Special Posting: MISSION CONTROL: American Healthcare!

Healthcare consumers ARISE!!!

The distractions of modern life, disastrous troop surges and the soap operas of new mothers -- Ms. Spears and Ms. Smith -- have overtaken our senses and common sense. Boomers' third age is on deck and our corporatized healthcare infrastructure and delivery systems are about to co-opt our (Internet) healthcare information resources as well. As the military industrial complex rachets downward (which it must as boomers begin signing up for Medicare en masse), the same lobbyists and financial interests who drive it will be refocusing on healthcare as the bastion of HUGE returns.

How will Congress and the next President allocate these redirected resources? Who will decide?

There is already evidence the money-guys/gals are staking out (Internet) healthcare information resources for the very same establishment interests who have held 40+ million Americans from a basic human right -- healthcare insurance. Many millions more fear the loss of insurance if jobs are lost.

American jobs are portable. Their insurance is not.

Boomers and their children have been otherwise engaged. New technologies and amazing medical advances have lulled us into a state of ignorance that would be unthinkable in any other area of our lives. We receive the healthcare and long-term care services and security we deserve.

GoogleHealth is coming.

CareTALK will be part of this REAL healthcare revolution. We are meeting with Chairman Rangel in two weeks. I pounded the pavements for his first campaign against the wonderful, but flawed Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. many years ago -- and that deserves a meeting! We have seen the movie over the last 7 years and we know all the entrenched and arriving players. Not many care very much for caregivers -- professional or family/friends -- who have been served pabulum for years, and have been deliberately kept ignorant or worse, misinformed. Medicare does NOT cover long-term care expenses. Families need to arm themselves NOW with modern, cutting edge information resources, tools, utilities -- and we, as Americans, all have a RESPONSIBILITY to MANAGE a change in course. Government resources have been SQUANDERED. A PLAN for how to reconcile boomers' HUGE Medicare and long-term care requirements with the needs of younger generations must be prioritized. That plan will not and should not exclusively come from entrenched interests. The plan must be driven by an informed and resourced American healthcare consumer. A demographic tidal wave of seniors will make demands on us all. Corporate interests cannot and should not define Americans' healthcare future -- alone.

GoogleHealth is coming.

YOU will be in the drivers' seat -- FOR REAL! Information comes with responsibilities.

Sorry, Brittany and Nicole -- we're changing the channel.

- Renata

PS. Visit The Concord Coalition, as mentioned in 'Baby Boom' about to lower boom on overextended U.S. budget ..., to see what we, as a nation, can do to help our lawmakers and the 2008 presidential candidates focus on the growing fiscal crisis we are currently in-- and will be in with healthcare costs rising and the ratio of "workers paying into Social Security and Medicare relative to the number of beneficiaries will fall by roughly one-third."