following up on the prior point in terms of 2014 elections, Saxby Chambliss (the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee) is retiring, so the impact on the race to replace him and committee assignments will be...interesting. For the 2016 Presidential Election, this could potentially have some impact on potential candidates Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush (politician).Much of the public will move on. Some of us – hopefully a growing number – will continue to press the issues, make donations to organizations like the ACLU and the EFF, stay vocal and stay active.As my recent Quora activity shows, I'm really angry about this – but I haven't lost faith in the system or the Republic. A useful bit of perspective to keep in mind is that in 1798, a mere seven years after our wise and revered founders/framers ratified the Constitution, the same set of squabbling idiots passed the horrid Alien and Sedition Acts. That was signed by President John Adams. In response, future presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison authored the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, which advocated the rights of those states to interpose themselves and nullify the acts based on the States' determinations that the acts violated the Constitution.Those were the days, eh?Before anyone gets too wound up, the post-Marbury v. Madison Supreme Court (Judicial Review didn't really exist until that 1803 decision) has repeatedly determined that Article III clearly establishes the superiority of Federal Law to State Law, and the final word on the Constitution comes at the Federal level. The States could theoretically convene a convention independent of Congress to amend the Constitution per Article V; that, however, is incredibly unlikely.Then there was the whole fact that we started as a nation that supported slavery which led to an gruesome civil war. That was a gross encroachment on civil liberties and travesty of human rights (to say the very least) built right into the Constitution. We're still here.We've been walking this tightrope since the beginning. Our balance has always been tenuous and every so often we lose what balance we have completely. We'll get back up, we'll get better, and we'll move forward.

The story between Rwanda and France is very messy with regards to the genocide. After the genocide, the French government took all the documents of anything they did. Those documents were just declassified this year in March 2018.Rwanda had been requesting those documents for over 20 years.Rwanda and France have official embassies in each other’s countries. But they have not had a sitting ambassador since 2015. Their relationship is just quite sour. The new French president is showing some decency, but it is going to be a hell of a ride.President Macron seem to be determined to get the bottom of things, but there is a long way to go. I will call it once I see it. Despite all the evidences, France has actually never apologized for, or even more accepted their role in, the genocide against Tutsi in 1994.To understand this text, you need to remember these personalities below.Alain Juppe: French Foreign Minister in 1994Francois Mitterrand: French President in 1994Juvenal Habyarimana: Rwandan President in 1994 ( responsible for committing these atrocities).Genocide lasted 100 days from April 7th to July 4th, 1994. Claimed more than 1 million victims ( Tutsis ). As of May 2018, the exact number from Ibuka is 1,074,000. To this day, we still find mass graves from time to time. The most recent one in April 2018 had about 3,000 bodies in it.Mass Graves Discovered 24 Years After Rwandan GenocideGenocide did not fall out of the sky. It was planned for years and executed with efficiency and effectiveness by the politicians and masters. It was sensitized all over the country through radio and any other propaganda methods you can think of.The masterminds made average citizens hate Tutsi. Think about how hard it is to look your neighbor in eye and kill them along with their children. This is what happened in Rwanda.Most of the killings were executed by Interahamwe, civilian who were trained to kill with local tools ( machetes, clubs, axes, etc). Simple tools that any Rwandan had in their households.The rest as they say is an “ ugly” history.Hope this helps.For those who find this text ( see below) a bit dry and want to learn about the French bloody-hands in the Rwandan Genocide, I would encourage you to check out my answers below.I cover the failure of International Community in Rwanda ( 1994), French involvement, and what happened between Hutu and Tutsi people in Rwanda. In the end, I will always blame my fellow Rwandans first before anybody else. Period.1994-Genocide against Tutsi people in RwandaDidier Champion's answer to Why did the US not want to intervene in the Rwandan genocide?Didier Champion's answer to Why did the RPF in Rwanda not launch their offensive against Kigali sooner when the evidence of the genocide was clear in May 1994?Didier Champion's answer to Why did Hutu and Tutsi hate each other so much that 20% of Rwanda population were murdered in the Rwandan Genocide?Didier Champion's answer to Why were we so worried about the Jewish genocide but never stopped the genocide in Rwanda?Didier ChampionWith regards to your question,What role did Mitterrand Administration play during the Rwandan Genocide against Tutsi?I was going to try but it is very hard to beat this report. See below.Alain Juppe’s “genocides” In RwandaFrench commandos train Interahamwe militia on 27 June 1994 in Gisenyi. The trainings of thousands of militias had been ongoing since the early 1990sAlain Juppe – the man who was France’s Foreign Minister during the 1994 genocide against Tutsis in Rwanda, today came out saying that pinning the genocide on France is a “disgrace and historical falsification”.KT Press has obtained data from official engagements within the French government where Juppe was directly involved, evidence enough indicating that Paris was well aware of what was happening in Rwanda and actively participated.Opération AmaryllisOn the evening of April 6, 1994, around 20:30 pm, President Juneval Habyarimana’s plane was shot down while landing at Kanombe (Kigali) airport.Juppe swung into action – coordinated government in establishing military intervention that lasted from 9th to 12th April 1994 given the code name Opération Amaryllis.In explaining the necessity of French commandos in Rwanda, Alain Juppé was more explicit in his rejection of an intervention directed at stopping the massacres of Tutsis: “Can France keep order in the whole world? Does she have the means and responsibility to stop, on the whole planet, people from killing each other?”This refusal by the right-wing French government to intervene and stop the massacres in progress is based on an ethnic and tribal view of Africa in general and of Rwanda in particular.In a confidential Elysee meeting, Prime Minister Balladur said; “They have always killed each other like that! Why do you want it to stop?”Collaboration with interim governmentFrance was the only country to collaborate with the interim government of President Theodore Sindikubwabo, although the latter’s role in the organisation and perpetration of the genocide was well established.On April 27, 1994, three weeks after the start of the genocide, two Rwandan emissaries, Jerome Bicamumpaka and Jean Bosco Barayagwiza, were received in Paris at the Elysee and Matignon, whereas the United States and Belgium had refused them visas.They held discussions with high ranking French leaders, notably the Prime Minister Edouard Balladur, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Alain Juppe and Bruno Delaye, head of the African desk in the Office of the President of the Republic .Barayagwiza was then the director of political and administration affairs in the Rwandan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as a radical ethnic extremist, a member of the leadership committee of the CDR and a founding member the RTLM, the instrument of genocide propaganda.As for Jerome Bicamumpaka, he was a member of MDR power, and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the interim government. He was an extremist who would not hesitate to air out remarks full of hatred against Tutsis at the Security Council to justify perpetration of the genocide.During their stay in Paris, Bicamumpaka and Barayagwiza went to the Rwandan embassy in France, dismissed Ambassador Jean-Marie Ndagijimana whom they blamed for not belonging to Hutu power, and changed the locks of the doors of the embassy to deny him access. They replaced him with the Chargé d’Affaires, Martin Ukobizaba, considered as more of an extremist than Ambassador Ndagijimana.All these men were convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda on genocide.According to human rights groups, the reason given by the French authorities for receiving the two envoys of the interim government with full honours was that it was necessary to “remain in contact with all the parties in the conflict”, and to finally declare that it was a question of a “private visit”.Interviewed by Daniel Jacoby, president of FIDH, on the merits of meeting with that delegation, Bruno Delaye answered him that “it was better to talk to them rather than not” and added later on: “With Africa it is not possible not to soil your hands. It seems therefore that “at that precise time, the French authorities knew perfectly well with whom they were doing business with’’ and that they were ready to give them and the interim government political support through such visits.Decision-makingFrançois Mitterrand and Alain Juppé back in the years of their government in powerIn the preceding part, we saw how France’s support to the interim government and FAR, which were busy committing genocide, never failed from April 7, 1994, date of its beginning.At one time, some French officials began recognising the reality of genocide. Alain Juppé, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, acknowledged it on May 16, 1994.Then on June 10, 1994, Alain Juppé, while responding to journalists who asked him if France intended to intervene in Rwanda, declared: “What would we go to do there? One thousand five hundred men would not manage to stop the massacres, especially since one of the parties, the RPF, rejects us”.The same day, June 10, 1994, several French media consistently reported the massacres of Tutsi children accommodated in a Kigali orphanage run by Father Blanchard, a French citizen.The emotion was at its highest on June 11, when Father Blanchard, talking on telephone from Kigali, was quoted in all the big television broadcasts of 08 O’clock on the big French channels. On June 13, the Rwandan tragedy was at the centre of the concerns of an OAU summit that was held in Tunis.In the meantime, back from Kigali, on June 14, Father Blanchard, addressed a press conference covered by all the big French radio and television chains. He described the atrocities that the Interahamwe militia subjected to the children of his orphanage.It is at that time that President F. Mitterrand confided in Edouard Balladur and Alain Juppé; “We must by all means do something; I entirely face up to my responsibilities”.Disagreement at the level of the French executiveWas France’s involvement in Rwanda a war of re-conquest in favour of the genocide government or a military intervention with clear and limited humanitarian objectives?The objectives of the French military intervention in Rwanda as well as its modalities of realisation were to oppose President Mitterrand and his Prime Minister Balladur.The minister of Foreign Affairs, Alain Juppé personally got very much involved in the launching and publicity of the initiative. In a fairly special way, this Minister of the right wing aligned himself with President Mitterrand’s positions.President Mitterrand’s project of intervention in Kigali itself was to divide both the town and the country into two and allow either a re-conquest by FAR, or force negotiations on the positions defended by the French army.This French military intervention, in favour of FAR which was committing genocide, seemed to have been prepared for some months. Thus, SébastienNtahobari, the military attaché of the Rwandan Embassy, during the genocide, in a letter addressed to Paul Quilès gave an instructive retrospective clarification of the visit that Lieutenant-Colonel Rwabalinda paid to General Huchon, head of the military mission at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.Referring to the coded telephone that General Huchon entrusted to Rwabalinda for delivery to the Chief of staff of FAR, General Bizimungu, to “forward to Paris protected information for the security of French soldiers of Opération Turquoise which was being prepared.”The information compiled above is based on data from various international investigations including the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (MIP) in France in 1998 and the Commission of Inquiry of the Belgian Senate in 1997. Alain Juppé is currently seeking to be President of France and is leading in the polls.Hope you find some answers. I will happy to take some questions about the little I know.Didier Champion